#like i have been thinking about albert - chim for months etc and

[mraprilgf]

do you guys think that whenever chimney talks about kevin albert secretly burns with jealousy but then one time when drunk chim says "you would have made him laugh non stop...he would have been such a great big brother..." and after that albert burns with jealousy AND longing? i mean ill stick to the jealousy but wouldn't that have been sweet?

[lovecolibri]

Gotta say, personally, I will never be over what they did to Chimney in season 5a. It was so nonsensical and insulting.

1. Unless you have no other choice you’re not going to take a baby on a months long car trip wtf

2. Chasing after someone when you don’t know where they are also makes no sense- ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE A BABY TO TAKE CARE OF

3. They couldn’t have, I don’t know, had Maddie get help and filmed a few scenes where chim visited her (instead of Jee drowning etc) before JLH went on maternity leave

4. The 3 Men and A Baby episode was right there for the taking. With Buck and Albert trying to help Chim take care of Jee. And them calling other 118 members for help because neither of them have entertained a cranky baby before.

Yeah. Still fucking mad about it.

Yeah, I don't like how they handled it either. I still think Maddie leaving could have worked but it definitely could have been done better with her letting everyone know where she was and that she got some tests done and turns out she was really sick and needed to heal. Don't get me wrong, Boston was a fucking masterpiece of an episode but everything else around how it was handled was bad and as a Chimney fan, I am ETERNALLY pissed we didn't get to see more of him and see the firefam being there to support him through this. And YES we could have gotten some bright fun spots with Buck, Albert, and Eddie trying to help but none of them really know much about BABY babies and Bobby is the one who comes over and gets Jee to fall asleep and finds the boys in a giant puppy pile on the couch passed out themselves. And even without JLH being there we could have heard one-sided phone calls or updates from Chim and Buck about how she was doing so it felt less like she was just on her own. It would have been nice to see the firefam supporting her too in communicating that they were there for whatever she needed and her being able to take that time and space away to heal without guilt. IDK I just think there were other choices they could have made that would have given a really similar story and emotional beats but was a little kinder to her and her illness and everyone involved and DIDN'T cut Chimney out of the show as if he's not important outside of his relationship with her and Jee. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Thoughts on Mary Poppins Returns

I’ve fallen behind on my current-movie viewing due to a number of factors (the only cinema screenings I’ve been to in the last 6 months in fact have been Aquaman at Christmas and twice to see Alita Battle Angel a few weeks ago), but I’m getting caught up as the blu-rays come out. I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse last night and will comment about it later (the tl;dr - good movie, a treasure trove for fans of pop culture, but looks awful on Blu-ray due to the textures used and I still think Incredibles 2 was more deserving of the Best Animated Feature Oscar), but since I actually invoked Mary Poppins Returns in a post I did about Alita yesterday, I thought I’d give some thoughts on this one first.

A spoiler/length break first as I get a bit wordy. I also do touch on some mild spoilers.

The Good

* Emily Blunt. Being unfamiliar with her other musical work, I was not prepared for how good a singer she is. Whether she stacks up to Julie Andrews is in the ear of the beholder, but I thought she was great. She wisely didn’t base her Mary on Julie, in the process giving us a slightly more cynical, world-weary Mary appropriate for someone with a quarter century more life experiences and adventures. I heard some reviewers call her a sexier Mary than Julie’s. I say nonsense to that - they’re equal (the only difference being Emily having a bit more innuendo in one of her songs, which I’ll mention later). One other comment is that when she played Mary, Julie Andrews was not an experienced film actress with only a few TV and film credits prior to Poppins - she was more a stage actress (her lack of screen experience was one of the reasons why Audrey Hepburn got the role of Eliza Doolittle for the My Fair Lady movie instead of Julie); Emily, by contrast, has been making movies and TV shows since 2003, so she has a level of screen-confidence that adds contrast to her performance.

* Lin-Manuel Miranda. Not being overly interested in Hamilton, Miranda has never been on my radar, so I came into this with a clear slate. He is a terrific addition to the film, he commands the screen (even stealing a couple of scenes from Emily, much as Dick van Dyke did from Julie), and director Rob Marshall wisely gives him a couple of Broadway show-like sequences and lets him go wild. This wasn’t his first film role - he has a number of movie and TV credits - but this is his first lead in a major film, and it won’t be his last.

* The kids. The three child actors chosen come off like 25 year olds who have been transplanted into pre-teen brains. Amazing. If they ever decide to remake Harry Potter, they could do worse than consider these three.

* Nackvid Keyd. Although this person’s cameo was I think intended to be a surprise, the trailers and other promotions give it away. Nonetheless, I’m going to keep it spoiler-free for those who haven’t seen it, by using the actor’s pseudonym here. He’s only on screen for about 3 minutes but it’s an amazing 180 seconds - and to both his and the director’s credit, "Mr. Keyd” actually doesn’t upstage the current cast. And his inclusion - as well as a cameo by another veteran of the original film - shows respect to the original film.

* Angela Lansbury. Her cameo (which I don’t think was intended to be quite the same level of surprise as Mr. Keyd’s) was amazing. This was a woman who made her screen debut in the 1944 Ingrid Bergman film Gaslight. Here, she plays a character equivalent to the first movie’s bird woman (though a little more sprightly). It’s widely believed this part was originally meant to be played by Julie Andrews, but Julie, to her credit, reportedly felt appearing in the film would take away from Emily Blunt (similar to how an alleged plan to have Sean Connery appear in Daniel Craig’s Bond film Skyfall as the groundskeeper was wisely dropped in favour of bringing Albert Finney in for the role. Soon as Sean appeared on screen, Daniel would have been done).

* Replicating the look of the original film. There are some scenes where this doesn’t apply, in particular the use of actual locations in London (the original film was all shot on soundstages in Hollywood), but the attention to detail in replicating iconic locations like Cherry Tree Lane, the Banks’ home, etc., is amazing, even allowing for it not being 100% the same - which is understandable since, after 25 years, you would expect a room to get a fresh coat of paint. There’s a touching featurette on the Blu-ray where “Nackvid Keyd” visits the Cherry Tree Lane set and is amazed at the detail.

The meh...

1. The music. Despite my praise for the cast, I was less impressed by the music (even though I bought the CD). Granted, the original score has had more than 50 years to become iconic, and there are a few songs here that could rise to the same level in a half-century. But, at least for me, they never delivered another “Feed the Birds” or “Chim Chim Cheree”. In fact, some of the songs felt almost like pastiches of the Sherman Brother’s originals. The closest to something that felt brand-new was a rap-like song performed by Miranda during the animated sequence, “Cover is Not the Book” (it actually works, while actually referencing something similar that Dick Van Dyke did in the original.)

The not so good

1. They call it a sequel, but, really, it’s more a remake. I’m not alone in noting that the film duplicates the original almost beat for beat. The order of events is similar, the types of songs are similar. Some of the songs sound similar to the earlier versions, even. Instead of acrobatic chimney sweeps, we have acrobatic leeries who go around lighting street lamps. Instead of Uncle Albert who floats when he laughs, we have Aunt Topsy who, for whatever reason, has a condition where her entire world turns upside down once every two weeks. George Banks becomes dejected over apparently losing his job at the bank; Michael Banks becomes dejected over apparently losing his house due to the bank - and both have epiphanies thanks to someone singing them songs. Both films have big production numbers set in animated alternate universes and another involving airbourne objects in the park. Etc. The only really original thing here plotwise is while the original film actually had no villain (George Banks comes the closest to being an antagonist, but even then he barely qualifies), here there is an actual clearly defined villain, as well as a scene or two of actual jeopardy which we never saw in the original. More on this momentarily.

2. The tone is all over the place ... and too much of it is kinda depressing. We know a film set in the height of the Great Depression isn’t going to be all goodness and light, and the ironic tone of the opening number, “Underneath the Lovely London Sky” sets that out clearly (and quite effectively - it’s one of the best scenes in the film). When Mary arrives, Jane and Michael assume she’s out of work and destitute so they take her in out of kindness. And the whole film revolves around Michael possibly losing his family home. Yet ... I thought too much of it was downright sad. Ben Whishaw - another actor I had no idea could sing - gives an amazing performance of “A Conversation” in which Michael talks to his dead wife. But as that description suggests, this isn’t “I Love to Laugh Redux”. In fact it’s such a sad sequence that it takes you right out of the film - which is a bad thing considering the song is performed only about 10 minutes in. They might have been better off saving it for later.

3. There are also aspects of the film that I think violate the spirit of the original Mary Poppins - and possibly PL Travers’ books too. The “Cover is Not the Book” sequence, which is great and probably the closest to a truly memorable original song (I’d have chosen it for the Oscar nomination over “Place Where the Lost Things Go” which was an attempt at replicating “Feed the Birds”), contains some off-colour jokes delivered by both Mary and Jack that really felt out of place. I’m not being prudish on this, and the off-colour bit is mild, but this being Mary Poppins it was still jarring. And a chase sequence, although well done and exciting - and for fans of the original film providing a dark bookend to 1964′s steeplechase sequence - likewise felt like it belonged in another movie. It was almost as if Disney - in a stark contrast to the days when the reverse was true - refused to release a G-rated movie so they had to add a few bits to get the PG. Sort of like how an F-bomb will sometimes pop up in scripts to ensure a movie gets bumped from PG to PG-13 (which famously allows for one F-word before triggering an R rating). Because no one is possibly interested in watching a G-rated movie in the late 2010s, apparently.

So, I guess, I am rather critical of Mary Poppins Returns. I feel not enough was made of the opportunity to create something new, rather than a rehash of the original.

But - don’t get me wrong, it is still a quality film and I’m glad I have the Blu-ray. The cast does a fantastic job, the music isn’t bad (I just felt they didn’t come up with anything as instantly iconic as the songs back in 1964), and once you get past some of the depressing bits it’s a fun film. So I’d still give it a solid 7 out of 10 and I do recommend it. Just maybe don’t watch it right after the original.