#julia is the one who almost kills isaac though

[beevean]

Another thing I find intriguing about CoD's story is that it's actually more original with its "revenge bad" theme than you might expect at first.

It seems to me that nowadays there's a growing backlash against this sort of story. You know the drill: character is wronged, they go on a massive badass rampage in their quest to get back to the one who wronged them... then, at the last minute, they decide "no, this isn't worth it. I will be better than them".

Which is a noble sentiment, but if done sloppily, we might be asked to ignore all the atrocities that person committed in their quest, making them completely worthless.

While I could make multiple examples, sticking with CV, N!Isaac is exactly what I'm talking about. In S3, he's so determined to go to Styria to kill Hector and Carmilla to avenge Dracula, that he kills without impunity or regret. Not everyone, but people who dare to oppose him for perfectly valid reasons, and he causes the death of all the villagers that the Magician kidnapped and brainwashed. But by the time he decides to conquer Styria... he doesn't want to kill N!Hector anymore. "Revenge is for children," he says. "You had no agency anyway," he adds just to spite me. And while he sets to kill Carmilla, it's not because of Dracula, but because he has become a hero who wants to save the world. Not that he spares a thought about all the people he unjustly turned into demons during his rampage, of course, we're just meant to be happy that he finally knows what to do in life.

CoD could have easily gone through this route. Julia even says the classic "the beloved one you're avenging would not like to see you like this". Hector could have at any point dropped his sword and decided that he wanted to be a better person than Isaac, understood that he acted out grief, and let his friend survive; the story still would have gone in the exact same way. But that's not quite what happens.

Hector never fully forgives Isaac. At most, he pities him:

Similarly to N!Isaac above, he recognizes that he didn't have full agency, because of the Curse. But this moment doesn't happen right before striking the final blow: he's looking at Isaac's corpse. At this point, whatever Hector might feel about his former friend is moot. And interestingly, it echoes a similar scene from the MF manga:

In this scene, he's pitying the deceased Dracula in the exact same way, even though some weeks prior he opely declared that he wouldn't be a pawn in his "ridiculous plot for revenge". I think this behavior gives us an important glimpse into Hector's personality: he might get angry, but he's not hateful, and he might even be sympathetic. He never resented humans for mistreating him, at least not to the point of agreeing with Dracula's plan of mass slaughter. He doesn't resent Dracula either, and he still speaks to him and about him with a modicum of respect (although he's clearly enjoying himself when he gloats about being a Devil Forgemaster :P). And, when he's in a clear mind, he can't bring himself to resent Isaac either.

And this is the real turning point, when he remembers Julia's words.

Remember Leon's words to Mathias in LoI?

Is this what the woman you loved would have wanted? The Mathias I know would not have loved such a woman.

I always found interesting that Leon puts it like this, not "you're disappointing your beloved" but actually "was the woman you loved this cruel, that she'd be pleased with your actions?". It's a more... radical way of putting it, I'd say, not about behavior but actual character. I think Hector here made a similar reasoning. "I am not being the person Rosaly fell in love with". Not disappointing her, but... literally, Hector is not like that. The Hector we had been playing as for the entirety of CoD is not the "real" Hector, but one who was driven insane almost as much as Isaac was.

Hector doesn't drop the sword because "if I kill him I will be just like him" or "I don't want to perpetuate this senseless cycle of revenge". He drops the sword in horror because Julia's warnings were enough to make him put two and two together and realize that he had been acting on thoughts that weren't his. He lost agency, and it frightened him.

So really, this isn't a story that teaches that revenge is bad, it's not really about that. It ties with Hector's general motif of self-affirmation. Dracula wanted him to be a tool of slaughter; Isaac forced him to become a hateful person dabbing in the dark arts he wanted to seal away; Zead wanted him to fully succumb to his hatred and cross the final threshold so that he could be used as a vessel for Dracula's resurrection. They all want him to be Dracula! Literally! And Hector got so close to losing himself! He was used twice over, his vengeful feelings toyed with, and he was so close to being the catalyst for Dracula's full return! It was only thanks to Rosaly's love and Julia's help that he found the self-awareness to pull himself over that precipice.

Going back to Hector pitying Isaac, while it's not fully expressed, I also imagine that Hector was not merely sympathizing, but empathizing with him. After all, he has realized how it feels to be ruled by the Curse. Both of them, hero and villain, were closer than they imagined, dragging each other down to the same level. How could he ever hate Isaac, when he was acting the same?

But it's not really forgiveness, just a general clarity of mind. Hector's self-awareness has always been his saving grace, unlike Isaac, who has always been ruled by his most negative emotions.

Then again, Hector planned to die under the crumbling castle after neutralizing the Curse; and it's not framed as a heroic sacrifice, but really him giving up on life after doing the best he could to atone because really, what else could he do? He got a hollow victory, he would have returned to an empty home anyway, and most likely, he got overcome by the humiliating and guilt of having almost become a tool for evil again. Hector is not a hateful person... except when it comes to himself.

It also is yet another way Hector parallels Dracula. Dracula never let go of his hatred for God and humanity. Eventually, through the centuries, he became a shell of his former self, before having to actually become another person to find peace.

[alpaca-clouds]

Also, the thing with Hector

You, after blogging about the entire Trevor thing, I really wanna write about something else, too. And that is Hector. Because steady as clockwork there will be tweets on Twitter and blogs here on tumblr, about how horribly written Hector supposedly is and how little sense his role in the animated series supposedly makes.

And, honestly, as an autistic person this almost feels a bit hurtful.

Because… Look, I have no idea whether it happened on purpose or accidentally (there is just a large number of neurodiverse folks running around in creative areas after all), Hector very much reads as a neurodiverse, possibly autistic character. And as such, yes, he very much makes sense as a character to a lot of autistic folks.

Yeah, yeah, I know, a lot of folks will be like: “But why make him a general?” To which I will just look in confusion, because, well… A) Dracula explains his reasoning (Hector and Isaac are humans aligning with his goals, hence he deems them more trustworthy than the other vampires). B) We know forgemasters are rare (probably, because they get hunted down by the church) and the two might well be the only forgemasters he knows. And he needs forgemasters and had to make sure they were loyal. C) It is not as if Dracula is of sound mind – while the other vampire generals only listen to the two forgemasters, because Dracula tells them to.

And everything else kinda makes sense, too, especially reading him as autistic. He is a victim of child abuse, he clearly has some developmental delay (several characters refer to him as being “child-like”) and he is really bad at reading other people’s intentions (again, something that very much speaks for him being neurodiverse in some capacity), leading to him easily getting manipulating. It might be noted that the fact, that over the entire course of the series, no matter how much shit he gets put through, he never actually cries, also speaks to this.

The thing that most annoys me, though, is how people will then argue, that his game version was better written, which… it is just not? I am sorry, in general I like the Castlevania games, but as written in the Trevor rant this morning: The 3D games are the exception. I hate them. All four of them. With St. Germain (yes, the one character, where I agree that the series kinda did him dirty) as the sole exception, I think that Curse of Darkness is horribly written.

And you know what? The reason I consider the Netflix version of St. Germain to be bad, is the same reason I hate the game version of Hector: Their sole reason for acting is a refrigerated woman. Their entire motivation in the plot is a woman getting lost (in the case of Netflix!St. Germain) or killed (in the case of Game!Hector). Though, really, Game!Hector takes is to a whole new level, because he then goes, finds a woman who happens to look like the refrigerated girlfriend, shrugs and goes living with her. Which is just… Wow, that is just such horrible writing!

Just the disdain that game has for the female characters in question… Thanks, I fucking hate it.

And yes, I am very much aware that the manga exists. But… It really does not make things better, doesn’t it, except from giving Rosaly some basic character instead of making her the “quickly mentioned dead girl, who gets replaced by Julia”. But to be frank, the heel-face-turn still does not make a lot more sense with that context added.

Really, I cannot shake the feeling, that the main issue, folks have with Hector’s arc in the series, is, that it categorically refuses to give them a power fantasy, aka the thing that the game obviously is all about. Hector does not get a power fantasy, he gets a disempowerment fantasy instead, his big moment of agency involving him cutting of his own finger.

But here is the thing: You can dislike that… but it is not “bad writing”. Just because you wanted that power fantasy and did not get it, it is not bad writing. Especially in an ensemble series like Castlevania it is perfectly fine, that not all characters get the big power fantasy.

And honestly, there is some shaky writing in the series. Again, St. Germain and just… season 4 is at least weirdly written. The pacing is super weird and it is just so weird, how the series shrugs off most of the trauma from season 3. And I have spoken before about how I did not like that Hector somehow forgave Lenore off-screen. But him not having a big hero moment? Yeah, I am absolutely alright with that.

[wygolvillage]

considering an au where julia is the main character of curse of darkness

[ellewritesathing]

You’re My Problem

Summary: What happens when you take unrequited love, throw in some jealousy, and add a dash of impulsivity? You get a recipe for disaster.

Word Count: 2.8k+

A/N: this was requested by @i-write-things-sometimes-x​ a forever ago. thank you for being so patient and i’m so sorry it took so long for me to write this!! 💕

Stiles’ Stilinski was a dumbass. He was impulsive, he was reckless, and he couldn’t focus on anything that wasn’t Lydia Martin for longer than five minutes. But he was also the one who brought you soup when you were sick, the one who remembered your birthday, and the one you’d been in love with since before you could remember. 

He’d been oblivious to all your attempts of getting him to see you as something other than a friend pretty much for as long as you’d known him. Erica thought it was hilarious, and she never let you live down the mouth-to-mouth debacle after he’d almost drowned with the kanima venom. She’d been nicer about it, though, since Lydia and Stiles had their own moment of panic-induced lip-locking. 

But it wasn’t just Erica that changed - everything was different after their kiss. As dramatic as your reaction seemed when you looked back on it, something inside you snapped that day, and all of your pent-up rage from being powerless in a town of supernaturals bubbled to the surface. You convinced Derek to turn you, and things between you, Stiles, and Scott had never been the same. 

“And here I thought you came to lacrosse practice for me.” Isaac set down his gear with a grin and grabbed your water bottle. The light caught on his eyelashes as he drank, painting delicate ribbons down his cheeks as long as his chin was tilted up to the sky.

Erica didn’t care about how pretty Isaac could be, because she didn’t find him nearly as pretty as the lacrosse players packing up on the field. She rolled her eyes and pushed Isaac to the side, not bothering to adjust her strength in the process. “Move over, lover boy. You’re blocking my view.” 

Armed with an evil grin and the knowledge that Erica couldn’t do anything to him in front of all these people, Isaac moved directly in front of her and tilted his head. “Didn’t Derek tell you to be nicer to people?” 

“Derek also told me not to smother you in your sleep, so-” Erica reached forward, hand extended almost as gently as to move one of his curls out of his face, and shoved him to the ground “-you better watch out.” She drummed her fingers on the bleachers with an evil smile of her own before jumping up to follow one of the lacrosse boys off the field. 

Laughing off Erica’s dramatics and shaking your head, you got up and held a hand out to help Isaac to his feet. “Come on.” You waved your fingers when he didn’t reach out. “You stink and the sooner you shower, the sooner I get lunch.” 

“Yeah?” Isaac reached up for your hand and leaned on his other elbow for support. “That kinda sucks for you.” 

It was your own fault for not noticing the glint of mischief in his eye before he wrapped his hand around yours and pulled you to the ground next to him. Soon enough, the two of you were rolling around the field (you trying to get up and him ruining every attempt) and laughing just like you always did. Your hands were barely intertwined, but it was still enough to feel his pulse racing. 

“Are you two done? Because Coach is gonna turn on the sprinklers in like five minutes.” 

Your heartbeat shot up at the sound of Stiles’ voice. Clumsily, you untangled yourself from Isaac and sat up. It didn’t matter whether you were human or superhuman, facing a cute boy or the monster of the week, nothing made you more nervous than Stiles Stilinski. “Yeah, we were just- uh, just leaving to grab some lunch. You wanna come with?” 

“Thanks, but I kinda lost my appetite.” Stiles waited an awkward moment and then shrugged, rolled his lacrosse stick over in his hand, and started walking away. The faded number 24 bobbed up and down as he walked away from you, like a boat treading very uncertain waters.

You let out a deep breath and hid your head in your hands. It didn’t matter what you did, conversations with Stiles always ended awkwardly or with one of you leaving. At least this way, you couldn’t see the embarrassing aftermath.

“Oh, come on-” Isaac knocked your knee with his, letting out a laugh. You could practically hear him rolling his eyes before you turned to face him. “It wasn’t that bad.” 

“He hates me.” 

“He doesn’t hate you.” 

“Ever since I turned, it’s like he can’t even bear to look at me.” 

“And you are so hard to look at,” Isaac said with a grin. He rolled his eyes again and let out a low laugh. If he was going to say anything else about your massively mortifying crush on Stiles Stilinski, he didn’t get the chance. The sprinklers switched on.

---

You were a real pain in the ass. You were annoyingly right about everything, you always had to get your own way, and you could barely focus on anything that wasn’t Isaac Lahey for longer than five minutes. But you were also the one that watched Star Wars with him when he couldn’t sleep, the one that saved him a seat in English, and the one Stiles had been in love with since before he could remember. 

Even after the world went to hell in a handbasket, Stiles thought he might have had a shot with you. All he had to do was find the right time to talk to you - and it seemed like the perfect time after you saved him from drowning - but he waited too long. Somehow something always came around to ruin his perfect moment. Eventually, you turned and traded him in for the one and only Isaac ‘Pretentious Asshole’ Lahey.

In the understatement of the century, Scott said, “Dude, you should just talk to her,” in that aggravatingly optimistic way of his. 

“Yeah? I should just talk to her, and tell her that I love her, and then maybe we’ll just walk off into the sunset like a Julia Roberts movie?” Stiles was robbed of the satisfaction of his snark by Scott’s dumbstruck face. “Oh my god, what is it now? What’s with the face?” 

Scott scrunched up his face and pulled on the straps of his backpack. He rocked on his heels defensively. “I don’t have a face.”

“You totally have a face, okay?” Stiles waved his hand in front of Scott’s face. “This right here is the face you make when it’s tater tot day.”

Scott shrugged and tried to play it cool. “It’s nothing, just-” He took a deep breath, leaned in, and said, “You just said that you love her. That’s all.” With another trademark Scott McCall shrug and smile, he started walking off to make his English class before the second bell.

“Well…” Stiles said to an empty hallway. He let out a heavy sigh and slammed his locker. “Shit.” 

---

You’d spent your entire life pining over Stiles Stilinski. All those years wasted on a guy who didn’t have feelings for you, when there was a perfectly sweet distraction right next to him. Sure, maybe Isaac didn’t know your favorite movie candy and he didn’t always know the right thing to say when you were having a bad day, but he snuck you out of detention and he didn’t make you so tongue-tied that you couldn’t speak in complete sentences. 

Isaac was fun. He made you feel witty. Maybe he wasn’t perfect, but he was fun.

This night was the closest to perfect you’d had in a long time: Lydia’s epic homecoming party. There were copious amounts of alcohol and scarce supervision, you and Isaac were dancing, and the full moon wasn’t for another week. It was as perfect as you were ever going to get … and yet you couldn’t stop stealing glances at Stiles. 

Outright staring at him would have been preferable, but he had been glowering at you ever since Isaac, Erica, and Boyd showed up. If you didn’t want to see the look of annoyance that was almost permanently on his face when it came to you, then stealing glances would have to be enough. 

It was a shame, though, because there was something so magnetic about him tonight. Maybe it was the effortlessness that made him attractive. He was slightly overdue for a haircut, so he was dragging a hand through it every other minute in that nervous way of his. Even though his plaid was one of the too big ones Noah had bought for Christmas a few years ago, his t-shirt was one from the older collection that he was in the process of outgrowing. Disheveled suited him; he was almost perfect. If the annoyed look on his face would disappear, so would the ‘almost.’

Isaac ducked his head down to speak to you over the blare of the music, lip grazing your ear as he spoke. “You’re doing that thing again.” 

“What thing?” you asked, trying to brighten up when you looked up at him. You should have tried harder, but dancing with Isaac and being witty wasn’t a priority when Stiles was so mad at you. 

The corners of Isaac’s mouth curled up and he tilted his head to the side. You knew that Stiles was the thing, even if he didn’t say it while he twirled you out.

Isaac pulled you in slightly too quickly, so you collapsed into him more than anything else. The two of you were still laughing and cracking jokes about super-healing when you caught a glimpse of Stiles angrily swigging what was left of a beer and disappearing into the house. 

For a moment, all the sweaty teens and bright lights faded away. You untangled yourself from Isaac quickly and clumsily before rushing out an “I gotta go” and pushing your way through the crowd. 

It was easier to breathe when you reached the second floor without so many people around. The only problem was that all the air disappeared the moment you were alone with Stiles. It was the first time in months that you’d spent any time alone together, and the fact that he was more than a little tipsy wasn’t making things any easier. 

Still, you followed him into one of the rooms and closed the door. “Hey, Stiles, are you doing okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, actually, I’m just peachy.” Stiles dropped the necklace he was fiddling with and brushed his nose with his thumb. “Perfect. Nothing to complain about, you know? At least no one’s trying to kill me this week.” 

“Sounds like maybe you should be celebrating,” you said carefully, trying not to spook him as you made your way over. “You know, instead of hanging out up here, going through Lydia’s great aunt’s jewelry.”

Stiles let out a hollow laugh and turned awkwardly to the jewelry box on the dresser. He shrugged and picked up the necklace again. “But it’s so shiny and I’m so awkward,” he whined. 

You took a few steps closer to take the necklace out of his hands before he broke the clasp. “You’re not awkward.” Stiles gave you a sideways look and you laughed. “Okay, maybe you’re a little awkward, but it’s an endearing kind of awkward.” 

Stiles stubbornly refused to give you the necklace without a fight, and the chain was caught in the crossfire. The both of you panicked and scrambled to fix it, but this wasn’t the kind of necklace that two teenagers and a pair of tweezers could fix. 

Stiles gave up struggling over the necklace and let out a heavy sigh, hand curling over one half of the broken chain and the bathroom sink. The necklace had been the only thing keeping the weight of the world off his shoulders - the only thing keeping Stiles tipsy and happy instead of almost drunk and kind of sad. “Just forget it,” he said. His voice was raw. “No amount of trying is gonna fix it.” 

“Don’t say that.” You grabbed Stiles’ half of the chain out of his hand and put it next to the other half on the counter. Willing the chains to fuse back together and decidedly not looking at Stiles, you said, “You can’t just give up like that.” 

“Why not? The necklace is broken and I broke it. I can’t fix it.” 

“You can at least try to fix it.” 

“Maybe it doesn’t wanna be fixed. Maybe it’s happier with the stupid scarf, alright?” 

“Wait, what scarf?” When he didn’t answer, you looked up from the necklace to find him staring guiltily at the floor. “Stiles, please don’t tell me there’s some ruined Hermes scarf up here because Lydia will kill me.” 

Still no answer. 

As gently as you could, you reached out to touch his shoulder. “Stiles-”

“Just forget it!” Stiles snapped, pulling away before you could touch him. He almost crashed into the door in his hurry to get away from you. “Go dance with your scarf, okay? You two deserve one another.” 

Stiles stormed into the bedroom, and you stormed after him. You caught his arm before he even made it halfway across the room. “Okay, man, what the hell is your problem?” 

“My problem?” Stiles echoed. “You wanna know what my problem is?” 

“Yes! You’ve been glaring at me all night, avoiding me for like six months, and- what? Now you’re freaking out over a broken necklace?” You took a step closer to him, pulse racing. “So, what’s your problem?” 

“Okay, you know what? You’re my problem.” Stiles was so close that you didn’t need werewolf superpowers to feel all the emotions coming off him. “We were best friends until you ditched me for Isaac Freaking Lahey, okay? We used to hang out like all the time, and now we barely spend any time together unless someone’s trying to kill us. And you’re impossible to talk to-” 

“I’m impossible to talk to?” you echoed. “Stiles, you cringe every time you see me.” 

“I do not!” he said defensively, scrunching his face slightly. “Okay, maybe I do but that’s because whenever I see you, Isaac’s following you around like a puppy dog.” 

You couldn’t help but scoff at that. The puppy comment was a cheap shot and it wasn’t like Stiles could complain when he made it perfectly clear that he didn’t have feelings for you. “So is your problem actually with me? Because so far all you’ve done is talk about Isaac.” 

“I don’t- it’s both of you, alright?” Stiles let out a shaky breath and looked away. He took a second to run a hand down the side of his face before speaking again. “My problem is that I have feelings for you and you don’t even know I exist anymore.” 

No amount of accelerated werewolf reflexes could have prepared you for that. For a second, you were too surprised to respond. “You … have feelings for me? I thought you were in love with Lydia.” 

Stiles snorted. “Please, she kissed me once and it was terrible for both of us.” He shifted his weight awkwardly, unsure what to say while you adjusted to the information. “Besides,” he said in a much slower, much quieter voice, “it’s not like she’s you.”

“Isaac hates Star Wars,” you said quietly, staring at the bullseye in the middle of Stiles’ shirt instead of meeting his eyes.

“God, I hate that guy,” Stiles mumbled. He looked around the room awkwardly before landing on the tv in the corner. “You wanna, uh, watch something with me? I really don’t want to go back down there.”

You nodded without giving it any thought, looking up at Stiles and giving him the first real smile you’d had all night. “Yeah, I’d really like that.”

“Great!” Stiles gave a short laugh before slowing his breathing and looking at you so seriously that you thought your heart would stop. “Just, uh, one more thing?” he asked, voice quiet and delicate again. You started rambling, but the words fell away as soon as Stiles lifted his hands to either side of your face. The whole world slowed for a moment, coming almost to a complete stand-still when he pressed his lips against yours. “There,” Stiles said softly. “I’ve been thinking about that since freshman year.”

Despite all the anxiety racing through your system, or maybe because of it, you laughed. The sound of his heartbeat was deafening as you reached a hand up to the side of Stiles’ neck. Time slowed again as you leaned up on your toes, kissed him again, and realized that maybe this night was perfect after all. 

[asterekmess]

S3A - E9

The last episode took me Hours to get through with all my notes, let’s hope this one doesn’t hurt my fingers so bad.

My fingers hurt too much to come up with a clever pun so Read More:

Thoughts:

This is a dumb first bullet point, but I love Tara’s hair. It looks like it’s braided or something, then in a bun at the back? I like it.

What exactly was the reasoning for her walking into the school alone like this? Let alone going That far into it? If it’s a 911 call that she’s so nervous about she has her hand on her gun, then shouldn’t there be more than one officer??

ALSO, that seems like Very Bad routine procedure? You got a 911 call (but we get no explanation as to what it was FOR) and the first thing you say when you see someone is “Why are you here?” shouldn’t you be asking “Who made the 911 call?” And then you tell them to leave, and to tell anyone Else they see to leave. When they could easily SEE the person you’re wanting to aim a gun at and TELL them to leave because there’s a cop in the school.

So I’m torn between Julia being just that sick and wanting to terrify each of her sacrifices (which...she talks about them like she’s Genuinely sad she had to kill them, but it was necessary to save the world, so that doesn’t sit right with me?) or fear being a Necessary part of the ritual, like, that the sacrifices Couldn’t be willing?

Honestly, Lyds, that’s so smart and reasonable. “I had to have the weird blackout to get here. YOU get to go find the body.”

What was the point of the staging in the shower room if she was gonna get thrown onto the sign?? Why move her at all?

ALSO if this is supposed to be a threefold death, then didn’t she do it wrong? She killed Tara by strangulating her, but didn’t do the head bash or the throat until after she’d moved her body, for some reason??? Don’t they need to happen like..near the same time?

No to mention that there wouldn’t be much blood bc her throat was slit After death, so the blood wasn’t pumping. Even laying her down wouldn’t render a large amount. But they’re going for horror, so...i guess i’ll let it pass.

Why does it feel like Julia is going after people close to STiles specifically? First Heather, now Tara? And then his Dad? That’s a weird coincidence when she’s got the entire town to choose from.

Also, sheriff, i love you, but ‘they’re not going to get away with killing one of our own.” is a REALLY fucked up line. Police getting pissed ONLY when other Police are the ones killed is SO FUCKED UP. Logistically, police are FAR more likely to get killed than citizens are, aren’t they? They’re the ones that’re supposed to be running into danger? Like, Soldiers don’t Only get pissed when other soldiers are killed, right? It’s literally like...your job to be in potentially fatal situations? that’s not even my point! My point is that your line implies that law enforcement was Half-assing it before a cop got killed. half a dozen people have died, so Beacon Hills should be Swarming with cops, but for some reason the big guns don’t come in until a cop dies? Your phrasing sucks, Noah. Were you gonna let them get away with it if they killed everybody BUT the cops? I’m being sarcastic on that last bit, btw.

I’ll admit, it’s nice to get some actual SUNSHINE in CALIFORNIA

Is Chris letting Allison stay home because she saw a dead body? FOr as long as she wants? I’m so confused, she’s seen Much worse things, shouldn’t it like raise an alarm that she’s choosing NOW to stay home?

Your badassery is tainted by the fact that you’re wearing a dress and fishnets, Allison. If you’re gonna go hunting put on some pants. or shorts AT LEAST. that’s just not Practical.

I love how blatant a lie Stiles is telling Julia in class. “do you play?” “No, my father does” when we Know he plays, and besides if his dad plays then stiles MUSt because that’s a two person thing most of the time? But no, he doesn’t want Julia to know Shit about him.

the loyalty of Lydia not going near Aiden after learning he killed Boyd is SO refreshing. I TOLD you, if she knew Aiden was a murderer she’d never have gotten with him in the first place.

NOt Derek. CORA. MY BABE BONDS FAST. (I mean, she was locked in a bank vault with him for however long)

FIrst off, I love Stiles losing his shit. Second, the acting here is so sub-par, and it looks like a writer’s mistake. okay, so, in acting, interruption is an ART. You have to let someone say enough to get their line across, but INterrupt them before they can finish in a way that looks natural. And you have to make sure not to come in late or you get an awkward pause (this is more common with newbies bc experience actors don’t stop their line, they keep it going until you figure it out.) So like The line is ...And shove it up your freaking--” Now, Scott needs to interrupt without being late, otherwise, unless Stiles Continues the line, he’ll pause after saying ‘freaking’ and it’ll be noticeable. here, the way scott interrupts him feels So Wrong, in part because he let’s Stiles get so far into his threat.

Also, I’m fucking pissed that Scott is downplaying how angry Stiles is. “okay, we get it.” is just...a garbage way to respond to a friend who’s hurting and clearly on edge, thinking Ethan is threatening him.

Exactly How do you “Know” Ethan didn’t want to kill Boyd? You weren’t there, fuckface.

Is this set after school? They’re shouting their heads off and no one’s coming? Even Stiles was shouting about wolfsbane.

THAT IS NOT HOW ACTUAL WOLF PACKS WORK YOU FUCKER. THAT’S A GARBAGE MYTH.

Hearing Cora’s little gasp as her head hit the wall hurt my heart.

Normally I’d be pissed about the girl standing back and not doing anything, but Lydia would be ripped apart and I do not blame her for shouting from the sideline.

I don’t understand what the hell is going on with the Chris stuff. Like, I guess he’s supposed to be looking into it on his own, but that still doesn’t explain where he got the information on this very specific ritual.

But I do understand Allison’s hesitance to outright ask her father what the fuck he’s doing, since last time that happened she was taken to a chained up derek in an underground tunnel system. Finding out her family are monsters is kind of her entire life, unfortunately.

Honestly, fuck yes. Cora go off. Though, I’m sad that no one is mentioning Erica, like At All. You realize she ALSO died at the hands of the ALphas, right? why does no one mention her when they talk about getting revenge?

I...am not talking about this scene.

I gotta say that I enjoy the fact that Allison called Stiles. That’s just...that’s p cool. BUT while it’s cute that her contact picture is from her conversation with Stiles in s2, it’s weird bc it’s a screenshot of the show, and we know that Stiles wasn’t taking pictures at that moment. But the effort is sweet!

I will say that it’s interesting that Cora doesn’t fight Stiles about helping him with his dad. She just finished yelling at Scott, Lydia, and presumably Stiles, and she’s clearly unhappy with literally everyone but Derek, but she’s been very humoring of Stiles. In every scene together, even when she’s snarking at him, she’s not an Asshole.

This conversation with Morrell makes...no sense. Scott literally said in the last episode that good liars wouldn’t have jumping heartbeats when they lied. Then he immediately went to ask Morrell if she was the killer and believed her (even though she’s sketchy as fuck) just because her heart didn’t jump. Wtf?

“But if I kill someone, I can’t be a True Alpha, right?” WHO SAID THAT EVER? WHO TOLD YOU THAT? SINCE WHEN? WTF?

I don’t know if it was intentional (maybe they mention it, but i haven’t gotten that far) but technically having this history teacher disappear leaves an empty class for Kira’s dad to fill when she shows up. Which is neat.

I will forever be angry that Aiden is touching Lydia here. He shouldn’t be near her. And that’s not even me being cranky! She IS PISSED AT HIM. She was avoiding him before today and even then the only reason she went near him was to act as a distraction.

Also, again, I am amazed at Cora’s PATIENCE with Stiles here. Seriously, they’ve clearly been there for a while as Stiles tries to find the words, but Cora didn’t just get pissed stand up and say “I’m a werewolf. People are dying. Help.” She continued to wait for him to talk.

When does stiles rearrange his room? I swear in the beginning of this season it was still in the previous formation with the corner bed sticking out and the desk under the window. Now the desk is facing a totally different direction and his bed’s up against the wall. It’s great, but like, when does it happen? Isn’t this literally the second time we’ve seen his room the whole season?

that’s such a weird text. “Mr Westover Missing” like I don’t know if it’s from Lydia or Scott, but you’re allowed to add some detail? Your keystrokes aren’t limited and there are no government agencies watching your texts for information.

Oh, poor Cora. I honestly wasn’t expecting to bond with her so quickly when I first saw her, but there’s something about getting to see characters being calm that really helps me vibe with them? Like, when they’re nothing but Fight Fight Fight it’s hard to actually relate in any way, but when you actually get to see them talk or relax, then you worry about that being taken away from them.

However much I hate Isaac and everyone else Constantly saying “But I want Scott here. We should ask Scott, blah blah blah” I will say that it’s getting REALLY annoying that Allison’s entire personality is “I”m going to run in with almost zero backup bc I want to be powerful and strong, but then I have to be saved bc I refused to ask for help in the first place.”

Wtf do you mean ‘i’m not that good at this yet’ Isaac? You’ve been a werewolf for literally like 5 months, only like two months less than Scott, and you were LIVING with a born werewolf for that ENTIRE time.

Chris you were shooting at nothing for like two-thirds of that time. That was an empty room. ALSO, if you’ve been there the whole time, why did you wait until he was dead to come out shooting?

Chris yells “help Him” and you go run to stand next to his body without bothering to pull him off the cord around his neck? You realize he might not be completely dead right? Or is his throat already cut?

Also, I wanna note, it was daylight when Cora passed out. Now it’s dark! He went to the ER with her and STAYED with her. I get that people say STiles is kind of callous, but he Constantly goes out of his way for near strangers, and I don’t think that should be overlooked.

No youfcking wouldn’t have Chris, you had tons of time while they were using the garrotte and you just stood there. They came in just before the kill was done, and except for Tara Julia has been leaving people’s bodies where they fall so she wouldn’t left right after. You were NOT ‘this’ close.

Yeah, yeah, and you’re both fucking guilty of being incapable of conversation. Chris you are the adult here, fucking act like it. You had a million chances to confront your daughter and you didn’t. Apparently that’s a habit she picked up from you.

What are they talking about, Scott healing himself?? He was thrown back, he wasn’t injured. I literally just went back and rewatched that scene. He falls backward and he’s completely fine. Stiles, there are so many better instances you could point to. For example, things that actually Happened.

That line is never gonna not hurt.

Stop touching Danny. Stop being near Danny. You are a literal serial killer, get your hands off him. GOD. your brother literally said he would murder danny if he saw you with him anymore, why are you putting him in danger? FUck you.

.....okay, lydia’s speech was meaningful until she fucking turned it into scott worship. Why couldn’t you have stopped at letting her say “maybe I’ll find them before it happens” Why couldn’t it be about HER for once? Why did you have to make it about how everyone thinks sunshine comes out Scott’s ass even though he’s literally not done a single thing to warrant it. He hasn’t Saved Anyone. He hasn’t done Anything to warrant all this trust. Lydia wasn’t there when he made Derek kill Gerard. SHE was the one to save Jackson. And Scott was the one who had to be saved BOTH when Allison had to stitch him up and when Stiles had to go after him in the gasoline. Jackson is the one who saved Lydia when Peter went after her. Scott Didn’t save deaton, that was Noah. He wasn’t the one who killed Peter, that was a combination of Stiles and Jackson’s molotovs and Derek’s claws. Scott wasn’t even the one to protect Lydia when Derek and the pack went after her, that was Stiles, Allison, and Jackson. SHe had no idea that Scott was even THERE until she ran out of the house. Scott didn’t stop Matt, that was Allison’s family scaring him off and then Gerard killing him. THe only possible thing that could count was him saving the two little kids while Boyd and Cora were running around in the woods, and Lydia doesn’t even KNOW about that. Scott has canonically done NOTHING worth all this faith and ‘leader’ nonsense.

were...were they hinting at a Scott/Lydia relationship before they brought Kira in? Holding hands isn’t really a friend thing...?

That....is the softest most broken little ‘hey’ that I’ve ever heard and I’m Instantly on the verge of tears, holy shit.

Derek, honey, what do you mean ‘not again’? You’ve never left Cora, unless you count moving to New York with Laura and Cora was in South America! This line would make so much more sense if they’d given us Any idea what happened to Cora after the fire.

Normally, i’d be annoyed that Melissa is just ignoring the laws about paperwork. I’d even be annoyed that she did it for the Sheriff. BUT, Melissa is in the know about the supernatural and she KNOWS that the murders are supernatural. I’m sorry but Supernatural needs trump human laws. Melissa is totally a boss for this.

EYYYY actual druid (specifically magician druids) thing they got right (though i’m not sure it was on purpose). Magician Druids were Very Well Known for their nature magic. For causing storms and droughts and high winds and fog. The building storm around the school is like, Peak magician magic.

God, it really....it really grinds my gears watching Isaac’s progression toward the most abuse he can find. You notice how, in season 2 when Derek was attacking the Betas on the regular and doing awful shit like breaking Isaac’s hands, Isaac was loyal as Fuck to him? (right up until randomly going to Scott to decide whether to leave town) Then, this season, we start off with Derek being pretty fucking gentle, there’s no indication that he’s been continuing the abuse. Isaac questions his command and Derek’s response is ‘do you trust me?’ to which Isaac easily says yes. In fact, Isaac asks Derek to be the one to hurt him for the memory seeking thing, and Derek refuses because he wants to do what’s Safer for Isaac.Then he throws the glass and Isaac bails bc it’s a direct reminder of what his dad did. Only he goes to Scott, who was incredibly violent toward him in the previous season. (And who we know will be violent toward him in the future as well) But the only time he lists away from Scott, is to go after Allison, who Tackled him to the ground and held a knife to his throat, and whose father inherently hates werewolves and is a constant danger to him. Yet he never goes in the direction of people who Haven’t hurt him. He could go to Deaton, who’d taught him the pain-drain thing and was nothing but kind to him in that short time. He could’ve gone to Boyd after Derek’s lashing out, his pack member, who would never hurt him. Hell, he hates Stiles’ guts, but he could still have gone to him. Stiles was the one to help Derek free him from Jail after all, and he’s not wanted anymore so Noah wouldn’t have anything against him. Stiles may have threatened Isaac to keep him from hurting Lydia, but he never personally laid a hand on him. But he went to Scott. Someone who’s beaten him bloody multiple times.

So, really focusing on the details here, but on Julia’s death record, her  ‘jane doe’ occupation is listed as “Child” Oh, and apparently there was Froth present on the body.

Okay, so I think I understand what they’re saying. The reason Julia lived after getting to the hospital was because the birds sacrificed themselves and their life force kept her holding on. Now, either this was a spontaneous thing, and the birds did it For her. Or she Made them, because we know she doesn’t need to Be There to control weird shit. She could’ve set it up before she left the Nemeton or passed out or whatever. My confusion is. If that’s the explanation for the bird suicides, then what the Fuck happened on the first day when all the birds came crashing through the window?? There was no reason for that to happen. She was totally fine! And doing it to frighten people doesn’t make sense because she set off the radars of everything supernatural in town. (And Stiles.)

This kind of mass mind-control is kind of insane and makes the situation with Derek just That much more awful. I am so sickened.

Now, on the subject of the chanting, I assume it’s part of the ritual since it’s present at the deaths so much. The question is, where did Julia Get it? THOUGHTS: This chant isn’t present at any of the virgin kills. It’s not there with Heather, and while we don’t see the boy at the pool’s abduction/death, Emily Also didn’t hear it during her hallucination. What if it’s part of the virgin sacrifice perk? Like, Julia could Only Use it after killing the virgins, because it’s got some kind of mind-control thing about it?

Wh--why didn’t Julia tape her arms down before she woke up? Why make the garrotte before ensuring her victim couldn’t Punch her in the face??

I thought you JUST said she wasn’t going to be a sacrifice?

Still confused. You didn’t sacrifice Lydia, so that doesn’t count as the third philo, but then the teacher who died onstage wasn’t a threefold death, or the hanging thing, they just got their throat cut and they were poisoned. So....what? Was that supposed to count as your sacrifice?

Nobody TOUCHES Noah, who managed to be the only fucking cop on tv i’ve ever seen follow sensible procedure which is to shoot them in the fucking leg when they walk toward you menacingly, rather than threatening to shoot them in the head and doing nothing.

Final Thoughts:

There was a lot in this episode that didn’t make sense. It’s very clearly an amping up for the finale thing, but it’s annoying that after all this time they’ve essentially made the Alpha pack a time waster. The whole thing with getting Derek in the pack is relatively meaningless now that there’s a Darach going after the Alphas. I dunno, feels kinda off.

Anyway, onward.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG140! … abridged version because I want to be Caught Up with these before this week’s release and Time Is An Enemy and so is my ability to do things without a deadline.

- I have not much to say about the statement itself except that:

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “You are familiar of course with my persecutor and tormentor Edmond Halley. The one so oft descending upon me as Nemesis with her sword to avenge upon my hubris. […] I will admit that in my heart, I nurtured such dreams of revenge that when they came to me the name of God felt hollow upon my lips. Another dignity stripped from me by mine enemy. […] No. If there was to be a confrontation or action taken against Raymer, it would be I, and I alone, that would have to take it. […] Again he traced his path under that dark and hidden wood, and again I followed, quiet in my manner, keen in my observance. […] It was that in his visit, he was accompanied by Edmond Halley. My dear Raymer, whose body had gone cold and still in my own cruel hands. […] they were the eyes of my Raymer, the one I couldn’t destroy.”

… insert here Kate Beaton’s “MY NEMESIS” comic, holy Mew John Flamsteed. In the same vain (warning for description of murder by drowning):

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “I wasted no time, and drew my smallsword, and praised to God, who gifted me foresight to carry it. I struck Raymer a fierce blow to the leg. He fell, still clutching at me, and in a moment, cast my sword away into the trees and grabbed at my coat. With a fierce strength never before awakened within me, I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade. And Raymer trashed, and kicked, and made such sounds as I have never before heard of the dying. And he was still. I drew him up with the black water still thickly flowing from him. He was dead at my hand, and though I well knew it to be an act of defence and retribution, I felt within me a sudden terror of discovery.”

I wonder what Flamsteed would have said, if he had been discovered spontaneously stalking and stabbing and drowning Halley – wait, no, I know, he would have muttered “Self-defence”, probably. It just escalated so quickly, as a natural progression in the way that he told the story… but seriously. You were so very chill with murder, dude. (That was a strong grudge, wasn’t it.)

- Alright, so; the events were precisely dated:

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “I know it was the second of May [1715] when this took place, for it was no doubt the crowning glory that he had stolen from me that occupied his mind that eve, and caused his steps to quicken and grow careless.”

He is referring to the date of ~Halley’s Eclipse~, which Halley correctly predicted would take place on May 3rd 1715 – except “Note: Great Britain did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, so the date was at the time considered 22 April 1715.” (I know Nothing about dates of eclipses and Britain’s own calendars so I have to trust Wiki on this x”)), so oops, Jonny…? Flamsteed should not have referred to it as being in May...

So The Dark is once against tied to solar eclipses; Oliver had first seen Gertrude’s death as happening around the day of an eclipse in Ny-Ålesund in March 2015 (MAG011, MAG025), and Basira had pointed out the relation between Halley’s Comet and The Dark’s activities in MAG108. If so, that would give Jon&Basira some time to operate in the North pole, given that the next (partial) solar eclipse planned in Ny-Ålesund on August 11st. Given, however, that season 4 has constantly reminded us of the subjectivity of symbols appropriated by Fear cultists and all… I don’t think the dates will actually matter all that much, at the end of the day, and they’ll be screwed anyway.

- The way I understood it: Edmond Halley had discovered Dark cultists and was joining them, was meant to do… something, but got killed by Flamsteed before that could happen and something different happened? Did the cultists have no idea about how to free the being-that-became-Maxwell-Rayner in the water, and whatever they wanted to do around the time of the eclipse wouldn’t have worked because the thing trapped in there needed a corpse to get out?

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “a strange and shrouded wood not a league from what might draw the interests of the pompous fool with whose whims I was now so well-acquainted. And in that quiet seclusion, while I looked on in silence and astonishment, he would meet with figures both man and woman alike, with dull clothing, and eyes that in the darkness of that wooded place seemed wholly black, and empty. Their words were soft and impenetrable to me from the spot wherein I was concealed, but they had much impact upon Raymer – who oft would stagger backwards as though struck. […] And as I waited there, the enormity of my actions settled upon me like lead, and Raymer’s dark-eyed compatriots arrived to attend him. Seeing him prostrate and lifeless upon the ground was clearly a shock, and their distress was marked upon them. And yet there seemed no sadness or horror within their passion, but surprise and confusion, and the question they cast between them was that of what was to be done, for it seemed Raymer was vital to a task as yet unfinished. […] he began to thank me. His gratitude was so plain and sincere that I could scarce understand it as he spoke, but he repeated it again and again, thanking me for his life. For his freedom. I stared into his eyes, and though they met mine, I saw spreading inside them the darkness, and mist.”

And what had trapped the creature in the water? Trapping is usually Web’s favourite activity but… here, in water…?

I was super-cautious about the idea that Rayner was body-hopping, but it seems I was wrong to be, that is what he was doing! Though I think it might not be a human-who-became-an-avatar but a full monster emanating from the power, if he was the water all along? (Aaaand it fits the fact that so many Dark-related activities involved that brackish water. We already had the connection to Svalbard, though, but it’s fitting that Rayner had been sealed in a lake or something.) Or was Rayner even older than the XVIIIth century and had been sealed in the forest for a long time, and only began to body-hop when it first came in contact with a corpse? Even Jon was unsure about a few bits:

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: So Edmond Halley was… Rayner. Or, at least… whatever was inside him. You said he was dead, though. BASIRA: I thought he was. We shot him to hell before he could, uh… “pour himself” into that kid. ARCHIVIST: Mm. BASIRA: But I mean, didn’t you say he got blown off in World War One as well? ARCHIVIST: Ah– uh, p–possibly, the, the details are, hum… It’s not exactly clear.

And indeed, back in MAG007 Jon had noticed the name “Rayner” rang some bells (that he later identified as Maxwell Rayner’s cult when it came up in MAG009), though according to Smirke’s categorisation… “Joseph Rayner” didn’t seem be related to The Dark after all, but rather to The Slaughter (potentially with a bit of The End)?

(MAG007, Clarence Berry) “The only thing they’d found nearby were the tags of the dead man among his remains. A man named Joseph Rayner. […] You know the phrase “to pay the piper”. I thought on it a lot through those many months – the debt of Hamelin, who for their greed had their children taken from them, never to be returned. […] It was a month later that I woke up to find [Wilfred Owen] sitting next to my bed. He stared at me, not unkindly, though there was something in his eye that put my ill at ease. “Almost over now, Clarence,” he said to me. I said yes, it did seem to be all coming to an end. He smiled and shook his head.”

I had understood it as… Wilfred Owen exchanging places with “Joseph Rayner” in order to not die, until he had paid his due, and/or the fact that he was allowed to live leading to the continuation of WW1 (as Clarence was hypothesising)? I’m surprised that Jon and Basira brought this up again as potentially being the same being as “Raymer” and “Maxwell Rayner”. What would have caused it to change names, from being called “Maxwell” during Smirke’s time, then “Joseph”, then going back to “Maxwell”?

And how come it took the name “Raymer” in the first place, given how it was John Flamsteed’s nickname to designate him? Unless Abraham Sharp betrayed Flasmsteed and told “Edmond Halley” everything he knew?

What about the thing about dark water pouring out of the mouths of avatars of The Dark, since we know it wasn’t just a Rayner thing – there had been the victim taken by Darvish, too, and we know that Darvish used to be… pretty high in the hierarchy apparently (MAG135, Manuela Dominguez: “I suppose there is also an element of provocation here as well; even with the loss of Darvish, we will still be victorious.”) before Trevor and Julia stabbed him and other followers to death, as they recalled in MAG109. The homeless man (Morris? Maurice?), who was already dead, had water pouring out from his mouth – was he meant to be a host for one of the cultists too…? Is that a regular thing some Dark avatars do, not only Rayner…?

- I’m still not sold on the Elias=Jonah Magnus theory (mostly because I don’t really feel like the way people have been describing Jonah so far… matches how people talk about Elias overall?), though I admit that it could make sense given that Smirke mentioned Jonah’s fear of dying, the fact that Rayner and Elias have ~history~ (and Rayner was around during Jonah’s time), and we now we have a Precedent of body-hopping confirmed – and not just Spooks serving a god to sustain themselves into old age like Simon Fairchild or the Lightless Flame.

(Not believing in what follows, but it did cross my mind that… in a way, Isaac Newton, as described in this statement, could kind of fit, given how he was getting closer to now-possessed-Halley at the end of the story…? (MAG140: “He is a blockish creature of vanity, concerned with his appearance only, and likely to fly into an indecent heat and knavish talk at any dispute. He has no reverence for God, and I pity him the fire that awaits. […] I was… astonished at how cordial his conduct seemed, his temper even and his head steady. But it was not the attitude of the president, that robbed my tongue of speech. It was that in his visit, he was accompanied by Edmond Halley.”))

But whatever Elias is or is not, we might get a few more things about that history between them at the North Pole… ;;

- I wonder how Martin will take the news of Basira&Jon leaving for the North Pole. Will he know before they leave? Or will he notice they’re… not around anymore and Peter will shrug it off because THEY decided to leave on a trip, it’s not his responsibility if they decide to go get butchered in a dangerous place! (Martin’s Life Is Hard and no one understands, especially not Peter.)

Will Basira&Jon keep their receipts to claim their expenses at the Institute. Will Martin process the reimbursement.

- Basira mentioned a boat:

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: […] So what’s the plan? BASIRA: I’m getting us passage on a boat heading up there. ARCHIVIST: … Right.

And I think she would have mentioned the Tundra if it was it, at least to prepare Jon psychologically? So it’s probably not it? But maybe Peter will be the one to take them back, given how his ship had a Precedent of travelling into very cold waters (Sannikov Land, described by “Michael” in MAG101). Well. “Them” if both Basira and Jon make it.

- It makes sense, and feels satisfying, that Basira is indeed heading towards Ny-Ålesund and was the one to gather clues about The Dark: as mentioned, her encounter “kinda stayed” with her.

(MAG140) BASIRA: You remember Maxwell Rayner? ARCHIVIST: Yes, of course, your… warehouse showdown? BASIRA: Yeah, well. The whole thing kinda stayed with me. ARCHIVIST: Mm, I can imagine.

Her encounter with Rayner between MAG072 and MAG073 was not another spooky story in her Section 31 career: it’s something that led to drastic changes in her life. It’s because she witnessed the cover-up of her colleague’s death, and his defaming, that she got pissed enough with the police and decided to quit (MAG075). And because she had given that statement to Jon, she was apparently pursued by the dreams until she signed her contract with the Institute in MAG092 (MAG120, Elias: “The Archivist wanders. He is searching, though, for what he does not know. He passes those places he can no longer watch: […] the empty warehouse of thick darkness and frightened children”). When she joined the Institute, her research brought her towards The Dark again:

(MAG108) BASIRA: I was reading through a bunch of stuff about the Church of the Divine Host. Did you look into that statement about the chapel in Hither Green? Because apparently, right around that time, there was a full solar eclipse going on in, guess where? MARTIN: I don’t know. BASIRA: Ny-Ålesund! And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago, well. How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed? MARTIN: What, Halley like the comet? BASIRA: Exactly.

It’s her thing. Part of her story. So it feels satisfying that she would be the one to end up piecing things together, even without apparently consulting Manuela Dominguez’s statement from MAG135 (though Jon was thinking about sharing it with her), and to organise the journey:

(MAG140) BASIRA: You don’t know what the ritual for The Dark is, right? ARCHIVIST: Not really, no. Hum, based on this and everythi– Er, something to do with the Sun, I would guess?  I– An eclipse, maybe. BASIRA: I don’t think so. ARCHIVIST: Mm. BASIRA: There’s not one due for a while, and I’ve been wondering for ages: why Ny-Ålesund? I mean, sure, that far North, it gets dark for a long time, but… there’s also really long days in the summer. […] I don’t think Ny-Ålesund is the ritual location. ARCHIVIST: Right. BASIRA: I think it’s a, er… a staging ground. ARCHIVIST: For what? BASIRA: The darkest place on the surface of the Earth: the North Pole, during the Winter Solstice. ARCHIVIST: They have an Eldritch ball of some sort of manifested dark matter, that’s going to be the focus of the ritual. BASIRA: … I thought you said you couldn’t know things about them! ARCHIVIST: I can still read. Actually, you should… probably see that sta– You know what, no. Later. [INHALE, EXHALE] So what’s the plan? BASIRA: I’m getting us passage on a boat heading up there. ARCHIVIST: … Right. BASIRA: I bring all the guns from Daisy’s old stash, you bring the spook you used to mess up that delivery guy. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: Wh… at? That’s it? [PAUSE] Christ, I thought my plans were half-arsed. BASIRA: It’s all about when we go. ARCHIVIST: … I don’t follow. BASIRA: Summer solstice is the 21st of June. So we leave in a fortnight. […] And should arrive about a week before. No danger of sunset or darkness for a long time. Stands to reason that they will be at their weakest.

… Though it’s coming with its fair lot of Worrisome Things:

1°) Basira still hasn’t told Jon that her intel source is Elias which… would probably make Jon way more cautious about the whole thing. If Elias read her right, Basira’s weakness is her “pride” and if he knows it, he is already using it. Elias did say that he needed Jon to be more powerful, and if he wasn’t bullshitting about that, he had a hand in Breekon’s visit at the Institute (or at least knew it would happen soon); he knows how to use Jon’s concern for people to push him further and to get him in direct contact with more Spooks. Jon is still missing a Dark scar/direct experience… and then last one of the list would be The Lonely, if it’s not already happening with Martin – he completed The Buried and The Flesh in season 4 already.

2°) Basira, stern and unimpressed but hovering, giving Jon a drink, organising the trip to Svalbard, including him in, complaining that Jon doesn’t share enough information with her, concerns me a bit. The parallel with Gertrude taking Michael as a sacrifice to stop The Spiral (by boat, even!) is a bit too obvious, especially given how Jon had called her out about how “You’re starting to sound like Gertrude.” (MAG133) recently. I’m… not sure that’s she’s not planning to try and use Jon to stop The Dark and The Beholding at the same time – since she knew The Eye still “had a chance” at its ritual at this time, and she knows that Elias has been watching and scheming. I have no idea about what Basira is thinking, but more about that later.

3°) Having BASIRA head into THE DARK’s turf is an extremely bad idea, even worse than Jon, given how… she was There when Maxwell Rayner was officially killed. If he’s still around, he will remember her. If he’s not, then the surviving members of the cult (we know there were some survivors) will identify her as responsible for his death (and I REALLY wouldn’t put it past Elias to have leaked that information to them, possibly even making it sound like she was the one to pull the trigger).

4°) If… if that Section 31 operation didn’t manage to get rid of Rayner, that means we know which body he managed to parasite. Until now, I had assumed that whatever Rayner had been trying to do, he had been stopped and killed while accidentally vulnerable, back in the warehouse, and that Leo Altman had been collateral, since he was… dead – I thought that Natalie Ennis had probably killed him thoughtlessly, in revenge?

(MAG075) BASIRA: [Maxwell Rayner’s] robe twitched violently as he staggered backwards, and all the dark liquid suddenly washed down onto the floor in a single movement, leaving Callum untouched. It still gushed from his mouth, though, and as the shots tore through him he spun about and an arc of the dark substance flew through the air. Altman had started running towards them as soon as he had seen the kid, and was almost at the chair when the wave of it spewed out. A few droplets hit him on the cheek and he started to howl and claw at his face. Goodman fired again at Rayner, dropping him to the ground, and the horrendous noise stopped suddenly, leaving only Leo’s cries of pain. The lights came on all at once, and in the sudden painful brightness none of us had time to do anything as a woman who hadn’t been there a moment ago ran up to Leo. She wore a robe similar to the old man’s, and by the time any of us had seen the knife in her hand she had buried it in Altman’s throat. […] It was too late, of course, but as I looked at his still, cold face, I saw his eyes were a milky white.”

… but MAG140 showed that the thing taking the name of Rayner had managed to get free by invading Edmond Halley’s dead body, and that his eyes were becoming white when Flamsteed met him again (matching MAG098’s bit of Rayner having “white eyes”). So: did Natalie Ennis kill Leo because he had killed Rayner for good… or did she do it in order to allow Rayner to use his corpse? Was Rayner really killed-killed back then, or did he parasitise Leo Altman’s body – which was apparently dead, back then, but… could have come back alive. Because if so: then, Basira is going to see Leo Altman again, moving and seemingly alive, and it won’t be him, and it probably will be worse than The Unknowing for her, on the scale of emotional torture.

- I worry about Basira but, at the same time, I don’t think she’ll get killed soon-ish. The thing is: Basira is still… a plain mystery, for us listeners. We know what she did in the police but we barely know anything about her personal life or thoughts, or what drives her, or… things she likes (except for reading). And she’s been a recurring character for longer than Melanie and Daisy! She has been there a lot, she has been amazing and funny and deadpan, but… I still feel like it’s hard to understand her, because she tends to hide in plain sight. She snaps and makes dry comments and talks about the others, but rarely about herself outside of what she does?

And Jonny has proven that he’s aware of such things: Melanie and Daisy both revealed themselves in MAG131 and MAG133, and these episodes were necessary pieces to understand their current-day behaviour. But Basira is still… concealing and hiding herself. The only glint of her perspective was when she snapped about trusting:

(MAG128) BASIRA: Do you know how I survived the… The Unknowing? ARCHIVIST: I… No. No, I don’t. BASIRA: No powers, no… magic or… help. I was trapped in that place, and so I tried to figure it out. And I did. A little. So I kept doing it. I kept going through until I got out. I… reasoned my way out of that nightmare. ARCHIVIST: Good lord… BASIRA: Then everything ended, and Daisy was gone. And you were gone. And Tim. And then I got back to the Institute, and Martin sent me to meet the new boss. Then I stood alone in an empty office for more than one hour. I can trust me, Jon. That’s it.

(Honestly, on the list of people likely to die soon… I would bet more on Daisy. Because we know her more, she has a drive, she has people she wants to protect. Melanie is still in a vulnerable place and it would feel too much like kicking the puppy – I’m expecting her to get something around John Amherst before she can kick the bucket. Martin is… a likely contender, too, but MAG138 gave me the impression that no, he needs Something more for a potential death to feel satisfying: he needs his story without involving Jon, or not as a constant helper/sacrifice. Basira is facing Her story right now, but, as mentioned, her feelings are still a mystery to us.

Doesn’t mean that Jon&Basira will be safe in Svalbard, I’m fully expecting them to get hit very hard but… we would need Basira’s words and perspective and feelings, I feel, before she could die.)

- On the subject of Basira being secretive… it seems like Jon’s powers get out of control around her the most? He only slipped in front of Melanie when she was heading out to see her therapist (Melanie going out was an odd thing, he was curious and accidentally compelled her) but he… tends to Know a LOT around Basira, in a way that never happens with Daisy for instance. Is it because Basira is hiding herself too much, which kicks his Beholding side into relying on his powers to dig out truths about her? Because he doesn’t understand her and wants to know her, while Daisy just spontaneously agrees to talk and… Melanie has already poured her heart out? He managed to refrain from Knowing about Martin, though, until he consciously tried to use his powers.

I’m in the minority here, but I don’t feel like Basira has been… A New Beholding Avatar in the making overall. She makes me think more about what Gertrude was trying to achieve, actually – staying outside of the box, trying to not get used by the powers and to use them instead, intervening and doing things rather than contemplating and feeding from other people’s misery? She had managed to stay out of The Hunt despite signing a few Section 31 forms (and getting in contact with various spooks: The Desolation, The End, the aftereffects of The Corruption, The Dark…); we know that, unlike Jon, she had been able to stop and quit instead of trying to dig further into the events surrounding Leo Altman’s death: it’s exactly the opposite of what Michael Shelley and Tim did (joining the Institute in order to understand what had happened to a close one who was killed by the powers) and of how Jon himself had behaved back in season 2 and 3 (pushing for knowledge at all costs, including shaking Jude’s hand because it was the only way to get more information about what was happening around him and to him). Comparatively, I tend to see Basira more as unaligned – on a very fine and dangerous line, but… not Beholding yet? She has stopped recording statements and even refuses to witness Jon doing so (“You’re not staying?” “Watching you do your thing? No.”); she constantly scolds Jon for using his powers; she followed Elias’s leads to try and do something to rescue Daisy from the coffin…

(- Aaaaand the answer to “What happened at the end of MAG139?” was that Jon both succeeded and failed to Know at the same time, because he couldn’t process everything!

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Yesterday, I tried something I… [INHALE] I–I deliberately tried to… Know something, like I did in the coffin, but… there was a lot. Too much [SIGH], and I… BASIRA: What did you find out? ARCHIVIST: [SNORT] Nothing. There was “too much”. BASIRA: You don’t remember any of it? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds, you don’t remember what the merlot tasted like. [SIGH] It just… hurt.

Sounds a lot like Jon personally knows about the feeling one gets when trying to “drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds”.

Is all this information within him now, though, and will he be getting a few more coherent pieces later, or was it just a plain failure…?)

(- Even if Rayner turned out to be dead-dead, even if Manuela turned out to have been offed by Gertrude since her statement, you know what’s presumably still around and unkillable? THE DARK’S CREATURE.

I’m not super confident about Jon coming back from this with his two Actual Eyes. Not sure he would still need them to see anyway. But yeah, hum. If he needs a scar, there is a creature that is known for coming back again and again.)

(- I’m not holding out much hope but guuuuh, I wish Julia&Trevor could pop up to fight against The Dark too… given how it was Julia’s story… but she specifically said she wasn’t keen on a long boat trip (after her experience with Darvish&co told in MAG109), and their illegal status makes it hard to fly, so they’re stuck in America…

Wonder, though, if Jon will learn more things about what happened to Julia’s mother, and what Robert Montauk was trying to achieve…)

- Super small tipbits:

* Jon is a Disaster and I love him.

* I’m still Hysterical over Jon&Basira’s interactions, they’re just too damn funny… and heartbreaking at the same time. Because Basira used to find Jon funny! And it sounds like dry scolding, nowadays, with Jon being a bit more biting than joking with her.

* I friggin’ love Basira, holy heck. (“You know, we’ve actually got a group chat going, called “British Cops Who Love To Do Extrajudicial Spook-Killings On Foreign Soil”. I’ll just see if they’re free this Saturday.”)

* I also can’t believe that Jon is slowly filling up a Spook drawer next to his stationery drawer. He’s been hoarding the pens after his inability to find one in MAG123, uh? (AND HE’S KEEPING HIS RIB… I wonder if it will become useful as an anchor at some point, or never, and just be the joke that oh yeah, Jon has a rib hanging around, he has to find somewhere to store it.)

* MmMMMMMMMM, did Jon’s powers TMI about Daisy&Basira?

(MAG140) BASIRA: Coffee. Drink it. ARCHIVIST: I don’t really, er… [INHALE] Fine. [TAKING THE GLASS] BASIRA: You look awful. You tried drinking with Daisy again last night? ARCHIVIST: [CUTTING] She was here last night, as you know.

That final line sounded like JON knew too much about it.

* … That small moment of vulnerability when Basira mentioned that no, Daisy is not coming because they fear that it could make her join The Hunt again…………………. ;_;

* SVALBARD TRIP SVALBARD TRIP SVALBARD TRIP!!

Title for MAG141 is… absolutely NOT ominous at all, I can’t believe nothing bad will happen ahahahah (sob). It… really doesn’t bode well for Basira&Jon, uh… No clue about the entity involved statement-wise, though… Could it be about another journey of the Tundra? John Franklin’s expedition on the H.M.S. Terror – Rayner had been interested in that one back in MAG098, possibly because of Arctic Explorations (though according to MAG133, the crew ended up with The Hunt)?

Anyway: “Nice Boat.” I guess………………………………

[douxreviews]

The Magicians - ‘A Flock of Lost Birds’ Review

“The moment that I found out magic was real that was the moment that I discovered who I am.”

Once again, The Magicians resets their entire show for the season premiere. Most of the questers don’t know who they are, what danger they’re in, or even that magic exists. But the show still gets to have fun with identity crises, kittens (who don’t even explode!), and Santa Claus.

The majority of the questers spend the episode trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Kady/Sam Kunningham really moves things along using her detective skills. Surprisingly, by the end of the episode four out of the six amnesic questers know magic exists and are in a position for someone or something to force them to figure stuff out (Marina 23 or Margo-ruled Fillory).

Quickly and realistically the show pushes the questers to start figuring things out while also introducing us to their false identities. Penny/Hansel the chill DJ who may or may not have hooked-up with Taylor Swift. Josh/Isaac the anxious Uber driver with bad breath. Kady/Sam the tough, expert detective. And Margo/Janet, who kind of just acts like how Margo probably would if she knew nothing about magic. They all seem fun to hang around with for a little while, but I’m definitely eager to have our magicians back.

Elsewhere, we see our Julia finally get to go to Brakebills! Except it isn’t really our Julia, it’s Kimber D’Antoni. And everyone thinks she’s a squib including Julia/Kim herself because she can’t do any actual magic. Fogg let her into Brakebills because he feels guilty about what happened to her when he turned her away the last time. And really he should. He spent all first season telling his students how dangerous magic could be if unregulated, while knowingly casting one student out, hoping that would save them all. So now he’s using this version of Julia to make up for what he did, which as part of the elaborate mental gymnastics he’s doing to try to rid himself of his guilt and responsibility for the dangerous situation he left all the questers in; like telling the head librarian he’s doing his best to protect them so if he fails it will be her fault. The problem is, even if he makes different choices with this Julia and uses protection charms on all the other questers, he still made those choices in the past and the consequences for those choices will still stand.

In the library, Alice and the head librarian also try to rid themselves of their own guilt. Alice refuses to let herself off the hook so easily, but Santa Claus (!) tells her she’s good. Because she was good as a child despite being smart and even though he hurt others it doesn’t mean she should hurt as well. This raises some more interesting questions about identity and responsibility. Is a person always good or bad? Or do your actions and experiences change your identity? And should she hurt because she hurt others? Alice seems to agree with Santa Claus and uses his encouragement as motivation to escape. Through a cockroach? Maybe? I don’t know.

The head librarian, maybe feeling guilty after what happened with Alice and the others and with her daughter Harriet, tries to have a nice moment with Alice. She tells her not to kill herself again (sound advice) and that she hopes she’ll join the library to enhance her magician skills. Once again, the librarian asks people only to grow the way she sees fit. Harriet needed to stay with the library, Alice can only have semi-freedom if she joins the library, and now she’s regulating all of magic, doling it out based on who she deems worthy and who doesn’t piss the library off.

Finally, we get to spend a few minutes with Quentin/Brian and the monster. The monster’s super murder-happy. He killed a waiter off-screen, kills an ice cream man for giving him jimmies instead of sprinkles (not realizing they’re the same thing), and he plans to kill all of Quentin’s friends. And he does all this with a childlike splendor. We’ve seen so many people try to kill our magicians before, and even though they don’t know who they are yet, they’re all (minus Julia/Kim) well on their way to figuring that out. But the way the monster kills almost on a whim is just terrifying. Hale Appleman does a great job showcasing that creepiness in the few minutes he’s on screen this episode. I can’t imagine the creepiness to come.

Bits and Pieces

-- The Magicians is already renewed for season five!!!

-- I loved all the Ember-plus-kittens-warning-alarm dreams. Ember-plus-kittens should show up in every episode. I’d settle for just kittens. Just kittens who don’t explode.

-- The name Sam Cunningham does sound like it belongs in a comic book.

-- Margo/Janet’s still sporting the eye-patch because of the wonky colors she sees with her fairy eye.

-- The librarians imprisoned Santa; they must be evil! Except, Santa also watches kids while they sleep and gives them unsolicited gifts. Maybe he should be imprisoned…

Dream Ember on undead uprisings: “Not sure they'd be able to do much, the dead. They're sort of feeble and rotting. It just struck me as creepy and I’d rather you put a stop to it.”

Margo/Janet: “My boobs look insane in this drawing. A man wrote this, correct?”

Three out of four crazy witness protection spells.

Ariel Williams

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 9/10/21 - MALIGNANT, THE CARD COUNTER, TIFF 2021, LANGUAGE LESSONS, THE ALPINIST, EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE, FAUCI, and More!

Before we get to this week’s releases-- and there are a lot of them, though not necessarily wide releases -- I probably should mention that the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is beginning this week up North across the board. I was unable to go in person, more due to the money than any worries about COVID. (Honestly, I have no idea what’s going on at the border right now between America and Canada, but I figured I better wait it out before attending TIFF in person… until I can actually afford it.)

This year’s TIFF offers a lot of premieres, most of them taking place in physical theaters in Toronto, such as Edgar Wright’s, Last Night in Soho, (which just premiered in Venice) and Universal’s musical, Dear Evan Hansen, as well as David Gordon Green’s horror sequel, Halloween Kills (which also just played in Venice oddly). Other movies playing TIFF include Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, and The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, both which star Benedict Cumberbatch. Mihael Peace's Encounter, starring Riz Ahmed and Octavia Spencer, and docs like Julia (as in "Child") and Attica. There’s even a doc about the Canadian rock band, Triumph! (I’m looking forward to that one.) Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the German film, The Guilty, starring TIFF regular Jake Gyllenhaal, will have its premiere, and many, many more. Too many to watch, let alone write about, but I’ll try to review a few of these over at Below the Line and maybe some here. (There are also lots of movies that premiered at Cannes in July that will play at TIFF, and some of those will also play at New York Film Festival later this month, which is where I’ll see them.)

A movie that I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time and is finally seeing the light of day is James Wan’s return to horror, MALIGNANT (Warner Bros.). Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to see this before Friday, which is a bit of a bummer, but I’ll look forward to seeing it with the common people in a theater. Because I’m looking forward to this movie so much, I haven’t even watched the latest trailer, so I really don’t know too much about it, which may be for the better.

Of course, you know Wan’s name from some of the most successful horror franchises of the past two decades, starting with Saw in 2004. After a few movies that didn’t do quite so well, Wan reteamed with his Saw collaborator Leigh Whannell for Insidious in 2010, which also did very well and created a similarly successful franchise. (Whannell would go on to direct the third movie in the series, the respectable sci-fi thriller Upgrade, and then he directed 2020’s The Invisible Man for Universal, which was also a substantial hit.) Meanwhile Wan went on to direct The Conjuring in 2013 and its 2016 sequel, The Conjuring 2, based on the true case files of supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by regular Wan collaborator Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. Both of those “Conjuring” movies opened with $40 million+, and you guessed it, they also led to hugely successful franchises for Warner Bros with spin-offs galore.

Although Wan has been making big studio mega-blockbusters like Furious 7 and Aquaman in recent years -- and he’s hard at work on a sequel to the latter -- Malignant is his return to horror after a whole five years, which certainly is exciting for horror fans and those who love Wan’s style of horror particularly.

One thing that’s become fairly obvious from writing about box office over the past couple decades is that horror movies are rarely sold on the names of their stars, although Wan has a fine lead in the form of Annabelle Wallis, who just so happened to have starred in the 2014 The Conjuring prequel called Annabelle, which did quite well. (No, she did not play the title doll Annabelle, if you haven't seen it.) And that’s about it. The fact that Wan can do whatever he wants these days, and he decides to return to the horror genre without stacking the deck with all sorts of name actor, is pretty impressive. Even Saw had bigger names actors like Carey Elwes and Danny Glover!

Although I don’t know much about Malignant, it’s definitely giving me vibes of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell, the horror master’s return to horror after making three “Spider-Man” movies. Although it’s well-loved by horror fans, it ended up opening with just $15.8 million in the summer of 2009. That’s a little daunting when you figure that Malignant is opening in September and in the second weekend of a huge blockbuster like Marvel’s Shang-Chi.

But there’s something else that’s been bugging me, as excited as I am to see the movie. I’ve been doing this a long time, and Warner Bros. has become almost legendary for screening all their movies in advance… every single one. I can maybe think of two examples of movies that didn’t get advance critics screenings. Malignant is screening for critics but only on Thursday night with an embargo Thursday at 10pm. That is not the move of a studio confident in a movie they’re releasing. Maybe it’s to avoid spoilers or maybe it’s ‘cause Malignant returns Wan to the craziness of the Insidious movies rather than the more commercial and mainstream horror of The Conjuring movies. I don’t know, cause I haven’t seen it, but I'm still gonna go see it on Friday night, ‘cause I like James and want to fully support his movie.

But that adds another layer of foreboding to the horror movie that will also be on HBO Max Friday, and it’ll be so easy for the curious to just hit “play” on their remote to watch it that way, which is what I think most people will do. Because of this, I’m struggling to find a way that Malignant makes more than $13 million, taking quite a distant second place to Shang-Chi in its second weekend.

Opening in roughly 500 theaters Friday is Paul Schrader’s THE CARD COUNTER (Focus Features), which stars Oscar Isaac as former prison inmate and professional gambler, “William Tell,” who drives around the casino circuit making money by playing blackjack and poker. He meets two people on his journey that changes the course of his path, the first being Tye Sheridan’s Cirk (Yes, with a “C”), a young man whose father ended up killing himself after serving time in military prison for crimes at Abu Ghraib. Tiffany Haddish plays La Lina, a woman who sees Will’s talent playing cards and wants to put him in her stable of players. The relationship between these three characters is what keeps the movie interesting even when there are only a few minor dramatic fireworks.

If there’s any doubt that Schrader, a significant Hollywood player in the ‘70s and ‘80s, is firing on all cylinders then The Card Counter confirms that 2017’s First Reformed was no fluke, as Schrader remains valid and important well into his 70s. Like First Reformed, this film features an undeniably solid performance from Isaac, who plays such a subdued character, an enigma who every so often truly explodes.

Sheridan's sheepish Cirk seems like an odd choice in road companion, although Haddish proves to be quite a counter (pun intended) to Isaac, as she seems far more comfortable in Will's world. Trying to understand Will and what he sees in Cirk and why he joins the World Poker Tour circuit despite wanting to remain anonymous is what keeps The Card Counter so invigorating. (One odd thing is that despite the title and the opening which literally teaches the viewer how to count cards while playing Blackjack, in most of the movie he’s actually playing poker.)

Folks who enjoy poker movies and the intricacies of Vegas and the gambling community in general should really enjoy The Card Counter for that aspect alone, but then there's the past of the main character, which ties into Abu Ghraib and the horrors of the tortures committed there. Some might feel that two decades after 9/11 isn't the best time to bring those crimes back to the forefront, but Schrader ably explores what it must have been like for the military torturers after they were convicted.

Few screenwriters and filmmakers could pull off what Schrader does in terms of combining these elements, as the story weaves itself through these very different worlds. Frequent Schrader collaborator, Willem Dafoe, takes on a smaller but still significant role as “Gordo,” Will’s commanding officer who trained him to torture. Even so, one of my favorite moments is a scene in a diner where Will performs a card trick for Cirk that would make the late Ricky Jay proud just adds to one's enjoyment.

I will say that I wasn’t as thrilled by the movie’s last ten minutes, as it feels like Schrader ran out of steam in terms of how to resolve all the pieces of a puzzle, leaving a couple pieces out before completion. Regardless, The Card Counter is a constantly compelling film that keeps you invested in the different characters’ behavior as things happen to and around them.

As far as box office, The Card Counter isn't getting a very wide release but with so many movies in the top 10 quickly dropping away leaving movies like Shang-Chi at the top, it should leave room for Schrader's film to inch its way into the top 10 and maybe even the top 5!

A movie I’m unlikely to see and know very little… okay… nothing… about is the faith-based SHOW ME THE FATHER (Sony/AFFIRM Films), which will open in about 1,000 theaters on Friday. Okay, fine, you twisted my arm, and I looked it up. This is a new documentary about fatherhood from the Kendrick Brothers, the duo behind faith-based hits like War Room, Courageous, and Fireproof. I've seen none of those movies, though I know all of them exceeded expectations, but this is also a doc, and those rarely do as well at the box office. I wish I could give you a definitive number for this, but something makes me think it won’t make more than $2 million, even if the religious right seem less worried about COVID and vaccines and wearing masks in movie theaters than everyone else. Expect it to end up in the bottom of the Top 10 with lots of confused movie writers not knowing what it is.

Kristen Bell and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (who have appeared both on The Good Place and in Veronica Mars together) co-star in the comedy QUEENPINS (STXfilms), which is being released straight to Cinemark Theaters on Friday and then it will be on Paramount+ on Sept. 30.

In the movie, based on a true story, Bell plays Connie Kominski, a suburban Phoenix housewife who thrills to saving money with coupons, hatches a scheme with her best friend JoJo (Howell-Baptiste) to sell coupons via mail, not realizing that what they’re doing is illegal as they rack up millions of dollars. Unfortunately, they have Paul Walter Hauser’s Loss Prevention Manager Ken Miller on their tail, and he teams with postal inspector Simon Kilmurry (Vince Vaughn) to try to catch them women trying to scam the supermarkets.

This movie, written and directed by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, actually is based on a true story, but it took me a little while to get into it, and it definitely had its ups and downs. The first thing one has to get past is the fact that this is essentially a heist film that involves illicit coupons, and at first, Connie writing letters of complaint to companies comes across a bit like a Greenberg for middle-aged women. (Note: that film's star, Ben Stiller is one of the movie's exec. producers.) On the other hand, Kristen Bell tends to be great in this kind of role and you can tell she's worked with Ms. Howell-Baptiste from their organic chemistry as best friends. Joel McHale has a tougher time fitting in as Connie's husband Rick, but that actually works in this case. (A little trivia fact: McHale, Howell-Baptiste and Natalie Morales, whose directorial debut is reviewed below, all appeared in BenDavid Grabinski's Happily, as did Stephen Root, who has a small role in Queenpins.)

Queenpins eventually falls into a steadier pace with the introduction of Hauser's character and then bringing Vaughn into the mix, although the two of them have very little interaction with the two female leads, as the film instead cuts between the two duos. Hauser essentially seems to be playing a jokier version of Richard Jewell here, constantly trying to get more involved in the case and wanting to be deputized by Vaughn. The two of them work well together, and there's only one unfortunate scene involving… it's too disgusting to mention, but it's where the film needlessly delves into gross-out humor, and that's also where it falters.

As much as the law in this movie act like buffoons, the two ladies don't seem very much smarter, doing idiotic things like buying Lamborghinis and guns in order to "clean” the illicit money from the coupon-selling scam. Because of that, Queenpins gets sillier and sillier and feels less like any sort of possible true story as it goes along. The movie basically comes across like a less skilled version of Butter, but in that case, it was a movie that shouldn't have worked but did. In this case, it's the exact opposite.

Cinemark Theaters only has about 331 theaters across America, including a lot in Texas, California, and Ohio, but honestly, I don't think awareness is high enough for Queenpins for it to make much of a mark, but even if it makes less than a million, it could theoretically break into the top 10 this weekend, but I think it will fall just short.

The movies above are the only ones that may be going even remotely wide, so because of that, this weekend’s box office will look something like this with Shang-Chi remaining #1 with relative ease, Malignant taking a distant second, and Candyman and Free Guy fighting it out for #3.

1. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $33.5 million -56%

2. Malignant (Warner Bros.) - $13.6 million N/A

3. Candyman (Universal) - $4.8 million -53%

4. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $4.5 million -42%

5. The Card Counter (Focus) - $2.2 million N/A

6. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $2.1 million -48%

7. Paw Patrol: The Movie (Paramount) - $2 million -50%

8. Show Me the Father (Sony/AFFIRM) - $2 million N/A

9. Don’t Breathe 2 (Sony/Screen Gems) - $2 million -30%

10. Respect (MGM) - $600,000 -57%

--- Queenpins (STXfilms) - $445,000 N/A

It was tough to pick a “Chosen One” this week, because there are a few decent films, but I had to go with Natalie Morales’ directorial debut, LANGUAGE LESSONS (Shout! Studios!), which she co-wrote and co-stars in with Mark Duplass. I saw it at SXSW back in March, and I loved it just as much a second time around, due to the simplicity of the premise and just how much Morales and her co-star do using similar Zoom technology we’ve all been using for the past 18 months. Duplass plays wealthy Californian Adam, whose husband buys him a series of Spanish lessons, given over Zoom by Morales’ character Cariño, who lives in Costa Rica.

You might think after over a year of mostly communicating with family and friends via Zoom, we’d be so sick of it that a movie that uses that as a conceit would be absolutely horrible, but maybe that’s why it’s easier to connect with what Morales and Duplass were attempting with this terrific piece of work. How these two people from different backgrounds interact begins slowly as might be the case while getting online language lessons from a new teacher. As they become more comfortable with each other, there’s more playfulness, as they begin to open up to each other. (Adam's Spanish teacher definitely has a dark side that comes out as things go along.)

I’m not sure if there was a lot of improvisation involved with the script as with some of the films Duplass did with the wonderful Lynn Shelton, but however they put this film together, it works in a similar way where it’s charming and funny, even during some of the more emotional moments. Because Duplass’ character is declared as gay fairly on, there's none of the attempts at making this some sort of meet-cute romance, as may have been the case with a studio movie. There's also never anything lascivious or creepy about their relationship, which makes some of the moments a little confounding, but ultimately, it all pays off.

Even though there’s a certain aspect of the movie that makes you want it to be kept organic and authentic-feeling, there is some gentle scoring by Gaby Moren that’s kept far behind the dialogue that does add something subliminal to the film.

Language Lessons is absolutely delightful -- definitely one of my favorite films of the year -- maybe because it thrives on its own simplicity by just having two actors doing what they do best.

Another great movie coming out in select theaters Friday is EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE (Amazon), starring Max Harwood as Jamie New, a fairly normal gay 16-year-old from Sheffield, England… other than the fact that he wants to be a drag queen. His mother Margaret (Sarah Lancashire) supports him, as does his best friend Pritti (Lauren Patel) but Jamie risks the ridicule and mocking and bullying of his entire Year 11 class as he proclaims his desire to attend prom in drag. This is the feature debut by Jonathan Butterell, a choreographer who directed the original stageplay.

I honestly wasn't really sure what to expect when I went to a theater to see this with a real audience. For one thing, I had no idea it was a musical. I had seen Max on some morning show talking about the movie and how it was based on the true story of Jamie Campbell, a British teen who wanted to be a drag queen, but I don’t remember him saying anything about singing or dancing. And the music and performances are all terrific, including all the young actors playing Jamie’s schoolmates, who have more than a few spectacular numbers to show off their own skills. (They’re kind of like the Greek chorus for the film.)

Harwood is exceedingly likeable, which is why he can carry this film, but it’s then an even bigger joy when Richard E. Grant shows up in a mentor role, as former drag queen “Loco Channel.” Grant has proven countless times he can do anything, and though his singing voice takes some adjusting to, it also leads to two absolutely amazing moments. Same with Lauren Patel and Sarah Lancashire, who each have numbers that would bring down the house on a Broadway stage but just gets the tears flowing as you’re watching on the screen. Sharon Horgan, who was just in the recent drama Together, plays more of the antagonist role as Jamie’s disapproving teacher, and her one number does not show that singing is one of her talents. (She does okay, and gets through it, at least.)

That aside, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a truly wonderful musical (and movie), one that took me quite by surprise, since I wasn't expecting something a bit more "Free to Be You and Me” (look it up). In fact, Harwood shines, and the cast around him does as well; the fact this musical was able to bring out so many emotions from me offers proof positive that it's a true winner.

Jamie is opening in select theaters this Friday, and then it will stream on Amazon Prime Video starting Sept. 17. I recommend going out and seeing it in a theater if it’s playing near you; it’s a real crowdpleaser, for sure.

Also launching on Amazon this Friday is the series, THE VOYEURS (Amazon), starring the terrific Sidney Sweeney (who many will know from Mike White’s The White Lotus on HBO Max) and Justice Smith as a young couple who move into a loft apartment in Downtown Montreal after which they become interested in the sex life of their neighbors across the street (played by Ben Hardy and Natash Liu Bordizzo).

I’ve really been looking forward to the action-thriller KATE (Netflix), starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who I love, so sue me. It also stars Woody Harrelson, who I’m also a fan of. Directed by Cedric Nicholas-Troyan (The Huntsman: Winter’s War), it has Winstead playing Kate, a kick-ass assassin who has 24 hours to get revenge on the man who tries to kill her, eventually teaming with the daughter of one of her targets. Harrelson plays her handler.

The fact that this movie, starring one of my favorite actresses playing an assassin and doing a bit more action than we've seen from Winstead in a while (Birds of Prey being an exception), comes so soon after The Protégé with Maggie Q may only be a coincidence, but whoever is making these movies clearly knows what I'm all about. This one also has a very tiny sci-fi angle as well, and much of it is set in Tokyo, so it has both those things going for it, too.

Is this Winstead's best role or movie? No, probably not, but it does show her versatility, the fact that she can do something like Scott Pilgrim and other types of genre, but also do serious drama, and this is much stronger a venture into a Japanese yakuza thriller by a Westerner than last week's Yakuza Princess. Much of that comes down to Winstead and Harrelson, who do a much better job selling even the weaker dialogue, because you can tell they're both taking it very seriously. Like Yakuza Princess (and Kill Bill, a model for both of them) Nicholas-Troyan leans heavily on his soundtrack and on some of the more stylish visuals, but at least this one offers other things beyond the constantly-circling camera in certain scenes.

Let's face it that watching Winstead taking part in some pretty impressive and violent fight and stunt sequences would probably be more than enough for me to enjoy this even, if there are moments that rip-off Kill Bill so obviously but again, better than other similar rip-offs. Eventually, Kate gets sidled with a young teen girl, Ani (Miku Martineau), the daughter of one of her victims, and that does take away from the "sole assassin” aspect but does give it more of the feel of The Professional. Maybe that would work better if Martineau didn’t seem much older than the teenager she was meant to be playing, which might be due to the fact that she swears more than Samuel L. Jackson. In some ways, Ani offers something more akin to Black Widow with a third act twist that few will see coming.

Ultimately, the movie works well as an action movie, if not slightly marred by its overuse of clichés. It probably will come as no surprise that I prefer seeing action movies like this on the biggest screen possible in a theater, and in fact, this did get a nominal theatrical run last week before streaming on Netflix Friday. Winstead's badassery does wonders at making sure that fans of her and the genre won't be disappointed by its few flaws.

Also hitting Netflix this week (today, in fact) is the doc BLOOD BROTHERS: MALCOLM X & MUHAMMAD ALI (Netflix), which has a fairly self-explanatory title. I haven't seen it yet.

A movie that people who liked the Oscar-winning Free Solo will also want to check out is Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen’s THE ALPINIST (Red Bull Media/Roadside Attractions/Universal), a documentary about the 23-year-old solo mountain climber Marc-André Leclerc, whose amazing climbs were counterbalanced by his elusive behavior that kept him mostly under the radar for so many years.

This is a very different movie from Free Solo, though. That was about Alex Honnold's determination to make one singular climb, while Leclerc was already making just as many impressive climbs at a younger age. It's pretty obvious that Leclerc was destined to climb even bigger rock faces as Mortimer (whose previous film, The Dawn Wall, was sadly overlooked with all the push behind Free Solo) and Rosen finally catch up with him.

I don't really want to say too much more about the film or Leclerc, since it's best to learn about him through the movie and the amazing interviews compiled by the filmmaking duo. There's a good reason why mountain climbing continues to be of interest to the casual non-climbers like myself. Great films like The Alpinist find ways to glorify these amazing climbers without glossing over how dangerous mountain climbing can be as a sport or hobby.

The Alpinist had a Fathom Event on Tuesday night, but it will also be getting a moderately wide release in theaters through Roadside this Friday as well. You can read my interviews with the filmmakers over at Below the Line, too. Also, I mentioned another Universal doc, Under the Volcano, a few weeks back, and I have an interview with those filmmakers over at Below the Line, as well.

Another doc of note out this week is FAUCI (NatGeo Documentary/Magnolia) from directors John Hoffman and Janet Tobias, which looks at the life and career of NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, but it doesn't deal with the last year and a half where Fauci's main focus was fighting COVID. No, this goes back to earlier in his career, to when he started at NIH, meeting, working with and eventually marrying his wife, Dr. Christine Grady. (Nope, I had no idea he was married either.)

More importantly, the movie follows Fauci's role in the discovery of HIV and AIDs and the conflicts between the government and protest groups like ACT UP who didn't think Fauci and the government did enough to help the gay community fight against AIDS and certainly not fast enough to make a difference.

Hoffman and Tobias’ doc has a fantastic interview with Fauci at its core that sometimes gets a little cutesy, but also allows him to talk candidly about his efforts in fighting disease, including the efforts to help fight Ebola in Africa where it was so debilitating for those who couldn't afford medicine that the USA had to step in.

But AIDS is really the crux of the film's exploration of Fauci's past achievements (and partial failures), and watching a younger Fauci talking to the AIDS activists in a rousing speech is one of the highlights, as is watching the present-day Fauci tearing up while talking about an AIDS patient who died.

I’ve always had a bit of a skewed perspective on epidemiologists and infectious disease doctors due to a few incidents when I was fighting cancer, and Fauci has annoyed me for the good part of the year by being so wishy-washy and negative towards movie theaters (which led to a full-year of closings in NYC with no major super-spreader cases since they reopened). But this documentary definitely helped change my mind about Fauci, maybe because the general public really never had a chance to meet or know him or his work before COVID hit.

Fauci is quite a fantastic doc in terms of shining the spotlight on a needlessly controversial figure who has been politicized despite having held his position through six administrations. I would definitely point someone to this doc if they still feel negatively towards the country’s top epidemiologist. It helps to humanize Fauci much like the RBG doc did for the late Supreme Court Justice.

Seriously, there are so many movies this week that there’s no way I’m gonna review everything, but you can read about a few of them below.

A music doc hitting New York on Friday and then opening in L.A. on Sept. 17 is Tom Surgals's FIRE MUSIC: The Story of Free Jazz (Submarine Deluxe), exec. produced by Nels Cline and Thurston Moore (who happens to be playing his first NYC show in a couple years this Sunday). It covers the free jazz movement of the '60s and '70s that produced the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane. The movie features archival footage from the '60s jazz scene and interviews with key players, including critic Gary Giddins. I'm not going to review this, but it's pretty good, because I definitely had a phase when I was really into this type of jazz, basically all-improvisational with less structure than the jazz that uses charts and such. I know that a lot of people hate or misunderstand the musical style but it's quite stirring, as is Surgal's film. I do feel you'll already have to be a fan of the musical genre to enjoy the movie, though.

Hitting Apple TV+ on Friday is the filmed version of the Broadway musical, COME FROM AWAY (Apple TV+) -- similar to last year’s Hamilton and David Byrne’s American Utopia -- which is being released on the streamer to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11, since the musical is loosely based on the events. It was filmed earlier this year, 14 months into the pandemic that shut down Broadway with a fully-masked audience watching Broadway’s first live performance since the shut-down. This is one of the MANY musicals on Broadway that I’ve never gotten around to seeing but it involves a town in Newfoundland, Canada where a plane lands on 9/11 as they’ve been diverted following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Claire Lewins’ doc THE WONDERFUL: STORIES FROM THE SPACE STATION (Dog Star Films/Universal Home Entertainment) features footage from the International Space Station and interviews with the astronauts who have been involved with the extraordinary space project. I hope to watch this over the weekend, but it sounds like my kind of movie.

Already on Apple TV+ (it debuted Tuesday!) is Bailie Walsh’s BEING JAMES BOND, a documentary about Daniel Craig’s run as 007 over the past decade plus, which you can rent for FREE on Apple, so go do that!

On Monday, FX and FX on Hulu will debut the first few episodes of Y THE LAST MAN, the new series based on the Vertigo comic series by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra that I absolutely loved. Set in a world where every single male human and animal has died, it stars Ben Schnetzer (Pride, Warcraft) as Yorick, who is -- you guessed it-- the last man on earth. He’s also an escape artist/magician, trying to survive with his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand, as he goes across country trying to find his girlfriend Beth who left for Australia before the event. It also stars Diane Lane (as Yorick’s mother, who becomes the President), Olivia Thirlby (as his sister Hero), Ashley Romans (as Agent 355), Missi Pyle, and lots of other actresses (because all the men are dead). I’m slowly making my way through the series, and I like what I've seen so far, but the first three episodes will premiere on Monday.

A few other movies, a couple that I’ve seen, which I just don’t have time to review…

Nicholas Cage stars in Sion Sono's PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND (RLJEfilms), which opens at the IFC Center this Friday. He plays a bank robber who is sprung from jail by Bill Moseley's "Governor" whose adopted granddaughter (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. Cage's character is allowed to go free to find her, but he's put in a suit that will self-destruct in three days if he doesn't return. So it's kind of like The Suicide Squad, and though it has an interesting cast (including Nick Cassavetes, who also appears in Queenpins this week), I don't remember liking this much at Sundance earlier this year. (I actually don't thnk I got through the movie.)

John Pollono adapts his own stageplay SMALL ENGINE REPAIR (Vertical) to the screen with John Bernthal and Shea Whigham playing life-long friends Terrance and Packie with Pollono’s Frank, who are overly protective of Terrance’s teen daughter, Crystal (Ciaro Bravo). A chance encounter turns into a night that spins out of control as the friends have to make a tough decision about how to resolve the situation. I was pretty mixed on this movie even though Bernthal and Whigham continue to be great in everything they do. (I just think Whigham's recent movie, The Gateway, was better.)

Hitting the horror-streaming network Shudder (I have a subscription, because I’m a fan) on Thursday is Ruth Platt’s MARTYR’S LANE, a ghost story about a 10-year-old girl named Leah (Kiera Thompson) who lives in an old house with her family but whose mother has grown distant. At night, she’s visited by a guest who challenges Leah in exchange for more information about the house and her family.

Saul Williams stars and writes the score for Charles Officer’s AKILLA’S ESCAPE (Vertical), a crime noir about an urban child soldier set in Toronto and New York with Williams playing Akilla, a 40-year-old with a covert cannabis operation that goes legit. As he’s ready to cash out, he’s robbed by a group of masked youths. Akilla captures one of them, a mute 15-year-old named Sheppard that is associated with the Jamaican crime syndicate founded by his grandfather.

Jonah Feingold’s DATING & NEW YORK (IFC Films), which premiered at the Tribeca Festival a few months back, stars Francesca Reale (Stranger Things) and Jaboukie Young-White (The Daily Show) as Wendy and Milo, two Millennials who are thrown together at the worst time in their lives for romance, as they meet on an app called Meet Cute, have a first date, and then ghost each other before being thrown back together into an unconventional romance. I’m usually a fan of the rom-com genre, and I often can even withstand one that takes place in New York City and uses my town in a completely unrealistic way to show how romance can flourish here. (*koff*BULLSHIT*koff*) But then you throw in the M-word (Millennials), and this grouchy old man could barely get through this movie, though I’m not even remotely surprised it premiered at Tribeca. It seems very much like a Tribeca movie, and yes, that was meant in a pejorative way as the former “Film” festival has lost its way over the years. I’m half-kidding, the movie is entertaining enough, and I’m sure younger people will enjoy it more than I did.

A few other films I didn't get to this week…

DOGS (Dekanalog) AZOR (MUBI) BAD CANDY (Dread)

That’s it for this week. Do we have any new movies next week? I think Clint Eastwood has Cry Macho

[orbemnews]

Golden Globes 2021 Nominations: What to Expect and Predictions Are you ready for awards season to start? We are. The Golden Globes have always been a peculiar ritual. The statues are awarded by a clandestine group of foreign journalists, only 89 of whom vote. Top prizes are split into dramatic and comedic categories, often in confounding ways. Rather bizarrely, foreign-language films are not allowed to compete for the most prestigious awards. This year, however, the surreal nature of the affair has been heightened by a pandemic-era question: The Globes are actually happening? The five nominees for best drama could easily have ticket sales of zero. Almost every film in contention has been released online or is still awaiting release. Many cinemas have now been closed for 11 months. For a lot of people, including some in Hollywood, it is hard to care about little golden trophies at a time when the coronavirus is still killing more than 1,000 Americans a day. Others will undoubtedly welcome the Golden Globes as a silly distraction — the reliable balm of celebrity self-involvement and did-you-see-that-ugly-outfit schadenfreude. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey will return as hostesses. The ceremony is planned for Feb. 28 and will be shown on NBC. The Globes ostensibly exist to honor excellence in movies and television. But the real reason this show must go on involves money. NBC pays the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and its producing partner, Dick Clark Productions, an estimated $65 million a year for broadcast rights. About 18 million people tuned in last year. Globe nominations are coveted marketing tools; studios and streaming services will quickly roll out expensive ad campaigns based on the tallies. For the first time since the pandemic began, moviedom will have a national platform to use as a pep rally: “I’m Still Here!” The Globes may also help steer an adrift Oscar race onto some kind of course. (The Oscars are planned for April 25.) David Fincher’s fading “Mank,” about Old Hollywood, could use a Globe nomination or five right about now. While “Hillbilly Elegy” was widely mocked, Globes voters could conceivably give Glenn Close a lift by recognizing her scenery-gnawing Mamaw. (It would be her 15th nomination.) In truth, the Globes are not predictive of much. Over the last 20 years, the Globes and the Oscars have agreed on best picture winners 50 percent of the time. Last year, Globe voters chose “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and the war drama “1917” as best in class. Neither won at the Academy Awards, which recognized the genre-busting “Parasite.” In keeping with its rules, the group did not nominate “Parasite,” a foreign-language film, for a best picture Globe. What maddening peculiarities await this time around, when the nominations are announced Wednesday starting at 8:35 a.m. Eastern: Streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon, will lead the way. Netflix, only a competitor on the movie side of the Globes since 2016, will dominate to a jaw-dropping degree. It has homegrown films in contention — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Mank,” “Da 5 Bloods,” “The Prom” — as well as films that it bought from pandemic-stricken traditional studios, specifically Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Among the television categories, the streaming service has established crowd pleasers (“The Crown,” “Ozark”) and shiny, new hits (“Bridgerton,” “The Queen’s Gambit.”) Amazon will also receive an armload of nominations, with Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” a fact-based drama about a meeting of four Black luminaries, positioned to pick up nods for best drama, director, screenplay and supporting actor (for Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Sam Cooke). And Globe voters will surely honor “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” which arrived on Amazon Prime Video in October, in the best comedy or musical category, among others. Some prognosticators are also betting that Amazon’s irreverent superhero series “The Boys” will receive a nomination for best television drama, which would be a big deal because the popular show, now in its second season, has mostly been overlooked by awards groups. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has come under attack in recent years for failing to pay attention to inclusion and diversity. At the most recent ceremony, for instance, the group put forward — yet again — an all-male slate of directors, failing to nominate women like Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”) and Olivia Wilde (“Booksmart”). Expect a corrective this year. It looks like both King and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) are going to get recognized. Adding to that mix is likely to be Spike Lee for “Da 5 Bloods.” The war drama generated a strong critical response, and Lee has been nominated three times before by the group (most recently for directing “BlacKkKlansman”). And, this year, his children, Satchel and Jackson, will serve as Golden Globe Ambassadors, a job that traditionally involves escorting winners off the stage. It wouldn’t be a family affair if Spike wasn’t there too. Sophia Loren and Zendaya could compete in the actress categories. The best actor in a drama category may also reflect a broad range of talents, with Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), Steven Yeun (“Minari”), Delroy Lindo (“Da 5 Bloods”), Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) all in the mix for nominations. Tom Hanks could rise for his “News of the World” frontiersman. But the actress nominations are likely to make the noise. Globe voters could include a legend, Sophia Loren, for her role as a Holocaust survivor who runs a day care for the children of local prostitutes in “The Life Ahead,” from Netflix. Or they could give that slot to an actress who represents the future, Zendaya, who has been praised for her performance in “Malcolm & Marie,” a black-and-white romantic drama (Netflix, again). Meryl Streep, a 25-time Globe nominee and eight-time winner, could receive two nominations for best actress in a comedy or musical, one for her over-the-top “Prom” performance and another for playing an author trying to reconnect with friends in “Let Them All Talk.” Streep would likely be competing against the Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, for her ultra-crude, yet surprisingly sweet turn in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” The TV supporting actress category, as usual, has a plethora of candidates, adding a mini-modicum of suspense. Will voters make room for both Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter from “The Crown”? Also vying are Uzo Aduba (“Mrs. America”), Letitia Wright (“Small Axe”), Annie Murphy (“Schitt’s Creek”), Jessie Buckley (“Fargo”), Marielle Heller (“The Queen’s Gambit”) and Julia Garner (“Ozark”). Garner and Aduba both won Emmys last year for their performances. ‘Minari’ is not allowed to compete for the top prize. It wouldn’t be the Globes without a foreign-language film kerfuffle. This time, the group has egg on its face because Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” has to compete as a foreign-language entry — even though Mr. Chung is an American director, the movie was filmed in the United States, it was financed by American companies and it focuses on an immigrant family pursuing the American dream. But the characters in “Minari” predominantly speak Korean. As a result, Globe rules require its banishment to the best foreign-language film race; it cannot be considered for the top prize. “Hamilton,” on the other hand, will probably benefit from the group’s rules. As a recorded stage performance, “Hamilton” is not eligible for the Oscars. But the H.F.P.A. has no such hangup. So expect Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical to show up as a best comedy or musical nominee. Source link Orbem News #Expect #Globes #golden #Nominations #Predictions

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

DarkStiles Head Canon.

This head canon is courtesy of @tygerblaze. AND IT IS AMAZING AND HAS BONUS FIC ATTACHED! 

1)Stiles lost his dad to the Darach... the Nogitsune would have no trouble at all seeping into this Stiles, using him to hurt people. Deaton’s speak about opening the door is still the same. But its too late for Stiles has been taken over. At least that's what the others thought. In reality Stiles didn't have to do much, that door had busted wide open when he lost his father. Now he shares his darkness with this fox that had already been twisted because of its imprisonment. He understood it more

2)than the others ever could, with his spark already shinning with swirls of darkness. His parents had been the only one to keep that darkness at bay. Stiles is the one in control here though. They’re tired of doing things Scott’s way, letting people go who have taken countless of lives. So they both agree to only hurt those who've hurt them, who had hurt their pack. Showing Nogitsune the ones responsible for taking Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd from this world, for hurting Isaac Lahey, for taking

This came out longer than I thought: 

4) for taking his father from him for hurting Derek Hale in the worst way. He hunts each and every one of them down, the twins are the first one he takes down, but not before giving them both weeks of sleepless night terrors, he does the same thing to deputy Haigh, (whose been known to abuse his power) splitting his time between the three. Using the chaos and pain to feed them both. It takes time and finess to get through his list. He has to relearn his abilities. Tricksters have so many after all. Stiles takes their down time to shape the power into something he can use, fuses it with his spark making sure what he had shines brightest in the dark. 

—

Its almost a year before he finds a less than powerful Julia Bacharri (Peter does not get that kill), hiding amongst hunters. Days of stretching out her life force, pulling it apart piece by piece, Stiles throws away the ashen parts, they never tasted good anyway. He enjoys licking up the sparks of power, her screams. The short time he takes, to let her breathe, she finally tells him the truth about Emissary’s. How Deaton had failed his pack, and broke their law. How he had failed in training Stiles, almost letting his spark fade. How Deaton was responsible for the downfall of the Hale’s and their previous Emissary… that gives Stiles a slight pause. To dig into what is left of Julia and see the truth. The rage it sets loose is enough to take shake the walls, foundation of the hunters hide out. Taking Julia’s life along with it. “Oops.” His phone rings just a few minutes after. One message ’he’s awake.’ pocketing his phone Stiles eyes Julia’s body. “Well shit.”

There’s more people to on his list, but he isn’t sure that he wants to go after them now. Deaton is his main target. The only problem is that bastard is protected in Beacon Hills. A place he hasn’t been to in a long time. Stiles wants him to hurt the most for knowing more than they did, for letting all this happen, for pushing the pieces of this game a long in his favor. Deaton has been withholding for the longest time, and that can no longer go on. 

He brings his phone up and hums a mindless tune, bringing up contact list as it rings, the phone is picked up. “I’m calling in that debt, and you dam well better pay up.” 

“…” 

Stiles could feel it from this side of the world, his Alpha had awakened from a long slumber, and he wasn’t happy. No, of course not, being left behind with a phony Alpha who thought he knew what was best for everyone. 

“Are we done?” 

He turns with the phone still up against his ears. The girl who stood timidly by the doors, dressed in layers despite the heat. He hangs up the phone, a dangerous smile on his face. “Almost…” Stiles watches as she comes closer but stays away from the body. 

“Did she pay?” 

“Oh yeah,” He made sure that Julia paid for all that she did… to Derek and his pack. Lifting up a hand he lets the little Tesla coils dance along his fingers before pressing them into her cheeks. They seem to seep into her skin making her shake a bit, before her eyes flew open, the fire in her eyes shown bright. “We’ve got one more thing to do before we go back.” 

“Hmmm…” 

“Kira… you with me.” 

Her lips slipped into an eerie smile. 

“Yeah, you’ll get use to that.” 

Stiles leads her out the doors and down the hall, it was still dark outside. Pushed her into the backseat of the Camaro waiting just down the road, he slides into the passenger seat, gives the driver the go ahead. Behind them the place goes up in flames that will burn far longer than anyone could predict. It wouldn’t go beyond the land itself. 

“Where to?” 

Stiles looked back at Kira who had lain across the backseat, head resting on a rolled up leather jacket. In her lap was a small wolf pup, its shining blue eyes meeting Stiles growling low in his throat. Stiles own eyes shined brightly back, before turning to Peter in the drivers seat. “He’s awake.” Was all he said before Peter nods and turns the car in a slow U-Turn. 

“You do know they won’t just let you walk back in there.” 

“Ohhhh I know.” 

Scott wouldn’t let the ‘monster’ wearing his best friends face just waltz back into their home town. Deaton made sure that Mccall wouldn’t make that mistake. The thing was, they were both so sure that Stiles had been taken over. They didn’t stop to think that, maybe… just maybe Stiles had taken over Notgitsune. Oh it was very much shared at first but… Stiles hadn’t heard that dark fox’s voice in a long time. 

That’s what happens when Nogitsune tries to take on an already darkened spark. He would deal with Scott and whatever delusional little beta the wolf had turned, maybe he could pry them apart like he had done with Kira. That had been so easy. Poor Kira hadn’t known that Scott hated himself so much, he tried to be something he wasn’t. Tried to tell others to do the same. 

Hmm… but first he would get his Alpha, and the last of his beta’s. Then he would take on that self righteous little bastard and his so called true alpha. Glancing into the backseat again he reached into the backseat and pulled up growling wolf pup, “Don’t worry Jackson… they won’t see us coming.” 

—

[shadowscrybe]

Metamorphosis- Chapter 4

Requested: no

Summary: You’re Melissa’s “adopted” daughter after her best friend died and left you to her. Scott pretty much ignores you until one day he randomly starts hovering over you. Then this new kid Isaac comes along and Scott takes him in so quickly. You resent them both until…

Word Count: 1.7k

A/N: YAY Chapter 4 is finally edited! I actually like this chapter. It’s mostly to invoke anxiety. I wanted y’all to be able to feel how stressful this is, so I guess this is also a warning? If you don’t like reading things that make you anxious you might want to avoid this chapter. Personally, it makes my heart race. I know I wrote it so I see it differently, but I hope you guys can see what I was trying to convey. Let me know what you guys think and if you liked the stress, or if it wasn’t stressful enough. Give me any suggestions you guys might have. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! 

My head is throbbing to a point where I can feel it in my left cheek. The back of my head feels heavier than the front. Before I open my eyes, I notice the cold kiss of metal against my arms and piercing through my jeans. My natural instinct is to pull away but I can't. My arms are restrained by tape halfway up my forearms, just out of reach. Panic floods my body. My fingers feel frozen, my bones like electrified steel rods. All of these observations happen within a second. There’s no light behind my eyelids, so where ever I am it's dark. I force my eyes open.

I’ve always been very observant to detail, but nothing about this room sticks in my mind. My hands try to rip at the tape with no success. No part of me is talking to the other. I’m watching myself wither and panic in a metal chair in the middle of a dark room. I need to stop and assess where I am.

Find an exit. I look to the wall across me. It's definitely not drywall, it's cement. There is a window close to the ceiling, small with foggy glass. I’m in a basement. I crane my neck to see a set of steps to my back right. When I turn my head back, the barefoot woman’s face is in front of mine. I jump involuntarily.

“She’s awake.” She smiles.

I break eye contact with her when I see the twins from school come and stand on either side of her. Wait, Ethan and Aiden? No. That can’t be them.

“Is this a joke?” I hear myself say looking between them.

She clamps her hand over my thigh and squeezes hard enough I’m sure she’ll break it.

“Kali!” Ethan pulls her grip off me.

I hear her growl at him. “You’ll remember to never do that again.” She slashes at his face and a line of blood cuts across his cheek. Only seconds later it disappears. I have to blink a few times to make sure I see right. Her nails are sharp and protruding from her hand where they weren’t seconds before.

They drugged me. They had to have. Because when she snaps back to me her eyes are bright red. Maybe she’s the one on drugs. What does a crazy drug addict want with me? And why are the twins here? I don’t feel drugged. Not that I’ve ever been drugged and kidnapped before, but I don’t feel like I’ve been drugged. It’s the adrenaline. I’m seeing things.

She rakes her nails up my leg and places her palm over my throat. I lean away as far as I can. She takes her time, enjoying the movements, in wrapping her fingers around my neck. Her thumb is just under my chin directing where I look.

“Relax. I'm not going to kill you... Just maim a little bit.” My heart is shaking in my chest. She can feel this and presses her claws into my skin. Not enough to break through, but enough to make me wince.

“That’s enough, Kali.” A calm voice says at the top of the steps. There’s a staccato clicking as he descends. The twins step back and Kali removes her hand and stands up straight. She sighs and puts her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

He’s an average looking man with black sunglasses and a white cane. He takes apart his walking stick piece by piece and let's it fall back into shape a few times before he crouches to me.

“What’s your name?”

“Julia.” I say a second too slow.

“Your real name.” His voice sound pleasant but his face looks annoyed. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Y/N.”

“There we go.” He stands and pats the leg that isn’t numb in pain. “Don’t be afraid, Y/N, I won’t hurt you.”

“Too late.” I say snidely.

“Sweetie, if I was-”

“Kali is working on her manners.” He speaks over her threat.

My hands are gripping the armrests so hard my fingers are going to break. “I don’t have anything you want.” I try to level my voice.

“I just want to talk.” He says so sweetly I’d almost believe him if I weren’t strapped to a chair. “You are Scott McCall’s sister, correct?”

My first thought is to lie. Why does he want to know about Scott? How does he even know Scott? Or me?

“Answer me, Y/N.” The room’s air seems to get thick at his tone. Ethan swallows and looks at the floor.

“Why does that matter?” I inquire. Kali grabs the back of my hair and pulls my head back. Somehow she pulled on the exact spot where it hurts the most.

“You don’t matter enough to be difficult. Watch yourself.”

The right side blind man’s mouth twitches into a smirk. “Kali is a bit of a loose canon. I can’t promise anything on her behalf.”

“I’m adopted.” I groan out.

“He hasn’t come for you.” He observes. 

Who, Scott? Why would he? How would he know where to look?

He must see the confusion on my face because he asks, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know? No, I don’t know anything! What is going on?” The tears are forming at the brim of my eyes. I will not cry. I’m afraid and alone and I will not cry. I make the angriest face I can muster and force the stinging in my nose to stop.

“Oh, so brave. Is it worth dying over?” Kali teases and pulls harder.

“She doesn’t know anything.” He says as he let's his cane fall into place. He turns to the stairs and begins to tap the end of each step.

“But we haven’t-” Kali starts.

“You heard her. Let her go, Kali.” I hear him disappear at the top of the steps.

She scuffs and throws my head back. There’s a stinging below my right eye and I’m looking towards the left. Ethan takes a step towards us, but Aiden puts his arm out to stop him. She slapped me and now the vision in my right eye is blurry. “Give Scott my regards.” She spits and ascends from the damp basement.

After a few seconds of my head swirling I feel the pressure on my right arm release. Ethan and Aiden are on either side of my ripping the tape with their claws. I recoil automatically.

“Don’t touch me.” I hiss.

“We’re trying to help.” Aiden says hushed.

“That was helping? What is wrong with you? You’re crazy! I’m going to turn you in.”

“No one will believe you.” Ethan says despondent rather than threateningly.

They try to help me from the chair but I push off them. My left leg is relatively useless. I have to support all my weight on my right. I wouldn’t be able to run even if I tried.

“Y/N...” one of them says behind me.

“Stop!” I turn to them with tears falling from my eyes. “I could never have expected...we go to the same...” I inhale and turn to the stairs. I hop onto the first step which creaks. It didn’t when the blind man went up or down. The only sound in the basement is of me huffing and the creak of the stairs as I try to leave. When I get to the top, who will be there to greet me? Am I just walking into another death grip from Kali? How am I going to escape when I get up there? I have no plan and no strength to fight. Not that I could. These people...

I’m going to pass out I need to get out of here. When I reach the top I fly to the nearest door. I don’t see anyone on this floor, but I force myself to use my left leg to move. I fumble with the door handle which is locked. My hands shake as I fiddle with the knob. When I open the door I see the sky in a beautiful purple of dawn; the grass is glittered with fresh dew. The sky looks like nothing terrible just happened. I run into the empty street with no direction in mind other than: away.

I realize I’m by the library after I flee down a few blocks. I didn’t remember to look back at the building I was in to describe in the file I was never going to report. You can’t say, “Yeah Sheriff Stilinski, I was kidnapped by people with red eyes and razor sharp claws. No, no I’m sure I wasn’t drugged. No, Sheriff, please don’t lock me up in an insane asylum.” Ethan and Aiden were right. No one is going to believe me.

I’m maybe twelve minutes from my house, but I can’t physically stand anymore. I keel over and throw up. There are too many emotions flooding my system right now.

I limp until I get home. I think last night was Friday, so there isn’t school today. Hopefully I can slip in while Scott and Isaac are still asleep.

The sky is a warm orange by the time I get to our front steps. I check my face real fast in the silver knocker. It's red on my cheek but no bruises yet. I know my leg is patterned with purple and blue without even looking.

I open the door and walk in to Isaac and Scott pacing the living room.

“Where have you been?” Scott stomps toward me. Isaac rubs the back of his neck and let's out a huge breath he looks like he’s been holding all night.

I didn’t figure they’d be up so I have no lie planned.

“Don’t worry about it.” I flinch at his approach.

“What happened?” Isaac asks. He knows the subtle signs of fear. He knows what covering something up looks like.

“Nothing.” I enunciate the syllables. He’s staring at my cheeks. I try to turn my face away without being obvious.

“Well where were you all night? Because you never showed up to Lydia’s.” Isaac points out.

“Y/N,” Scott says. “We’ve been worried all night. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I was fine before you cared about me, I’ll be fine now.” I use all of my remaining strength to walk upstairs without limping.

“Scott, she was lying.” I hear Isaac’s muffled voice through my door.

“I know, but why?”

Isaac doesn’t answer.

You were right though, I think at them. It’s not safe here anymore.

I lay back on my bed without changing out of my sweat soaked clothes. 

Why did the blind man want to talk to me? How is Scott involved? What does he know? What the hell is going on in this town. 

[theconservativebrief]

As Amazon’s new thriller Homecoming unfolds, it becomes more and more clear that its lofty ambitions are both a curse and a blessing.

The series, which stars Julia Roberts, is built like a puzzle box, weaving a story between the past and the present that often threatens to fall apart under its own weight. Its tropes are well-worn, and its narrative doesn’t go anywhere unexpected.

And yet all these elements miraculously coalesce into a show that is still tremendously emotionally affecting. Ultimately, Homecoming has too many strengths — and is a story too strikingly told — for its flaws to find real purchase.

The title of the series refers to the treatment facility where Roberts’s character, a novice psychologist named Heidi Bergman, works to help transition military veterans back into civilian life — at least in flashbacks. In the present timeline, a few years later, she’s waitressing. When Shea Whigham’s Thomas Carrasco, a Defense Department auditor, comes calling with some questions about her former employer, her new life starts to fragment.

Directed by Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail and written by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, Homecoming is adapted from Horowitz and Bloomberg’s podcast of the same name, which debuted in 2016 and wrapped up last year. The podcast, which starred Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac, and David Schwimmer, was praised for its performances and its use of audio tricks to jump between conversations, whether they be recordings of therapy sessions or phone calls.

Given Homecoming’s origins in the ongoing boom of true crime and mystery podcasts, it is predictably aimed at viewers who harbor a fascination with finding clues. And the show provides plenty of that that thorny detangling process.

But the series is ultimately less concerned with the mystery, which accordingly turns out to be less complicated than its veneer would suggest, and more with the characters working through it.

Shea Whigham, MVP of every project he’s in. Amazon

By virtue of the series’ story, which involves the military and government politics, there are more macro issues at play in addressing how soldiers are treated by the countries they serve. That those points sometimes feel a little glossed over isn’t necessarily excusable, but it’s made understandable, at least, by Homecoming’s obvious intent: The series’ first season (the show was picked up for a two seasons from the jump) is made up of 10 half-hour episodes and hyper-focused on its characters, rather than on building an impenetrably twisty plot.

The show is ultimately something of a two-hander between Roberts and Whigham, as their characters are the ones actively unraveling the thread of exactly what happened at the Homecoming treatment facility. Roberts’s performance intensifies as her character’s confusion grows, crescendoing to a fever pitch — and a sublime visual trick — that will induce gasps even if you can see it coming.

It’s a reminder of why she’s one of the last real movie stars in an entertainment landscape where that label has become increasingly rare, and a major part of why Homecoming lands on its feet.

It also speaks to Whigham’s talent. Despite what could be a thankless role as a government stooge, he more than keeps up with the cogs turning around him. Whigham is one of those actors who enriches every project he turns up in (see: Fargo, Vice Principals, Take Shelter, and Boardwalk Empire, to name just a few) and yet he still seems largely underappreciated. While this role, unshowy as it is, may not be the catalyst for a breakout, he performs it marvelously.

If Roberts and Whigham are the moving parts, then the core around which they orbit is Stephan James, who plays Walter Cruz, one of Heidi’s patients. James is possessed of such innate warmth — there’s a reason he’s also one of the leads of Barry Jenkins’s upcoming film If Beale Street Could Talk — that his rapport with Roberts immediately establishes a centering force for the show, and makes it all the more affecting when it begins to erode.

Taken altogether — along with a turn from Bobby Cannavale that takes full advantage of how domineering Cannavale can be, as well as how unexpectedly tender — these pieces form a whole that’s unshakeable even when the thread of the plot starts to fray.

Stephan James’s performance is part of what pushes Homecoming past its flaws. Amazon

In its TV iteration, the story’s dual timelines and thematic focus on dual selves mesh well with the kind of meticulous (if sometimes a little too on the nose) imagery that Esmail is known for. In Homecoming, this is especially apparent in his method of distinguishing between the show’s timelines, which borrows from other time-traveling dramas (the recent Korean TV series Signal comes to mind) by switching aspect ratios. The past takes up the whole screen, while the present is presented in a square — a fitting choice considering how so much of the information is obscured from both viewers and Heidi herself.

The two timelines are also filmed in different styles. The past is shot in a way that’s reminiscent of ’70s and ’80s thrillers — and scored that way, too, with some tracks lifted wholesale, from movies like Dressed to Kill. The present, meanwhile, feels more like your usual contemporary drama. Unfortunately, that’s not where the show’s duality ends.

There’s nothing inherently wrong — or even new, at this point— in adapting a podcast into a TV series, as scripted series like Lore and (in a less narrative format) Comedy Bang! Bang! have paved the way. But Homecoming has a bit of a tell when it comes to how it’s jumped between mediums. It clearly has one foot stuck in its original audio-only existence, as the show sometimes struggles to keep its visuals up to speed with its sound and dialogue.

Specifically, there are a few too many phone conversations as Homecoming tries to tie its timelines together, made all the more obvious as voices are altered to make sure we know that characters are speaking on the phone. Though these sorts of conversations and the interesting sound opportunities they offer arguably made the podcast much stronger, they don’t translate smoothly to TV.

This problem is particularly glaring when it comes to Cannavale’s character, Colin Belfast. Colin is Heidi’s boss at Homecoming, and for the first half of the season, he’s almost always on the phone. The scenes, despite their visual component, underline just how important audio still is to the series, and it becomes difficult to avoid the distraction of how hard the story is working to get both voices in a conversation into the same physical place.

In combination with the way that Homecoming’s first season resolves — as tied up with a bow as it possibly can be, in a way that almost betrays how committed the show seems to maintaining an aura of unsolvability — it’s the kind of weakness that would knock the legs out from under any other show.

But Homecoming’s strengths still outweigh any faults that would bring it down; as with the original podcast, the pleasure of Homecoming is in its performances, witnessing great actors do great work. There’s enough emotional depth to the story — and enough pageantry in how it’s told — to hold it all together.

Homecoming premieres November 2 on Amazon Prime.

Original Source -> Homecoming, starring Julia Roberts, is simpler than it appears — and a pleasure to watch

via The Conservative Brief

[thelittlethinginsaigon]

another Spanish crazy 

Julia's Eyes

Tormented by an unseen presence, a blind woman, Sara, prepares to hang herself in her basement, but changes her mind. As she tries to remove the noose, the stool beneath her is kicked away, leaving her to die. Miles away, Sara's twin sister, Julia, collapses, sensing something amiss.

Julia, who has the same degenerative disease but can still see, is tormented by Sara's death and by the feeling of another presence nearby. She insists Julia was not depressed as she was awaiting surgery to restore her vision. Her husband, Isaac, insists she stop investigating, and as her doctor has informed him that Sara had eye surgery that was not successful.

Julia meets Sara's elderly blind neighbor Soledad, who has a pessimistic view that Isaac will leave her, as even Soledad's own son, Ángel, abandoned her after she went blind. After hearing that Sara had a boyfriend and they visited a hotel nearby, Julia goes there with Isaac. She is approached by an elderly janitor, Créspulo, who warns her of "men who live in shadows," who are dangerous because they are tired of being ignored.

Isaac disappears and Julia is convinced that the "invisible man" has kidnapped him, though the police are skeptical. Someone kills Créspulo, but police rule it an accident. Julia's eyesight continues to deteriorate. When Julia and the inspector return to Sara's house, the inspector discovers a suicide note and Isaac's body. Julia, now fully blind, cannot see anything.

A grieving Julia learns Isaac's suicide note declared he loved Sara, with whom he had been having an affair for six months. However, an eye donor is found, so the operation to save Julia's sight goes ahead. She is told she must wear bandages to protect her eyes from light for two weeks, and the morgue agrees to keep Isaac's body so she can see him to say goodbye. She returns to Sara's house with the daily help of a home nursing aid, Iván.

Julia is plagued by disorientation and convinced that somebody is lurking in the house; but Iván's patience helps her regain her independence. Four days before Julia is due to remove her bandages, an unseen man almost succeeds in drugging Julia while she sleeps; however, she wakes, panicked, and accidentally hits the intruder. She flees to a neighbour, Blasco, who makes advances on her. She escapes, paging Iván, who finds her hiding outside in the rain and escorts her to his apartment.

While Iván is out, Julia hears the voice of Blasco's shy daughter, Lía, who tells her that Iván is the "invisible man" who tormented and blinded Sara by ruining her operation, forced Isaac to write the fake suicide note before killing him, and has walls covered with photographs of Julia and Sara. Julia hides in the bathroom where, four days early, she tears off her bandages, desperate to see. Julia exits the bathroom and sees Iván's walls covered with photographs of the twins as well as Lía's bloodied body.

Iván returns to the apartment, where Julia pretends that she is crying because her operation has failed. He believes her momentarily before leading her to the body of the real Iván; Julia's scream betrays the fact that she can see. Ángel tells her he loves her and wants them to be together as long as her sight is gone, as since blind women are the only ones who need him.

"Iván" drives Julia back to Sara's, where she flees to Soledad's. "Iván" chases her and addresses Soledad as Mom, revealing himself as her missing son, Ángel. A candle and glasses betray the fact that Soledad is not really blind as she knocks Julia out, at which point an enraged Ángel attacks his mother and blinds her. Julia escapes and manages to contact the police. She uses a flashlight to show the police a bloodied Ángel hiding in a corner of the room. Finally visible, he slits his own throat.

At the hospital, Julia is told the damage to her new eyes is irreversible. Using her last few hours of vision, she finally says goodbye to Isaac's corpse, as it is revealed that he donated his eyes to her.

[cfijerusalem]

Watching Over Zion Report 23rd August 2018 (12th Elul 5778)

THE WORD

And it [the Torah] shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this Torah and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:19, 20)

He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the word that He commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant that He made with Abraham, His sworn promise to Isaac, which He confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.” (Psalm 105:7-11)

POINTERS FOR PRAYER

CFI UK is still in the midst of the summer festivals. Thank you for all who are praying for us over this period.If you didn’t click on the LINK of the new video Matthew Soakell created when we were at New Wine, then can I encourage you to do so. Simply click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_BtmSCWBw4 and then subscribe for free (if you haven’t already) and click ‘like’. Do pray that we would have good fruit from these festivals.Next up is the One Festival at Lincoln that Julia and I will be at representing CFI on Friday 24th through to Tuesday 28th August (https://www.one-event.org.uk/). This is another family based festival, but do lift before the LORD the youth of our Churches, that we would see many attend and that God would stir up their passion for the LORD, and that revelation would burn in their hearts regarding Israel.Pray that the many people we challenge at the One Festival would seek the truth regarding God's purposes for Israel, that they would read the literature we hand out regarding the Jewish nation and the CFI ministry, and that many of the youth leaders and Pastors would bring their youth based ministries in line with the Word of God, giving sound teaching on this whole issue.

In the UK, concerns have been raised yet again regarding the Labour Party’s leader along with the anti-Semitism within many areas of the Labour Party. These issues keep being exposed yet little seems to improve. Please do continue to pray into these situations as you read the reports below.

Throughout the world there is so much deception and lies spoken out against Israel. Whether it is groups who promote anti-Semitism; the UN, the media or political campaigns speaking out against the Jewish state, or even areas within the church where replacement theology and BDS campaigns can be found... no matter what the issues might be, God is concerned for truth and so should we.Please pray that the truth will be revealed and that lies and deception will be cast down, wherever they are found.

Please continue to pray that we will reach many people of various ages through our Twitter and Facebook feeds, along with our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/cfiuk. Please pray that we will see an increase in support and will have fruit that will last.

ABOVE THE LAW?

[Above photo: Taken by D Soakell Lobby Day 2016]

In a section from the Torah readings this week, I pondered on the above Scripture from Deuteronomy 17.  In the study I have, the writer states that “everyone must follow the law” when it applies to the law of the land. “In our Western democracies, no one, not even the prime minister or president, is above the law.”  Regarding the Torah, in Biblical times in Israel, not only was the King to obey the Law; he was to study it during the years of his life (the Torah here is the teaching of God found in the first five books of the Bible).  But what about the law when it means ‘the law of the land’? If in our Western democracies, no one, not even the prime minister or president is above the law, should not our politicians keep within the laws of the land? And what of the laws of the land where ‘loopholes’ can be found… isn’t it time these laws were tightened up?

One good example here in the UK is that of flying Terrorist Hezbollah flags.  One would expect to see these flags if visiting Tehran or Damascus, yet these chilling scenes have also been played out in many areas of the UK including central London as they have every summer for several years.  So how is this allowed? Why should we allow a terrorist organisation’s flag to be waved on our British streets?  Yet every year the flag of the Hezbollah group, complete with its less-than-subtle image of a rifle, is waved by and worn on the clothing of participants in various anti-Israel marches that pass through the streets of London including the annual Quds Day parade (the event initiated by Iran’s Islamic republic in support of Palestinians and with a view to destroying Israel, as called for by the Iranian Ayatollah).  And all this happens in full view of police, who clarify that the law may not allow them to do anything other than watch as these parades pass by.

The blame for this lies squarely with the fact that Britain refuses to proscribe the Hezbollah group’s so-called political wing, as it already has its military wing. It’s this legal loophole which enables the group’s one and only flag – the one with the gun – to fly unchallenged.  The glaring flaw in this is that there is no such distinction in reality – even Hezbollah’s own leaders say so. In the words of deputy chief Naim Qassem: “We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other … Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, are in the service of the resistance and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.”  So why is it that our UK government under Theresa May continues, inexplicably, to turn a blind eye?

However, even though there may be some grey areas regarding Hezbollah, what of the groups clearly marked as terrorist groups? Well, in the UK there are 74 international terrorist organisations that are proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000. These include, amongst many others, Al Qaida; Ansar Al Sharia-Tunisia; Boko Haram; Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Hamas Izz al-Din al-Qassem Brigades. Hamas were proscribed in March 2001.  Hamas’ total aim is to wipe Israel off the map and establish yet another Islamic state there (for a full list of proscribed groups click here).  

Now before we continue on with this issue, let me point out that CFI UK remains neutral where UK politics are concerned. However when stories appear that involve Israel, we share some of these stories on Social Media and other places in the hope that our supporters will pray into these stories. With so many stories appearing almost daily regarding anti-Semitism within certain political parties, and with the UK Labour leader being under the spotlight yet again with his involvement with Hamas and other terrorist groups, these are certainly troubling days.  Yet why has the UK Labour leader even been associated with members of Hamas when they are regarded as a terrorist organisation proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000?

Last Sunday evening, the Daily Telegraph’s political correspondent, Harry Yorke, wrote of how the UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attended a conference with a convicted Hamas military leader who was jailed in Israel for his role in orchestrating a string of terrorist attacks. The Labour leader hosted a panel discussion at a conference attended by a number of senior Hamas officials, including Husam Badran, who was given a 17-year sentence for his involvement in terrorist atrocities.  Husam Badran was arrested by Israeli forces as he was responsible for the bombings in Israel of the Dolphinarium discotheque in Netanya; two restaurants in Jerusalem and Haifa; a train station; two buses, and the Park Hotel in Netanya. The attacks resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people. Three days after the conference, Mr Corbyn acknowledged in his regular column in the Morning Star that he had listened to speeches given by men who had been released in return for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, stating that “their contribution was fascinating and electrifying”.  He also confirmed in an interview with Press TV, the Iranian news channel that “I met many of the brothers, including the brother who’s been speaking here...when I was in Doha earlier this year”. 

In the article in the Daily Telegraph, Harry Yorke wrote that Jeremy Corbyn also met with Khalid Mishaal, the former leader of Hamas. Mishaal has repeatedly praised the use of violence against Israel. Yorke wrote, “The 62-year-old is one of four senior Hamas officials blacklisted in Britain for terrorism and terrorist financing, according to an official financial sanctions document seen by this newspaper. In a speech in December 2012, Mishaal pledged to wipe away Israel through “resistance”, to take back Jerusalem “stone by stone”, and give “no concession on any inch of land”. Two years later, in Gaza, he claimed that Israel had committed atrocities in the territory “twice as great as the Holocaust” and praised Palestinian groups for achieving a ‘balance of terror’.” To read the full Telegraph article, you can subscribe here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/19/exclusive-jeremy-corbyn-attended-conference-qatar-hamas-military/

This is just one of many stories being recently highlighted which expose Jeremy Corbyn, and come in the light of last week’s revelation that Corbyn was photographed holding a wreath at the tribute for Palestinian 'martyrs' of the Black September terrorists who killed 11 Israelis.  He denied he had laid the wreath. Corbyn also stated he did not know that a man he stood next to [see above photo] at the wreath-laying ceremony was a senior member of a militant Palestinian group. Maher Taher, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), was pictured alongside the Labour leader at a 2014 event in Tunis. The PLFP was linked to an attack on an Israeli synagogue. According to the USA and the EU, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine state is a terrorist group, yet Mr Corbyn told the BBC: “I was unaware of any of his background.” He also stated, “I don't share platforms with terrorists.” Read more on this here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45208358 . 

As already mentioned, CFI UK remains neutral where UK politics are concerned, however when stories appear that involve Israel, we share these in the hope that our supporters will pray into these stories. These are indeed troubling days, and we must pray into these issues, for as it states in I Timothy 2:1-2 – ‘I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—  for kings and all those in authority.’

UN MILITARY FORCE TO ‘PROTECT PALESTINIANS FROM ISRAEL?’

A story which seems to have flown under the radar of most media sources was that of the shocking statement made by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.   The UN Secretary-General called for options aimed at boosting the protection of Arab Palestinians in the so-called ‘West Bank’ and Gaza Strip, from sending UN rights monitors to deploying a military or police force under UN mandate.  The proposals were contained in a report requested by the General Assembly in response to a surge of violence in Gaza, where allegedly 171 Palestinians have been killed during Hamas-led clashes with Israeli troops since late March. Many of the dead were members of Hamas and other terror groups, Hamas has acknowledged. 

In the 14-page report, Guterres proposed: 1) Provide a “more robust UN presence on the ground” with rights monitors and political officers to report on the situation. 2) Pouring in more UN humanitarian and development aid to “ensure the well-being of the population.” 3) Creating a civilian observer mission that would be present in sensitive areas such as checkpoints and near Israeli settlements, with a mandate to report on protection issues, and 4) Deploying an armed military or police force, under a UN mandate, to provide physical protection to Palestinian civilians.  Guterres argued that a political solution to the conflict was needed to address the safety of Palestinians but that “until such a solution is achieved, member-states may further explore all practical and feasible measures that will significantly improve the protection of the Palestinian civilian population.” 

You can probably imagine what the Israelis would have said in response. But here are my suggestions: To the first proposition, can you really imagine Hamas allowing the UN to have any presence on the ground? This would surely stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel and bring an end to their demands of putting women and children on the frontline! To the second proposition, if Hamas stopped using the billions of aid already being poured into Gaza for rockets and terrorist tunnels, they would have more than enough to look after their people. To the third proposition, Israel would not allow this, and to the fourth proposition, if Hamas and the Palestinian Authority stopped attacking Israelis there would be no need to protect the Arab Palestinians. 

Thousands of Palestinians have taken part in the riots at the Gaza border, hurling bombs and Molotov cocktails at Israeli troops. Several have attempted to infiltrate the border.  The Hamas leadership urged the Palestinian public to participate in these “protests” and even forced women and children onto the frontline; and of course Israel have had to put up with thousands of rockets being fired into Israeli civilian areas.  Maybe the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should rather suggest a military UN force to protect Israel from Hamas and all the other terrorist groups?  

AND FINALLY... WALLS AND PEACE ACCORDS

I thought I’d end this week’s report with a couple of short stories which again, I’d be surprised if we heard them in the western media. The Israeli Ambassador to the UK Mark Regev posted on Twitter on August 21, 2018: “This week in 1993, the final draft of the Oslo Accords was signed, with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat subsequently making these two core commitments in writing: 1- Resolving issues through negotiations. 2 - Renouncing terrorism and violence. 25 years on, have the #Palestinians kept these promises?”

Well, twenty five years later...with Arab Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaking in favour of more uprisings and stabbings; still denying the Holocaust; with UNRWA textbooks and teachers calling for violence against Jews; with countless schools, public squares and streets being named after terrorists... and I haven’t even mentioned the last 25 years of Hamas… I believe the answer to Mark Regev’s rhetorical question is very clear. And so we must keep pressing in with our intercession regarding these issues.

Of course one argument that those who oppose Israel come up with is this: “Well if Israel knocked down their apartheid wall, there would be peace”.  Naturally they ignore the very reason why Israel was forced to build the awful thing in the first place. However, here is another story I’ve been following over the past seven months or so. Did you know that while Israel gets slammed constantly by the EU, UN and the media for protecting its citizens from terrorism, the EU have paid for a huge wall in Turkey, keeping any refugees from being able to come in from Syria?  The wall was built by Turkey’s state-owned construction enterprise, and comprises Turkey's entire border with Syria. Made of seven-ton concrete blocks topped with razor wire, it stands 10 feet high and 6.5 feet wide.  It includes 120 border towers and a security road with regular military patrols. Construction was completed in 2018.  The massive 764-kilometre border wall with Syria was allegedly paid for with European Unionfunds (https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=58567).  Is there a case here of hypocrisy from the EU, and nauseating silence from the media?

David Soakell Media Correspondent Tweet me @David_Soakell

[orbemnews]

Golden Globes 2021 Nominations. Yes, They’re Happening. The Golden Globes have always been a peculiar ritual. The statues are awarded by a clandestine group of foreign journalists, only 89 of whom vote. Top prizes are split into dramatic and comedic categories, often in confounding ways. Rather bizarrely, foreign-language films are not allowed to compete for the most prestigious awards. This year, however, the surreal nature of the affair has been heightened by a pandemic-era question: The Globes are actually happening? The five nominees for best drama could easily have ticket sales of zero. Almost every film in contention has been released online or is still awaiting release. Many cinemas have now been closed for 11 months. For a lot of people, including some in Hollywood, it is hard to care about little golden trophies at a time when the coronavirus is still killing more than 1,000 Americans a day. Others will undoubtedly welcome the Golden Globes as a silly distraction — the reliable balm of celebrity self-involvement and did-you-see-that-ugly-outfit schadenfreude. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey will return as hostesses. The ceremony is planned for Feb. 28 and will be shown on NBC. The Globes ostensibly exist to honor excellence in movies and television. But the real reason this show must go on involves money. NBC pays the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and its producing partner, Dick Clark Productions, an estimated $65 million a year for broadcast rights. About 18 million people tuned in last year. Globe nominations are coveted marketing tools; studios and streaming services will quickly roll out expensive ad campaigns based on the tallies. For the first time since the pandemic began, moviedom will have a national platform to use as a pep rally: “I’m Still Here!” The Globes may also help steer an adrift Oscar race onto some kind of course. (The Oscars are planned for April 25.) David Fincher’s fading “Mank,” about Old Hollywood, could use a Globe nomination or five right about now. While “Hillbilly Elegy” was widely mocked, Globes voters could conceivably give Glenn Close a lift by recognizing her scenery-gnawing Mamaw. (It would be her 15th nomination.) In truth, the Globes are not predictive of much. Over the last 20 years, the Globes and the Oscars have agreed on best picture winners 50 percent of the time. Last year, Globe voters chose “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and the war drama “1917” as best in class. Neither won at the Academy Awards, which recognized the genre-busting “Parasite.” In keeping with its rules, the group did not nominate “Parasite,” a foreign-language film, for a best picture Globe. What maddening peculiarities await this time around, when the nominations are announced Wednesday starting at 8:35 a.m. Eastern: Streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon, will lead the way. Netflix, only a competitor on the movie side of the Globes since 2016, will dominate to a jaw-dropping degree. It has homegrown films in contention — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Mank,” “Da 5 Bloods,” “The Prom” — as well as films that it bought from pandemic-stricken traditional studios, specifically Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Among the television categories, the streaming service has established crowd pleasers (“The Crown,” “Ozark”) and shiny, new hits (“Bridgerton,” “The Queen’s Gambit.”) Amazon will also receive an armload of nominations, with Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” a fact-based drama about a meeting of four Black luminaries, positioned to pick up nods for best drama, director, screenplay and supporting actor (for Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Sam Cooke). And Globe voters will surely honor “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” which arrived on Amazon Prime Video in October, in the best comedy or musical category, among others. Some prognosticators are also betting that Amazon’s irreverent superhero series “The Boys” will receive a nomination for best television drama, which would be a big deal because the popular show, now in its second season, has mostly been overlooked by awards groups. Expect a diverse slate of directors to be nominated. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has come under attack in recent years for failing to pay attention to inclusion and diversity. At the most recent ceremony, for instance, the group put forward — yet again — an all-male slate of directors, failing to nominate women like Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”) and Olivia Wilde (“Booksmart”). Expect a corrective this year. It looks like both King and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) are going to get recognized. Adding to that mix is likely to be Spike Lee for “Da 5 Bloods.” The war drama generated a strong critical response, and Lee has been nominated three times before by the group (most recently for directing “BlacKkKlansman”). And, this year, his children, Satchel and Jackson, will serve as Golden Globe Ambassadors, a job that traditionally involves escorting winners off the stage. It wouldn’t be a family affair if Spike wasn’t there too. Sophia Loren and Zendaya could compete in the actress categories. The best actor in a drama category may also reflect a broad range of talents, with Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), Steven Yeun (“Minari”), Delroy Lindo (“Da 5 Bloods”), Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) all in the mix for nominations. Tom Hanks could rise for his “News of the World” frontiersman. But the actress nominations are likely to make the noise. Globe voters could include a legend, Sophia Loren, for her role as a Holocaust survivor who runs a day care for the children of local prostitutes in “The Life Ahead,” from Netflix. Or they could give that slot to an actress who represents the future, Zendaya, who has been praised for her performance in “Malcolm & Marie,” a black-and-white romantic drama (Netflix, again). Meryl Streep, a 25-time Globe nominee and eight-time winner, could receive two nominations for best actress in a comedy or musical, one for her over-the-top “Prom” performance and another for playing an author trying to reconnect with friends in “Let Them All Talk.” Streep would likely be competing against the Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, for her ultra-crude, yet surprisingly sweet turn in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” The TV supporting actress category, as usual, has a plethora of candidates, adding a mini-modicum of suspense. Will voters make room for both Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter from “The Crown”? Also vying are Uzo Aduba (“Mrs. America”), Letitia Wright (“Small Axe”), Annie Murphy (“Schitt’s Creek”), Jessie Buckley (“Fargo”), Marielle Heller (“The Queen’s Gambit”) and Julia Garner (“Ozark”). Garner and Aduba both won Emmys last year for their performances. ‘Minari’ is not allowed to compete for the top prize. It wouldn’t be the Globes without a foreign-language film kerfuffle. This time, the group has egg on its face because Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” has to compete as a foreign-language entry — even though Mr. Chung is an American director, the movie was filmed in the United States, it was financed by American companies and it focuses on an immigrant family pursuing the American dream. But the characters in “Minari” predominantly speak Korean. As a result, Globe rules require its banishment to the best foreign-language film race; it cannot be considered for the top prize. “Hamilton,” on the other hand, will probably benefit from the group’s rules. As a recorded stage performance, “Hamilton” is not eligible for the Oscars. But the H.F.P.A. has no such hangup. So expect Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical to show up as a best comedy or musical nominee. Source link Orbem News #Globes #golden #happening #Nominations #theyre