#just shot-for-shot remake it with the same stuff it works perfectly

[swan2swan]

Expecting the Bleach Cour 3 ending to basically be this but with a different song.

[duckybarnes1917]

Figure My Heart Out - Chapter 5

Notes: Flashback Chapter. Takes place starting 6 months before the action of the main story.

An exploration of Chanel's relationship with Stephan. Their beginning was just as chaotic as their ending.

(Robert Pattinson was my inspiration for Stephan)

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18+ Only

Warnings: light smut, unhealthy relationship, violence (nothing gory).

Chapter 5: If You're Going Crazy Just Grab Me And Take Me

6 Months Ago - Berlin, Germany.

The first thing Chanel noticed about Stephan was how his Louboutin loafers were the exact same shade of rich chocolate brown as the leather belt around his hips. As he strode through the warehouse, she thought he was exaggerating his steps so that everyone could see a flash of the red soles. Every piece of clothing was perfectly coordinated and styled. She couldn’t find a single flaw. His sandy blonde hair was even tousled in the precise manner that came from standing in front of the mirror for half an hour.

He walked past her without a glance. In fact, he didn’t waste a look at any of her newfound associates.

Chanel had recently been placed undercover in Berlin. Her mark was a drug kingpin known only as Klaus. She was supposed to be working in a coffee shop that was popular with Klaus’ crew, but customer service wasn’t really her forte. After nearly dislocating a man’s arm after he asked her to remake his drink three times, she opted to join a low-level gang instead.

That is how she came to be at the meeting between her new boss and Klaus’ partner, Stephan Kaiser. She paced anxiously around the run-down warehouse, watching her boss, a stupid short-tempered man, argue with Stephan.

What is he doing? He’s going to ruin this deal.

Another gang member leaned in to whisper to her. “Boss gave the signal. We’re taking him out, be ready.”

“What?” Chanel whispered back in surprise. “Why would we do that?!”

The man shrugged, “you know how the boss is; he doesn’t like to be treated like he’s low-level trash.”

“But he is low-level trash,” Chanel mumbled under her breath.

She stepped forward with unearned confidence to intervene, causing the other gang members to widen their eyes in surprise.

Her boss shot her an annoyed look and she bowed her head in deference, “I apologize. I have some information you may find intriguing.” She peeked up at him and he gruffly nodded his head, leading her a few paces away.

She could feel Stephan’s curious eyes on her as she walked away. Looking back, she met his gaze. His serpentine eyes were well-practiced at luring in prey. Like the eye of the basilisk, one look could kill. Chanel was no exception, she stared for too long, and he winked at her, flashing her a cocky grin.

It wasn’t the grin, or the eyes, or the impossibly sharp cheekbones, not even the air of danger that surrounded him that made Chanel decide to save his life. No, it really was the sapphire and diamond Cartier cufflinks that she spotted as he rolled up the sleeves of his pressed white shirt.

She licked her lips.

Holy shit. How did he get the Hold Tight cuff links?

They had to have cost at least half a mil.

Jesus.

Of course, the other stuff helped too, and of course, the mission. She couldn’t forget the mission. She needed him alive to get to Klaus.

She refocused and tried to convince her boss that he was making a mistake.

“No, no, no. You still have much to learn about respect. This--” he waved in Stephan’s direction, sending a fresh wave of cheap cologne in Chanel’s direction. “This is not respectful. Klaus doesn’t show, and this guy comes alone? They will learn to respect us now.”

Chanel rubbed her temples in frustration as he turned his back on her and walked back to where Stephan was waiting. Violence was now unavoidable; she took a deep breath, and her fingers tapped anxiously against her thigh holster.

A coded signal passed between her soon to be ex-boss and the crew. Out of the corner of her eye, Chanel saw a gun raise, and she couldn’t help but smile a bit as she pulled her throwing knives from her thigh holster. With a quick flick of her wrist, she sent one in the assailant’s direction. The blade pierced his eye and settled in his brain, sending him crashing to the floor and setting all hell loose.

The rest of her knives found home in the necks of her boss and a few more cronies.

The action happened so fast that Stephan hadn’t caught up with what was going on. He stood frozen in place until Chanel tackled him to the floor, taking cover behind the large metal table she had flipped over.

“What the hell?!” He pushed her off of him and started dusting the dirt off of his white shirt.

Chanel rolled her eyes at his trivial concern and pulled her pistol out of her boot. With a little more excitement than the situation called for, she popped up and fired into the chest of 3 more of her coworkers before she ducked back down.

“Are you planning on helping?” Her flippant smile faded when she saw Stephan still sitting on the ground.

The shock finally passed, and Stephan stared at her incredulously. “They were really going to kill me?” His voice dripped with disgust; offended by the idea that these nobodies thought they could kill him. As if he was nothing, as if his name didn’t demand respect.

“Still might if you don’t get the fuck up and help me, now come on, we have to get out of here!”

Chanel pulled a smoke grenade off of her belt and launched it over the table.

“In about 10 seconds, this room is going to fill with poison, so--”

Stephan pulled his pistol from his ankle holster and nodded, cementing their haphazard union. They jumped out from behind the table and fired blindly as they ran towards the exit. Bullets whizzed past their heads, encouraging them to move faster. Then, just as the poisonous gas began to fill the room, they burst through the large metal doors. Chanel spun around and sealed them shut, effectively ending the chapter on that phase of her time in Germany.

Chanel and Stephan sized each other up; neither said anything as they listened to the pounding fists of the trapped men behind the metal door until they went silent.

“Who the hell are you?” Stephan finally asked.

“Daisy. Daisy Daniels.” She extended her hand, “and you’re welcome.”

Stephan eyed her hand warily and didn’t take it; naturally, he was suspicious. There was no reason for her to have saved him.

He placed his hands on his hips in an attempt to exude power. “I’ve never heard of you. Why?”

“Why have you never heard of me? Or why did I save your life?”

“Both.”

“I’ve been working with this shit crew,” she motioned to the warehouse. “You wouldn’t have heard of me.” Chanel started walking towards Stephan’s sleek black Rolls Royce. He watched her for a moment, admiring her curvy shape before he followed her.

“And as for your life,” she turned to him with a smile, “well, that was just a bit of fun, really. I’ve been in desperate need of an upgrade.”

“So you want a job, that’s it?”

She presumptuously opened the car door, her confidence that he would want her making her cocky. But, Stephan wasn’t having it; he slammed the door shut, standing between her and the car.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He took a step toward her with the intention of forcing her back. However, his attempts to exert his dominance didn’t phase her; she stood her ground.

Stephan had to look down at her now to meet her eyes. “Klaus doesn’t just allow anyone to work for him. What are you anyway, some street pusher? You sell to teenagers and junkies? Not interested.”

“So Klaus makes all of the decisions then? I thought you were his partner.” Chanel smirked and enjoyed the flare of anger she saw in his eyes. “I have so many more skills,” she stepped even closer to him and ran her fingers lightly over his arm; she smiled to herself when he didn’t move away. She looked up at him, giving him her best fuck me eyes, “just let me show you. I’m sure I can change your mind.”

Stephan was finding it hard to concentrate. The logical side of his brain knew this was a bad idea, and he should leave her behind. But, the devilish side of his brain was intrigued and wanted to see what would happen next.

His decision-making was interrupted when the sound of approaching vehicles caught their attention.

“Probably back up,” Chanel noted.

Stephan turned to her, “give me your weapons and get in the car.”

“Seriously?! We don’t have time for this.”

“Seriously. I don’t know if you’re a honeypot or just fucking crazy to turn on your boss like that, but either way--weapons now.”

Chanel rolled her eyes and started quickly disarming herself. She handed over her pistol first, then pulled another one out of her waistband. Then, kneeling down, she pulled a large dagger out of her boot and unclipped her tactical belt.

Stephan smirked, almost looking impressed as he threw the weapons in the back seat of the car.

“Wait, one more,” Chanel said as she lifted her shirt and detached a small gun from the holster attached to her bra. She threw it in Stephan’s direction; he made no attempt to hide his ogling.

Bullets began to fly in their direction, kicking up dirt where they landed.

“Get in the car,” Stephan commanded.

He stomped on the gas, sending them flying down the dirt road. The silent, luxe engine purred from 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds.

“One following us,” Chanel observed just before bullets started ricocheting off of the bullet proof glass.

“Goddammit, I just got bodywork done on this car!” Stephan slammed his hand on the steering wheel as he sped up and took a sharp turn.

Chanel slid in her seat, her head hitting the window. “Geez, where did you learn to drive?”

“It’s called evasive driving.”

The car swerved again, sending Chanel the opposite direction this time.

“Um, no, it’s not. And who the hell brings a Rolls Royce to a drug deal?”

“Well, I didn’t think I was going to get dragged into a car chase, did I?!”

Stephan tried to lose the tail again, but they were persistent. As they got closer to city traffic Chanel knew she had to intervene.

“Oh, so you’re blaming me then? That’s rich.” Chanel took her seatbelt off and leaned over into the backseat where he had thrown her weapons.

“Hey! I said no weapons!”

Chanel gave him a defiant look, daring him to stop her. When he didn’t she grabbed her utility belt and sat back in her seat, “you just focus on your evasive driving.”

She pulled a small disk off of her belt and loaded it into what looked to Stephan like a flare gun. He jerked the steering wheel again as she rolled her window down.

“Try not to throw me out of the window, please.”

Chanel shimmied her body through the window until she was sitting on the ledge, and her hand was gripping the headrest to stay steady. Her left arm extended long in front of her as she aimed at the hood of the car, following them. The disk flew through the air with one shot and landed right in the middle of her target. Her lips curled into a smile just before the explosion occurred, causing the car to flip over as the flames consumed the occupants.

She slid back into the car and tossed the utility belt back into the seat behind her. “I’ll be good now, I promise.” She teased.

Stephan looked at her from the corner of his eye.

Has to be a honeypot. There’s no way I’m this lucky.

“Nice shot,” he said, focusing his eyes back on the road. “The knife through the eye earlier, that wasn’t too bad either.”

“Thank you,” Chanel softened her tone. She was still adjusting her personality to fit his needs. So far, slight submissiveness seemed to be working. “Can I ask where we are going?”

Stephan decided he was going to test her. Maybe, if nothing else, she would be fun to have around the house for a couple of days.

“I was going to another meeting, but we need to get this car off of the street. So I’m going home.”

“Oh, taking me to your house already? Very forward. I like it.”

When Stephan pulled up to the villa hidden in the hills, Chanel was giddy with excitement. This was precisely where she needed to be...for the job, of course. She couldn’t forget about the job.

Over the next few days, Chanel passed every test Stephan put her through. Finally, he lost patience with his own cautiousness and brought her back to the villa. She didn’t leave again until the day she left for Paris.

During the months in between, Chanel lost herself at some point. She did her job, but she wasn’t in a hurry. She enjoyed Stephan’s company more than any other mark. His venom ran deep. Doing whatever he asked of her, no matter how amoral the request might be, was no longer part of her cover; she wanted to do it, wanted to make him proud.

“Du bist ein schatz; you are my treasure.” Stephan would whisper to her after she pleased him.

And deep down, she enjoyed it; she was good at it. All of her anger, guilt, and sorrow were channeled into her viciousness when Stephan used her as his muscle. When she started to feel like she was going too far, Stephan would push her further, encouraging her to explore the darker side of her soul. After all, she was trained to be a killer; the government had given her these skills and used them to their benefit. So why should she feel bad for using them on drug dealers, sex traffickers, and other heinous creatures that pissed Stephan off?

She hadn’t had a nightmare in months. She had become the very thing that nightmares are made of.

3 Months Ago - Berlin, Germany

Stephan only ever wanted two things in life. Money and power. Getting money was easy. Running an international drug cartel provided plenty of it. The power, however, came slowly and was never enough.

Klaus had seen potential in him and pulled him up through the ranks, but he still shut Stephan out when it really mattered. Like this Power Broker business. Klaus refused to tell him what they were buying or who the Power Broker actually was. Stephan didn’t like the secrecy; he didn’t trust it.

His hands gripped the leather steering wheel tightly.

Klaus is losing his touch. He’s making rash, stupid decisions.

The dense, suffocating feel of the city faded as he drove farther into the rolling green hills of the country.

“I just need to find the right time to take him out. Everyone agrees that he has to go. We’re better off without him.”

Stephan’s voice startled Chanel. After the meeting with Klaus, they got into a screaming match after Stephan yelled at her for speaking on his behalf. They had been sitting in silence ever since.

Chanel knew that Stephan would be in a stormy mood after the way Klaus had treated him. He had completely ignored all of Stephan’s questions and concerns as if he was just another low-level pusher. She should have known better than to speak up during the meeting, but she was getting impatient. News of the meeting with the Power Broker had sent her boss into a tizzy; he was pressuring her to be ready for a sting op during the meeting.

Chanel tentatively placed a comforting hand on his thigh and squeezed lightly. She didn’t say anything; her mind was preoccupied trying to make a decision that could potentially cost her life.

Stephan warmed a little under her touch. He had only ever wanted two things in life until he met Chanel or Daisy as he knew her. Now her company was threatening to become number one on the list of desires.

He always felt shitty after they fought. She just pushed his buttons sometimes; he couldn’t help it. He suspected that sometimes she did it on purpose just to make up with him in the bedroom later. To an outsider, their constant bickering probably signaled trouble. But, passion takes many forms, and the more they fought, the more he was sure what they had was love. Even if Chanel wouldn’t admit it.

He placed his hand over hers, “I’m sorry, I’ve been rude.”

“Don’t apologize. You’re right. I’m sorry.” Chanel’s voice sounded distracted as she stared out her window.

Stephan brought her hand to his lips and kissed it gently, a small gesture to express the feelings he couldn’t speak out loud.

When he first met her, he didn’t expect that she would be his number one confidant and partner in a matter of weeks. However, quickly everyone recognized her and treated her as an extension of himself. She was cunning and fierce when need be. He liked when she needed to be fierce and would push her to violence every chance he got. The way she obeyed him without hesitation delighted him. She could probably kill him if she wanted to, and he often thought about this when he fucked her. Their passion, adrenaline, and the thrill that came with being feared, usually had them tearing at each other’s clothes as soon as they got a moment alone.

He certainly didn’t expect that after a few months, she would have such a permanent residency in his heart.

Sharing dark secrets has a way of binding people together.

When they arrived at the villa, her delicate fingers laced through his as she led him to the couch in the sitting room. Her red dress fluttered around her thighs, demanding his attention. He tried to pull her down onto the sofa with him, but she resisted.

“Not yet; let me make you a drink.”

Stephan kissed each of her fingers before letting her go. “I suppose that is acceptable.”

Chanel sauntered over to the bar. Her decision had been made. While Stephan was distracted, she pulled a small vial from her handbag and added one single drop into the scotch she poured for him.

With the drink in one hand and her handbag in the other, she walked back to the couch.

“None for you?” Stephan questioned as he sipped the drink.

Chanel gave him a tight-lipped smile and shook her head no. “Come on, I know what you need to get you out of this mood.”

Stephan followed her to the bedroom. She directed him to undress and meet her in the bathroom.

Chanel shut the bathroom door behind her and took a deep breath. She turned the bathtub faucets on and sat on the edge of the tub. The water slowly rose in the immense jacuzzi-style tub; the sound seemed to amplify the pounding of her heart. A fleeting thought about what would happen if things didn’t go her way had her digging through her bag for a compact. She flipped it open and held it up to her eye. A green light flashed, and the mirror transformed into a communication interface.

“What’s wrong? This isn’t your usual report time.” The droning voice of a bureaucrat sounded from the compact.

“Listen, I don’t have much time.” Chanel lowered her voice a tad. “I’m about to try something risky, and I need you on standby in case things go bad.”

“I would advise against whatever it is you’re about to do.”

“That’s what you always say. Just be ready.”

As Stephan came into the bathroom, she snapped the compact closed and dropped it into her bag. Then, she placed the handbag on the floor, making sure to keep it nearby.

Stephan approached her, and she admired his chiseled frame; she inwardly hoped that this would work out in her favor. She wasn’t quite done enjoying him yet. Not to mention all of the things he bought for her.

“You have too many clothes on,” Stephan said as he placed the empty scotch glass down on the counter.

“Come,” Chanel beckoned him towards the tub as she added a rose-scented soap. “This is about you, not me.”

Stephan sank into the warm water with a sigh. “If that were true, then you’d be in here with me.” He playfully grabbed her ass as she leaned forward to turn the faucets off.

“Steph!” She swatted his wet hand away, “this dress is expensive, don’t get it wet.”

“Seeing as I’m the one that bought it, I think I can get it wet if I so choose.”

Chanel rolled her eyes and moved behind him. She checked the clock; she didn’t have much time left.

She grabbed a bar of lavender soap and started with his shoulders. The scent filled the room with a false sense of calm.

“Klaus doesn’t deserve you. He’s an old fool.”

Stephan hummed in agreement.

She worked the soap over his chest.

“He’s reckless, and he’s going to take us all down with him. You have to do something.”

“I told you, I have to wait for the right time.” His tone was snippy, but Stephan liked that she said us. He was never sure if she felt as strongly for him as he did for her. Of course, she would say she didn’t, no, couldn’t , but every now and then, something would slip like an us instead of a you.

Chanel started working the soap through his full head of hair.

“Steph now is the right time.”

He didn’t respond; he was relaxing into her touch. Talking business was not what he wanted to be doing at the moment.

“Do you remember what you said to me when we first met?”

Stephan tilted his head and opened one eye to peek at her, confused by the sudden change of subject. She looked so domestic, washing his hair, taking care of him. He knew she only did this to make him happy; it wasn’t her natural state.

“Of course. After you saved my life—“

“The first of many times.”

Stephan chuckled, “yes, and not the last time you did it by throwing a dagger through someone’s eye.” Chanel smiled, her fingers still running through his hair, scratching his scalp.

“I said that you must either be crazy or a honeypot. But truthfully, I didn’t care much at the time.”

Chanel smiled sadly. A flicker of doubt passed over her. Not because she was worried about the success of her plan, but because she wasn’t sure if she was ready to give up this life with him. The best case scenario would be if he didn’t attempt to kill her and instead shunned her from his life.

“After I watched you commit several more very illegal acts, I still wasn’t sure, but I knew I wanted you. So I decided you were mine.”

“And what did you say?” Chanel dropped her voice to barely above a whisper.

“That if you were a honeypot, you’d be questioning which side you were on after I was through tasting you.”

Chanel’s concentration wavered as she watched his tongue wet his lips.

“Steph—what if you were right?”Her voice faltered.

“I know I was; you had quite the raving review.”

“No, what if I told you that you were right about me being a honeypot?”

Stephan froze, not sure where she was going with this.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not who you think I am. My name isn’t Daisy Daniels. It's Chanel Thomas. I’m a spy.”

Chanel continued explaining who she was and why she was there, but Stephan didn’t hear anything after the word spy. He sat utterly still, his muscles tense. He didn’t say anything as he processed what she had said—a range of emotions passed over his features in quick succession.

Denial. It couldn’t be true.

Anger. How could he be that stupid? How could she do this to him?

Despair. Was it all a lie? She really didn’t love him.

His jaw was tight as he planned his next move.

Chanel took it as a good sign that he hadn’t immediately tried to attack her. She rechecked the clock and tried not to panic. She kept her voice low and comforting. “I think we can help each other get what we want. I’m here for Klaus. My boss wants him and the Power Broker. If you help me, you can walk away; you can be in charge like you wanted.”

Stephan clenched his hands into fists as he thought for a second about dragging her under the water. That’s what he should do. That’s what Klaus would do.

He rose from the bath and wrapped himself in a towel. Chanel braced herself as she watched the muscles in his back flex.

Finally, he turned to her. Rage simmered in his green eyes, threatening to turn them black. Although Chanel expected this, she didn’t expect the hurt that took over and snuffed out the rage.

“You’ve been spying on me? This was all a lie?” His voice came out as a despondent whisper, barely audible over the pounding of his heart.

“I’m sorry--” Chanel started, but Stephan held his hand up, stopping her.

He looked away from her face; he needed to focus.

I should kill her; what choice do I have?

He started to feel light-headed.

I just can’t fucking think.

His vision blurred, and he made his way to the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, taking in shaky breaths; he felt like he was going to be sick.

Chanel stood in the doorway, her bag under her arm.

“Steph come on, this works for both of us.” Her tone was impatient.

“You want me to be a traitor? A snitch?” He spoke through labored breaths.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to spin it. You said so yourself; Klaus needs to go. I can guarantee that he will. I just need your help.” She was practically begging him now.

Stephan looked up at her and, for a moment, considered reaching for the gun under the bed and killing her right there, but he couldn’t do it.

Fucking bitch.

I love her.

He thought surely she wouldn’t deny that the time they spent together was genuine. She couldn’t be that good of an actress. Plus, she was right; he needed Klaus out of the way.

“Fine,” he mumbled. “I don’t—I don’t feel so good.”

Chanel’s heart lifted at the concession. She quickly pulled a syringe out of her bag and went to him on the bed.

“Yeah, sorry, that would be on account of the poison.”

“What—?” He stared at her in disbelief as he started to lose feeling in his limbs.

“Hold still; this might sting.” She plunged the syringe into his arm and administered the antidote. “There, good as new.” She kissed the spot she had punctured and rubbed his back soothingly.

The color came back to his cheeks as the antidote worked through his system. Chanel let out a sigh of relief; she would have been sad to see him go.

“Jesus Christ, you poisoned me?!” Stephan screamed at her as soon as he was able. He paced around the room furiously.

“I gave you the antidote!” Chanel yelled back, sitting up on her knees on the bed so that her face was level with his. “Don’t be a baby about it,” she added sarcastically.

Stephan shook his head in disbelief. He still wasn’t sure he was making the right decision. But as he looked into her eyes, the eyes that got so defiant when they had their screaming matches, the eyes that widened so beautifully when he touched her just right, the eyes that mirrored his own wicked madness, he knew it was the only decision he could have made.

He let out a long sigh and caressed her face gently. “I guess that makes us even then because I almost shot you.”

“What? Just right here in the bedroom?!” Chanel punched his arm scoldingly. “Manfred is too old to be scrubbing blood out of the carpet.”

“What can I say? I can’t think straight when it comes to you.” Stephan’s lips curled into a scampish smile, “I also briefly considered drowning you in the tub.” Chanel’s mouth popped open in surprise, and he quickly added, “just for a second. I know you don’t like to get your hair wet.”

Chanel tried to be mad but couldn’t suppress the giggle that rose through her chest. They fell into a burst of easy laughter; nothing changed between them.

Stephan sat back down next to her on the bed. “Chanel, huh? I never liked Daisy anyway; it didn’t suit you at all.”

“You seemed to like it; you moaned it loud enough.”

Stephan grabbed her and pulled her into his lap.

“I’d like to do a trial run with the new name.”

“I think I owe you that much after the poison.” She planted kisses on his neck, giving him the green light.

“One thing, though. You said we would both get what we wanted—”

Chanel hummed her agreement against his skin.

“But I want you.”

“You have me. I’m right here.”

“But what about after the job is done? What if I still want you then?”

Chanel sighed and sat back to look into his eyes. She was elated that Stephan wasn’t pushing her away, but he always wanted too much from her. “Steph, you don’t know me. Not really.”

“I refuse to believe you’re that good of an actress. Some of this had to be real.”

Chanel started to argue with him, and he continued quickly before she could get a word in. “I know that you’re fierce, you live for danger, your favorite color is black, but you wear red to please me…oh, you say your favorite drink is scotch, but you really prefer vodka…stop me if I’m getting anything wrong.”

Chanel crossed her arms defiantly, but the slight smile on her face spoke to the joy surging in her heart.

“Okay, if all of those are right, then what is it that I don’t know about you?” Stephan smiled at her teasingly, “don’t tell me it’s..” he widened his eyes in fake shock, “you don’t like my Saturday morning pancakes….”

Chanel swatted his arm as her smile widened, “I love your pancakes.”

Chanel kissed him in an attempt to distract him, and he let himself be distracted, leaning back onto the bed.

“I can’t believe you poisoned me.” He smiled against her lips.

“It was just one little drop. I didn’t give you the full dose.” Chanel returned his smile before sucking his bottom lip into her mouth. She could feel his growing excitement under the towel still wrapped around his waist.

“Oh, is that supposed to make me feel better? Do you want me to say thank you?”

Stephan’s hands slowly moved over her hips and up her sides before yanking the zipper on the back of her dress down. She sat up, kneeling over him, and let the dress fall off of her shoulders. The red material slid down her arms and pooled around her waist. Stephan didn’t move, so she reached behind her back and unhooked the expensive lace bra herself. Stephan licked his lips as she threw it to the floor, her dress soon joining.

She placed her palms firmly on his chest. “You should probably be more concerned about how easily you let your guard down, you know, in case another woman like me comes along someday.”

Stephan chuckled lightly and flipped her over onto her back. She removed the towel and threw it to the side. Stephan started to remove her underwear but paused, giving her a quizzical look.

“Is it typical to continue fucking your target after you’re no longer undercover?”

Chanel squirmed, uncomfortable with discussing one of the many lines she had leaped over. “I’ve never been in this position before, but I’m going to guess, no, it’s not typical. I probably shouldn’t have slept with you in the first place, but…” She trailed her finger down his chest and over his abs, letting the gesture finish the sentence for her.

“So I did fuck you to the dark side.” Stephan flashed a cocky grin.

“You’re insufferable.” Chanel made a false attempt to get off the bed.

Stephan pulled her back under him and held her in place, one of his hands gripping her wrists together above her head. The other slowly removed her underwear. His fingers did a slow dance over her most sensitive areas, making her breath grow ragged.

“It’s either that or you’re just a very bad girl.” The words made Chanel open her legs wider for him, and he smirked. “You’re supposed to be one of the good guys, but you did everything I said without hesitation.”

His fingers moved faster inside of her, and Chanel moaned, “maybe it’s a little of both.”

“I bet you say that to all the men.”

“And women.” Chanel teased.

“You wound me.”

“Steph, I can’t make any promises, you know that. But, I’ve never done the things I did for you with anyone else.” Chanel’s confession was partly a desperate attempt to get him inside her already and partly something else she didn’t understand.

Getting the answer he wanted, Stephan pressed his lips against hers in a deadly amorous kiss. “There will never be anyone else like you, schatz.”

He had effortlessly slithered his way into her heart, and his honeyed words wrapped around it and constricted until she was his to devour.

If you enjoyed this please let me know by commenting, reblogging, sending me a dm, or an anon ask! If I get enough interest in these first few chapters I will keep posting :)

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[shelovescontrol91]

Between a starring role in Cinderella, live performances, and a forthcoming album, it would appear things are business as usual for Camila Cabello. But there’s a difference: Before the pandemic her work was leaving her drained, anxious, and insecure. Now she’s found a way to be a pop star on her own terms, and everything—from the music to her relationship with her body—has fallen into place.

By mid-September, Camila Cabello was feeling burnt out. In the span of three days she had performed at the MTV Video Music Awards, attended the Met gala with boyfriend Shawn Mendes, and shot the first-ever global cover for Glamour. So when she finally returned home to Miami, rest wasn’t just desired—it was essential.

But rehearsals for New York’s Global Citizen Festival loomed. Before jumping back into pop star mode, Cabello put on a yellow bikini and headed to the beach for two hours of blissfully uninterrupted downtime. She sank into a chair and cracked open a book, her favorite pastime. The salty air enveloped her; waves crashed in the distance. This is why she lives in Miami, her hometown, as opposed to a showbiz hub like Los Angeles: more privacy.

Or so she thought. Somehow the paparazzi found out where she was for those 120 minutes. She didn’t see them at first, but there they were, snapping away.

“I didn’t consent to those pictures,” she tells me over Zoom, camera off as she drives in Miami. (At one point she says to someone on the road, “Why are you honking at me, bro?”) “I got my period on the beach. I’m in a bikini and on my period, so I don’t know if I have a fucking period stain and that’s going to be everywhere. I didn’t sign up for anybody to be taking pictures of me in a bikini.”

Cabello has developed methods for dealing with invasive situations like this. She’s had to. The 24-year-old—born in Cuba, raised in Miami—has been in the public eye since 2012, when she competed on The X-Factor. She auditioned as a solo artist but was later matched with four other girls to form the pop group Fifth Harmony. They released two albums before Cabello embarked on her own—and achieved mind-boggling fame. Her singles “Havana” and “Señorita” (with Mendes) topped the charts worldwide. She’s earned three Grammy nominations, become a face of L’Oréal, and tried her hand at not just acting but starring in a feature film: this year’s Cinderella remake on Amazon Prime. Her third studio album, Familia, is due out later this year.

By all accounts it’s a lot. Careerwise it’s the closest things have felt to prepandemic times, when she was working constantly, arguably to an exhausting degree. As COVID-19 shutdowns went into effect last March, Cabello was able to realize just how tired she was.

“I by no means am trying to complain,” she says, “but it was such a thing of, ‘I have to get onstage tomorrow and I’m performing at this big thing,’ or whatever. ‘I want to do a good job. How do I do that when I feel nervous?’ I did this without being like, ‘Am I even happy right now? Do I even feel healthy?’ I didn’t have the space to ask myself those questions. I’m still working a ton now, but after quarantine I’m able to be like, ‘You know what? Right now I’m just not happy. I need to change something.’”

Therapy helped her see the changes she needed to make. Cabello tells me she’d experimented with therapy before the pandemic, but it was always situation focused—quick fixes to help her tackle the next performance or songwriting session. But with time at home, she dug deeper: “Because I wasn’t stressed about all the things I needed to do the next day, I was able to slow down and have enough stability to look at my stuff.”

Cabello doesn’t expand on what that “stuff” is. She does, however, explain why she decided to switch therapists as her internal work continued. “I wasn’t feeling like I was progressing in the areas I wanted to progress,” she says. “But when I switched, I found I was able to apply what they said in a way that benefited my mental health.”

One lesson she’s learned is the power of saying no. Two hit albums under her belt give Cabello the freedom to do things her way. Now she always has one day off a week, minimum. And when time came to start work on Familia, she forwent the standard pop music factory for a more intimate approach. The new album was made with just a handful of collaborators she could be open with. If Cabello was feeling anxious or nervous in a session, she had the space to address it. As a result, she says, it’s her best work yet.

“It’s the most grounded and calm I’ve ever been making an album,” she says. “I worked with people I wanted to have dinner with, and I was like, ‘I’m not going to write every single day for months, but write a few days a week and have time to gather experiences and be a human being.’”

Shawn Mendes is one of the people she’s gathering experiences with. The two singers confirmed their relationship in September 2019, and they’ve been tabloid magnets ever since. Everything from their laughably slow pandemic walks to their kissing style is dissected with a fine-tooth comb. A clip of them getting ready for the Met gala went instantly viral.

Cabello tells me she and Mendes try to avoid the social media chatter about their relationship, but it inevitably seeps in. “When stuff that’s negative is out there, it’s going to get to you,” she says. “So yeah, that’s very, very challenging. I feel like it’s another thing therapy has been really helpful for.”

Mendes goes to therapy too. While Cabello says she and Mendes haven’t done couples therapy—though she’d be open to it—they very much work on their mental health together.

“For better, for worse, we’re very transparent with each other. I think that’s why we can trust each other so much, because it’s a very 3D human relationship,” she says. “I’ll be venting or ranting about something, and he’ll be like, ‘Have you talked to X about it?’ And I’ll be like, ‘No. I’ve got to do a session.’ And he’ll do the same thing to me. I think even just the language of being like, ‘Hey, I’m sorry that I’ve been distant with you or snappy with you. I’m just struggling and I’m feeling kind of anxious.’ That level of transparency really helps a lot.”

Mendes echoes Cabello’s thoughts. “Camila and I give each other an extreme amount of patience and understanding,” he tells me via email. “I think the truth is that when you’re struggling with mental health, it turns you sometimes into the version of yourself that you don’t like to be—and kind of loving and accepting your person through that, and being there for them through that, is life-changing. We give each other so much space and understanding and patience.”

A behind-the-scenes VMAs story perfectly illustrates this. When Cabello was nervous meeting new people at an after-party, she caught herself leaning on a habit she’s trying to break. Mendes helped her through it.

“I have this pattern of eating a lot when I’m anxious or uncomfortable,” she says. “It’s a comfort thing for me. I’ll just kind of become unconscious and zombie-eat a lot, and then I’ll feel sick. I’ve told Shawn about that. So at the VMAs party, I was like, ‘I’m doing it.’ And he was like, ‘It’s okay. You’re doing it. That’s okay. Let’s just take a breath and not do that.’ It’s really good for me to be able to talk about my patterns with someone.”

Food and body image are two things that have really been on Cabello’s mind this year. A July TikTok she posted shutting down body-shamers racked up 4.8 million likes. “Being at war with your body is so last season,” she says in the video, which she posted after photos of her running in Los Angeles made the rounds online.

That mantra is true, sure, but it’s easier said than done. Even Cabello has difficulty following it. She braced herself for what she might feel when those aforementioned bikini pics went live: “I need to work out. I need to eat better.” “Not that those things are bad,” she says. “But maybe I wouldn’t think about them as much if there weren’t people taking pictures of me.”

It’s not just the paparazzi who ignite moments of self-doubt. Cabello tells me about a time she was exercising with her trainer, Jenna Willis—who’s great, she says—and feeling insecure. “She’s the same height as me, and I was kind of comparing myself to her, because she is a lot skinnier than I am,” she recalls. “I was just like, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been working out and I look better, right? I look better, right?’”

It’s Willis who helped silence those voices in Cabello’s head, reminding her that how she feels is more important than appearances; that life is about balance and enjoying food. These are health philosophies we’ve all heard—but when you’re Camila Cabello and millions are picking apart your beach photos, it’s hard to tune out the noise. Now when she’s feeling down on herself, she just turns her phone off and goes outside.

“When I’m having negative thoughts about my body, that’s actually when I’ll want to binge-eat cookies, and then I have a stomachache,” she says. “It’s this weird psychology: The more I love my body, the more I actually want to take care of it…. As long as I’m healthy and working out and feel good, that’s the best I can do. There’s no point in trying to have another kind of body.”

By this point in our conversation, Cabello’s made it to her destination. When I ask if she’ll have time to chill and decompress, she says, “To be honest, not yet, but I will after this weekend.” There’s a calmness in her voice when she says this—a stillness, a readiness. She seems perfectly prepared for what lies ahead: album promo, performances, and undoubtedly more scrutiny about her body, her relationship, her everything. But she’ll be fine, because just around the corner is a day off. That’s nonnegotiable.

“It’s important to be on top of not just what’s making you sad or anxious, but also what’s giving you joy,” she says. “I want to be happy and enjoy my life. That’s kind of it.”

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep17

Haha yeah at this point I give up on thinking this is newcomer-friendly, lmao.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut [plus Umineko spoilers]

Well this sure was an episode, lol.

At this point I think that regardless of how the rest of the show goes, it kinda just definitively doesn’t work properly as something for new fans to enjoy. It’s not like it wouldn’t make any sense, but it’s just a straight up inferior experience to watching this as a sequel after the VN. Even with the fast-paced montage of Matsuribayashi plot points, new fans still don’t even know stuff like what Takano’s whole backstory is, what her motives where, and what her actual plan even WAS in the first place beyond just ‘she’s gonna kill everyone somehow for some reason’. And I doubt that we’re going to get much time spent at all on Rena and her backstory to explain what she was doing in Onidamashi.

I think Gou works fine as a sequel to the VN, but as a starting point for new fans it just throws enough spoilers at you to ruin the experience of reading the VN afterward, without enough time spent on those plot points and characters to make it worth it. Though I also have to wonder now if it was even worth spending 13 episodes going over mostly the same events as the original question arcs if immediately afterward they were going to drop all pretenses of this being a remake.

I’m pretty negative about this whole aspect of the show, but I still think that the sequel aspect of it is good and interesting. Even if a lot of that is just me being desperate for any amount of indirect Umineko content, lol.

This episode might have spelled out that Satoko is the second looper on the gameboard, but it seems pretty obvious that there’s a higher power influencing her and giving her the power to loop in the first place. I’m still suspicious of Hanyuu/Featherine, but this episode made me think it’s much more likely that it might actually be Lambda.

I wasn’t really sure about it earlier since it felt like wishful thinking, but the whole beginning scene where Takano apologizes to Rika and says that she wouldn’t believe her even if she explained why she suddenly changed her mind about her mission seems to indicate that Lambda has basically abandoned Takano and revoked her blessing of certainty, and she seems to remember the events of Matsuribayashi anyway, so she’s basically just accepted her defeat. I don’t think it’s as simple as that, though, because of what Takano said about Rika not believing why she changed her mind, so I think it also involves her connection to Lambda.

It might actually be a lot like how Lambda acted in Umineko, where she took over the game master position for a while after Beatrice abandoned the game. This might be Lambda taking over the Higurashi game board because Hanyuu abandoned it, and she’s decided to make Satoko her new piece.

We’ve already seen Satoko talk about how Oyashiro contacted her and made her into his new priestess because of Rika’s sins, so I think Lambda probably just posed as Oyashiro to convince Satoko to become her piece.

It’d also help explain how weird a lot of Gou’s game board feels, and how silly the whole concept of Satoko being a criminal mastermind is, if this is the Higurashi version of Umineko Ep5, where Lambda created a ‘game without love’ where she didn’t technically contradict anything about the story or the characters, but pushed the limits of how out of character she could make them act.

I’ve already felt for a while that Nekodamashi in particular feels more like a case of the culprit just trying to unfairly torture Rika instead of trying to present her with a fairy mystery to solve, and that’d definitely fit with the idea of Lambda just wanting to mess with Rika and manipulating the pieces and the game board to do so.

It kinda risks entering the catch-22 territory of something being ‘intentionally badly written’, in a sense, if the whole point is that the real mastermind is just being sadistic and not trying to establish a fair mystery, but it’s at least something that’s been established before in the overall franchise. I dunno how well it works to have that be the premise of an entire season, though, compared to how only one episode of Umineko worked this way, and it was already established there that Lambda was the new game master at the very start of the episode, so there weren’t any surprises or secrets there.

Either way this could basically just be the hand wave-y explanation for any questions of how Satoko apparently managed to obtain the syringe in each arc and inject all these random people successfully in each arc. And also why it doesn’t even seem to make sense from Satoko’s POV for her to act in such a roundabout and risky way.

Honestly, it kinda reminds me of the whole mentality some people have where they wonder why Rika doesn’t just use her supernatural knowledge of everything going on to perfectly game the system and manipulate everyone. The whole point there is that she’s just a little girl who’s only physically capable of doing so much without outside help, but Lambda might be straight up giving Satoko the unnatural ability to actually do all of this stuff even as a random little girl. Which, again, feels kinda iffy as a writing choice, but it’d also fit with a lot of the commentary Ryukishi likes to do about this type of stuff.

One thing I’m curious about is if the next arc will start off with a new loop, or if this one will keep going. Usually we don’t have loops carry over between arcs, and with how this episode ended we might just find out that Satoko immediately shot Rika, but considering how Rika obviously planned this whole scene to happen, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s able to stop Satoko from shooting her.

I didn’t think this up, but I’ve seen other people theorize that part of the ‘birthday party preparation’ involved Rika explaining everything to her friends off-screen and getting them to help her deal with the whole Satoko confrontation, which I think would make a lot of sense, and it’d make it a lot more likely that the next arc will start with Satoko getting stopped before she can kill Rika. Although if the next arc starts that way, and everyone’s already aware of what’s going on with Rika and Satoko, and we’ve already gone through all the stuff with Takano giving up her plans and leaving the village, I have to wonder what they’d even spend seven whole episodes doing, lol. All the stuff with Takano and the clinic in this episode also makes it feel like this will be the ‘final loop’, since it’d feel a bit weird to have to go over it all again later on, but we’ll see.

I’ve also seen people point out that Satoko’s gun at the end seems to be the same type as Mion’s toy gun, so instead of her getting physically overpowered, we might find out that Rika got Mion to swap her gun with Satoko’s. I dunno exactly how Rika would have known about Satoko having a gun, or how she’d be able to make the swap happen without Satoko realizing it, but I could see it playing out that way.

Anyway, this really feels like it’s shaping up to be a Bern vs Lambda game, where Lambda’s whole goal is just to keep Rika stuck in this loop as long as possible no matter what. And I still feel like if they’re gonna go this hard into the Umineko connections, they should really just go the whole nine yards and have this lead into a proper Umineko anime remake. Otherwise it’d feel like a wasted opportunity where Higurashi fans get disappointed that their series got ‘tainted’ by Umineko-related story baggage, while Umineko fans are disappointed because it’s not the sort of content we’ve been hoping for, and it’s not as substantial as a full remake would be.

It doesn’t help that Okonogi and Amakusa both show up in this episode, lol. I know they both show up in Higurashi, but still. At this point it’d just feel cruel if all this teasing doesn’t actually lead to anything noteworthy.

Also, even in spite of how much this episode explained about the whole mystery, I feel even more confused about what the whole final arc could possibly be about at this point, especially if I’m right about this loop continuing for maybe the entire rest of the next arc. It kinda feels like we’re already at the endgame where both sides have revealed their intentions to each other, and we more or less know exactly what the mechanics of everything going on behind the scenes are. It feels like there isn’t really any mystery left to unravel, aside from maybe the specifics of what happened to Satoko after Matsuribayashi that clearly lead to her getting influenced into doing all this. But we still have seven whole episodes left to go, so clearly there’s a lot left to happen.

Ideally they’re going to find time to actually go over stuff like Rena and Shion’s backstories, and the exact details of what happened in the previous years of the curse killings, and Takano’s whole backstory and what her big evil plan actually was in the first place, so those things don’t just end up left in the VN for new fans to not find out about, but I dunno. Ironically, I don’t think there’s *enough* episodes left to properly go into all that, unless it’s as fast-paced as how this episode went through a bullet point list of details from Matsuribayashi.

There’s still the question of if we might get a second season, but I doubt it. Maybe it could be a one-cour second season, but it already feels like we’re at the end of the story. We’re basically at the equivalent of the end of Minagoroshi, and there was only one more arc after that in the VN. But if we’re making comparisons to the VN, then we’ve still basically skipped over Tsumihoroboshi and Meakashi, lol.

Also, before I forget, it still genuinely bugs me that even though Rika apparently remembered Takano being evil this whole time, and clearly still thought she was evil this whole time, she’s apparently done absolutely nothing to try and investigate or stop her in any of these timelines, and she spent all of Nekodamashi being like ‘wow, I can’t believe people are going unnaturally L5 and killing me while taking about parasites . . . . who could possibly be behind this . . . . . .. .  oh well guess I’ll just die lol’. I don’t want to call it a plot hole, but it just feels like genuinely bad writing caused by the unnecessary conflict of Gou trying to appeal to new fans while also being a sequel. But in the end they ended up giving a sparknotes version of Matsuribayashi that spoils Takano being evil anyway, so it feels kinda pointless that they sidestepped the issue so hard up to this point, at the cost of having Rika basically act like an idiot who doesn’t bother acting upon any of the knowledge she has.

Anyway, if we don’t get a full Umineko remake out of this in the end, they should at least just have the next arc turn into full on Umineko shenanigans with logic battles and witches with laser swords and shit.

I might sound like I’m just really negative toward Higurashi in general compared to Umineko, but even though I prefer Umineko, I really like Higurashi, and that’s a big part of why it bugs me so much that they didn’t just commit to this being a proper remake. An actual remake of the VN that has more concise pacing and works better as an anime would be genuinely great in it’s own way, but that’s not what we’ve ended up getting, lol.

[trans-clown-catgirl]

Sooo, someone on Rewritten Belial wanted to know what I see wrong with mid fight masses. Boy, boy oh boy, where do I fucking start

ANIMATION

My god. My god the animation. The problem for the most part isn't the animation itself (except for the title screen, fuck that, it looks so weirdly floppy and stiff), it's the fact the animations aren't aligned properly. Take one good look at Sarv's sprites in the first 2 songs. Look how often her position shifts. There's seemingly no ground whatsoever for her, her feet get positioned up and down seemingly at random with the notes and it's REALLY frustrating. It isn't even bc of exaggerated poses, Week 4 shows that exaggerated poses can work while still making sense with where the floor is. Sarvente continues to be an offender in that regard with the fact the telephone animation looks EXTREMELY choppy and lacks a lot of inbetween frames, not to mention how stiff it feels.

Ruv is a lesser offender, the only thing that bothers me is how his feet curve down on his idle stance, because, again, That's Not How The Ground Works.

Selever. Dear god. His idle animation is so fucked. He goes 3 steps to the left by standing still. And this is purely an XML issue btw, bc there's a gif in the files with the animation in its raw state and it looks just fine

ART

THE BACKGROUNDS, DON'T GET ME STARTED. They're completely fucking lineless. That's NOT what you do with FNF. In FNF, lineless stuff is the environment, a car, the sun, a house, individual objects that are supposed to be in front or behind of one another are lined, always, and the mod NEVER does this, making everything blend in super hard.

Then there's a problem all the sprites share. They are by no means in FNF's style. FNF's art style consists of a lot of thick lines, big shapes, and a generally very street-like style. MFM does none of that. The lines are thin (with sarvente having completely lineless elements, which you should NEVER do for fnf character sprites unless it's pure black) and look very out of place when put next to every other character. Ruv is, again, the lesser offender, although he's definitely still one.

THE CHARTING

Hell. Hell. HELL. SO MANY NOTES THAT AREN'T EVEN IN THE SONG ITSELF, SUCH AN ABSURD OVERUSE OF TRIPLES AND DOUBLES, because god forbid the player actually has fun doing patterns for fast songs, right?! Gospel is safe in this regard, meanwhile Zavodila. Why. Zavodila could have been perfectly fun and difficult without them. Why did you do this. They're not inherently wrong, you just need to implement them really well and chief this ain't it. Jacks and multis aren't to be abused, ever. Patterns are best, always.

THE MUSIC

Subjectivity zone has been entered. Worship, Parish and Gospel are very subjective and down to taste, personally I ended up only liking Gospel out of the three even if I insist it should be a metal song bc demons are just like that.

Now Zavodila I have an objective complaint about, AND IT'S THE BEST SONG IN THE MOD. This isn't too much about the song on its own, but as an FNF song. Listen to it. Listen to it and tell me Ruv's voice sounds like a voice at all. No. It's just hard bass without a smidge of voice on it. If it was a voice with a filter on it that made it kinda sound like hard bass, fine, Whitty is good for that reason, it's a voice with a filter that makes it sound SIMILAR to an instrument. But when it's JUST an instrument, you've gone overboard. Idk what Selever's song is called but it has the exact same issue.

THE WRITING

ULTIMATE SUBJECTIVITY ZONE ENTERED. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.

The writing is very lackluster. Everything just kinda happens for the sake of it, there's no background motivator or thing that got BF and GF there against their own will, it just kinda. Happens. And the reveal for Sarv's demon form is VERY lackluster, she just goes "lemme show u a secret actually" and transforms for no reason other than an excuse for a harder song. And to be blatant hornybait btw, I saw the namefiles, this demon form was designed with pure libido and no brain processes. Either way; everything just kinda happens for no reason here. It's not good. It's. Very, very bad.

And then you get into the background lore and it all gets so goddamn confusing because Dokki literally dug up OCs from when she was a kid and tried to bullshit up some backstory for them and it all crashed horribly. Every little fact is thrown in just because, like. She's lucifer but also didn't want to become lucifer and did so on accident?? How? It's never elaborated on? And WHY would she help God, who she hates, to bring people to heaven, what kinda consequence is there to not doing it, why is she being told to do this, and yet she's apparently NOT an actual nun and is just wearing a costume. What the hell is going on there. It's a mess. And Ruv. What's going on with Ruv I actually don't know I just know apparently he has dead nerves that make him unable to smile (which btw THAT'S NOT HOW NERVES WORK THEY'RE SPREAD ACROSS THE BODY AND ARE VERY, VERY LONG, THEY'RE NOT DIRECTLY CONDENSED INTO ANY SPOT AND THEN THEY JUST STOP THEY'RE INTERCONNECTED) and that he "kills for a sense of justice and ends up becoming an antagonist because of it"?? It's all so confusing and it makes 0 sense. They should have been remade from the ground up instead of having been picked up and thrown a buncha shit onto. You don't pick up a rotten piece of meat, slap a buncha sauces on top of it and make it taste good. It's still old, rotten meat, and you should just get fresh meat instead. Same type, new start. Remake, don't rehash.

CONCLUSION

In my sincere opinion? This mod had a TON of potential. You could have done a lot more under more capable hands. On every single end. Writing, charting, art, music to a lesser degree, if it had been done by more capable and experienced people it could have been one of the best mods. But then it wasn't. And it got popular anyways. This. This all is why I'm reclaiming it. Because I see what could have been. How much you could have done with this mod. And I wanted to take a shot at the writing end of things, because that's what I'm most capable of, even if it isn't much. That's why I made Rewritten Belial. And why I hope I did a good job of making something worthwhile with these characters.

ALSO THE DEVS ARE SO ENTITLED HOOOOLY SHIT YOU LITERALLY CANNOT POST RECHARTS ON GAMEBANANA ANYMORE WITHOUT GETTING BANNED BC THEY GET MAD WHEN PEOPLE FIX THEIR HORRIBLE CHARTS. THEY NEVER, EVER ENCOURAGE FAN CONTENT THAT ISN'T SUCKING UP TO THEM AND JUST COPYPASTING WHAT'S ALREADY THERE WITH 0 MODIFICATIONS. MIKEGENO UR THE ONLY DECENT PERSON HERE BLESS YOU

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

  ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.  

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.  

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.  

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

  61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.  

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.  

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.  

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

  GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

  Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

  This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

  Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

  4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

  An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.

[tessandscottforever18]

By mid-September, Camila Cabello was feeling burnt out. In the span of three days she had performed at the MTV Video Music Awards, attended the Met gala with boyfriend Shawn Mendes, and shot the first-ever global cover for Glamour. So when she finally returned home to Miami, rest wasn’t just desired—it was essential.

But rehearsals for New York’s Global Citizen Festival loomed. Before jumping back into pop star mode, Cabello put on a yellow bikini and headed to the beach for two hours of blissfully uninterrupted downtime. She sank into a chair and cracked open a book, her favorite pastime. The salty air enveloped her; waves crashed in the distance. This is why she lives in Miami, her hometown, as opposed to a showbiz hub like Los Angeles: more privacy.

Or so she thought. Somehow the paparazzi found out where she was for those 120 minutes. She didn’t see them at first, but there they were, snapping away.

“I didn’t consent to those pictures,” she tells me over Zoom, camera off as she drives in Miami. (At one point she says to someone on the road, “Why are you honking at me, bro?”) “I got my period on the beach. I’m in a bikini and on my period, so I don’t know if I have a fucking period stain and that’s going to be everywhere. I didn’t sign up for anybody to be taking pictures of me in a bikini.”

Cabello has developed methods for dealing with invasive situations like this. She’s had to. The 24-year-old—born in Cuba, raised in Miami—has been in the public eye since 2012, when she competed on The X-Factor. She auditioned as a solo artist but was later matched with four other girls to form the pop group Fifth Harmony. They released two albums before Cabello embarked on her own—and achieved mind-boggling fame. Her singles “Havana” and “Señorita” (with Mendes) topped the charts worldwide. She’s earned three Grammy nominations, become a face of L’Oréal, and tried her hand at not just acting but starring in a feature film: this year’s Cinderella remake on Amazon Prime. Her third studio album, Familia, is due out later this year.

By all accounts it’s a lot. Careerwise it’s the closest things have felt to prepandemic times, when she was working constantly, arguably to an exhausting degree. As COVID-19 shutdowns went into effect last March, Cabello was able to realize just how tired she was.

“I by no means am trying to complain,” she says, “but it was such a thing of, ‘I have to get onstage tomorrow and I’m performing at this big thing,’ or whatever. ‘I want to do a good job. How do I do that when I feel nervous?’ I did this without being like, ‘Am I even happy right now? Do I even feel healthy?’ I didn’t have the space to ask myself those questions. I’m still working a ton now, but after quarantine I’m able to be like, ‘You know what? Right now I’m just not happy. I need to change something.’”

Therapy helped her see the changes she needed to make. Cabello tells me she’d experimented with therapy before the pandemic, but it was always situation focused—quick fixes to help her tackle the next performance or songwriting session. But with time at home, she dug deeper: “Because I wasn’t stressed about all the things I needed to do the next day, I was able to slow down and have enough stability to look at my stuff.”

Cabello doesn’t expand on what that “stuff” is. She does, however, explain why she decided to switch therapists as her internal work continued. “I wasn’t feeling like I was progressing in the areas I wanted to progress,” she says. “But when I switched, I found I was able to apply what they said in a way that benefited my mental health.”

One lesson she’s learned is the power of saying no. Two hit albums under her belt give Cabello the freedom to do things her way. Now she always has one day off a week, minimum. And when time came to start work on Familia, she forwent the standard pop music factory for a more intimate approach. The new album was made with just a handful of collaborators she could be open with. If Cabello was feeling anxious or nervous in a session, she had the space to address it. As a result, she says, it’s her best work yet.

“It’s the most grounded and calm I’ve ever been making an album,” she says. “I worked with people I wanted to have dinner with, and I was like, ‘I’m not going to write every single day for months, but write a few days a week and have time to gather experiences and be a human being.’”

Shawn Mendes is one of the people she’s gathering experiences with. The two singers confirmed their relationship in September 2019, and they’ve been tabloid magnets ever since. Everything from their laughably slow pandemic walks to their kissing style is dissected with a fine-tooth comb. A clip of them getting ready for the Met gala went instantly viral.

Cabello tells me she and Mendes try to avoid the social media chatter about their relationship, but it inevitably seeps in. “When stuff that’s negative is out there, it’s going to get to you,” she says. “So yeah, that’s very, very challenging. I feel like it’s another thing therapy has been really helpful for.”

Mendes goes to therapy too. While Cabello says she and Mendes haven’t done couples therapy—though she’d be open to it—they very much work on their mental health together.

“For better, for worse, we’re very transparent with each other. I think that’s why we can trust each other so much, because it’s a very 3D human relationship,” she says. “I’ll be venting or ranting about something, and he’ll be like, ‘Have you talked to X about it?’ And I’ll be like, ‘No. I’ve got to do a session.’ And he’ll do the same thing to me. I think even just the language of being like, ‘Hey, I’m sorry that I’ve been distant with you or snappy with you. I’m just struggling and I’m feeling kind of anxious.’ That level of transparency really helps a lot.”

Mendes echoes Cabello’s thoughts. “Camila and I give each other an extreme amount of patience and understanding,” he tells me via email. “I think the truth is that when you’re struggling with mental health, it turns you sometimes into the version of yourself that you don’t like to be—and kind of loving and accepting your person through that, and being there for them through that, is life-changing. We give each other so much space and understanding and patience.”

A behind-the-scenes VMAs story perfectly illustrates this. When Cabello was nervous meeting new people at an after-party, she caught herself leaning on a habit she’s trying to break. Mendes helped her through it.

“I have this pattern of eating a lot when I’m anxious or uncomfortable,” she says. “It’s a comfort thing for me. I’ll just kind of become unconscious and zombie-eat a lot, and then I’ll feel sick. I’ve told Shawn about that. So at the VMAs party, I was like, ‘I’m doing it.’ And he was like, ‘It’s okay. You’re doing it. That’s okay. Let’s just take a breath and not do that.’ It’s really good for me to be able to talk about my patterns with someone.”

Food and body image are two things that have really been on Cabello’s mind this year. A July TikTok she posted shutting down body-shamers racked up 4.8 million likes. “Being at war with your body is so last season,” she says in the video, which she posted after photos of her running in Los Angeles made the rounds online.

That mantra is true, sure, but it’s easier said than done. Even Cabello has difficulty following it. She braced herself for what she might feel when those aforementioned bikini pics went live: “I need to work out. I need to eat better.” “Not that those things are bad,” she says. “But maybe I wouldn’t think about them as much if there weren’t people taking pictures of me.”

It’s not just the paparazzi who ignite moments of self-doubt. Cabello tells me about a time she was exercising with her trainer, Jenna Willis—who’s great, she says—and feeling insecure. “She’s the same height as me, and I was kind of comparing myself to her, because she is a lot skinnier than I am,” she recalls. “I was just like, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been working out and I look better, right? I look better, right?’”

It’s Willis who helped silence those voices in Cabello’s head, reminding her that how she feels is more important than appearances; that life is about balance and enjoying food. These are health philosophies we’ve all heard—but when you’re Camila Cabello and millions are picking apart your beach photos, it’s hard to tune out the noise. Now when she’s feeling down on herself, she just turns her phone off and goes outside.

“When I’m having negative thoughts about my body, that’s actually when I’ll want to binge-eat cookies, and then I have a stomachache,” she says. “It’s this weird psychology: The more I love my body, the more I actually want to take care of it…. As long as I’m healthy and working out and feel good, that’s the best I can do. There’s no point in trying to have another kind of body.”

By this point in our conversation, Cabello’s made it to her destination. When I ask if she’ll have time to chill and decompress, she says, “To be honest, not yet, but I will after this weekend.” There’s a calmness in her voice when she says this—a stillness, a readiness. She seems perfectly prepared for what lies ahead: album promo, performances, and undoubtedly more scrutiny about her body, her relationship, her everything. But she’ll be fine, because just around the corner is a day off. That’s nonnegotiable.

“It’s important to be on top of not just what’s making you sad or anxious, but also what’s giving you joy,” she says. “I want to be happy and enjoy my life. That’s kind of it.”

[silver-wield]

What's your thoughts on when the plate falls and Cloud went to go help Tifa?

My thoughts or my analysis? Cause you’re getting the latter anyway lol I love doing action analysis, there’s so much happening and getting the chance to slow it down is great for getting a fuller picture.

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be long.

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.

You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone’s interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis) 

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog) 

Tifa character analysis 

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis/theory – I should probably update this since I’ve had other ideas since then) 

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti) 

Clotiscrew tunnel analysis 

Cloti reunion analysis 

The Promise Analysis 

Andrea’s approval (Cloti ask response) 

Leslie analysis (not mine, but a good read) 

Cloti action touching 

Aerti friendship analysis 

Cloti body language chapter 3 

Cloti healthy disagreement 

Cloti post heliboss battle (chapter 15) 

Clerith playground scene 

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

Recap time!

This is a 6m scene I'm going over, so I'm gonna skip anything not directly relevant or I'll be here all night lol

So despite our brave heroes best efforts the plate is coming down. We get a power slide from Rude, a call from Tseng (who times it so perfectly was he watching?) and some cloti.

First thing we see if Tifa looking distraught. She has no idea how to stop the plate from coming apart and from the way she's looking at this consol wouldn't know what to do even if she could work the computer. They were so close to winning and now defeat is about to stomp all over them and kill everyone she loves. Tifa is someone whose driven by the desire for those she loves to be safe no matter what. This is a crushing moment for her.

Murderous Cloud is murderous (and kinda hot). I mean, we know he's got very little reservations about killing people in cold blood because he's SOLDIER!Cloud when it comes to a fight, but I do like the deadly intent we see on his face at different points in the game. He looked at Johnny a bit like this back in chapter 3 and now he's looking at Reno the same way. He means business.

And then he doesn't because Tifa's in trouble and we all know Real!Cloud prioritises Tifa's safety above everything else. That's not me saying he's no longer SOLDIER!Cloud, but the difference between the last screen and this is that he was fully in that badass merc mode about to kill Reno because it's what badass mercs do, whereas this is Real!Cloud urging him to refocus all that skill he's got into protective ability and go save the woman he loves.

I get some people might not see the distinction between the two personas, but it's actually really easy when you break it down. If it's about Tifa then Real!Cloud is gonna push for dominant action to keep her safe. If it's any other situation then he's just gonna let SOLDIER!Cloud do what he needs to. Sometimes it's a more conscious battle between the two and sometimes they co-operate. That's how a fractured psyche works within the context of Cloud's character. Don't believe me? You see both of them on screen at the start of chapter 8 in the church. Real!Cloud is the one saying “You okay, buddy?”

How many times can you count that we get an 1st person pov with Cloud in the whole game? Like literally looking through his eyes? Because this is 1st person pov. We are Cloud at this moment in time and he's rushing Rude, but still takes a glance at Tifa. I don't think this happens at any other point. This game is a 3rd person game. We're over everyone's shoulder. We don't get in their head to see through their eyes. This is deliberate framing. We obviously can't see his face or his reaction, but the fact we're seeing this moment as Cloud and he's chosen to look at Tifa is a big thing.

So Rude's pushed the button and Barret's yelling. Cloud actually looks more halfhearted in this swing than I expected. It's like Barret's fury just isn't enough to get his blood boiling lol

He's about to go after him anyway, when Tifa's voice stops him dead. I can't think of a moment in the game where someone else calling for him to stop actually makes him stop.

AH! Honestly this is such a move! Romantic hero hello! I know it's a classic move from Cloud – which is kindly weirdly implemented since we first saw it after OG, but it's been retconned as one of his signature moves with Tifa and only Tifa.

Also! EYE CONTACT! I'm gonna scream about Cloti eye contact until my own eyes cross lol they do eye contact so damn well! The only other person who got Cloud to look him in the eye was Andrea Rhodea lol Everyone else it's either confrontational eye contact or total avoidance. Cloud and Tifa have good eye contact. This highlights how much they trust each other. Even though Real!Cloud is afraid of letting Tifa know how weak he really is, he's ok with her looking him in the eye. He wants her to see the real him.

Now, I know some people go on about Tifa's chapter 3 comment of “Cloud, you're scaring me/your eyes didn't used to look so” as a negative thing. I've already explained why this is fucking bullshit, and I'd like to add that if Tifa wasn't comfortable with him in combat situations or otherwise she wouldn't make eye contact with him. Eye contact is fucking terrifying! You're able to see so much. These two aren't afraid to look in each other's eyes, even with their “I don't think he/she likes me” misunderstandings.

And just to cap it. They both smile to reassure each other they're ok.

Ok, so Reno and Rude are making their exit. Barret tries the FF7 boomer version of turning a computer off and on again by shooting it. Then Tseng proves he's either psychic, a stalker or just dramatic af by appearing on screen at just the right point to answer Tifa's question.

And look at her face! Whoever said she's a heartless bitch can stfu forever! This is the face of a woman who is broken by what's about to happen! She's lived in that slum for five years. She probably knows every local by name, and takes time to actually get to know them too. She cares. So much. She doesn't want anyone hurt. She's pleading for their lives. Pleading with her enemy. Who literally smirked when he said “there's nothing you can do now”. Tseng has no conscience.

Just adding this to be a butt. This is Cloud's reaction to Aerith when he sees her....what reaction? Yeah...

Then he asks where she is in his SOLDIER!Cloud way.

So Aerith gets dragged away and explosions start happening. A siren goes off. Barret and Cloud turn away from the computer. Tifa turns and says, “No no no no no” and Cloud immediately turns back. His eyes widen and he looks a bit lost for a moment. There's nothing he can do for her and he's not got the first clue anyhow, and there's no time. It's hitting him just how much she cares. I mean, he knew, but he didn't know, you know?

Notice the awkward hand there? Yeah, that's an “I don't know how to comfort you, what do I do?” hand gesture. Cloud's literally never seen Tifa like this. She's always trying her best to remain optimistic. She fights hard to protect what she loves. She doesn't fall to her knees defeated.

I'm actually loving all the extra insight all these analyses are giving me into just how reserved, how introverted, how determined Tifa is. She's had a hard fucking life. Born in a dust bowl, lost all her friends to the big city, saw her father murdered, almost died, her town got burnt to the ground but she still somehow managed to pick herself up and build a new life. She did that on her own. Nobody got her to Midgar. When she arrived she was lucky Marle took care of her. She could've been left alone with no support system. She got in with Avalanche and built a new family – even though they don't always see eye to eye on method, she also believes in their goal to stop Shinra and save the planet. She's principled and brave, focused af. But she's not unbeatable. Stuff gets her down. She tries her best to be cheerful, but doesn't always succeed. She keeps her problems to herself. But this? This is too big. This has broken her. She can't stay up and Cloud doesn't know how to help. Not emotionally, anyway.

OMG HE OFFERED HIS HAND!! I didn't see that before!! (Check the spot where his name is, his hand is between Tifa’s hair and arm, palm open.) I knew he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up when she didn't move, but he's actually holding his hand out for her before that!! She's too in her head to do anything, though, and I don't think Cloud really understands that. Any devastating feelings he had about personal tragedy he's locked away because they literally broke him. It must be distressing on some level for him to see his own emotions mirrored in Tifa. I said before the urge to comfort her starts at the beginning of chapter 13, but maybe the first spark of that is this moment here, when he can't do a thing for her, except pull her along behind him and hope he can keep her alive.

There's some really nice still shots in this game and this is one of them. I don't really have anything to say about it. I mean, we knew Cloud had both hands on Tifa's shoulders so he could direct her where to go and she's not really with it until the moment the debris falls in front of her and shocks her out of her stupor. Cloud's focused on the job at hand, no time to worry about anything but the next obstacle. By keeping both hands on Tifa's shoulders he's ensured he doesn't have to keep checking on her to make sure she's with him. He's basically piloting her because she's not capable of decision making for the moment.

Someone tell me, do action backhugs count? That's non-optional embracing right there. How many of you have seen this exact moment? Because I have literally been replaying the same 4s clip to get the screen for this bit and this is the first time in about 10 replays that I stopped it here. This is the between 1 second frames when the debris falls.

I mean, this is what a bodyguard actually looks like. Cloud's focus is all on keeping Tifa safe. He pulls her close to him, offers strength while she's feeling weak. He is literally using himself as a shield for her. They're such a balanced couple. When one is weak the other is strong for them, and whatever flaws they have they accept. They really are just a great couple!

Probably the worst screen I've ever grabbed lol

I was trying to figure out the moment he took her hand but I can't quite stop on it and it's just a touch too much out of frame. Instead, I got this. EYE CONTACT. I don't need to explain it again, right? We get the whole Cloud/Tifa eye contact deal by now.

Although, at the same time, that's a fucking scary shot of Cloud lol reminds me of that meme with Rinoa and Squall where she says he's the best looking guy there and it's all pixellated lol

Ah! I remembered why I was trying to get their hands, to see if Tifa grabbed his first or he took hers. But I could see through the playback that he took her hand. He initiated contact.

Yknow, I know people often compare the whole one half is always the summoner or mage and the other half is the warrior, but this screen right here looks a lot like another FF couple.

Tidus and Yuna.

I mean...do I have to say more?

Cloud looks behind to check Tifa's ok – I mean she's not but you get the point. Still getting Tidus and Yuna vibes from this moment tbf. This is the exact same type of sequence they had of them in FFX-2 when Yuna's dreaming Lenne's past and she and Tidus replace Lenne and Shuyin. They're running down a corridor and Tidus looks back at her. I mean, seeing how this type of comparison is usually only reserved for the whole mage/warrior pairing, it's strange that their body language here mirrors Square’s first fully voice acted installment. At the time the graphics were cutting edge and the cut scenes are still lauded as some of the most beautiful storytelling. Strange that Tifa and Cloud could have this comparison to Tidus and Yuna, especially with the whole Suteki da ne always being used to prop up a certain ship.

Anyway, Cloud’s checking on Tifa cause he’s totally not in love with her and wants to make sure she’s safe. You get the idea lol

I'd like to point out that Cloud doesn't – despite popular opinion – have hold of Tifa's jubblies. His arm is under them, wrapped around her ribs, which is actually a very secure hold for him since he's trying to hang onto Barret and keep hold of Tifa too. You'll notice she's not exactly paying attention to her own safety – which makes sense since Cloud literally had to haul her up when she wouldn't move. She's not in a good headspace during the end of this scene, so he's being very protective towards her.

Conclusion

Another great piece of action! I mean, does it really matter if these two are in the trenches or just hanging out? They have a synchronicity that's impossible to deny. They balance each other in pretty much every single way there is for a couple of be two halves of a whole. The FF10 comparison is a new one on me, especially since I don't look at two titles and try to see what about each one is like the other. They're both different and unique with their own charm. But, the second I caught that screen of Cloud pulling Tifa along I was immediately hit by the thought of “That's what Tidus and Yuna do”, so I couldn't not mention it.

We get a clear look at how devastated Tifa is immediately after the realisation hits that sector 7 is about to get crushed. She's just gone. Checked out. If Cloud hadn't stepped up to save her she'd have died. She wouldn't have got herself over to Barret in time and he would've died going to get her and get them back to the zip line. This is why it's so important that Cloud picks up the slack. He was strong when she needed him to be. She's strong for him later when he becomes weak. They really are two halves of one whole. 

I love that Tifa gets her own character development. She’s not just “the love interest”. Barret is basically a supporting character here, but we know he’ll get his turn in Corel and he does get his own moments to shine in Midgar, but this is cloti, so sorry dude, next time.

[jaybug-jabbers]

Pokemon Prism Review

Well I’m currently finishing up the post-game content of Pokemon Prism.

Dang.

What a fun game.

(what follows is an informal review of the game. it got a little long, lol. it has some spoilers for the game, of course.)

My background

To give you a quick idea on my perspective on Pokemon, I grew up with Pokemon Red on the big grey brick Gameboy. After Red, I pretty much stopped playing for many years. My little brother had a Gameboy Color and had Silver, but I never got one myself. Wasn’t ‘til years and years later I found some emulators and played through several generations of Pokemon at once. So, Gen 2 really isn’t nostalgic for me. It’s close enough to Gen 1 to hit some nostalgia buttons, though. I am admittedly somebody who feels Gen 1 is the best gen of pokemon. I don’t care of people laugh or say I’m a genwunner for believing that. Gen 1, I feel, had the raw creativity and charm of the original idea, and it simply sets my imagination alight far more than any other gen does. Those simple pixel designs for those little virtual creatures just opened up a world in my mind. THAT SAID, I did play and very much enjoyed all the other gens of pokemon. I do not shun things just because they are new, and I am not one of those people who says the new designs of pokemon are stupid. I adore plenty of modern pokes.

Blend of Old and New

Anyway! Pokemon Prism, for those unaware, is a ROM hack of Pokemon Crystal. It essentially delivers a brand-new Pokemon adventure for the Generation 2 games. It’s a really neat blend of classic gameplay and modern features. You’ll find species from modern games all the way from Gen 3 (such as Breloom) to Gen 6 (such as Sylveon) but their sprites perfectly integrate them organically into the Gen 2 environment. You’ll get many modern pokemon moves and conviences but also plenty of throwbacks to older experiences. Miss crafting pokeballs from Apricorns? It’s there. Enjoy a simplier time when there weren’t any Natures? Well, there ya go. Really want to call Joey and talk to him about his Rattata? Well, err, no, you can’t do that, but let’s face it, the telephone feature was probably one of the most hated features in Gen 2. :P

But Prism isn’t simply about updating Gen 2 with some modern pokemon, moves and game features. Not in the slightest. It’s full of original mechanics and gameplay concepts, and has tons of original areas and an original storyline. Pokemon is known for experimenting with new gameplay ideas, so it’s really fitting and enjoyable to see these take shape as you play the game. Mining and crafting is introduced in the game, for example, and there are a couple new pokemon types. There’s even a few sections where you can play as your pokemon, Mystery-Dungeon style. Do all of these experiments with new concepts work? Probably not ALL of them– when you try something new, not all of them will work out as amazing as you’d hope. But a lot of them are welcome and fun additions. And the game is bristling with these new ideas! It’s a joy to see so much creativity and novelty.

Sprites

It should be noted the spritework for these games is A+ and utterly fantastic. There is perhaps 3 or 4 out of dozens and dozens of new sprites that I thought were a tad off? Seriously, they look AMAZING and their animations are perfect and they fit in with the style so well I found myself briefly getting confused as to which were originally from Gen 2 and which weren’t. Saying these sprites are good is no small thing, because they are such a vital part of the game. The backsprites were not shafted, either– something even Gamefreak often shortchanged on back then.

Music

It should also be noted the music in this game is really damn good and has a huge variety. There are tons of classic songs, classic remakes of modern pokemon songs, remixes, and original tunes. There were like one or two tunes I was a bit iffy on, but considering that’s only a few out of so many, that’s impressive. The new bike music and Surfing music are probably my favorites, and they are SO GOOD, and those are especially important ones to sound good, because you typically hear those a lot.

Writing

The writing in this game is fairly solid. Not A+, but still not bad. It suffers occasionally from slightly rough and confusing grammar, and the climax of the story is definitely anti-climactic and very weak. In addition, the post-game story basically does not exist, but that can be excused since most likely more story was planned but they ran out of time. (C&D)

I also felt that at times, the story felt out-of-place within the world of Pokemon and went “too far” in the darker direction. The entire prison sequence, especially, and the frequent mention of inmates being mistreated, pokemon being abused, etc., just felt a bit much. Because this game was largely concerned with replicating the feeling of a true Pokemon game (some hacks intentionally focus on making a story that would never take place in the Pokemon world, like zombie survival horror stories or whatnot), I find it relevant to mention that. All of that said, though, its darker departures were at least not *too* extreme. We don’t get the very jarring and frequent problem of some ROM hacks where it’s full of cussing all the time or intense violence. Compared to those it’s still relatively subtle. And while the NPCs in this game I felt were rude a little too often, (holy crap, it felt like 95% of Naljo and Rijon were crankyass people) I do appreciate the attempts at making people a little more “real” and not quite so freaking happy and idealized all the time like Nintendo tends to do. The dialogue often made me chuckle. It did go a tad overboard with that “realness” (because, hey, a variety of people exist in the world, you know, both rude and polite, optimistic and bitter) but oh well.

So yes, the writing had its drawbacks. But overall, it felt like it was progressing a pokemon-style narrative with some interesting ideas, and wasn’t simply a dreary rehash of the same basic tropes Pokemon has been regurgitating for ages now. I just think if the writing were cleaned up a bit– the grammar cleaned up in a few sections, the plot threads clarified a bit more, and the climax reworked– it could take a “decent story” and make it a great one. There’s definitely some neat ideas there, it just needs polish.

Maps

As to the different towns and locations in this game to explore, there are many. This game is ambitious AF. As I said, it’s FULL of new ideas, features, things to do, and places to explore. Naljo is the region you explore in the main game, but post-game you can wander a whole new region of Rijon (the featured location of an older ROM hack, Pokemon Brown) and beat all the gyms there. In addition, there’s a few towns in Kanto and Johto you can visit (I believe they originally planned to open up all of those regions eventually), AND one town in ANOTHER new region, Tunod. The game’s ambitiousness occasionally outpaces what it delivers, but that’s quite acceptable in my mind, since updates with additions to the game were originally planned. So, yes, there isn’t much to do post-game, but that’s largely because a lot of stuff was going to be added.

Back to the locations, though! It’s an important aspect of ROM hacks. Not everyone is good at designing a good town, with logical building placement, intuitive layouts, aesthetically pleasing locations, and interesting things to explore so it doesn’t feel totally plain and lacks character. I’m pleased to say this game does a great job of it, though. I should point out I have a terrible sense of direction and bad spatial memory. Despite that fact, I found myself remembering important features and where they were located– oh, the Move Deleter house is in Phacelia on the left, the bullet train is in Torenia– and that’s a good sign. Physical travel was not a sloggy chore, and it wasn’t bogged down in a confusing layout. Towns were memorable and fun to explore.

Pacing/Level Curve

Another thing ROM hacks can screw up, because it’s a tricky thing to do, is the challenge pacing. How many trainers? What teams do they have? What levels? Are the Gyms challenging without being insane? I actually Nuzlocked the main part of the game. In my opinion it was well-paced. There’s probably fewer trainers overall in this game than a standard Pokemon game. But it did not take me much extra grinding in the grass– and I was only doing that to play it safe for the Nuzlocke. And that’s GOOD. You shouldn’t have to do tons of grinding in the grass all the time just to have a reasonable shot at the gyms. Pokemon Uranium, sadly, seems to suffer from that issue. So, yeah, the pacing was very reasonable to me, good balance of fair and challenging.

… with one important note. Once you reach the League? Well, we could have used higher-levelled wild pokemon in the cave that served as the victory road. The highest in that cave was level 34 or so, and you were facing trainers with teams ~level 55. That’s a huge gap. Not everyone has the same play style. Some people like to do extra grinding before the Elites. Some people are Nuzlocking and may do extra grinding as a safety buffer. Some people might want to adjust their team & add a new pokemon to their team and need to grind them up from a lower level. For those cases, you NEED decently-levelled wild pokemon to grind on. So, yeah, I really do think the Seneca Caves wild pokemon need a level buff. It would also help with the level gap for the post-game. Trainers in Rijon are suddenly at levels 70ish and higher, and for some folks playing, that’s a bit much and they’d like to do a little grinding first.

Puzzles

This game has puzzles. You have been warned, lol. Apparently a lot of people found the number of puzzles a bit frustrating, or felt that some of them were excessively tricky or annoying. I find it very funny, because usually puzzles are my least favorite part of a pokemon game. But I really enjoyed the puzzles in Prism and didn’t find it annoying or offputting at all. I was sick with a cold through most of my play of Prism, and yet even in my dumb brainaddled state, I didn’t find the puzzles too difficult. I solved them all at a pretty average length of time, even the ones some people traditionally found a little unclear or confusing. (the Ruins puzzle often confuses folks, apparently, but I really didn’t have a problem with it at all.) I was briefly confused on one of the switch puzzles (and it contained an element of bad puzzle design imo– there’s a gap that you can leap down into when normally a gap of that size just gives the ‘run into wall’ sound and is not passable) but not for too long. Even the ice slide puzzles, which I traditionally hate with a passion, were not bad!

All except for one thing. The Magikarp Puzzle. Anyone who has played Prism knows what I mean. Haha, fuck that puzzle man. Even the creator of the ROM hack himself has acknowledged the puzzle was not great, heh. To be honest, I find it kind of hilarious, in a way, though. I mean, obviously it’s a nightmarishly difficult and frustrating puzzle and is intensely exhausting to look at, let alone try to solve. But it’s also kinda glorious in its demonicness. I didn’t spend too much time on it before just looking up a solution to it. It’s tedious and not fun at all, and hey, that’s OK, because even the creator realized that.

pls nerf magikarp

But seriously, outside of the magikarp puzzle, I didn’t just enjoy the puzzles in this game– I felt like they were an important part of what gave this game its character.

Fakemon

There are even a few fakemon in this game! Which I was excited to learn because I thought there weren’t! All of the fakemon are Legenderies. Unfortunately, I don’t care for most of their designs. Like, at all. I think Varaneous and Libabeel’s sprites look really, really shitty. They’re ugly and don’t match the style of Pokemon at all. This feels weird to say, since I love so much about this game, but man, there’s just no way around it, I hate ‘em. Everyone has their own tastes, of course. There’s a couple fakemon I have yet to capture– I’m finishing that up now and the very very last of the post-game. But one fakemon I did capture and ADORE LIKE NO OTHER is Phancero.

I happen to know about Phancero’s designer, because I saw their design years ago. They apparently were approached by the team and were asked permission for the use of the design, which is awesome. I won’t rant again about Phancero here because I already ranted about it before, and literally could keep ranting for pages. :P But yeah, it’s a totally creative and awesome pokemon both in idea and execution, and by FAR my favorite fakemon ever created.

Conclusion

This is the best ROM hack I have played in years and probably ever. I haven’t played hundreds of ROM hacks, but I have probably played dozens over the years. I think they are a creative and wonderful expression of the pokemon community, but let’s be honest. There’s a lot of really bad ROM hacks out there. There’s even more ROM hacks that have a lot of potential but are never finished or anywhere near completion. (And that’s perfectly understandable. People run out of time, they have real life get in the way, etc.) The fact that not only did a ROM hack of this caliber get made, but was 95-99% completed? Is fantastic. It was an intensely massive project and I cannot begin to imagine how much work it must have been. Pokemon games are normally developed by an entire team at a company, and folks are paid to do it. The comparatively small team of devs who made this game in their spare time and implemented these amazing things had to do it all on their own. It’s no wonder it took as long as it did for them to finish it; and the amount of effort SHOWS. There is so much loving attention to detail and polish to Prism. (I mean, yes, there’s still some bugs and the occasional unfinished bits, but of course there are, those were going to be finished, but then the C&D hit)

Most ROM hacks are just strong in a few areas, because it’s one or two people who have strengths or interests in a few things. So, you’ll play a hack with a really good story but terrible fakemon and mapping, or you’ll play a hack with fantastic designs of new areas, but no new story, etc. Prism kinda has everything, though. It really did feel like playing a new Gen 2 game.

(It’s now almost 11pm and oh god where did the time go. I have a problem with being concise. :P This was far longer than I intended but thank you if you’ve read this far!)

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on Jan 17, 2017.

[antiques-for-geeks]

Game Review: Aliens

Electric Dreams /  1987 / C64 

Also released on Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, MSX and C16

With one eye firmly on Halloween, we’re going to review some games that used to make us breathe heavily, grasping our joysticks tightly in our sweaty palms...

Based on James Cameron’s sequel to the archetypal sci-fi body-horror Alien, Aliens is possibly one of the most panic-inducing games of the 8-bit era. It goes without saying that it’s hard to actually scare anyone on an 8-bit computer, unless blocky, jerky and flickery graphics bring you out in a cold sweat. What you can do, however, is force the player into having to make a series of quickfire decisions under stressful conditions, juggling resources and trying to keep order in the face of the impossible, like an air traffic controller in a power cut.

Aliens is played from a first-person perspective, and at first glance seems like a fairly simple game. You start in the middle of the operations room in LV-426, in control of Ellen Ripley and a team of 5 space marines who’ve been sent to find the alien queen and rid the base of her menace. You get a cross-hair, which is where your bullets will go. You can look around to the left or right, and you can step through a door to another room with a press of the space bar.

Nothing much is happening right at the start of the game, but don’t worry, it won’t stay that way for long!

The queen sits in a room right in the depths of the base. You use the keyboard to select individual team-members, but you can only directly control one at a time. Each member is represented by a nice little image and a stat bar showing how tired they are. There are no practical differences between each team member, which is a bit of a wasted opportunity, but the images are still a nice touch if you’ve seen the film, and help the player identify with their soldiers. Your team grows weary if they move too far without a rest; they’ll be unable to move and will aim more slowly until given time to recuperate. 

You can issue orders for any team member to move a number of rooms in any compass direction, and they’ll carry out your instructions to the best of their ability once you switch out. On the way you’ll encounter alien warriors, eggs and face huggers... or they’ll encounter you as they’ll actively try and hunt down your group. 

When one of your characters is in the same room as an alien you’ll hear a warning noise. This is a sinister beeping when you’re not controlling the character directly, and a panic inducing klaxon when you are. What ensues next is a desperate fumble to find the correct key to select the character who is in trouble, followed by an anguished pan around the room in search of the invader. Obviously you’ve only got a limited time to do all this, and the warning tone gets quicker and increasingly agitated to make sure you’re well aware of this fact. 

I see you!

Once you spot the alien, you’ve got to line him up and blast him before he gets to you. One head-shot should do it, but you won’t get a clean shot, because by now your heart rate is sure to be through the roof. He’ll run right at you too, making you waste a bunch of (limited!) ammo on him.

If you’re super lucky, several team members will be attacked at the same time, which is probably more tense than doing a driving test naked with a wasp in the car.

If the alien gets you the warning tone will change to a forlorn peep. That signifies your character being bundled up for immediate xenomorph oral impregnation. You’ve got a short time to get someone else to the room to take the alien out, but if you don’t get there in time you’ve lost them for good. Their little picture will disappear and you’ll get nothing but static if you switch to their screen.

Another nasty twist: if you blast an alien in front of a door it’ll leave a pool of acid blood which will kill your character outright should they try to exit that way.

There are a few things you can do to keep yourself alive. You can shoot out the control panels next to any door, which will prevent aliens coming through for a time. This is a one-time only deal, because you’ll have to blow the door open if you want to use it again. You can also re-stock a team member’s ammo at a specific room in the complex. This is useful, because running out of ammo is as good as a death sentence. You’ll also need a map. There’s no in game map provided, though the room number each character occupies is shown next to their image. The full price release provided a fold out map in the box, and you’ll need this. Make sure you have a copy handy, because the game is almost unplayably hard unless you have one!

One last thing. The aliens spread a sort of fungal growth around the rooms, which can cover doors and must be blasted away. There’s a generator room somewhere in the complex, and if the walls there get covered by alien fungus the LIGHTS WILL TURN OUT!

I can’t emphasise enough what bad news this is, because hunting for aliens by shadows alone is probably about as much fun as falling into the sharps bin in an STD clinic.

Film licenses had a pretty bad reputation for the discerning 8-bit gamer, tending to be shoddy and quickly thrown together efforts. Aliens is both an excellent game in its own right and perfect at evoking the tension and atmosphere of the film. There’s also quite a bit of tactical depth here too. Do you keep your group of soldiers together? Move as quickly as possible to the queen chamber? Maybe try to fan out and secure the generator room and armoury?

Ripley is looking a bit off colour today.

It’s also worth mentioning that there was also another Aliens game released for 8-bit micros, developed by Activision in the U.S. This takes a different approach to the license, presenting the film as a series of mini-game levels such as landing the drop-ship, fighting your way through the base to save Newt, the last surviving colonist, and the climactic one-on-one mechanical loader duel with the alien queen. This is also a good game, and well worth seeking out if you're a fan of the franchise, though for my money not quite as well conceived and executed as the U.K. version.

Playing it today

If you don't want to follow the obvious route of emulation and you’ve got a real C64, Amstrad CPC or Spectrum to hand, this should be easy to pick up for a few quid online. If you fancy something slightly more polished, there’s a fine looking windows PC remake ‘LV-426’ by Derbian Games that can be downloaded for free.

Commentariat

Tim: Ah, Aliens. Back when the franchise was actually scary and not a pastiche of itself.

As I suspect many others, I bought this on budget when it appeared on the Ricochet label from Mastertronic. This release really lacked the one thing that helped gameplay. A map.

The full price release had pull-out one included with the game; Mastertronic however, probably decided that including a separate sheet for just one title would have cost too much. And been yet another inlay for the staff at Menzies in the Clydebank Shopping Centre to lose. Zzap 64 published one for those of us without, but as I didn’t have that issue, I was in the dark. Quite literally, as it was more fun to play with the lights off.

Life is too short to make maps, so instead I ended up creeping about the complex, not really knowing where I was. Sounds dull, right? Well, no. The game oozes atmosphere; the graphics are tight and well executed, and though the C64’s SID chip is hardly taxed, the sounds that are there do the trick. The throbbing noise when an alien approaches, your exhausted marine out of ammo but still you frantically pull the trigger of their Pulse Rifle in the vain hope that maybe, just maybe there will be one last shell in there to give you a fighting chance. What I particularly like though is the freedom of gameplay, choosing to use your team as individuals or cooperatively as squads, investigating the different parts of the base separately. Pretty cool, when you consider it’s all done in just 64k.

Do I have fond memories of it? Yes. Would I play it again? Absolutely.

Meat: This game is an intense experience, likely to elicit some strong swear words if you’re not in the right mood for it. It’s certainly engrossing stuff though, and tough to beat. One thing though. Which genius decided that the ‘m’ key should restart the game? You know, the one next to the ‘n‘ key you use to tell your soldiers to move north? Nice one.

Pop: I played this a few years before seeing the film, but in retrospect it’s a very clever use of the license. It was also a really tense experience for an 8-bit game, particularly later on when your soldiers are assaulted by wave after wave of aliens and face huggers. Like many games of the era, it’s perhaps a little arcane for today’s audience, what with having to use the keyboard to select the different team members, but still playable and still enjoyable today. It’s the kind of game I can imagine working perfectly on a VR helmet, though that might be a little too much immersion for comfort!

Strangely enough, one of my strongest memories of this game was actually waiting for it to load off cassette tape. The Mastertronic re-release copy I played (borrowed off Tim, of course!) had a neat game of space-invaders that you got to play while waiting for the loading process to complete, accompanied by some very atmospheric music. This ‘invade-a-load’ appeared on a few C64 tape games, but in my head it’s always tied to playing Aliens.

Score card

Presentation 4/10

Very basic indeed. No intro screen, title crawl or music. The box contained a map, which is essential and should have been a part of the game itself.

Originality 8/10

An extremely novel use of a film license. The mix of first person perspective, team management and light strategy elements put this in a class of its own. Sadly, most licensed games of the 8-bit era tended to use cookie-cutter gameplay which was usually executed better elsewhere.

Graphics 7/10

Very clear and atmospheric, you’ll have no problem working out what everything is. The images for the team members are well drawn and clear for an 8-bit system. On the down side, rooms are drawn predominantly in a single colour and a little more variety in the room designs would be nice. The aliens walk like they’re going for a relaxing afternoon stroll, but the animation when they rush your position is very effective.

Hookability 7/10

Immediately intriguing, but the use of the keyboard and advanced controls for commanding team members require the investment of time to enjoy.

Sound 3/10

Played in near silence, except for gunfire and the alien warning siren. This actually makes the game more atmospheric. A title tune would have been nice.

Lastability 7/10

A decent challenge, it seems impossible until you form a good plan on how to tackle the assault on the base. Like many other games of the era, how much you get out of this game depends on how much you’re willing to put into working out how to play it effectively.

Overall 8/10

A fine example of how to compress the tension and drama of an action film into 64K.

[slamsams-blog]

Thunderball - #24WeeksofBond

This week we are treated to the 1965 film “Thunderball” with Sean Connery.  This movie has always been one of my favorites, mostly because of all the beautiful under water scenes and action.  The final underwater battle for atomic bomb supremacy is one of my favorite, if not thee favorite, ending sequences of any Bond movie.  But on top of all the visual stimulation there is a well thought out plot perfectly executed by the direction of Terence Young.  The downside to this movie and the Bond series in the long run is the producer, Kevin McClory...we’ll get to him later.  

This would be Connery’s fourth outing and the last of his greats before he starts phoning it in.  There is just so much to love and enjoy with Thunderball starting with the pre-title sequence.  Thunderball opens up at a supposed funeral of a man who was working for Spectre and Bond appears to have his doubts.  He goes to follow the widow to her place only for Bond to squarely knock the crap out of her...revealing it to be the man who was supposedly dead.  This gave me a good chuckle, seeing Bond going to give his condolences to a grieving widow and then just punching her face.

If that wasn’t enough, he escapes by jet pack...JET PACK.  How very entertaining already, and the journey has only just begun...CUE TOM JONES, MF!  

Well, after a rather obnoxious performance by Tom Jones the film begins with Bond off getting rehab after his last mission. Little did Bond, or Blofeld know, that he was going to find himself on a another mission.  Bond smells something fishy is going on and starts doing some digging off the clock. The plan is to steal a couple atomic bombs and hold England for a 100 million pound ransom, threatening to destroy a city in England or the USA if they don’t cooperate.  Bond gets the files for the mission but sees photos of faces he saw while getting rehab including one of them who Bond found dead.  So Bond already has a lead in this time sensitive mission, so Bond is on his way.

By this time Blofeld and Spectre are not good friends of Bond.  He’s already ruined a few of their operations so it’s funny to me that Blofeld keeps coming up with these elaborate schemes instead of putting all his best men on a mission to just get rid of Bond.  Largo (Adolfo Celi) is the man heading the operation and quickly comes to realize that Bond is going to be a nasty thorn in his side.

While Thunderball has so much going for it in terms of story and action, the cast of characters are a bit sleepy.  Domino (Claudine Auger), whom I just learned had her voice dubbed over by a Voice Actor, pulls in a rather forgettable performance.  Largo has a cool look with jet white hair and an unexplained eye patch...but even that doesn’t really save him or make him that memorable.  No cool henchmen either, except for the crazy Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) who likes to drive 110 miles an hour through narrow windy streets in the woods.  Those deer better watch it.

As Bond works to uncover the truth and put the puzzle pieces together we see him being followed by a mysterious man with sunglasses....he evetunally gets to Bonds hotel door...Bond opens the door AND.....(suspense) IT’S FELIX!  Ah they got us again!  Good ole Felix from the CIA is here to help with the mission, and to get Bond of out what ever type of Jam Bond has found himself in.

After an escape through a madri-gras parade, a run in with a couple sharks, and some hand grenades, Bond has finally, and quite literally, uncovered the answer to where the bombs are and can now pursue the nasty Largo to foil his plot.  This all leads up to a most wonderfully shot action sequence between the good guys and the bad guys under the sea.  Carrying harpoons and welding knives to cut the oxygen tube of your enemy as the key strategy to victory, we see an absolute war in the water.  We also see shots of all the beautiful sea creators who are like “WTF?”.  I just can’t imagine the skill it took to film the whole thing.  With the intense score backing it up, I’d be hard pressed to point you into the direction of a better fight scene in the Bond series.

This leads to the big fight between Bond and Largo on his runaway ship. The green screen work here is just laughable.  The boat, from the inside, appears to be going 1,032,231,318 miles an hour and somehow they are still able steer it away from the rocks that are 5 feet in front of them.  After the evil Largo has been killed by Domino, the final scene is Bond and Domino getting whisked away by a plane catching a string that is attached to Bond.  They make this look romantic, but in actuality, they get hauled away so fast that I would be crapping my pants.  It made me laugh anyways.

I do also wish we got one last reaction from Blofeld finding out his plans got spoiled once again.  This movie lacks a touch of closure at the end.  Largo dies and they get whisked away without seeing MI6 relived of the mission being a success or Blofeld pissed and angrily changing his cat’s litter box.

Thunderball, while plentiful of shortcomings, is stimulating to the senses and takes you on an epic journey - but this script would come back to haunt Eon Productions years later.  Kevin McClory had worked on multiple screen adaptions with Ian Flemming and got partial credit for this screenplay.  McClory had eventually been given the rights to the script and would go on later to make a Bond film of his own with the same script.  It was called “Never Say Never Again”.  12 years after Connery had said good bye to the role, would come back to play the part again...only as a grandpa.  

Never Say Never Again is an abomination and is not an official entrant into the series, so no, I will NOT be watching that garbage...if you want to on your own time, be my guest, but it’s just a bad movie.  McClory would go on to have multiple lawsuits against the Bond producers, even trying to remake the same movie again in the late 80′s and trying to recruit Brosnan for it.  But it fell through...thank the lord.

All that nonsense being said, I still love Thunderball, and is one of the highlights of the Connery series.  I hope you liked it too!  Let me know what you thought!

Reviews from Friends:

My Mom:

Boy Sean Connery was really in his glory days here wasn’t he? So young and handsome. You could always identify him in a crowd under helmets and googles by those puppy eyes. A couple things that were really funny was that silly jet pack at the start. With all our tech stuff now that scene was almost cartoony. The way his body didn’t move and the wind picked up not a whisp of hair or clothing. Then when we got a look at those nuclear bombs. They had the words printed on them. “Treat like Eggs”. Ha. It seems like it’s unique to Connery (from what I’ve seen so far) to punch a woman in the face (seemingly) or use her to shield a bullet. Don’t know if Bronson or Moore or Dalton would do that. It was a Tense under water battle but I loved the ending. It was just simple and fun. No need to string out a big explanation or closure.

Alexandra Hein-Roberts

I find Claudine Auger to be the most iconic Bond girl. She had something most didn’t.

Jake Benrud

So many things taken from this movie for Austin Powers... sharks or Ill tempered mutated sea bass? I enjoyed the movie, and laughed out loud when Sean Connery punched that woman in the face who was really a disguised man. I guess I wasn’t expecting that. Also, whoever SPECTRE employs as a plastic surgeon, I want their name. That was a perfect clone. The SPECTRE agent should have known better to try to extort more money from Largo. That’s never going to end well. The death of Bond’s assistant/field operative kept it a little bit more real. I thought the plot was decent, but I thought the underwater battle was really slow moving for my tastes especially in the beginning. Kind of a cool concept though. Bond was able to swim pretty well for getting shot in the leg. I liked that Domino got the kill in the end. Classic Bond. Great movie despite the sometimes unbelievable parts!

24 Weeks of Bond will return next Monday with - 

A View To A Kill 

[televinita]

Little Women (2019): Thoughts

REQUIRED READING: the prequel post about my background going in to this film.

SNAPSHOT VERSION: Though I have some casting qualms, and may adjust my opinions after I reread the book, mostly I think this is everything my heart has needed since the magic of the ‘94 movie was broken for me. My heart is very full.

FULL VERSION: Twice as long as the prequel post (a.k.a. 1800 words), starts below.

I did not expect LW to be the first Unexpected Comeback Fandom of 2020 (or a comeback fandom ever, really), but here I am, having spent every day since I saw this film mooning about this story and looking up different editions and supplemental books in the library catalog, so I'd better process how I feel about it while the memories are relatively fresh.

Most of my thoughts are on casting rather than specific scenes because like I said, I can’t remember the book super well, so I’d like to get my movie memories to fade so that the book can surprise me. Also because I think I will have a more in-depth post about them when I watch the film a 2nd time, whether that’s in theaters or on DVD. But here’s what I’ve got for now.

ON CASTING

In no particular order --

* Emma Watson is very pretty but it is so hard to take her seriously as an actress. She's just Emma Watson, Famous For Being In Harry Potter and Getting Hired For Other Big Name Projects. I feel like she's so consciously acting all the time. She made a not-terrible Meg, I guess? No worse than she made a Belle. But it was roughly as hilarious watching her try to be a mother now as it was watching her try to be a mother in the last Harry Potter movie. To the point that I just kept hearing the "Damn! I'm SO maternal!" song playing as her theme in the background at all times. * I realized 6 days prior to seeing the movie that Florence Pugh is recognizable because she's in Midsommar and honestly, that just ruined everything for me. I didn't even see that film, I just know it's gross and I would hate it and while she is not tainted forever like the 50 Shades actors, she is definitely too tainted for Little Women. Also I could not stop thinking about how I associate Amy with being very dainty and prim and Florence, while perfectly lovely, is not. * Laura Dern was kind of strangely modern and kooky for Marmee, but I love her as an actress and I loved that she was just like "HELLO STRANGE NEIGHBOR BOY, COME BE MY FIFTH CHILD." So I was OK with that. * ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH BOB ODENKIRK. What kind of anachronistic garbage. What crack were you on, because it was obviously not the good stuff. "Did I stumble into an SNL parody??" I wondered more than once. * Meryl Streep as Aunt March was AMAZING. Ten Oscars. * Beth consistently looked younger than Amy, so that was weird. She was okay but kind of childlike, and failed to make Beth my favorite like she is in the book. * JO! Saoirse Ronan is by far my favorite actress in this set, but I didn't think she was right for Jo going in. "Jo's not a redhead!" I said, indignantly stamping my foot, because my childhood-era love for this novel reigns defensively supreme like for no other classic besides Black Beauty. (another 1994 classic they should remake soon, even though I love that version. Just saying.)

But damned if she did not COMPLETELY embody every essence of Jo there is and make Jo my favorite character this time. Truly, nobody except Meryl Streep so thoroughly matched my expectations for their character. Ten Oscars, part II. Or at least the one she is actually nominated for. If Jo loses to ScarJo I will riot. * John was nice. I feel like he was exactly what he was supposed to be, which is to say kind of plain and milquetoast but perfect for Meg. I don't actually remember him existing in the novel, so that was an interesting game of "how important is this guy?" until suddenly Meg was getting married and I realized I did, in fact, have a very dim memory of a wedding from the book. I think I will like their romance more the second time around, though. * Mr. Laurence was VERY EXCELLENT. IDK why I know the actor, even after looking him up, but I liked him in this role a lot. His grandfatherly quasi-adoption of Beth was so sweet. * As for Professor Bhaer...UGH. I hated him on sight and my brain wouldn't even let me recognize who he was for like 3 scenes, I was just like, "who is this random boarding lodger and why are we focusing on that weirdo." I mean, he's objectively handsome? But he did not do it for me. He lacked the gravitas I expect from this character and his thick accent scraped my ears and drove me insane (update from the future: his accent is also driving me insane in the book, where I have peeked in at a few chapters as incentive to reread. whyyyyyyy). * LAURIE: maybe it's been too long since I read the book, but never could I ever have imagined I'd want to use the term "fuckboy" to describe Laurie. It wasn't even Ski Chalet's face so much as it was that in all present-day scenes (post-rejection), he is such an insufferable, melodramatic, pouting trash heap that I didn't want him to marry any of them at that point. (Also YOU STILL DIDN'T MAKE ME UNDERSTAND WHY HE GOES FOR AMY, so good job.**) However, I took especial delight in paying attention to all the cuddly platonic friend cuddling he heaped on Jo growing up, in focus or in the background, and I loved it...kind of a lot? The ship radar made noise. That noise is getting louder by the day, smoothing away his faults. He may have permanently taken up residence in my mind's eye as the new Laurie. ...this is the worst. Make it cease. (**update from the future, I am peeking at the book and it looks like it's a lot easier to understand both in text and when you're inside Laurie's head. He is still clearly sulking his way through Europe, but in a way it's easier to recover from. Also, I don’t have time to unpack this but as I finish the edits on this post I started 5 days ago, I’m starting to think I could not only ship Laurie/Amy, but believe in it from the start.) ACTUAL PLOT AND FILM QUALITY

+ The shifting between past and present was very jarring right off the bat, but after that I think it worked.

+ I loved the attic play rehearsals so much

+ I am so glad Jo’s shorn hair is both fleeting and as hideous as it should look, and not Pixie Cut Chic (Childhood Me wailed at that part reading the book)

+ I remember hardly anything about the book's Part II / Good Wives, so basically everything in their adult lives was news to me. Amy and Aunt March go to Europe? Jo goes to live by herself in New York? Meg marries a relative pauper? Any of this could be true to the book or just made up as an alternate idea to explore, and I would be none the wiser. That made it more fun. (NOBODY SPOIL ME ON WHAT'S TRUE)

+ It did not occur to me until just now that the part where Jo publishes her version of Little Women is not in the book (right?), but that was beautifully done.

+ The house interiors were breathtaking. It's not like I don't regularly watch period pieces, but this time there was just something about seeing an old house, like the ones I am often in for estate sales, decorated the way I always imagine seeing when I enter those homes, that kind of made me tear up. + The outside shots were pretty too + Jo made me cry with her I'm so LONELY! speech, rude. (I went into this movie thinking I was 100% on board to finally read Alcott’s sequels for their Jo/Professor content, and now I'm like 'ah damn it is gonna be the season for the Jo/Laurie AU novel, isn't it.')

+ A strike against Beth and/or the actress playing her: I did not cry about her death (in my defense I was busy crying about Jo's pain).

+ I did NOT remember precisely how Laurie & Amy got married, so even though I knew it happened eventually, I felt that sucker punch to the gut reveal just about as hard as Jo did. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR WIFE.

+ My mom said she’d heard this movie was lauded as being super feminist, which rarely goes well for me, but I thought it felt like really authentic "married women literally were not allowed to control their own income and it sucked" 19th century feminism, and not someone using their 21st century voice to claim this is how people would have REALLY talked if The Patriarchy Of Historical Record hadn't silenced/suppressed it. Nothing rankled me. I’m very confused by the people who think it says Jo is queer and/or didn’t end up with the Professor, but if that’s what you see then I guess it’s a win/win situation for all of us. + LOVED the closing montage. + Basically, at all times that I wasn't annoyed by the casting, I was feeling the same magic I did while reading the book and/or while watching the 1994 movie as a child. I can’t think of any parts I really hated.

IN CONCLUSION

Part of me is honestly kind of sad I didn't reread the book before watching this movie, because even though I usually prefer to go movie first and then get the Expanded Edition that is the book, in this case I wish I'd taken my last chance to properly visualize everything in my head on my own -- since I’ve mostly forgotten the ‘94 film -- before the new movie washed it away forever. This is one of the rare times I would have liked to hope and guess what would be shown vs. cut, and be able to anticipate the thrill of seeing the page come to life.

However, seeing it was the impetus I needed to finally take my childhood copy off the shelf (and thank heavens I have it, because the library request is backed up 3 or 4 deep for every copy), and it took all of 5 minutes to get instantly sucked into chapter 1 and feel such rapturous joy and familiarity that I consciously cut myself off and decided I am going to journal out my feelings after each chapter on this reread. So that’s something!

[letterboxd]

Life in Film: Ben Wheatley.

As Netflix goes gothic with a new Rebecca adaptation, director Ben Wheatley tells Jack Moulton about his favorite Hitchcock film, the teenagers who will save cinema, and a memorable experience with The Thing.

“The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it.” —Ben Wheatley

Winter’s coming, still no vaccine, the four walls of home are getting pretty samey… and what Netflix has decided we need right now is a lavish, gaslight-y psychological thriller about a clifftop manor filled with the personality of its dead mistress—and a revival of one of the best menaces in screen history. Bring on the ‘Mrs Danvers’ Hallowe’en costumes, because Rebecca is back.

In Ben Wheatley’s new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling 1938 novel, scripted by Jane Goldman, Lily James plays an orphaned lady’s maid—a complete nobody, with no known first name—who catches the eye of the dashing, cashed-up Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer).

Very quickly, the young second Mrs de Winter is flung into the intimidating role of lady of Manderley, and into the shadow of de Winter’s late first wife, Rebecca. The whirlwind romance is over; the obsession has begun, and it’s hotly fuelled by Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas, perfectly cast).

Each adaptation of du Maurier’s story has its own quirks, and early Letterboxd reactions suggest viewers will experience varying levels of satisfaction with Wheatley’s, depending on how familiar they are with both the novel and earlier screen versions—most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 Best Picture winner, starring Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson.

Why would you follow Hitchcock? It’s been 80 years; Netflix is likely banking on an audience of Rebecca virgins (the same kind of studio calculation that worked for Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born). Plus, the new Rebecca is a Working Title affair; it has glamor, camp, Armie Hammer in a three-piece suit, the sunny South of France, sports cars, horses, the wild Cornish coast, Lily James in full dramatic heat, and—controversial!—a fresh twist on the denouement.

A big-budget thriller made for a streamer is Wheatley coming full circle, in a way: he made his name early on with viral internet capers and a blog (“Mr and Mrs Wheatley”) of shorts co-created with his wife and longtime collaborator, Amy Jump. Between then and now, they have gained fans for their well-received low-to-no budget thrillers, including High-Rise, Kill List and Free Fire (which also starred Hammer).

Over Zoom, Wheatley spoke to Letterboxd about the process of scaling up, the challenge of casting already-iconic characters, and being a year-round horror lover. [The Rebecca plot discussion may be spoilery to some. Wheatley is specifically talking about the du Maurier version, not his film.]

Armie Hammer and Ben Wheatley on the set of ‘Rebecca’.

Can you tell us how you overcame any concerns in adapting a famous novel that already has a very famous adaptation? How did you want to make a 1930s story relevant to modern audiences? Ben Wheatley: When you go back to the novel and look at how it works, you see it’s a very modern book. [Author Daphne du Maurier is] doing stuff that people are still picking up the pieces of now. It’s almost like the Rosetta Stone of thrillers—it tells you everything on how to put a thriller together. The genre jumping and Russian-doll nature of the structure is so delicious. When you look at the characters in the book, they’re still popping up in other stuff—there’s Mrs Danvers in all sorts of movies.

It remains fresh because of its boldness. Du Maurier is writing in a way that’s almost like a dare. She’s going, “right, okay, you like romantic fiction do you? I’ll write you romantic fiction; here’s Maxim de Winter, he’s a widower, he’s a good-looking guy, and owns a big house. Here’s a rags-to-riches, Cinderella-style girl. They’re going to fall in love. Then I’m going to ruin romantic fiction for you forever by making him into a murdering swine and implicating you in the murder because you’re so excited about a couple getting away with it!”

That’s the happy ending—Maxim doesn’t go to prison. How does that work? He’s pretty evil by the end. It’s so subtly done that you only see the trap of it after you finish reading the book. That’s clearly represented in Jane Goldman’s adaptation that couldn’t be done in 1940 because of the Hays Code. That whole element of the book is missing [in Hitchcock’s Rebecca]. But I do really like this style of storytelling in the 1930s and ’40s that is not winky, sarcastic, and cynical. It’s going, “here’s Entertainment with a big ‘E’. We’re going to take you on holiday, then we’re gonna scare you, then we’re gonna take you around these beautiful houses that you would never get a chance to go around, and we’re gonna show you these big emotions.”

After High-Rise, you ended up circling back to more contained types of films, whereas Rebecca is your lushest and largest production. How was scaling up for you? Free Fire does feel like a more contained film, but in many ways it was just as complicated and had the same budget as High-Rise, since it’s just in one space. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is literally a contained film, that’s right. What [the bigger budget] gave me was the chance to have a conversation where I say I want a hotel that’s full of people and no-one says you can’t have any people in it. You don’t have to shoot in a corner, so that scale is suddenly allowed.

Elisabeth Moss and Tom Hiddlestone in Wheatley’s ‘High-Rise’ (2015).

The other movies I did are seen as no-budget or, I don’t even know the word for how little money they are, and even though High-Rise and Free Fire were eight million dollars each, they’re still seen as ultra-low budget. This is the first film that I’ve done that’s just a standard Hollywood-style movie budget and it makes a massive difference. It gives you extra time to work. All the schemes you might have had to work out in order to cheat and get around faster, but now it’s fine, let’s only shoot two pages today. We can go out on the road and close down all of the south of France—don’t worry about all the holidaymakers screaming at you and getting cross! That side of it is great.

You had the challenge to cast iconic actors for iconic roles. What were you looking for in the casting? What points of reference did you give the actors? I don’t think we really talked about it, but [Armie Hammer] definitely didn’t watch the Hitchcock version. I can understand why he wouldn’t. There was no way he was going to accidentally mimic [Laurence] Olivier’s performance without seeing it and he just didn’t want to have the pressure of that. I think that’s quite right. It’s an 80-year-old film, it’s a beloved classic, and we’d be mad if we were trying to remake it. We’re not.

The thing about the shadow that the film cast is that it’s hard enough making stuff without thinking about other filmmakers. I’ve had this in the past where journalists ask me “what were your influences on the day?” and I wish I could say “it was a really complicated set of movies that the whole thing was based around”, but it’s not like that. When you watch documentaries about filmmakers screening loads of movies for their actors before they make something—it’s lovely, but it’s not something I’ve ever done.

The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it—“we’ll use this shot from 1952, that will really make this scene sing!”—then you’re in a world of pain. Basically, it’s my interpretation of the adaptation. The book is its own place, and for something like High-Rise, [screenwriter Amy Jump] has the nightmare of sitting down with 112 pages of blank paper and taking a novel and smashing it into a script. That’s the hard bit.

Armie Hammer and Lily James in ‘Rebecca’.

Current industry news is not so great—cinemas are facing bankruptcy, film festivals in the USA are mostly virtual, Disney is focusing on Disney+ only. How do you feel about a future where streaming dominates the market and the theatrical experience becomes, as we fear, an exclusive niche? Independent cinema was born out of very few movies. If you look at the history of Eraserhead—that film on its own almost created all of cult cinema programming. One movie can do that. It can create an audience that is replicated and becomes a whole industry. And that can happen again, but it needs those films to do that. They will come as things ebb and flow. The streamers will control the whole market and then one day someone will go “I don’t want to watch this stuff, I want to watch something else” and they’ll go make it.

It’s like The Matrix, it’s a repeating cycle. There’ll always be ‘the One’. There’s Barbara Loden in 1970 making Wanda, basically inventing American independent cinema. So I don’t worry massively about it. I know it’s awkward and awful for people to go bankrupt and the cinemas to close down, but in time they’ll re-open because people will wanna see stuff. The figures for cinemagoers were massive before Covid. Are you saying that people with money are not going to exploit that? Life will find a way. Remember that the cinema industry from the beginning is one that’s in a tailspin. Every year is a disaster and they’re going bust. But they survived the Spanish Flu, which is basically the same thing.

Two months ago, you quickly made a horror movie. We’re going to get a lot of these from filmmakers who just need to create something this year. What can you identify now about this inevitable next wave of micro-budget, micro-schedule pandemic-era cinema? I’ve always made micro-budget films so that side of it is not so crazy. There will be a lot of Zoom and people-locked-in-houses films but they won’t be so interesting. They’re more to-keep-you-sane kind of filmmaking which is absolutely fine. Where you should look for [the ‘pandemic-era’ films] is from the kids and young adults through 14 to 25 who’ve been the most affected by it. They will be the ones making the true movies about the pandemic which will be in like five years’ time.

People going through GCSEs and A-Levels [final high-school exams in England] will have had their social contracts thoroughly smashed by the government after society tells them that this is the most important thing you’re ever gonna do in your life. Then the next day the government tells them “actually, you’ve all passed”, then the next day they go “no, you’ve all failed”, and then “oh no, you’ve all passed”. It’s totally bizarre. Anyone who’s in university at the moment [is] thinking about how they’ve worked really hard to get to that position and now they’ve had it taken away from them. That type of schism in that group will make for a unique set of storytelling impetus. Much more interesting than from my perspective of being a middle-age bloke and having to stay in my house for a bit, which was alright. Their experience is extreme and that will change cinema.

Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs Danvers in ‘Rebecca’.

It’s time to probe into your taste in film. Firstly, three questions about Alfred Hitchcock: his best film, most underrated film, and most overrated film? It’s tricky, there’s a lot to choose from. I think Psycho is his best film because, much like Wanda, it was the invention of indie cinema. He took a TV crew to go and do a personal project and then completely redefined horror, and he did it in the same year as Peeping Tom.

There’s stuff I really like in Torn Curtain. Certainly the murder scene where they’re trying to stick the guy in the oven. It’s a gut-wrenching sequence. Overrated, I don’t know. It’s just a bit mean, isn’t it? Overrated by who? They’re all massively rated, aren’t they?

Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? The slightly uncool version of my answer is the first fifteen minutes of Dr. No before I got sent to bed. We used to watch movies on the telly when I was a kid, so movies would start at 7pm and I had to go to bed at 7:30pm. You would get to see the first half-hour and that would be it. The opening was really intriguing. I never actually saw a lot of these movies until I was much older.

The more grown-up answer is a film like Taxi Driver. It was the first time where I felt like I’d been transported in a way where there was an authorship to a film that I didn’t understand. It had done something to me that television and straightforward movies hadn’t done and made me feel very strange. It was something to do with the very, very intense mixture of sound, music and image and I started to understand that that was cinema.

What horror movie do you watch every Hallowe’en? I watch The Thing every year but I don’t tend to celebrate Hallowe’en, to be honest. I’m of an age where it wasn’t a big deal and was never particularly celebrated. I find it a bit like “what’s all this Hallowe’en about?”—horror films for me are for all year-round.

What’s a brilliant mindfuck movie that perhaps even cinephiles haven’t seen? What grade of cinephile are we talking? All of the work by Jan Švankmajer, maybe. Hard to Be a God is pretty mindfucky if you want a bit of that, but cinephiles should know about it. It’s pretty intense. Marketa Lazarová too.

‘Marketa Lazarová’ (1967) directed by František Vláčil.

What is the greatest screen romance that you totally fell head over heels for? I guess it’s Casablanca for me. That would be it.

Which coming-of-age film did you connect to the most as a teenager? [Pauses for effect] Scum.

Who is an exciting newcomer director we should keep our eyes on? God, I don’t know. I would say Jim Hosking but he’s older than me and he’s not a newcomer because he’s done two movies. So, that’s rubbish. He doesn’t count.

[Editor’s note: Hosking contributed to ABCs of Death 2 with the segment “G is for Grandad” while Wheatley contributed to The ABCs of Death with the segment “U is for Unearthed” and also executive produced the follow-up film.]

What was your best cinema experience? [Spoiler warning for The Thing.]

Oh, one that speaks in my mind is seeing The Thing at an all-nighter in the Scala at King’s Cross, and I was sitting right next to this drunk guy who was talking along to the screen. It was a packed cinema with about 300 people, and someone at the front told him “will you just shut up?” The guy says “I won’t shut up. You tell me to shut up again and I’ll spoil the whole film!” The whole audience goes “no, no, no!” and he went “it’s the black guy and the guy with the beard—everyone else dies!” That made me laugh so much.

Do you have a favorite film you’ve watched so far this year? Yeah, Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Related content

Classic Gothic Literature to Film—Jennifer Boddaert’s list

Ava’s Dark Romance list

Ben Wheatley’s Life in Film list

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘Rebecca’ is in select US theaters on October 17, and streaming on Netflix everywhere on October 21.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Aladdin 2019

I think that the Disney remakes are a lot like the direct-to-video sequels of a decade or so ago; they may not be as good as the original, but I think they do have their merits and some are even good. People all too often seem to write them off as lazy rehashes, and I won’t deny that some are, but I frankly see this as no different than the numerous versions of Shakespeare’s plays put to screen. If a director has an interesting vision on how to retell a story I love, I’ll give them a shot. Heck, I gave The Jungle Book a shot even though I dislike the original film and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. On the other side, though, we have the remake of Beauty and the Beast, which was a complete and utter travesty. And in both cases I think it boiled down to what was changed and what wasn’t. The Jungle Book altered quite a bit – Louie’s species, Kaa’s gender, the ending, no stupid vultures – and ultimately was a more entertaining story to me because of it, as it kept the same basic framework while twisting stuff around. Beauty, on the other hand, did so little different aside from making Lefou more entertaining and charismatic than Gaston that it just fell flat; I SAW all this before, and done better, so why should I care?

I bring all this up because, obviously, I had mixed feelings going to see Aladdin. Aladdin is my absolute favorite Disney movie and has been since I was a kid, and Robin Williams’ Genie is one of my all-time favorite characters in anything, so this movie had quite an uphill battle to impress me. Combine that with the lackluster trailers and some iffy drama behind the scenes involving brownface (which I should note was corrected in reshoots after this came to light), and I was really hesitant in seeing this. But see it I did, and with my expectations basically being “I’ll like Will Smith but I don’t know about the rest,” I must say… I was just blown out of the water by how genuinely good the film is.

Now, of course, I still think the original animated film is best. But this remake does what I think any good remake or readaptation of a prior work should do: it tells me the story I love with some new twists and turns added in. Obviously there’s no mind-boggling revelations that change the course of the entire story, but I appreciate a lot of the flourishes they added in. Case in point: the film opens up on a ship, and a sailor played by Will Smith sets up the movie as a story he is telling to his children. As we are already well aware Smith is playing the Genie, this is sort of a clever shout out to the heavily implied idea that the merchant at the start of the animated film is just Genie in one of his forms telling us a story. The fact they decided to keep that bit in and expand upon it a bit filled me with hope that wasn’t lost as the movie continued.

In general, all that they added to the plot was welcome. I loved Jasmine’s haindmaiden friend Dahlia, I loved the expansion on Jafar’s backstory, I like how they changed Jasmine’s motivations from wanting to run away from the palace to wanting to go out and get to know her people better… it all made the story feel a lot more fleshed out and engaging. They even make no one recognizing that Aladdin is Prince Ali make sense! However, I have to say not all of the changes work perfectly. Jasmine gets her own song, for instance, and it is a very good and powerful song, with its reprise late in the movie being one of the best scenes hands down. The issue is the song doesn’t really mesh well with the rest of the soundtrack, and it does stick out quite a bit. Still, this is a borderline nitpick.

What isn’t a nitpick is Jafar. Jafar is the most mixed bag in this film. While I do like that they made him a lot less obviously evil, and I like the backstory they gave him and his reasoning for wanting power, and basically a lot of his characterization… Jafar just doesn’t feel much like Jafar. He’s a great villain but he’s not a great Jafar, and I think the big problem is that Iago has been utterly neutered. He’s not the snarky, angry, mouthy jerk that Gilbert Gottfried played; here, Iago is just a smart but sadly stereotypical talking parrot played by Alan Tudyk, marking the second time Disney has wasted this talented man playing a useless bird. With Jafar having no one to bounce off of, he just feels a lot less impressive, and not helping matters is his showing in the third act, where he loses a lot of the fun and theatricality that movie Jafar had. He doesn’t even turn into a snake! He doesn’t ruin the film, but Jafar really does feel like someone they should have polished a bit more.

The rest of the cast fares a bit better. Jasmine’s actress Naomi Scott is one of the standouts among the cast, with her gorgeous singing voice and beautiful dresses really selling you that she IS Jasmine. I actually prefer her to the animated one, honestly. The same I sadly cannot say for Aladdin, because while Mena Massoud does a good job and brings a sort of awkward charm, I don’t think he quite matches up to the original Aladdin. The rest of the ensemble cast is pretty solid as well, but I’m sure there’s one man you really want to know about: Will Smith.

Will Smith had some big shoes to fill here, and even he knew it. He was playing a beloved character by a beloved actor in a remake of a beloved movie, and more than just that, he was playing the character that honestly makes the movie work as well as it does. People were writing him off before the movie came out due to how weird the CGI looked, but at the end of the day… Will Smith steals the show. Smith’s Genie is everything you want out of a remake of a character: a fresh take that stands on its own while respecting the original. He doesn’t just ape Williams’ performance, he adds his own spin, turning the Genie into basically a magical dating coach and wingman for Aladdin (which has lead to numerous jokes about how this is really a remake of Hitch). It works really well, and Massoud and Smith play off each other very well. What really sells Smith is definitely the scene where Aladdin, now a raging jackass on an ego trip, tells Genie he isn’t going to free him. Where Williams’ had the Genie react with resentment and bitterness, Smith’s Genie reacts with the most crushed, sad response; he is just genuinely hurt and is so sad to see a guy he considered a friend turn out like all the masters before him. This little change there easily made Smith’s Genie every bit as good as Williams’ in his own way.

This movie is a lot of fun, and I hate how everyone just wrote it off before it came out. Even I did that, and that’s something I need to work on correcting; these remakes, no matter their quality, do have some level of artistic merit to them, and regardless of your feelings there is nothing wrong with them existing. If this had been a shot-for-shot remake like Van Sant’s Psycho, I’d have more of a problem, but this movie was someone else’s view on a story I’d seen before. I hope Disney uses this movie as a template on how to properly do their remakes as opposed to Beauty, because this really was everything I could have wanted from one: fun, enjoyable, good expansion, good changes, and while not as good as the original it is good in its own right.

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 1, Episode 11, The 12-Step Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi, I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer.

Chris: I’m Chris Downey, Executive Producer and Co-Writer of this episode, The 12-Step Job.

John: I’m John Rogers, Executive Producer.

Amy: I’m Amy Berg, Writer and Producer.

Rod: And I’m Rod Hardy, I’m the Director of the episode.

John: Welcome to The 12 Step Job! This is an unusual episode in that this is our bad guy and we meet him first and we don’t usually meet him first.

Amy: This is true.

John: This is true. Also the music video sound that you’re hearing is not anybody. There is actually a big debate on the message boards about who this was, and this was actually our composer, right?

Dean: Joe LoDuca wrote this song for us. We told him the kind of song we wanted, and he knocked this one out of the park.

Chris: It’s fantastic. The only thing he had was Celtic punk.

[All laugh]

Chris: And if I could tell you that this song was exactly the song I had in my head, it’s really the truth.

John: Cool!

Amy: We actually made Drew, this is Drew Powell, our great guest star for this episode, we actually gave him homework to go out and listen to some Irish punk. So, when he does the lip syncing here of what it is, and then Joe matched the song to whatever he was mumbling.

John: That’s pretty great!

Amy: Yeah.

Rod: Drew’s played a drunken Irishman many times in his life I think.

[All laugh]

Rod: One of the treats about casting him in this particular role.

Chris: Now you worked with him before, you knew him before, right?

Rod: You know I met him because he and another acting partner had written a screenplay they wanted to do in Australia, and they discussed it with me, and by chance some six months later, I’m in the casting session. I sit there, and in walks Drew so it was a real treat to catch up. So, he is a very talented young actor, and I think what he’s delivered from this role is something that I think will push his career ahead forward. I have no question about that.

John: I- you really- he was one of those guys and we cast him off a tiny one inch square on a computer.

Chris: That Amy found.

Amy: Yeah, yeah, I saw his- it was like an 8 by 10 piece of paper with about 20 faces on it. I was like you know what, I like this guy. I literally circled him, and we brought him into the audition, and we’re like ok, he’s it.

Rod: But you know he also played Hoss in the remake of Ponderosa, which was also made in Australia, and in fact he’s married to an Australian. So, there’s that Australian connection once again. I’m the guy with the funny accent, by the way. I’m from East Texas if you can tell.

[All laugh]

John: This con is actually scarily prescient, because this is about a charity that got ripped off by a money manager. And of course we wrote this months and months before the Madoff scandal hit.

Amy: Yes, hello Bernie Madoff.

John: Yeah.

Amy: We are psychic.

John: Not psychic, just that I think the- unfortunately scumbags exist, but the news wasn’t covering them until it hit the critical mass that it eventually hit.

Chris: I don’t know if we would have decided to make our Madoff character the sympathetic one in the episode had we written it post Madoff.

[All laugh]

John: Probably not.

Amy and John: That’s probably true.

Amy: This actress, by the way, her name is Denice Sealy and she’s fantastic. She really grounds it for us.

Dean: By the way, I love this shot, how it goes all the way around the room, it covers everything in the scene, and it’s seamless.

Rod: Well, you know Dean, it was one of the things about doing this show for me, is you set up a high standard with that pilot, I might say, speaking of good shots. And I’m not here to just pat you on the shoulder, but you set up a really interesting style and look that I found really worthwhile following through, and this set in particular gives you a chance to do 360 degrees, as you know, we do quite often in this show.

John: Also, that’s- this is one of the ones where we really tried to address Nate’s drinking, and as you see she sort of smells the booze in the pop can, and not as the resident alcoholic ,but certainly as the person most familiar with the alcoholic lifestyle, it’s laid in through the entire season.

Chris: How’s that beer by the way?

John: It’s just great, thank you.

Chris: Ok, good.

John: The reason we all have beer, by the way, is that I insisted that I would be drinking every session and now everyone’s into it so.. Why does that make me the bad guy?

Rod: My way of getting to know Tim was before I actually started on the show, when we went out on a Saturday night with the DP and the operator and a bunch of other people, and we drank. Just to see what it would be like.

[All laugh]

Amy: Pure research.

Rod: Thanks for the gig!

John: No problem. But, yeah, it’s actually laid in fairly thoroughly throughout the season. You will never see an episode where he doesn’t have a drink in his hand, and it’s kind of interesting that this air orde,r there were two episodes about his drinking in a row, but this episode was meant to be the one where you realize with Sophie- and you’re kind of in the Sophie POV- that she realizes at the same time that the audience does, he’s not well, that this is not- That funny little habit we’ve given him is actually catching up with him. It’s starting to roll up on him.

Amy: By the way, our graphics guy literally handed me a map and I had to circle spots on the map, and then they drew lines. Like, ‘OK what’s a pattern?’ was basically my, uh-

Chris: Well nice job! It was a really nice- a very nice Family Circus  job.

Dean: I still don’t get the Family Circus joke.

Amy: Honestly, I didn’t get it either.

Chris: Billy, from the Family Circus, would walk from here and they would say, “Billy, go bring this laundry to the basket!” and they would show the route that he took all around.

John: It was a part of the Family Circus cartoons- was always some big convoluted route with Billy at the end of it, kind of-

Rod: God, I’m going to ask who Family Circus is.

All: Oh!

Rod: Sorry about that!

John: Billy would like have taken something. He would say, “Billy, go take something to the laundry.” and Billy would like take something from the fridge, he would stop by and go outside and bury a dead hooker. He’d steal a car. He’d- what?

[All laugh]

John: That was my version of Family Circus.

Rod: The great thing about this scene and this character throughout this episode, to me, was the flawed hero. There’s nothing more appealing on-screen than when one of your heroes has a slight dysfunction.

Dean: This moment here between Eliot and Hardison, you so nailed the fun of these guys together. In fact, I think of all the episodes this season, this one was my absolute favorite, as far as these two guys together having fun, and Rod, I just think that you absolutely nailed that relationship.

Rod: Thank you, do you know what it was? I think I read the screenplay and, I hate to be cliched here, but I really got a sense of a Lethal Weapon-style relationship between them- between these two characters and, on television, that’s very rare, and I think you guys wrote a really nice piece for both of them. They both, sort of, stood out very strong.

John: And it helps that the actors themselves are friends. It really helps that they like playing this stuff, they’re really into it.

Amy: And they were actually calling themselves Riggs and Murtaugh throughout the episode. So, it was really funny. So, they embraced it too.

Chris: The interesting thing in this scene too, speaking of the dynamic between the actors, was also watching Christian Kane helping teach Aldis Hodge how to fight. So, you kinda saw that their dynamic as actors-

Chris and John: -is somewhat similar to the characters.

Chris: Because he was kind of showing him how to do the moves in the fake fight coming up.

John: By the way as far as verisimilitude goes, I really appreciate that your crummy bar/strip joint has a We Support the Troops banner on the. That is like- man when I was a stand up and I was going to these small towns, there was like-

Rod: I have to be perfectly honest with you, you know, this is a used car yard.

John: I know. It’s really magnificent.

Rod: It was really something. The sign helped a lot. Yeah, yeah.

John: It was a great piece of production. It really was.

Dean: It’s also one of my favorite fight scenes of the year too. I thought this was really great, and it’s nice to see. We had one episode where Aldis did a little bit of fighting, where he fought the injured.

Amy: More a shove than anything.

Dean: And we saw that he’s graduated from that to actually being in a fight scene.

John: But even if you look at it, he’s not good. He tangles guys up, he gets hit. You know, what he’s really doing is kind of pull the guys off Eliot. But most of it, he’s using his reach and his arms and really more tangling them up. Charlie Brewer did a good job of separating out their fight styles.

Rod: And let me tell you, these scenes work because the actors can do it themselves.

Dean: That shot, Rod, gave me a heart attack, when I saw it I said, “Wait a minute, who said the actors can dive away from a moving car!”

John: You know what, Dean, it’s really for the best that we don’t tell you everything that’s going on on the set.

Dean: See what happens when I don’t show up on set.

Amy: Dean, Dean, the insurance company is on the phone.

Dean: And this was a great bit. This whole shooting the engine block, “I was aiming for his leg.”

Chris: That was his ad-lib.

Amy: I think it was in- on the script it was, “I was aiming for the tire.”

Chris: It was “aiming for the tire,” and he said “I was aiming for his leg.”

John: I also like how all the actors have developed a different way of talking into the headpiece. Each one has a different way of letting the audience know that they’re talking into the- are moving the conversation on.

Amy: Christian is great at that, by the way. Whenever it’s out of context, he knows to reach to his ear.

John: He establishes the space.

Chris: Rod, I also like how you used the crane in this show. You never did it in a big kind of elaborate shot it was always very- like that was a very subtle way to bring you into the car. You have another thing before where you establish just before, the showdown. I love how you use the crane in this episode.

Rod: You know when you’re doing these seven day episodes, it’s about trying to find the angles that are different. It’s not about getting something flashy that takes away from the storytelling, it’s about finding an odd angle- and I thought that went nicely, thank you.

John: I do love that a recurring thing in these commentaries is, “When you’re doing these seven day episodes.”

[All laugh}

John: The absolutely mad schedule.

Amy: Wait till we do a Bank Shot Job and we talk about how we did that in six.

Chris: This is a great transition here, between him sleeping on the airbag-

Chris and John: -and waking up.

John: That’s a great transition.

Amy: By the way, that’s- all the snoring sounds are ADR. He did that after the fact; I think, he snores.

Dean: And I love that reveal of Tim, there, because you don’t know where we are because the story hasn’t told us exactly what we’re going to do, and it’s such a lovely way to go out on the act.

Rod: I was reminding Drew of his last hangover during this scene, and he really nailed it.

Amy: Because it was the night before.

John: No, yeah, the twist reveal. This is where we started to land this sort of template as it evolved over the course of the season, and now the place where we’re going to live for the rest of the show, is kind of dumped on the end of the first act. It’s really- it’s interesting to see how hyper-aggressive our first acts got near the end of the season, as we crunched how much we could shoot. I mean really time- shooting time began to dictate that.

Chris and Amy: Right.

Chris: And it was always our intention to not show a lot of the prep, like you do in a lot of other con and heist shows. That we’re gonna kind of like drop you in.

John: We’re just going to assume that they’re good enough to pull this off.

Rod: Now this was an actual rehab center which you guys know about.

Amy: Yeah, it’s the Veteran’s facility.

Rod: The Veteran’s facility so- and they were just fantastic with us. They really allowed us freedom right across the place. And a lot of really nice guys there.

John: And a beautiful location.

Amy: This actor playing Dr. Frank, by the way, is Garrett Brown, and he’s that guy that you know from that show that you never remember his name.

[All laugh]

Chris: That’s exactly what my wife said watching this.

Amy: ‘It’s that guy!’, but Garrett Brown’s his name, kids. He’s fantastic.

John: Now this is interesting, the light fixtures are what sell it. That’s a transition from the rehab center. This is on a soundstage.

Chris: That’s a soundstage. They did a fantastic job matching it.

Dean: I love this scene.

John: Now here’s a quick question, the exterior roundy rounds, I know how they’re done. How did you do this interior? Because you’ve got some where you’re kind of drifting, and you’ve got some where you’re doing the sort of roundy round shots.

Rod: You know what we do is, we put a remote head camera in the middle of the group. So, we’re able to just remotely make the camera focus on whoever we wanted, and it just gives you another perspective. You can’t use it all the time, but it gives you another perspective.

John: Right.

Rod: I mean. I love her sense of comedy, is-

Amy: Beth is amazing.

John: Beth is incredibly funny.

Rod: She’s just fabulous.

Amy: And it’s weird, because she doesn’t ad-lib dialogue very much, but all her sort of facial features and physicalities are all ad-libs, and they’re just amazing.

John: And breaking in and out of this circle here is really visually interesting.

Amy: Yeah.

John: Now did you get this done in one day?

Amy: Yeah, in one day, everything in this room.

Rod: But it’s a seven day shoot.

[All laugh]

Chris: Did you mention that?

Dean: And this girl was phenomenal.

Amy: This is- Marisa is fantastic and John Kerry - not the senator - is playing our Gary Busey look-alike, and they were both brilliant.

Dean: From heaven, from heaven.

Rod: And I think she’s playing a Michael Jackson look-alike.

Rod and Amy: And he's playing a Busey look alike.

Rod: But she was really terrific. She’s a smart young actress.

Amy: She’s wonderful.

John: We have to give a shout out to April Webster and Scott David for this one because-

Dean: -because our casting-

John: -this casting-

Amy: One of our better- well we’ve had great casting. But this one- the day players were fantastic

Chris: Sulentine[?], you expect them to give you some good Sulentin[?], but when you need somebody that’s mumbling incoherently...

Amy: Yeah. It's not like there’s a template for that for casting agents.

John: I also just realized this whole scene is basically just Tim being annoyed and it really is and this whole thing is just focused around his frustration.

Amy: And apparently Parker, too.

[All laugh]

Rod: I love Tims ad-lib about the Gary Busey look alike/

Amy: Yeah, yeah that was an adlib that was fantastic. By the way John Kerry, our Gary Busey, literally spoke the words written on the page for dialogue which were just basically words that Chris and I made up.

Chris: He did we wrote them, yeah. Hers might have had a little more relationship to what the words were supposed to be than in mine but it was- it was- he read them.

Amy: Yeah yeah.

John: Now here's something since this is sort of how one scene sort of plays out, I can ask the writers, two writers who don't usually write together, how’d you split it up?

Chris: We split it into acts; it was kind of interesting. I wrote acts one and two.

Amy: I wrote acts four and five.

Amy and Chris: - and we picked scenes in act three that we wrote separately.

Chris: We said, ‘can you start working on that first scene in act three?’

Amy: Yeah I got that, can you do this?

Chris: ‘Alright alright, how did that one end?’

Amy: And oddly there wasn’t a lot of having to polish after the fact, either because, I think because we wrote this towards the end of the season, our writing styles meshed and we got the voices down.

Chris: And I’ll say something else when I was watching with my wife, I asked my wife if she could tell who wrote what half, and it took her a minute, it took her awhile, but she said I think you wrote the first half.

Amy: Ahh, nice.

Chris: But it was pretty close. For that to happen, I think, it's a pretty good seamless style.

Amy: By the way, my brother calls me after every episode to tell me what bits I wrote in every episode. He knows me so well that he can target my jokes, even in episodes I didn’t write.

John: Vocal rhythms. You know, you transfer your vocal rhythms to your characters’ dialogue.

Rod: That last shot we saw was shot at about 9:30 at night and when was pitch black outside and David Connell, our DP, does an amazing job at being able to create that illusion, I might say.

Amy: And I’m pretty sure Beth, at this point, can actually pick a lock. She's done so much research on con and stuff.

John: We mentioned on another commentary, Apollo says she has the best hands of the cast and she could actually do this if she wanted to.

Amy: She does.

Rod: She’s got good legs, too, by the way.

[All laugh]

Amy: We love you Beth, in a platonic way.

John: Yeah, but we have all sorts of parameters that we’re not allowed to talk about.

Dean: Wait until you see her in the dress in the season finale.

John: Yeah, that was a little stunning.

Amy: That was nice.

Rod: I thought her dress at the wrap party was pretty damn good, too.

John: Well the thing is, you tomboy her up, and the writers, you have to think about the characters in a certain way, you know. We got her in the pony tail and the break-in clothes the whole time, then we finally glam her up in the season finale and it’s like ‘Oh!’

Dean: I love her reactions to the whole medication thing here. Again, as you were saying, it’s not dialogue that she’s improvising, but the way she takes the pill and eats it says more about her character than any dialogue.

Chris: That’s not in the script.

Amy: Yeah, it’s the best I’ve ever seen, and as scripted she wasn’t actually supposed to eat it, which she does. She actually chews it. But she- it was scripted to where she just looks at it, and then it was a reveal in the next group therapy scene that she was affected and she had taken it. But how do you not show that? How do you not, like-

[All laugh]

Chris: It’s the defiance. This is a fantastic shot here.

Rod: And here is one of the best car park locations in Los Angeles.

John: This is production value.

Amy: That’s my RAV4, by the way. Made its debut, right there.

Dean: I think this is my favorite scene of the series.

John: Really?

Dean: yeah. These two guys, the bomb.

Amy: Riggs and Murtaugh.

Dean: I tell you, I could watch this all day long.

John: You realize that right now, Tim Hutton is sitting at home listening to this commentary with a single tear rolling down his cheek. I hope you’re happy. He’s like cradling his Oscar, he’s like ‘Dean!’

Chris: He acts a hole into this episode, he really does.

Dean: I’ll bet it’s his favorite, too.

John: It is pretty great. It is amazing, you know this car park really is no more special than other car parks, but just being out and seeing LA behind you just adds so much more to the production value.

Amy: Yeah, the backdrop in this is just gorgeous.

Rod: Of course you guys had written some of these scenes being night scenes, which-

John: That’s adorable. [Laughs]

Amy: There was about 5 or 6 night scenes that became day scenes.

Chris: For those of you that don’t know, night scenes are very expensive.

John: Yes. They’re very expensive. You’re shifting the entire shooting schedule of the crew, you’re changing, you know.

Chris: Let me tell you, I was talking about this earlier today with Amy, I actually think that, aside from the economic reasons of being in the day, I actually think that it lightens up the fun, being in the day time. And I think it elevated the fun of this episode, having it be bright.

Amy: It kinda gives it more energy, visually and physically.

Dean: It would’ve been more heavy, if it was at night.

Amy: I remember when- I don’t know where Chris was, Chris I think you were on set, supervising Juror when John and I were doing the polish on this scene, and we were trying to make it shorter, but in fact we ended up making it a page longer because we kept adding stuff to it. And you were playing Hardison and I was playing Eliot, and that’s how we got to the ‘reboot, kick it’ line.

Rod: Which is a good line.

John: It was literally just us talking through the scene.

Amy: Yeah, it was us talking through the scene because you know John is the big tech nerd on the show, and apparently I’m the tough ass-kicker, I don’t know how that translates but-

John: But apparently- I love the fact that so many things are computerized in a car now, including, you know the- I just literally put a heavy bag of groceries on the passenger side and it triggered the seatbelt alarm.

Chris: Sure, that’s in the prius. I have that too.

John: Yeah, and so the idea that the bomb would be wired to the pressure in the- rather than the ignition just kind of amused me and allowed us to trap him in the car. Which really worked because computer guy can’t touch the computer.

Dean: Well what i love is the switch in dynamics, in the beginning of the scene, Hardison is nervous and Eliot knows what he’s doing. And then suddenly it all turns around.

Chris: Once it becomes a computer, it becomes- Hardison takes over.

Dean: The ‘run the bag of bricks by me again’ is the best line.

Rod: That’s a good line.

Amy: It’s fabulous.

John: And also I gotta say, I mean we talk a lot about how much we love him ,and how great he is, Chris Kane does little- these little choices, little bits, particularly in comedy lines, he’s a really great comedic actor.

Amy: Yeah.

Chris: It’s right there.

Amy: And there it is, folks.

Dean: And again the more frustrated he gets, the funnier he is.

John: Just right there, look at it.

Chris: A lot of hesitations, he's great.

Amy: Right there! That’s exactly what we’re- yeah, just the blinking and the- ‘run… run the bag of bricks by me again?’

John: It’s not- there’s not a lot of action guys that have that chops. I mean, seriously.

Amy: And the shaking of the hand there, like, you never really see

Chris: There’s some great shots here coming up here.

Dean: You can tell they really like each other here, both as characters and as actors.

Amy: Oh, for sure.

Chris: Oh, I love that shot.

Rod: And this here is fantastic, very funny.

John: I love that shot. Also popping out wide here was inspiring, I have to say.

Chris: Yeah, well comedy plays in the master.

Amy: Yeah, comedy plays in the master.

Chris: And we talk about that a lot, you want- want space for-

Dean: Was the line ‘cry a little’ in the script?

Amy: That, yeah, I wrote that, yeah, ‘I wanna cry a little.’

John: Whenever you give him, particularly- it’s tricky with Aldis because, he’s incredibly tall and in great shape, and it’s interesting we were talking about the promo from one of the other episodes, from Two Horse, where the promo shot, the iconic promo shot from the show, is him in the suit with Tim at the track.

Dean: Right.

John: He has an incredible presence, and so writing him down to be geeky and afraid is actually fairly challenging, you have to kinda go a little far with it.

Dean: That’s the crane shot I was talking about.

Chris: Yeah this shot, I love this shot.

John: yeah arriving down there, that’s really nice.

Amy: The other thing about the ad-libs between those two, is that by the end of the season, we’ve gotten to know the characters and the actors who play them so well that we were writing the ad-libs for them.

John: Yeah

Amy: Like, to where moments that felt like they were ad-libbed, were just little lines that we wrote because we knew they would say them.

Chris: On the spot, yeah.

John: This is also one of my favorite bits, the idea of the axis- the axis of scumbags.

Amy: The axis of scumbags, yes.

John: I had just finished the book McMafia and the idea that- that essentially the universality of organized crime, and the kind of black market, the black economy that’s out there, there would be nexuses and our guys would naturally stumble into them.

Dean: Another compliment i want to give you, Rod, is that when I was first looking at this script, I got nervous about these gangs-

Rod: Right.

Dean: -because the initial image in my head was so cliche, I thought ‘oh they could be so goofy’,  buti the fact that you put them all in these dark suits and made them look so elegant, really made these gangs intimidating.

Amy: Yeah, that they weren’t wearing bandanas.

Dean: It made these scenes work. They didn’t feel like the typical-

Rod: Right.

Amy: And I think it helps that we got Chase Kim, and we’ve got Cisco Reyes right there playing the Mexican gang leader and they brought some gravitas to it which is nice.

Rod: They certainly did.

John: You got good actors- I mean this is cast great all the way down. All the way down through the day players. I’d use either one of them in a leading role, you know?

Dean: Sure. Now is that the crane just moving slowly?

Rod: Yeah it was, and once it had come to the ground we just had it move slowly on the ground.

John: So you wrote- you ran the whole scene with the crane moving.

Amy: There was a crane going the whole time, yeah.

Rod: Because there were so many members of the cast here, I wanted to be able to get that sense on a big wide shot, so you could see the gangs and their positions within this story and it worked really nicely.

John: That’s another thing you did really well here, Rod, if i can say, action all depends on geography.

Dean: Yeah and you never lose the geography.

Chris: You always know where everything is.

John: A lot of action directors just think it’s in the choppiness or the movement, it’s all about knowing where everybody is at all times.

Dean: We started going down, we leave going back up; it’s so great.

Amy: Yeah i love it, love it!

Dean: And i love this scene too. This is my favorite scene of these two together.

John: Yeah it’s interesting, it’s really- it’s really the moment where she starts to realize he’s more broken than she thought he was. You know?

Dean: Yeah.

John: All joking aside, all banter aside, you know, this is not- this is not funny anymore.

Rod: Which is interesting when you think about, the person you look up to, the man that leads the group, has these flaws and could let you down. It sets up a great thing for these characters for the future too.

Chris: And you kinda get a window into how unself-aware he is. I mean that- here’s a person who devised this con, that’s putting himself in rehab, because he has no concept that he has a problem. Or you could kinda look at it as, on some level did he- was he trying to test himself to see if he really did have a problem. It’s really interesting

Amy: Can we take a minute to say how awesome Timothy Hutton is in this episode?

John: Yes.

Amy: He’s so good.

Dean: He’s amazing in this episode. Because he’s able to play the depth of the problem and still be funny.

Amy: Absolutely.

Dean: That’s hard to do. You know, it would have been so easy to slip into melodrama.

Amy: Right.

Rod: And also keep the continuity performance, when you realize how in and out of scenes we shoot. He kept it going and worked it really nicely.

Chris: This is a fan favorite right here.

Amy: By the way, I wrote this scene in approximately thirty seconds, but-

Dean: But what makes the scene, is Christians face right… there!

[All laugh]

Rod: ‘Is that where the scam’s going?’

Dean: That’s what makes the scene! That reaction, right there.

Amy: I actually played a joke on Aldis, after I wrote this scene, I went down to the set - they were shooting Stork Job at the time - and I told him that I had this three page scene where in order to get into the rehab facility, that they were going to have to play gay lovers. And I wanted to make sure that he was comfortable with the kiss.

[All laugh]

Chris: Oh, that’s great.

Amy: It literally went on for ten minutes, he got really paranoid, and Christian who can read me like John can read me, knew I was joking the whole time, but Aldis just-

John: You’re a horrible poker player.

Amy: I’m a horrible poker player, it’s true. But I got Aldis, probably because he’s 22.

John: No the- yeah that was a great little improv. I mean it was interesting to see how you- trying to move people in and out of this rehab structure actually became part of the challenge of the show. When you split the team, a lot of the fun is trying to get them back together.

Chris: Well originally we kind of thought that they were all gonna be in there, and that Eliot was going to be a rage-aholic, and then it was just once we figured let’s split them up, it that’s when it just-

Amy: And you need some time to just breathe, too. Which is nice to sort of leave it and come back to it.

Dean: I love Eliot's moment here where he just says ‘Are you ok?’. Where it’s like, you get the feeling that this is starting to spread, that- their fear that the leader may be coming apart.

Amy: Yeah, and I love Gina here too, because-

Dean: She covers for him.

Amy: -she’s taking charge, she’s-

John: She’s enabling. Which by the way, now that the season has wrapped, we can make a point- we can actually, since you’re watching on DVD we can tell you, this is part of the fact that we knew this relationship wasn’t gonna work.

Dean: Right.

John: I mean going forward, it’s interesting, because you kinda expect it to be the big romance of the season, but about a third of the way through, we realize no, they’re too broken, this isn’t going to work. And so we had to start writing to the fact that she’s not mature enough, she’s still a criminal, he’s still a drunk, he’s not over his wife, and so it was a really fine line the actors had to walk the whole season.

Chris: I love the way this is composed, too. I love him in the middle of- Rod, you did some great stuff of Tim smoldering in the background, that I love.

[All laugh]

Rod: He’s always present-

Chris: There’s one coming up that I thought was fantastic, but this, too.

Amy: Yeah, he never left, Tim. He was always there.

Rod: The thing about working with this cast is that there’s an embarrassment of riches, they have- they each have their own place and they develop the scene accordingly, but when you have the chance to get in and cut it whichever way you want- look at this scene.

[All laugh]

John: I mean really, it’s all- it’s all anger.

Amy: There’s really nothing better than Parker on happy pills, by the way. I love it.

John: And the gimmick that everyone can understand him, but Tim it’s really just- I really do adore. That, there you go, over to you.

Dean: And I can’t say enough about our DP.

Amy: Dave Connell, baby.

Dean: Episode after episode, what he’s doing every week, was a quality level so beyond what I’d even hoped for. I mean, I just think every shot is gorgeous.

Amy: Yeah.

John: Especially since we’re doing it, what we do it in nine, ten days? How do we do it?

Dean: Seven days!

Amy: Wow, seven days. Wow how do you make a shoot in seven days Dean?

Dean: Quickly!

[All laugh]

John: Oh, dear. There’s actually- I do wanna say one lifestyle thing, in the previous scene where-

Chris and Dean: I love that!

John: Where Tim has the shakes, as we were pitching the- pitching the thing in the room? I told the story about when I’d been doing stand up in Australia, and we were drinking so heavily that when I stopped drinking for a day, I actually got the shakes that night.

Dean: Right.

John: And it was a great moment with the younger writers who were like, ‘the shakes? What are the shakes?’ and I went ‘oh that’s not good, I’ve had a symptom nobody here has had? That’s not- that’s not healthy’

[All laugh]

Amy: That was actually really funny.

John: The con actually- what I like, too, is the con goes along the 12 step progress- program. He has to make amends, that’s a logical part of the-

Chris: Yeah, that’s part of the- we tried to work it into the episode.

Dean: There’s actually a really nice button on the scene that we had to lose for time. It wasn’t because we didn’t like it, it was just trying to get it in within the time, and hopefully on this DVD you’ll be able to see that button.

Amy: Yeah.

Rod: God, they’re beautiful cars. They really are great cars.

Amy: Yeah! [laughs]

Dean: God bless Hyundai Genesis.

Amy: Hyundai Genesis, we love you!

Chris: Thank you, thank you very much.

Dean: And might I say, this year, when every car company did poorly and had huge losses, the only one that increased was the Hyundai Genesis. And I think it was entirely us.

[Laughter]

Amy: Oh wow, yeah.

John: So you’re- so you’re thinking that Leverage single-handedly tried to revive the auto industry in America?

Dean: Single-handedly saved this- and if more car companies-

Chris: Note- note to GM, come to us! We’ll put you on our back

Dean: I’m just saying.

Chris: We’ll put you on our back.

[All laugh]

John: We’ll do what we can for you.

Amy: Oh by the way, one of the scenes we had to lose for time is the bridge between this scene and the next scene at Leverage HQ, which we’ve filled with lovely product placement, was a montage scene of all the good deeds and people that Hurley had helped.

Dean: Which hopefully also be on the DVD.

Amy: Yes. Which we will put-

John: Did- did we shoot those?

Amy: Yes, we did! Yeah we shot them.

Chris: Yeah we shot them. Yeah yeah yeah we got them.

Dean: I think we even did the effects shots.

John: So you- you meet all the people Hurley has helped on the way which helps sell this scene where, you know what he actually didn’t just help that waitress, he’s left a trail of good deeds behind him.

Dean: Yeah

Amy: Yeah, and the strippers are very thankful for that.

John: nd that was hard casting.

[All laugh]

Rod: That was a big job to cast.

Amy: That was tough casting.

Chris: Yeah that was hard, that was tough.

John: That’s always- as soon as directors and writers see ‘stripper’ in the script, that’s always- yeah.

Amy: That’s my fault.

Chris: I think there’s a great ‘a architect’ joke in that.

John: Yeah there is

Amy: Oh there is! Yes- we- yeah.

John: That’s a big shout out to Derek Evans, the- Derek Edwards pardon me, the Canadian comic the ‘a architect’ joke is in the original script.

Amy: ‘I want to be a architect’

John: Yup. That is the greatest- the greatest stripper joke ever written.

Chris: Another great-

John: Oh, that’s great.

Chris: Tim- Tim smoldering in the background, enraged by this guy.

Dean: Beautifully composed.

John: It is. And then a nice button reveal. And also- I like the fact that we made it the San Francisco office to explain why they were all Korean and nobody noticed ‘why are they all Asian?’.

Amy: By the way, I

Chris: Nobody- nobody blinked.

John: That’s one of those things that as a writer, when you’re inside the show so much for things that you think people will catch, and people never catch.

Amy: I- I think that’s true, that’s- people never catch. Chase Kim, I love you.

[Laugher]

John: You know you’re- you have to be careful there, you’re a powerful person you can’t let the actors think you’re harassing them in some way.

Amy: Oh. Well you realize I know all of their names, that’s why I am likeable.

Dean: This is the ‘just give me something to do’ scene right?

John: Yeah.

Dean: Which- which for some reason, both the writing of it, and the performance of that line, was insanely truthful. I mean it- and it was a great out of the melancholy of this scene.

Amy: Yeah

Dean: Because it’s what he needed to get through, and in fact it’s what he’s done the whole season.

John: And I mean, it’s weird that this whole show is kind of, you know two writers wrote it, it really was kinda on the fly-

Amy and Chris: We wrote it in a week.

John: -but it unifies most of the themes of the season. It really does.

Dean: Yeah.

Amy: Yeah. Intentionally, right Chris?

Chris: Oh, absolutely, that’s what we had going.

[Laughter]

Amy: We totally planned that.

Rod: Of course it is.

Chris: We certainly didn’t wanna just, have something to film next week.

John: I like to- I like to think it was really my polish that brought that-

Amy: Oh, what?

Chris: That’s it, you brought in all the themes.

Amy: You did not touch anything we were not apart of, my friend.

[Laughter]

Dean: Rod, you going to handheld in this scene, which we normally do in a physical jeopardy scene-

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: -gave us the feeling of emotional jeopardy.

Rod: Yes, yes it does.

John: When do you make that- I mean, Rod, when you- you’re sorta looking at a scene, what is- when do you make that choice? I mean, is it-?

Rod: Do you know- I mean in one sense I like to leave the freedom of that choice right up to the point just before you’re ready to shoot it. But other times when you’re reading a script, you do tend to- and I might say there were some brilliant notes given out about the style of the production. So often you get onto a series and you come in and do an episode, everybody’s saying just ‘do what you feel comfortable with’ but at least there was a guide that- that Dean had left behind which gave, very clearly, the choices. And of course, this is normally in an action sequence, or whatever, I felt that unease, from the camera movement. And of course then we introduce Sterling and-

Amy: Oh, Mark Sheppard.

Chris: So here’s the- here’s the story of this. We were contracted to have Mark Sheppard in this particular episode. And we- the writers-

John: It wound up being different, yeah.

Chris: Dean came in and said ‘we really need to use Mark Sheppard’ and we said well we’re in rehab, I mean we just don’t have a place to put him. And Dean kinda walked out of the room, and then he walked back in, and he said ‘he’s a hallucination’ and he walked out again.

[Laughter]

Amy: That’s what Dean does all the time, by the way. Solve a problem and then leave.

Chris: And- and we sat down and we came to this scene, and this is one of the best scenes of the episode.

Amy: By the way, this is the only scene Chris and I actually wrote together.

Chris and Amy: We actually wrote this together, yeah.

Dean: I love how he’s in a different wardrobe here each time you cut to him.

Amy: Yeah, yeah. That was a- that was a nice choice

Rod: He’s a comfortable spirit.

John: And again, it’s an interesting bit of geography, because it starts at the door, to Tim at the window, and then rotate around.

Rod: Just watch Tim’s eyes now, though, I love those eyes.

Amy: Yeah, Tim, ugh, gosh...

Dean: Tim so just knocked this episode right out of the park.

Chris: And I think Mark Sheppard had some- the ideas about the glass and-

Amy: Yeah, he wanted to bring back the glass.

John: Well what’s interesting is that the glass becomes a thing in the season finale.

Chris and Amy: Yeah.

John: The glass- the idea that they trade this glass back and forth, and again it’s one of those reinforcing things where, when we started Sheppard in the show, we didn’t know if they’d been friends or not. And by the end of the season, I’m fairly sure they were best friends. And there was- there was just too much continuity between the two of them

Amy: By the way, Rod, I totally love this choice of sort of filtering this scene through Nate’s sort of psychosis in a way. Tt was fantastic.

Rod: Sort of distorted, yeah.

Dean: Yeah look at that, sort of bouncing around. And it really gave that impact on this cut, because you felt it was building building building.

Amy: I mean as great as the dialogue was, I thought it was fine that you did it that way.

[All laugh]

John: That was- that was very giving of you, very nice.

Amy: yeah. I thought that was very open

Dean: [Laughs] And he wants to hug him.

Rod: He wanted to hug him.

John: He’s not a big-

Amy: Yeah, by the way ,he’s that guy. Drew is that guy. He’s like ‘where are you? Give me a hug.’

John: Tim Hutton, not a big fan of the- the social hugging.

[Laughter]

Amy: Nate isn’t.

John: Nate- Nate isn’t, Tim is.

Amy: Tim is, Nate- Nate, not so much.

John: Yeah I mean, Tim- look at that, that is a guy just composed with rage and way off his game, yeah. He’s really- it’s weird it’s to the point with the commentary where it’s just like yeah let’s pop the sound up because Tim’s just rocking this out. Yeah, this is also one of the tricky things, where when you’re in a closed location, one of the writer room challenges is always ‘Alright, what’s the danger? At some point some dudes with suits and guns are gonna show up. What makes sense in this context?’

Amy: It was- it was fortunate-

Dean: I love- I love Parker’s reaction, when she steals the gun, accidentally.

Amy: And John- yeah, yeah.

Dean: It’s just- she can’t help herself from stealing something.

Amy: It’s just instinct, yeah. It’s just instinct.

John: And Beth really added a level of pathos to that, where it was just beautiful.

Amy: Oh, fantastic.

John: I mean, it was interesting to- it was interesting, some fans got really angry at the fact that we took Beth- Parker out of rehab.

Chris: Right.

John: Because the idea is she’s getting better!

Chris: They’re all ‘how dare they?’

[Laughter]

John: But there’s- she can’t get better! There’s no show!

[Laugher]

Amy: But see that’s not who Parker is. She’s becoming someone she isn’t, which is why you can’t have her stay that way.

Dean: And this line- that line right there is the whole season.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Where he says back to him ‘is doing all this for the right reason, wrong?’

Amy: Yeah.

Chris: Well that’s- well that’s how we envisioned this character, was kind of a cracked mirror version of Nate.

Dean: A mirror of Nate, yeah.

John: Yeah, exactly

Rod: Well he wasn’t really that smart because he’s putting all the money into the stock markets.

[All laugh]

Dean: Right.

John: Which really ended very poorly all around.

Amy: Right, it did not go well. Did not go well.

John: Yeah, look- look at that take, that was a lovely take. But yeah, the entire- again, the theme, he asked this question of like- basically sets up ‘I’m a pathetic drunken wretch and I’m doing exactly what you do aren’t I morally justified?’

Chris: Right, right.

John: There’s no way you can, you can avoid the- that situation. And that's kinda the interesting thing is, it’s a very light, funny show, underneath, running through the entire season is ‘this dude’s broken’.

Amy and Chris: Yeah.

John: Matter of fact, everyone else is getting better around him. You know he’s the one who interestingly isn’t leading them in any way shape or form. They begin to lead him, you know?

Amy: Well they’re sort of evolving, he’s sort of devolving as the season goes on.

John: Yeah.

Amy: And also I think that Jack Hurley is sort of the Bizzarro nate.

John and Chris: Yeah

Amy: Like the difference between them is control. Like Nate, typically, has much more control than-

Chris: Nate typically is not the character of id. He’s all about the ego and superego. Literally, Hurley is the id.

Dean: I love that, he just shoves him into the hall.

[Laughter]

Dean: You get a near death situation.

John: ‘You know what, I’m just tired and cranky.’

Amy: ‘You know what? If he gets shot, that’s fine. I’m getting out of here.’

Dean: Oh this is- and this, this is to die for.

Amy: Yeah.

John: This bit is great.

Dean: ‘You’re touching me.’ [Laughter]

Amy: By the way, the reason- the reason Beth is slightly smiling there is that before we shot this scene, the three of them, the actors, had a food fight with cold cuts. And when- when Tim put his arms on Beth, she got this- this whiff of turkey that was so overwhelming.

[Laugher]

John: I will, actually, also say that where that- where that bit of dialogue comes from, it’s from a Justice League that Mark Waid wrote, where- I’m totally gonna say this, one of my favorite bits of comics. Batman puts his hand on Flash’s shoulder and says ‘I need you to do this’ and there’s a long pause where Flash goes ‘Batman is touching me. I’m going to die, aren’t I?’ And the idea that someone’s physical contact was so rare, that what- even in a totally different context stuck with me, and that’s- really, you know.

Amy: Is it weird that I didn’t read that and yet I wrote that? [Laughs]

John: No, because we talked about it in the room, the bit where-

Amy: Yes we did talk about that, that’s true.

Chris: Right that’s how it all-

Amy: That’s true.

John: Yeah, I mean, at this point it was the three of us in a room.

Dean: And I love Hardison’s line here.

Amy: This is so good.

John: Oh yeah this bit. He’s so angry.

Dean: I nearly died, and all I had to do was get him tacos?

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘I sat on a bomb!’

Chris: Read this kinda late. Cause sometimes you look at a- you look at a moment in a script and you go ‘is the audience gonna buy this?’ Let’s write to it, let’s have a character say what we’re saying .

Amy: I love that. I love that.

John: Yeah, ‘Are you out of your mind?’

Chris: It’s the ‘let me get this straight’ line.

Amy: Yeah yeah.

John: Yeah. A crucial part of the writer's toolbox is being able to sell the ‘let me get this straight’ line properly. Cause poorly done...

Dean: Here we go, cause again, resetting this whole thing again.

Amy: Gorgeous!

Dean: This is beautiful.

Amy: Hey ,remember where we were? Exactly. With the crane.

John: Yup. There’s the geography again, yeah.

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: And just the amount of movement that you got out of the camera, Rod, was just fantastic.

Rod: Yeah. Thank you. I feel that movement is always important on television stuff, because it just keeps the audience feeling just a little bit uneasy.

John: Yeah, even just a little creeping here right now is just fantastic.

Dean: And we’ve never stopped, this whole sequence, it’s just great.

John: No. Also you shoot through the foreground a lot I’ve noticed, which is nice.

Amy: Oh yeah, I love that. It’s brilliant

John: It’s definitely something worth stealing. I mean when we bring you back, we’ll definitely have you use-

Amy: Oh yeah, for the eight episodes in season 2.

Rod: Can you- can I get the guarantee now?

[All laugh]

John: Oh, this showdown is a great- and that’s a great background. And again, it’s interesting - I think it works better in the day not just because it brightens it up, but because you can see more.

Rod: Well you know one thing I was thinking as we were standing on top of that car park, ‘Would these guys be doing this with thousands of people watching it?’ But that’s half the fun of the scene, because these kind of guys do do that.

Chris: Yeah

Amy: Yeah, they’re not afraid of anything.

Dean: Now this effect sequence, is one I’m most proud of on the show.

Amy: Yes.

Dean: This was something that we wanted to do for real, and the practical realities of what it was going to cost us between all the stunt cars that had to be destroyed, the amount of fire marshalls-

John: Exploding a car in downtown LA.

[Laughter]

Dean: And so we said, ‘I think we can do this with a model.’

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: Elsewhere on the DVD there will be a little behind the scenes of how we did this.

Chris: Oh that’s cool; that’s terrific.

Dean: That’s a tiny, little model on a green screen.

Rod: That is pretty amazing stuff, let me tell you.

John: And this is my favorite bit.

Amy: Oh, the tire!

Dean: That tire was digitally animated, with digital fire on it.

Amy: Wait, the tire makes a return appearance shortly, which is fantastic, in the foreground of Tim.

Dean: But then it’s real.

Amy: And there it is.

Chris: But also you shot- also you shot through fire which was the other thing. You had a little fire in front of the camera to get this.

Rod: Yes, yes.

Dean: And sold the whole thing.

John: How do you do that? Do you just set up a fire bar?

Rod: Yeah a gas bar- flame bar underneath the camera lens. But I have to tell you, as the director of the piece and having been there, I was absolutely amazed when I saw the fire.

[Laughter]

Rod: i just couldn’t believe it. I thought it was just terrific.

Amy: It’s always a good sign when the director doesn’t think that you’re gonna be able to pull it off.

[Laughter]

Rod: I was in doubt, I have to tell you, but not anymore.

Amy: We do some things well here.

Rod: Yes

Amy: Thank you, Dean Devlin.

[All laugh]

Dean: I love that reaction.

John: I love that- I love the idea that the bomb coming back is- hesitance there. ‘No no no, don’t don’t tell him.’

Amy: ‘I don’t like where this is going.’

Rod: Now this part is really- to the writers. This is so silly, but, my god, it works.

John: Yeah.

Rod: It’s such fun. It’s such fun.

Amy: It’s great.

Chris: It’s- thank goodness it worked.

John: Well this is- this is definitely one of those situations where it was- it was ‘alright, here’s the physical location, here’s the situation he’s in, how in the name of-’

Amy: By the way, only so many things you can do there-

John: Yeah.

Chris: And really we- really we didn’t have a lot.

Amy: -and using this creeper was like the only thing I could think of right there. Using the creeper there.

Dean: This works so well. It’s such a laugh.

Chris: This worked really well. And it worked.

Amy: And originally we wanted to-

Chris: And this- this sells it to me - him pulling on the ropes, that’s what made it really work.

Amy: I think originally we were gonna have Drew hop on Gina, but then that would’ve been just ridiculous.

Chris: Yeah, that didn’t seem...

Dean: That could’ve just killed her. [Laughs]

Rod: But let me tell you, we had to build those cars up on 25 bricks to get Drew underneath them.

[All laugh]

John: Yeah, kinda a slight miscalculation there, yeah. Yeah it’s not like I would’ve slid under there like a greased pig either.

Dean: I love when he says ‘you two hate each other’.

John: Well they kinda do.

Dean: Love and hate - it’s a fine line.

Amy: In the context, yeah yeah.

Chris: Strong emotions.

John: Love and hate. I mean it’s the- it’s the people that you care about that can call you on your- your bullshit. That’s the situation she’s in and he’s not at the emotional place where he’s ready to listen yet.

Amy: And she wouldn’t be on his case if she didn’t care about him, so.

Rod: You know, you say that this relationship doesn’t- wouldn’t go any farther. I gotta tell you I watch it kinda like I did with Moonlighting. They would bicker and fight and carry on, I still feel like there’s some sexual tension there that stays alive.

John: Yeah, well there is.

Amy: There will always be tension, yeah.

John: But when I say this isn’t going to go further, is that they have to realize this isn’t the version that’s going to work before they can go forward.

Amy: This isn’t the version of them that will be successful, yeah

Chris: And we wanna keep them- we wanna keep them apart.

John: But really them, the end of the season is them really just realizing that, this? As much as they care for each other doesn’t work. And hopefully second season, now that we know we have a second season-

Amy: And they’re waiting for that.

Chris: And I love this, another- another great- another great transition.

John: Good transition. And they’re waiting for that that’ll work.

Dean: And I love him trying to get the hug. And there’s just, like, no chance it’s going to happen.

[All laugh]

John: And that’s- you know, there’s a line he has earlier in the show where he says, ‘this is my big score’. And he’s constantly looking to fix everything with one score and that’s what Nate’s doing.

Amy: Bizzaro Nate, comes into play.

Chris: Exactly. But with- with id instead of ego.

John: ‘Take the win. Take the win.’ The- I will freely admit, money in the car tire? Lupin the Third. That’s what gave me that idea.

Chris: What’s that from?

John: The Japanese anime Lupin the Third did a car crash heist.

Chris: Wow, that’s- go look- go look for that kids.

[Laughter]

John: Freely- freely admit that inspiration.

Amy: Steel belted radials.

John: Yup. Now this is great, where they try to give him a fresh life, and they try to- We’ll be seeing him again.

Chris: We will.

John: Hurley is a character that will definitely come back. We like both the actor and the character.

Dean: And he’s a terrific thief.

Chis: Yeah.

[All laugh]

John: Yeah ,well that’s boiled down- now there was a version of one of the scenes where the team actually talks about adopting him like a puppy.

Amy: Yeah, it’s true.

John: That we wound up not doing, but it was lovely. Because it is, he’s a money guy and the one part of the team they don’t have is a money guy.

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah, we’ll definitely be bringing him back.

Rod: Yeah and a great you know, it starts off as the anti-hero and then at the end of the time here- wants the hug again-

[All laugh]

Amy: He just wants a little love!

John: Yeah ‘no please, please.’

Chris: ‘Keep it in.’

John: ‘No, no, no.’

Amy: But- but I have good intentions? No? Alright fine.’ Love it.

John: Yeah, he’s put them through a very long couple of days.

Dean: And I absolutely love the coda scene on this episode, because at this point you’re like ‘Jeez what happened to Parker?’ and then you get to find out.

Amy: This was so fun to write, I have to tell you.

Dean: My- my best friend, this is his favorite line of the entire season so far.

Amy: Really?

Dean: Is him saying ‘I don’t think she knows how to play this game.’

[Laughter]

Amy: Yeah, well you wanna give him one moment of clarity. Rehab works for some people! Maybe not Parker, but-

Chris: Well when I was- that was exactly- we were literally writing this thing in the room together, and at one point I said ‘Alright this is who I have in the rehab center, a sullen teen girl and a guy that mumbles’ and then I threw it to you and you said ‘I’d just put them in a charades scene’ and I go ‘great!’

[Laughter]

Dean: I love how Parker always smells things. Whether it’s someone's hair, or the clothes...

Amy: You gotta test it first. What, you don’t do that?

John: Actually, one of my favorite little throwaway bits is that moment where Sophie’s the only one who recognizes the diagram. That it’s the antiquities thing at the Cairo Museum.

Amy: Yeah yeah yeah.

John: It’s just one of those little things that reinforces the thing why she has to be with people she’s like. And you’re right this isn’t Parker, this is having a weird reaction drugged up Parker.

Amy: Yeah, Parker doesn’t naturally jump hug.

John: The jump hug that launched a thousand fan fictions.

Amy: Oh my God, yeah.

Chris: Oh boy, people are writing about this like crazy.

Amy: But now they’re confused because they’re like, ‘wait I thought she like Hardison, but she totally went for Eliot first, what’s the deal’?

John: Yeah, they’re all- they’re all in uproar. You know what, ah, look at em, they’re so happy.

Rod: Let me tell you during these troubled times we’re going through, to see a family on television like this, that each week you see that family getting to know things about each other, it’s fabulous. And let me tell you, a family, thank you for welcoming me into this one.

John, Amy, Chris: Aww, please.

Rod: I seriously had one of the best times in a long time working with you bunch, seriously.

Amy: Aww, you’re so sweet!

Rod: And the show ends up and shows it, too, I might say.

John: Oh, that’s a great episode.

Amy: I think so. It’s a really good episode.

John: This is the wrap up, during the credits you get to say anything you wanna say. Do you wanna say something nice to Rod? He said something nice about you.

Rod: No you don’t have to.

Dean: Nah, no way.

Amy: I love Rod.

Chris: We should try to get him into writing.

Rod: Let’s talk about David Connell’s clothing.

Amy: Really? What’s the deal?

Dean: In many- in many ways this is one of my favorite episodes of the season. And in fact, because we shot this before I had a chance to shoot the season finale, I, actually, was really inspired by the way you directed this. And I incorporated a lot of your stuff into the season finale.

Rod: Thanks. Thank you.

[dkronpa]

Chapter 3: Journey to Despair, Grave Secrets, Grave Lies ~Daily Life Part 2~

//Hooray for getting this done pretty quickly! Hopefully I’ll get the investigation out soon as well

//I’m also working on the FTE and those’ll be released in the order the characters died (Labelled Chapter 1 Victim etc) so look forward to that!

//Enjoy!

-Chapter 3 Daily Life: Renaming Resolve-

 “Kurosaki-san isn’t here today…” Kurohiko-san said as those of us remaining sat around the centre table eating our breakfast. That was now five people distancing themselves, leaving seven of us. “…what are we gonna do? At this rate we’ll all be divided…our unity will be totally broken.”

 “Feel like our unity took a hit as soon as Maemi-chan turned up dead.” Amaterasu-san said.

 “Our group may have taken hits, but we shall not submit to Monokuma-sama. I will not allow it. We must find a way to gather those five back to our group. With them all separate, we are danger of losing track of each other. Should a murder occur, there’ll be a smaller chance of finding out people’s movements.” Ishikawa-san said.

 “That’s your concern?” Okanaya-san asked. “Ah…whatever. If our problem right now is that our group is divided, all we gotta do is reunite it. If we all take someone, then it shouldn’t be hard! Plus if you get Yokozawa, then Graves’ll probably follow.”

 “True, she seems to have taken a shine to him.” Ram-san nodded. “But the issue is the how.”

 “I guess we could try talking to them…” Kurohiko-san suggested. “It’s a weak idea, but we can’t really force someone like Sly-san to come back.”

 “Then that is what we shall do!” Asano-san announced. “Hmm…Nagata-kun, if you could take care of Kurosaki-kun? Ram-san and Okanaya-kun can talk to Yokozawa-kun. Ishikawa-san and myself can talk to Shinko-kun whilst Amaterasu-san and Kurohiko-kun can talk to Sly-kun.”

 “E-eh? I have to deal with Sly-san?” Kurohiko-san fidgeted.

 “Don’t worry. I can deal with him if things get hairy.” Amaterasu-san gave a thumbs-up.

“I d-don’t want things to get hairy in the first place! I want things to stay very not-hairy!”

 “Please, Kurohiko-kun! I trust in your abilities! I believe you and Amaterasu-san, so believe in yourself also.” Asano-san assured. Kurohiko-san stared at Asano-san for a few moments before twiddling his thumbs.

 “Ah, what should I do? I’m totally terrified but if I don’t do this then I’m gonna disappoint Asano-san and I don’t wanna do that. But I don’t wanna see Sly-san when he’s acting so scary? Is death worth believing in Asano-san? Am I even gonna die? Is Asano-san right? How can I even know? Even if Amaterasu-san is there-“

 “Enough.” Amaterasu-san swatted the back of Kurohiko-san’s head, shutting him up. “We’ll take care of it.”

 “Excellent. I thank both of you.” Asano-san nodded.

 “Then if we’re getting to work, let’s get to it! Ram, let’s-“

 “K…Kirishima.” Ram-san suddenly cut Okanaya-san off.

 “…huh?” He tilted his head.

 “Um…A-Asano-san!”- Ram-san ran over and held Asano-san’s hands in her own. –“U-um…I wanna be more like you! You have so much courage now a-and…I wanna be able to help everyone here like you’re trying to as well…so…”- Ram-san turned to the rest of the group –“I…I need to reintroduce myself. I introduced myself as Ram, but…that’s obviously not really my name. Please…call me R-Rina Kirishima. I’m the Ultimate Taxidermist. I’ll do my best to continue getting along with you all…”

 “Rina…Kirishima…san?” Kurohiko-san sounded out.

 “I…have a lot of things I need to deal with…and if I don’t start dealing with them then I’ll be holding the group back. So…I needed to start being Rina…and stop being Ram.” Ram…Kirishima-san had a determined look in her eyes I hadn’t seen in her before.

 “Kirishima-sama…” Ishikawa-san smiled softly, “The real you. I am glad we are going to be able to see it from now on.”

 “A-ah, is that so…? G-gosh, I don’t know what to say…” Kirishima-san’s face flushed as she twirled the middle strand of her hair around her index finger. “…Um…I’ll do my best to get stronger. So, I apologise for you having to deal with me until then-“

 “KIRISHIMA!!!” Okanaya-san suddenly yelled.

 “K-Kyah!” She jumped.

 “Alright, I’ve yelled your name, so it’s locked in my brain space! Let’s work together and get that bastard Yokozawa coming back here! YEAAAAH!” Okanaya-san began psyching himself up.

 “Y-yeah…!” Kirishima-san smiled slightly. These two…are seriously something else.

 -Chapter 3 Daily Life, The Most Dangerous Motive-

 I don’t like that I’ve been left to deal with someone like Kurosaki-san by myself, but with four people to look for and seven of us, somebody had to go alone…but I couldn’t have gotten someone like Shinko-san?! He would’ve just cussed at me.

 Mustering up whatever resolve I had, I knocked on Kurosaki-san’s door and waited until he answered the door. “Hmm…? Nagata-kyun! Is this a love confession?!”

 “No.” I shot down immediately. “Kurosaki-san, is it okay if we talk for a bit? You’re free to say no if you don’t wanna-“

 “Ah…” His expression quickly changed to one of disinterest, “you’re here to convince me to come back to the group, oui…? Sorry, I don’t really have any interest in re-joining the group right now. I have a lot occupying my time, from the motive, to the library, to Herr Knives…I’m afraid my hands are tied.”

 “Sly-san has something to do with this?”

 “Of course. I suppose you could say Herr Knives is…a restraint. Not just for me, but the whole group. His whole existence keeps people in line because they know he can shut down any dangerous behaviour in an instant, and nobody would dare mess with that. One of the reasons I find him so interesting is how his simple presence is intimidating.”

 “And without him there…”

 “The group loses that restraint. I suppose I could come back if he were to return…but he wouldn’t return to the group if I was there. Ergo, the best course of action is for me to distance myself from the group instead. I can handle myself, however, you have plenty of people that need that restraint in place.” Kurosaki-san explained.

 “You pushed him to that point though.” I pointed out.

 “Indeed, I did! Therefore, I should be the one to leave the group for being such a nuisance. I may be a schemer, but I’m not a murderer.” For some reason, I believe Kurosaki-san when he says that.

 “What about the motive…? Are you really that worried about it…?”

 Kurosaki-san smirked before pulling his hat down to cover his eyes, “yeah…but I’m guessing my worries aren’t the same as yours. No…I think that, out of everyone, I have the most dangerous motive card…”

 “Wh-what does that-“

 “Ah, look at the time! I should really get going. I don’t want to lose precious time investigating that library!” Kurosaki-san tipped his hat, stepping into the hallway and closing his room door over. “Adios, Nagata-kyun! Thank you for your kind words!” He began to walk away…if Asano-san was here…

 “Kurosaki-san!” I called after him, “…you…should try talking to Sly-san. I dunno if it’ll help, but…it can’t hurt trying to communicate…” Kurosaki-san didn’t say anything. He simply looked over his shoulder at me and nodded before continuing on.

 -Chapter 3 Bonus: Brand New You-

 “I am so glad to see Asano-sama embracing her truest self that has been locked away so deeply inside her! It has also set Kirishima-sama on the same path! I wish to do something for the both of them! I makeover maybe, however finding the supplies for such a thing is difficult…” Ishikawa-san sighed.

 “Actually, I got a make-up kit from the Monokuma machine if you wanna have it? I like the sound of it being used for such a cause.”

 “Oh! This is perfect! Nagata-kyun, thank you so much. Hmm…I may need some assistance, so would you mind coming to my room later? I promise I will not try anything promiscuous.”

 I’d hope not.

 --

 I don’t know why I had to come along but considering the creepy décor of Ishikawa-san’s room, I wish I didn’t. Despite her…vibrant personality, most of the stuff in her room was dark or old. It was slightly discomforting, though Kirishima-san and Asano-san didn’t seem to mind.

 “I thank you both for coming here. I wanted to be able to have a get-together in order to celebrate both of you becoming your true selves. So, I believe the best way to celebrate is a little experimentation with makeup.” Ishikawa-san explained.

 “I-isn’t that a little strange? Why celebrate with makeovers?” Kirishima-san asked.

 “Well, whilst makeup can be used as a tool to hide your truest self, I also believe it can be a way to discover even more about you. If this can help either of your progress further in your journey of self-discovery, then I believe it will have been worth it.” Ishikawa-san said.

 “And why is Nagata-kun here? Is he on a journey of self-discovery?” Asano-san asked.

 “No, he is simply my assistant should I need one.” Ishikawa-san smiled. So, I’m not necessary, huh?

 Ishikawa-san began use different types of brushes and different palettes on Asano-san’s face. I didn’t know a lot of the things she was using other than the obvious stuff like lipstick and mascara. Eyeshadow is a thing, right? She used a pencil to shape Asano-san’s eyebrows and a lot of different brushes on her cheeks.

 “Hmm…what do you think, Asano-sama?” Ishikawa-san gave Asano-san a hand mirror. I could see her reflection and I admit, even I was taken aback by the transformation Ishikawa-san had achieved.

 Asano-san usually perfectly porcelain white skin how was coloured with blush, her eyelids were coloured dark blue and her eyebrows were shaped to look more normal sized.

 “I…almost look how I did when I was young. Before my parents began remaking me.” Asano-san said with a hushed tone. The hand mirror trembled in her grip before Asano-san launched herself and hugged Ishikawa-san tightly, “Thank you…Ishikawa-san, you did a wonderful job.”

 Ishikawa-san smiled softly and patted Asano-san’s back comfortingly. “Of course. I am always glad I could help.”

 Kirishima-san smiled at the two embracing then flashed her smile towards me. It seems she had fun as well, even if she didn’t get a turn to get her makeup done. Well, I guess I had fun too.

 -Chapter 3 Daily Life, Midnight Trip!-

 …

 Tomorrow is the deadline for the motive…if I don’t tick a box on this card then everybody on the list will die. But how am I expected to pick from the people closest to me? Nobody on this list deserves to live over anybody else, so why am I being forced to choose between them all?!

 There was a knock at the door. Well, more like seriously loud banging. I got off my bed, setting my motive card down and answered the door. “Nagata!!” I stumbled after being greeted with the bellowing voice of Okanaya-san.

 “Wh-what’s going on?”

 “Sorry about this, Nagata-kun. Okanaya-kun did the same for me.” Kirishima-san poked her head out from behind him.

 “C’mon, let’s move, we got somewhere to be!” Not wasting any time, Okanaya-san grabbed me by the arm and started dragging me out of my room.

 “H-hold on! You can’t just start pulling me around! O-Okanaya-san!”

 --

 Somehow, we ended up sitting on the grass near the central fountain. “Okanaya-san, it’s the middle of the night…why are we sitting out here in the freezing cold air? I want my bed.” I complained. Okanaya-san laughed as if I had said something hilarious.

 “It’s team building, obviously! My team from the tour guide company loved to camp, but since we can’t sleep outside our rooms, I figured this was the best alternative!” Okanaya-san explained. “I really forgot how much I loved to sit under the stars with my friends, it’s pretty nice.”

 “Y-you think of us as your friends?” Kirishima-san said.

 “Huh? Well, duh. I know I was a pretty shitty guy when we all met, but when you’re put into a situation like this…yeah, I guess I was pretty on edge. Sorry you guys had to deal with me when I was like that.”

 “No, it’s fine. Everybody was on edge when this all began…some still are…but, Kirishima-san and I know the real you. Even if you’re quick to snap, I know you’d jump at the chance to help someone. I’ve never been the assertive type, so watching you be so vocal about your opinion without worry…I kind of admire you for it.”

 “O-oh…that so?” Okanaya-san blushed slightly. I’m not really sure where all that came from, but I think I really meant it.

 “So, what did you and your friends do when you did something like this?” Kirishima-san asked.

 “We mostly chilled out. It was a good way to distract us from shit that was bothering us. A particularly bad day or somethin’ like that. I figured it was necessary considering…” The motive, he wanted to say. “…hey, have you guys picked someone on those cards yet? I’ve tried to, but…I dunno how I’m supposed to make that choice…”

 “N-no way I could do that.” Kirishima-san’s hands tightened on her lap, “I…don’t really have friends outside of here, so it’s only my close family that are on the card. I can’t choose between them all, but if I don’t tick someone…”

 “Ah, that reminds me. What was with that whole thing? Y’know, calling yourself ‘RAM’.” Okanaya-san asked. Kirishima-san played with her hair as she thought about it.

 “It’s…a sad story, I’m not sure you’d want to hear it.” She looked back at our understanding expressions. She took a deep breath before continuing, “It’s actually an acronym for a chant people would say whenever they saw me in my middle school. ‘Rina’s just Another Mistake’, but R-Jam didn’t exactly roll off the tongue so…”

 “They called you Ram instead.” I guessed.

 Kirishima-san nodded, “Th-they all were grossed out by my talent. If I tried to lend them a pencil, they’d recoil in disgust, I’ve had people throw their lunches on me and say that ‘at least you’re cleaner than before’…”

 “So, how you reacted when I met you. That was because you were used to people reacting badly about your talent as the Ultimate Taxidermist?” I asked, Kirishima-san nodded again.

 “Those bastards…” Okanaya-san clicked his tongue.

 “Now that I think about it, that motive note Kibe-san tried to use during the trial said ‘Another Mistake’, didn’t it? So…”

 “Before I came here, I was trying to reinvent myself back into being Rina, rather than Ram…but, when I was meeting everyone in such a strange situation, I completely shut down. As if all my progress up to that point meant nothing…so, I suppose you can call that unfinished business.” Kirishima-san said.

 “What about the note you got for the motive?” I had been thinking about that for a while. Now that the motive was over, what were all the notes in the first place?

 “It said ‘8 Days’. I’m not really sure what it means.”

 “A time limit…come to think of it, we’ve been here like…9 days, right?” Okanaya-san said.

 “Yeah. And if we got the note on the 2nd day…then that would mean that time limit is today…” I said.

 “Sh-should we be concerned?” Kirishima-san asked.

 “Nothing happened today though. I don’t think we need to be too worried.” Okanaya-san shrugged, “probably something in the outside world. Maybe something someone didn’t realise had a time limit?”

 “That’s…probably it.” I got a strange feeling in my stomach…

 “What about you, Nagata? What did your note say?” Okanaya-san asked.

 “O-oh, um…I think it said ‘Ape’. Though I don’t really remember…geez, all of these motive notes…they were pretty vague, huh?” I forced out a laugh, but Okanaya-san’s expression had changed drastically. A grotesque darkness was hidden behind his gaze, his eyes widened and staring at the grass which his fists were clenching tightly.

 “O…Okanaya-kun…?” Kirishima-san tried.

 “Oi,” I flinched when he spoke, it was like the Okanaya-san from before the first trial was back, “if I ever hear you say that word to me again…”

 “O-Okanaya-san?” I said.

 Okanaya-san blinked, his pupil reverting to their normal size as his hands relaxed. “…s-sorry.” He put a hand over where his heart is and took slow breaths.

 “…Okanaya-san, are you okay?”

 “I will be. Y’just…caught me off guard. I didn’t think you…” I could guess what he was gonna say. Whatever ‘Ape’ meant, it was linked to Okanaya-san and it was clearly something he wouldn’t appreciate being pushed on.

 “Wh…what about the note you got, Okanaya-san?” Kirishima-san quickly broke the silence.

 “Ah…what did it say again? I think I was name…ah, yeah it-“ Before Okanaya-san could finish, there was a crashing noise that came from the leisure building. “Wh…what the fuck was that?! Is somebody else out here?!”

 “Should we check it out…?” I asked.

 Okanaya-san hesitated, “Yeah…we probably should, just in case.” ‘Just in case’…something bad happened. We all cautiously made our way towards the leisure building. Since we could hear the crashing noise, we figured that the source of the noise was somewhere around the perimeter of the building.

 When we went around the side of the building, the window closest to the ground was smashed in from the outside. “What the hell…?” Okanaya-san questioned looking inside the window, parting the curtain to see which room it was. “This leads into the guys changing rooms right before the pool.”

 “Did they really need to break the window to get in? Sh…should we look inside?” Kirishima-san asked.

 “Yeah. Just in case.” He said ‘just in case’ again…

 Even though we looked everywhere around the leisure building, there was no sign of anybody being there. Not even in the pool area. It was an odd event but none of us had any kind of explanation for it. Uneasy about the situation, but left with nothing to do, we all returned to our rooms.

 -Chapter 3 Daily Life: Missing Maiden-

 I sat quietly in the cafeteria. Despite our efforts yesterday, nobody seemed interested in coming back to the group. Not to mention that today, Asano-san still hadn’t arrived. I thought about bringing up the weird incident from last night, but…nothing came of it, so there’s no real reason to bring it up. Right?

 “Geez, where is Asano-san?” Kurohiko-san sighed. “She’s usually here by now.”

 “You miss her that much? Am I not enough of a comfort for you?” Amaterasu-san asked.

 “N-no, I ain’t saying that! B-besides, why would you even think of saying something like that! S-so weird! A-Asano-san is g-great, but-“

 “I’m joking.” Amaterasu-san interrupted.

 “O…oh.”

 “Ah, Kurohiko-sama. I am so glad you are getting to enjoy your youth. Not many boys can say they were caught in a love triangle, after all.” Ishikawa-san giggled.

 “L-love triangle?! N-no way, this is definitely not like that! I m-mean, Asano-san and Amaterasu-san?!”

 “You don’t like tall girls?” Amaterasu-san tilted her head.

 “Y…you have to bring that, huh?” Kurohiko-san said while pouting like a little kid who just got denied candy. I didn’t think he was sensitive about that stuff.

 “At least they’re all lively today, huh?” Kirishima-san half-laughed. I don’t know how…I can’t stop thinking about how the motive deadline is tonight. Tonight, Monokuma is gonna follow through on those lists. I doubt I’m the only one that’s thinking about it, but I’m certainly the only one showing it.

 A minute or so later, Asano-san walked into the cafeteria with a look of concern painting her face, “We have an issue.”

 “H-huh? What’s up?” Kurohiko-san asked.

 “I was walking through the dorms and noticed that Shinko-kun’s door was slightly ajar. When I opened it, I found he was not there. And…he is not here either, it seems. I’ve already searched this building but there is no sign of him!”

 “Of Shinko-sama? I am sure he’s off doing something unimportant.” Ishikawa-san dismissed.

 “Even so, tonight is the deadline for that motive! We cannot…”

 “O…okay…okay! Um, why don’t we split up then?” Kurohiko-san stood up and put a reassuring hand on Asano-san’s shoulder. “Um…Asano-san and I can check the leisure building. Okanaya-san and Amaterasu-san, you guys are the fastest so how about you search the campus grounds-“

 “So, Kirishima-sama Nagata-sama, and I shall all check the history building.” Ishikawa-san said, though with little enthusiasm. “Very well, if it will put Asano-sama’s mind at rest then we shall search.”

 We all fled from the dormitory building and began our searches. Kurohiko-san and Asano-san went directly towards the leisure building whilst Amaterasu-san and Okanaya-san split up to cover as much group as they could. Leaving Ishikawa-san, Kirishima-san and I to head to the history building.

 I pulled out my E-handbook and used to the scanner and we entered the building. “Where should we look? Should we split up?” Kirishima-san asked.

 “Uh…I’ll check out this floor. Kirishima-san, you check the 3rd floor. Ishikawa-san-“

 “The second floor? I understand.” Without listening to another word, Ishikawa-san left.

 “Ah…is she alright?” I said.

 “Ishikawa-san isn’t usually this cold. Does she really not care for Shinko-kun that much…?” Kirishima-san frowned.

 Putting that away in our minds, we split up as well. I went down the hallway to the weapon exhibit. All the glass cases seemed to be undamaged, but more importantly, Shinko-san wasn’t in here. Something that did catch my eyes was a disturbed pile of rocks, my mind went back to last night…

 Shaking my head, I left the room and moved to check the classrooms though before I could open the doorway-

 “KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

 “K-Kirishima-san?!” Without a second thought, I began sprinting up to the second floor, two steps at a time. I spotted Kirishima-san wobbling down the stairs, falling into Ishikawa-san’s arms.

 “Kirishima-sama?! A-are you-“

 “Th-that torture exhibit room…” Kirishima-san put a hand over her mouth, her face had a slight green tint to it.

 “…Kirishima-sama, will you be okay going to the bathroom by yourself? I feel as though both myself and Nagata-sama need to see this.” Ishikawa-san asked. Kirishima-san nodded and began looking for the bathroom, “…Nagata-sama. This will likely be a horrifying scene, are you ready?” Not even asking if I want to see it. I have to see it.

 Ishikawa-san and I made our ways up to the third floor and went towards the torture exhibit. “…Shinko-sama.” Ishikawa-san murmured his name, “I…do not have a good feeling.” I nodded, understanding. We slid the doors open.

 The unfolding scene made me understand that our situation still hasn’t changed…

 The torture exhibit was decorated with various instruments. I could only imagine how most of these would function, but my eyes were drawn to the giant iron casing placed against the wall: an iron maiden with blood flowing from the bottom of it. With the iron maiden closed, there was no way to know who was inside…but my gut said-

 ~Ding Dong, Bing bong~

 “A body has been discovered! After a certain amount of time for investigation, a class trial will be held! Everyone better haul ass over to the torture exhibit in the history building!” The monitors turned off.

 “…I’ll investigate it.” Ishikawa-san walked towards the iron maiden and stares at it from a distance. “…there’s a slide where the head would be.” Ishikawa-san reached over the blood and opened the slider. Her face was stoic but her tone was dark, “Indeed…it’s Shinko-sama.”

 Shinko-san…Toson Shinko, the Ultimate Horror Movie Director…