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onisiondrama · 5 years ago

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“Onision Interview With Attorney” April 27, 2020 Speaks

Apparently the attorney is Vincent’s sister. If that’s true, I’m guessing he didn’t have to pay for this interview because she already has a bias against Chris Hansen. (Vincent hijack Hansen’s website and publicly announced he sold it to her. They turned it into a website advertising her attorney services. She also helped Vincent filed a lawsuit against Chris Hansen, but Idk if it went anywhere. It looks like the site has since been reverted back to Hansen’s.)

Notes:

Greg / James announces they are going to talk about online culture and how people are impacted by social media.

He asks a really wordy, broad question. I’m not exactly sure what he’s asking, but I think he’s trying to ask how private people can stay safe on the internet? She says with the pandemic attorneys are using the internet more. She says cancel culture is very dangerous.

(Wait- why is there a picture of James as a teenager on screen? I just noticed this. I’ll add it to the top of the post. Sorry, that distracted me.)

She gives an example of a couple going through a divorce and one of them uses their big social media presence to damage the other. She said that makes the attorneys think if they should keep representing someone when their ex could inflict damage to them (the attorney) with things like negative reviews. (People left negative google reviews for her law firm after she got involved in Vincent’s online feud with Hansen. It looks like they are all gone now. From what I saw, it was complains of unprofessionalism with the website situation. People may have left false reviews as well, but I did not see them. I only looked very early on.)

James says this is the opposite of the justice system where everyone has a fair chance. Public opinion controls right and wrong.

Attorney says public opinion is a myth because most people don’t know the laws or have been to law school. That’s why they have lawyers.

She talks more about how scary it is for lawyers, to risk their livelihood. People can put them out of business with negative reviews who don’t even live in the same country.

James asks what she thinks the general legal repercussions could be for trying to destroy someone’s private life on social media. She says there’s options, but they’re difficult. You could sue for defamation, but you’d have to prove the statement is false and defamatory, you’d have to locate them, you’d have to prove loss of money, and the defendant would need the ability to pay.

James asks if he’s been right when he said it’s not worth going after someone with no money or if you could claim their future assets. She says it could be a thing, like in the state she practices a judgement is good for 20 years and in some states it can be renewed for longer. You’d have to check the state. She says if they’re a minor, the parents could be held responsible.

James asks if there will be a legal shift to protect people from baseless cancel culture. He uses Taylor Swift and Johnny Depp as examples. She believes there will be a shift. She says there should be responsibility on providers that allow negative comments that enable cancel culture.

James asks if someone could be punished for unknowingly telling a lie about someone. He uses the example that he said someone was a murderer, then later finds out someone else was found guilty. Yet he doesn’t remove his initial statement and doesn’t make a public correction. She asks isn’t that why the news publishes retractions? James says people act like the news, but don’t do that. He says everyone wanted to interview him, but when they realized everything they wanted to interview him about was false, they suddenly didn’t want to interview him anymore. They publicly ignored the issue instead of publishing a retraction. He says if you pretend to be a newspaper or journalist, you have to hold yourself to the same standard. Attorney agrees and says everyone needs to be careful with what they say as facts.

She says people shouldn’t be afraid to interview someone in fear of the online effect it might have. She asks where the great interviewers like Oprah, Lisa Ling, and Barbra Walters would be. James says this is black and white mentality, if you’re not with us you’re against us. You can’t have an impartial opinion. He gives an example, if weren’t against Johnny Depp when everyone was angry with him, then you’re an abuser. He says you can’t even have a dialog or find out the full story without people trying to cancel you. He says it converted the media into pandering to their audience.

Attorney asks if now we have to not watch Woody Allen movies because of what he was accused of? James says he stopped watching Johnny Depp movies for a while and that was wrong because he let society and popular opinion control him. He says we want to be with the in-crowd, so when someone is cancelled, we want to go along with it to go with the flow. We’re afraid to admit when we’re wrong or that will be one more reason to be cancelled. He says it’s a complex social structure.

He asks for advise for public figures and private people trying to recover from being canceled or if their ex ran a humiliation campaign online. Attorney says she has a website because all attorneys need websites now. She was dragged into it and everybody started posting really negative reviews because the person that started this cancel culture stated what her familial relationship was. No one has any knowledge of that before they said it. (Dude... when I went to “HansenVSPredator dot com”, your face and name showed up. You have the same last name as Vincent. His last name was on every Hansen stream. Your law firm is across the river from where Vincent said he lived. Vincent tweeted your full name when he announced he sold the site. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. At the time I assumed she was either Vincent’s cousin or sister. I’m not a Hansen stan, but Jesus. Blaming him for all of the negative attention she received is a stretch. If anything I blame Vincent for even suggesting selling her a hijacked website from a high profile person to use for her business. Especially after Vincent got twitter totally pissed off at him. Terrible idea. I remember at the time thinking this poor woman doesn’t know the shit show she just walked into.)

Then her rating, which was really good, went down. She says profanities started being used and it was disturbing. She says she has her own harassment suit. (oh so it wasn’t Vincent’s) The platform got rid of the reviews and she was able to find out the identity of some of the individuals. This all caused loss of sleep, not being able to work, headaches, being afraid and worried for the people she’s working for. She wanted to protect them and was able to file a harassment charge and those are hard to get filed.

He says she’s a private citizen and when someone with a social media presence goes after you makes it difficult to work at your job and function as a human being. Online community doesn’t understand there’s the real world, then there’s the online community. The real work is mostly rational people working jobs with other people. There are consequences for their actions. Online you can be extreme you can act like there’s no law, until reality hits and they’re sitting in court. When people irl agree with you, when police agree with you, when people in court agree with you, it’s important to bring people to the real world so they can’t destroy your life more.

Attorney says people contacted the Bar Association on behalf of the person they’re following. She said it brought harm to the person who started the cancel culture. He made false statements about her. Because of her familial association, she should be banned. People going to the Bar Association inspired her charges against him.

James says we need to be held accountable when we drag people who are entirely private, people who never had a Youtube channel, for bringing negative attention to them. (Like the underage fans you insulted in your body ratings videos?) There’s no reason for us to inspire people to go after private people. His own family members were targeted. They have no association with his channels. (They were on his channels though. Not saying they deserve negative attention, just pointing it out. His mother acted in a number of his skit videos and she has her own channel. He also did a collab with one of his sisters to promote her channel.) He says they were entirely innocent.

He says he hopes the world we’re approaching is one where there is an anti virus for the virus, which is cancel culture. He says we keep acting like heroes by hurting people who are not involved.

He says, like in the attorney’s case, you can’t involve people who are not involved. Says you can’t take someone from a platform they are on and attack them on a platform that they are not on. He gives the example of someone cutting him off the highway, he can’t take out a camera and stalk them to humiliate them online. He should handle it with the police. She agrees and says the authorities are the ones that can do investigations.

James asks for a closing statement from the attorney. They promote her new channel and she says she would like to talk to Cher one day.

She says if something isn’t fair to share, don’t share it. James says you should think about if what you’re going to share will hurt a private citizen. He says he understands public figures, like himself, are different. When you involve family members and private citizens, you become legally accountable for what happens to them.

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megashadowdragon · 4 years ago

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on lukes moment of weakness and how it is fitting for luke among other comments

Personally I TOTALLY believe that George's Luke would have been VERY similarly to Rian's Luke.

And here is the reason why.... Luke has almost always been George's insert (lucas pronunced luke S ) and it makes total sense for Luke to be "exiled" and secluded away just as George became with Star Wars after the backlash of the prequels. But at the end of it, he comes back and stands up for what makes Star Wars what it is. Which is what Luke does for the Jedi and themes of Star Wars by the end of TLJ. He has learned from his mistakes, atoned for them, found redemption, confronted those he has failed, inspired hope, and learned to show compassion once again.

Now while George may have done it differently, I do believe that Luke being in exile was a metaphor for George's own relationship with Star Wars and its fandom.

www . reddit . com/r/StarWars/comments/ebb4f3/lukes_momentaneous_thought_of_killing_ben_solo/

I know I'm stepping on dangerous territory here by talking about The Last Jedi, and I only do this because I think this is an interesting take on a key moment of the movie. Just bear in mind that I do not intend to make my point-of-view the absolute truth of it. After all, this is just my opinion.

We all know very well how divisive Episode VIII was, with many people pationately hating that movie. One of the main reasons of complaint is the fact Luke Skywalker had attempted to kill his apprentice and nephew, Ben Solo, because he sensed the Dark Side to be too strong in the latter. Luke Skywalker, the only person in the entire galaxy that saw there was still light in Darth Vader, tried to kill his relative. When even Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda had lost all hope Anakin could be saved, Luke helped putting him on the path of redemption, helping Vader turn back to the Light and fulfill the prophecy of the Chosen One. It seems to be an insult that this same character gave up on his nephew so easily and tried to kill him.

I believe things must be analyzed more carefully.

I've just finished marathoning the Skywalker Saga (by the way, I STRONGLY recommend the Ersnt Rister order: IV-V-I-II-III-VI) and noticed something very interesting while watching Return Of The Jedi.

During the final moments of Luke and Vader's duel aboard the Death Star II, we see the young Jedi Knight wants to avoid fighting his father so as not to fall in the trecharous web of Palpatine, who wants to turn the young Skywalker to the Dark Side. Luke is hiding beneath the Emperor's throne. Vader chases him and, through the Force, reads Luke's thoughts to lure him into confrontation:

You cannot hide forever, Luke. Give yourself to the Dark Side. It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes, your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for... sister! So, you have a twin sister!

In this moment, we see Luke's face and he's completely terrified by the idea Darth Vader found out about his sister. It is something new and Luke fears for Leia's well-being. Also, we hear from Vader's words that he cares a lot about his friends, the people he loves. Vader continues:

Your feelings have now betrayed her too. Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete. If you will not turn to the Dark Side, THEN PERHAPS SHE WILL!

Now we have something different. Since he was brought before the Emperor, Luke had been constatly confronted by Palpatine and Vader with the idea of him turning to the Dark Side. When Vader talks about the possibility of that happening to Leia, it's not a threat directed to him, but to someone he loves. In this moment, Luke loses it completly and attacks Vader viciously, totally enraged. The Sith Lord can't stand the power of his son, fuelled by hate and falls to the ground, defeated. In this moment Luke is prepared to make the final blow, but then he hears Palpatine laughing and clapping. This makes him go back to his senses and realize what he's been doing. He then turns off his lightsaber and refuses to kill his father.

"I'm a Jedi, like my father before me" and so on... we know what happens, so let's fast-forward to The Last Jedi.

When Luke is confronted by Rey, who demands him to tell what had happened between him and Kylo Ren, we learn how things unfolded through Luke's perspective:

I saw darkness. I sensed it building in him. I'd seen it in moments during his training. But then I looked inside, and it was beyond what I ever imagined.

In this moment of the flashback we see Luke's hand reaching out to his lightsaber, almost unconsciously. He then proceeds:

. He would bring destruction and pain and death, AND THE END OF EVERYTHING I LOVE BECAUSE OF WHAT HE WILL BECOME, AND FOR THE BRIEFEST MOMENT OF PURE INSTINCT, I THOUGHT I COULD STOP IT.

Here it is again. Like in Episode VI, we see Luke reacting in a similar way by the notion of something posing a threat not to him, but to the people he loves and cares about. Luke feared Ben would destroy everything he cherished, just like Vader had threatened by turning Leia to the dark. And, just like in the OT, it was a passing shadow:

It passed like a fleeting shadow, and I was left with shame and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose Master had failed him.

I've already written way more than I expected, so I'll just conclude here. I've realized the act Luke commits in the Sequels is the same (or at least VERY similar) as from the OT: he attempted to kill Vader then his nephew, out of fear of seeing what/who he loved destroyed. He repented and managed to stop himself in the act in both situations. And he was ashamed. So, at least regarding this point of the movie, I see the same Luke Skywalker.

(luke had more to lose now then he did before

another example which I saw dont remember where I saw it but I saved the comments unfortunately I didnt put in the links:

edit: (now I remember www . reddit . com/r/StarWars/comments/9a3hdl/)

Luke considered killing Ben for about two seconds in a vulnerable moment

Sort of like he almost got baited into killing Vader by a few mocking words, and cut the hand off his own father in blind rage.

Luke is still just a person. If we've learned anything in Star Wars it's that the Jedi are not superhuman paragons of virtue and perfection, no matter how they might appear to the unwashed masses in the SW universe. They have the same flaws, temptations, failures, etc as anyone else. Yes the Force can help them overcome some of this, but they're far from perfect. Luke could have, and I agree should have grown in a positive way, but it's not impossible or even unbelievable that he didn't. He just had his life's labor wiped out in front of him and blamed himself for it. All those years of finding lost Jedi knowledge and artifacts, being what he believed to be the last Jedi in the universe with the responsibility to restart the order on his shoulders alone. All those lives that he took under his protection and guidance as the Master of the new order, wiped out in one night. Because of him (at least in his mind). Everything he was working towards for years just totally undone in a few hours and it was all his fault.

So he leaves and says fuck the whole lot of it. He lives by himself, stews in his misery and regret, retreats into himself and rejects the most foundational principle of the whole concept of being a Jedi: to help people. He's the most powerful Force user alive and he's wasting away by himself on some desolate rock, swearing off the rest of the galaxy because he thinks that he's a failure, that he wasn't strong or good enough, that he can't win, that it's not even worth it to try anymore, and that even at the height of his wisdom and power, it was all undone, and by himself no less.

another comment

Stuff has changed, I mean he’s quicker to come to his senses. I wouldn’t call that his flaw though. His flaw is one of his greatest traits, his care for his friends and family. It’s a flaw cause it causes implusive actions, lashing out on Vader, leaving Yoda, a single thought that he could stop a horrible fate in Ben.

I personal struggle with a temptation in my life, a temptation to do something my faith says is wrong to do. I may have overcome it some days, but other days, whether the same circumstances or not, I might fall into it. Temptations are a constant battle, not a one and done thing. Flaws are similar, you don’t just grow past a flaw after one instance.

Because a day may come when you will brought face-to-face with that temptation or flaw again, but the circumstances will be different, and it won’t be so easy to overcome.

You mentioned Toy Story in a post, and that’s a decent example when it comes to one facet. Woody might not get jealous when another flashy toy comes along that gets more attention like Buzz did.

A better example of the nagging of a temptation, like Luke dealt with, is in Lord of the Rings. The Ring is a constant temptation to the bearer and those around them. At least by the film, Frodo may have resisted the urge to use it under the tree, but he still was tempted to use it at other times, and it was a constant battle. Same with Bilbo. Bilbo held the ring for 60 years. And the temptation of it held him greatly. He drops the Ring in Bag End, letting it go. If he was viewed similarly to how people viewed Luke tossing the saber, that’d mean he freed himself from it’s grasp and from the temptation to take and use it. We see in Rivendell that isn’t the case for him. He has a moment of wanting to take it back, and even at the end of his time in Middle Earth, he inquires about it, although more innocently curious.

That would be more similar to Luke’s case. To fall to the dark is a constant temptation that Jedi should always be aware of, and if you get close at one point, there’s the possibility that it’ll happen again, and if you aren’t prepared or it comes in a different form, you’ll either fall or get really close.

That turned out longer than I meant it, but I see this idea and..it’s just not the case.

another comment

Just because you get older doesn't mean you necessarily get wiser and better.

Jedi are still people (and some aliens, but you get the meaning), and the prequels (and even the OT) showed that even the oldest and wisest among the Jedi were capable of mistakes and misjudgments.

I think it's unreasonable to assume Luke should have become incapable of making, or even repeating mistakes and succumbing to emotion.

Right because people only get better as they get older and we grow past our flaws and doubts permanently right?

You guys are weird.

Luke overcame that moment of doubt before he almost struck Vader down and you think what ....... Luke got some kind of videogame like powerup where that character flaw would never come back again?

Some of you have a very black and white (boring) opinion on life and human growth.

Spoiler: People have flaws, we don't all overcome those flaws.Your boy Luke is no exception.

Consider what nearly proved to be his downfall in Return of the Jedi: for all the Emperor's taunting about the Rebel Alliance's imminent demise, it was Darth Vader who finally pushed his Berserk Button by discovering that Leia was his twin sister and suggesting that if Luke didn't change sides, he and his master might have better luck turning her. Then, when Luke went berserk, it totally worked: he curb-stomped Darth Vader and still didn't go evil in the end. His father's killing off the Emperor also put an end to a whole lot of the Empire's evil and birthed the New Republic.

Flash forward thirty years, and once again someone is threatening everyone and everything Luke loves, and killing the guy would surely preempt a whole lot of trouble. In his heart of hearts, he doubtless remembers what Yoda taught him about how easy and seductive the Dark Side is, but he also remembers how Yoda's mistake of hiding the truth about his lineage from him nearly brought his downfall. He also remembers how killing the Emperor solved so many problems the way he'd better not try to solve them this time... Well, what's so tempting about that?

Luke had more to lose at this time. He knew what a relatively free, peaceful Galaxy looked like, and had other students to care for besides Ben. Instinctively, he was acting out of concern for them. Luke makes an important point when he gives Rey the truth: it is a split second. Luke is a hero, but he's human. He was impulsive and acted on instinct in his youth, so the fear of Ben turning is enough to push him to the edge for a second.

hopeforben . tumblr . com/post/623000635980333056/theres-a-significant-portion-of-the-fandom-that/embed

@emeraldspiral

@daughter-of-water

@someoneintheshadow456

#star wars #star wars the last jedi #luke skywalker #star wars meta

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minaminokyoko · 6 years ago

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Venom: A Spoilertastic Review (that is mostly just a rant)

When the end credits to the Venom movie started, just as Eminem began his embarrassingly uninspired rapping, I turned my head to one of my two friends and asked her, "What the hell did I just put into my eyeballs?"

To be frank, Venom is one of the most peculiar, bizarre, baffling films I've seen in years.

I want to preface this review by saying I was against this idea when it was announced. I thought it was beyond idiotic to make a film about a supervillain whose entire creation hinges on a certain Webhead, and since Sony lent him out to Marvel Studios (the only smart fucking decision they've made in probably over a decade, imo), they went off half-cocked with the hair-brained idea that they could create an anti-hero solo flick for Venom instead. To some degree, sure, they were warranted because the general audience these days has low fucking standards and if you put the words "comic book movie" in front of them, they're usually going to lap it up no matter how terrible it is. After all, fandom doesn't care about things being accurate anymore, by this point, if you dangle fresh meat like Tom Hardy riding a motorcycle in front of them. As long as there's an attractive person at the helm, fandom will just adopt it as canon and ignore any red flags, as they have already done. That being said, I still think this is one of the most blatantly stupid things done for money and for notoriety from any studio toting around a popular comic book character.

Is Venom as bad as legendary awful comic book movies like Catwoman, The Spirit, Batman & Robin, Daredevil, Green Lantern, or Spawn?

Well, no.

And that's almost the only positive thing I can report about it, personally.

In short, Venom is inept. That's the word I'd choose, aside from bizarre. It has no fucking clue what it's doing at any given time, from start to finish. It's too wacky to be serious, too serious to be a parody or satire, too mature for kids, too childish for adults, too mainstream for nerds, and too nerdy for mainstream. It's just a piping hot fucking mess.

So let's dive into why. Spoiler alert.

Overall Rating: D

Pros:

-Note: I am being very fucking generous by giving this movie points for anything at all, just so y'all know.

-It's not boring. Other comic book movies that have failed, whether it's the really bad kind or just the mediocre kind, have failed worse than this movie simply because at least there aren't any dead periods. Venom doesn't have awful pacing, even with its sloppy, uneven story. It moves along at a steady rate and you can never accuse it of being a borefest like Superman Returns or something. Even though most of it is incomprehensible from a story standpoint, it keeps your attention throughout.

-The doctor boyfriend surprisingly averted the usual stereotype/archetype for this kind of story. For example, in the first Ant Man, the cop boyfriend who is with Scott's baby mama is a smug, overprotective dickhead who later gets better. Most of the time when a main couple breaks up, the girl picks some douchebag who is either so much better than her former lover that it just feels insulting or it's just a one-dimensional asshole for us to hate so we want the two of them to get back together. Hell, doctor boyfriend was actually TOO nice and understanding and helpful. There is no way in hell I'd have stuck it out after seeing Eddie bite the head off a goddamn lobster. I'd have sent his ass to a mental hospital immediately, fuck the regular hospital. That being said, I like the movie averting the trope. It was a welcome change and was awfully refreshing too.

-Even though this is one of his strangest fucking performances to date, Tom Hardy is doing what he always does and gives 110% to a film that really doesn't even deserve him. I've already been hearing rumors that he's not pleased with the final product and that doesn't surprise me, but he does what he can with that awful script and I appreciate the effort. In fact, the only reason I sat through this turd is for Tom Hardy. He is a dedicated, talented actor and even when he's in tripe, he's still busting his beautiful ass to make the best of it anyway. I like him a lot and I'd go to bat for him any day, which is the only reason I coughed up the money for Venom when I knew damn well it'd be a trainwreck.

-The effects are at least decent. Not always. But Venom and the symbiotes actually feel as if they're really there and it's not just the actors staring at a ball on a stick. I appreciate it, since Sony goes in and out of quality regarding CGI.

-Despite the fucking travesty of a fake clown wig on his head, Woody Harrelson is an excellent choice for Cletus Kasady. Everyone knows that. I just hope they get him a better hairpiece next time, sheesh.

Cons:

-Jesus fucking Christ, where do I fucking start?

-Plotholes. This movie doesn't have plotholes--it has plot canyons. It's plothole Inception, for God's sake, with holes inside of fucking holes. It's so clear that the movie doesn't give a rat's ass about anything because there are some of the most ridiculous moments you're expected to swallow with the power of Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's why it took me a whole two days to try and write a review/analysis of the film. There is so much wrong with it that I frankly wasn't sure where to start and how to process it all. The best I can try to do considering the overwhelming number of holes in the story is go chronologically. First off, Eddie stealing Blondie's confidential documents (Note: Michelle Williams' character was so bland and unimportant I can't remember her name and I don't care to look it up because we all know she doesn't matter, so she is now Blondie) but then not doing his actual job as a journalist when making wild accusations is the first monumentally dumb thing in the film. Why the hell did he go through the trouble of breaching her personal security and trust if all he was going to do was rant about it to the Bad Guy without proof? What did he think it would accomplish? Why would you just confront the guy instead of looking for more proof? Plus, you stole that information, which means it's inadmissable in court since it was obtained illegally, so you still wouldn't have a case anyhow. Any writer with half a brain cell would simply have it so that Eddie read the document, became curious, and started snooping around Life Foundation himself looking for hard evidence that would stand up in court to get justice for the victims. The way they did it in the film makes no sense, but it's because they wanted to bust up the couple and make Eddie a "loser" to kickstart the rest of the film. Then, the girl who tattled on the Life Foundation 100% did not need Eddie Brock to do that. She had full access to the lab and the trust of her superior. All she had to do was document everything herself, send it to Eddie to pass along to his boss, and then skip town with her fucking kids to avoid being murdered. Hell, she could have given it to the authorities anonymously. Third, why after everything went tits up in the lab did she fucking return to the lab as if they wouldn't immediately know it was her? She was seen outside the lab seconds before Eddie set off the alarms and her palm print is recorded having opened the door to the lab. Why the fuck did she go back after she let Eddie in there with no way to cover her tracks? And then she actually told on herself and Eddie, which led to her death. I can't comprehend that level of stupidity at all. It's staggering. Because I'm trying not to turn this into a seven-page single spaced review, I'm just going to stop here and not try to point out all the other plotholes in detail, like the fact that the cops only get involved one time and are never seen again despite the fact that they'd be all over the explosions and missing people associated with the Life Foundation or Eddie's phone working perfectly after he swam under the fucking bridge or Eddie leaving his phone for his boss instead of just sending him the goddamn pictures or the symbiote magically knowing where Eddie was after they took him from the hospital. We'll be here all day if I keep going. I'll just reblog CinemaSins' eventual video of this movie and feel satisfied that way.

-The movie makes zero attempts at explaining anything about the symbiotes except for "they're vulnerable to fire and sound frequencies, need a host to survive, and eat brains." What is even stranger about the lack of explanation is that this isn't a long film. They could have easily added about ten minutes into the story to give us an overview of where they came from, what their world was like, how they found human contact, and why they were on that comet. All we can do is infer things, which pisses me off because this is YOUR story and YOUR new continuity that you just fucking made up on the fly, so I don't know the rules here and it's shitty of you to just gloss over it all. Why is it called Venom? Is that a translation from whatever the hell the symbiote was called on its own planet? Did it hear that somewhere and decide it liked the word? Why? Why does it get touchy if you call it a parasite when that is literally what it is? Is it like Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective and it's just in denial? We have to guess that it knows whatever Eddie knows, but why does it have any conceptual knowledge of romance and relationships when it attempts to get Eddie to apologize to Blondie or when it says it "likes" her? Or that Eddie "changed its mind" at the end? And how can a symbiote even be a loser? That concept is almost universally human and it's a giant sentient piece of fucking tar? How can it possibly be a loser on its own planet? There is just no damn context for majority of the shit surrounding the symbiotes in the movie and it's all the more frustrating since we spend a great deal of time in the lab with them during the movie and yet we learn almost nothing.

-Eddie and the symbiote don't actually form a proper bond or partnership. This is one of the things that's irritating me about people who seem to have taken to the movie. I was told multiple times by people that the movie is stupid, but the repartee between Eddie and Venom is enjoyable. Not really, no. Are there quips? Yes, there are quips. But quips do not inherently create a bond. Anyone can bounce dialogue off each other. If said dialogue does not change the characters, then it's just lip service. Sadly, though, a lot of people don't notice that absolutely nothing between Eddie and Venom lines up. Venom helps Eddie survive the attacks, but is killing him in the process. It's self-interest alone. The truly confounding part is when they get Venom off of Eddie and find out Venom has basically been consuming Eddie's organs to stay alive inside him, Eddie acts betrayed and storms off, but then when Venom returns wearing Blondie as his guise, he just accepts it and they go off to the badly filmed climax. What the hell changed in between those scenes? Nothing. Eddie still runs the risk of dying being piloted by the symbiote, and while Eddie has motivation to stop Bad Guy (again, another character that is so thin I can't be bothered to learn his name) from bringing the symbiotes to earth, Venom is given zero reason to want that at all. As mentioned above, there's no backstory. Is Venom concerned his race will consume the earth? If so, who cares? There's seven billion people and Venom has already found Eddie, who is a suitable match for him to survive, so why does he care at all? Eddie would survive an invasion anyhow. It makes no damn sense. Films that have dealt with symbiotic relationships always establish a common ground at some point but Venom doesn't for some inexplicable reason. I'm incredibly frustrated that everyone's just going "tee hee, look, they're best friends now, it's cute" when in fact Eddie is just running around committing murder randomly without ever really contemplating how serious it is, even though he claims to only be eating bad people.

-Nitpick: Fridging two different female characters, the homeless lady and the Life Foundation tattletale, rubbed me entirely the wrong way. Both of them were in Eddie's vicinity, both die, and both are never brought up again or shown to have impacted Eddie's motivation or life. They are simply used and discarded, which is another thing that makes this movie feel so hollow.

-The tone is all over the fucking place. It can be argued that Venom never went full serious and is always sort of tongue-in-cheek, but there's just this ridiculous whiplash feeling when you watch it spike from an action scene to "wacky" Brock antics to Venom quips. Eddie's personality even before the symbiote is just confusing as hell. It's like stuffing a bunch of random character traits into one man and all of them are fighting to get out at once like the characters from Split. The most consistent thing is he's sarcastic, but even then his moods range far too widely to get a bead on him. He can be dry one minute and then frantic and excitable the next, and that's before the symbiote. After the symbiote, it's like they gave Tom Hardy cocaine and steroids. The man's acting is simply all over the damn place. He accepts near-impossible things sometimes with a shrug and other times he freaks out. The movie just doesn't know what the hell it's attempting to accomplish, and that's why mood and tone are important to set from the get-go with a film. It just slingshots between a faux-horror film and a snippy action flick over and over again until your head feels pulverized.

-The final action sequences is one of the dumbest, messiest things since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's an ugly, dark, jumbled up mess. It's so indistinguishable that Godzilla (2014) can take potshots at it. Why in perfect blue hell did they choose two symbiotes with such similar appearances to showdown with each other on top of a rocket at night? It's so hard to see what the two of them are doing, who is winning or losing, or what kind of movement is happening at all. We also are never given the full range of their abilities, so the only real stake is when they pull off their hosts and their bodies are vulnerable, but even then it appears that Venom can raise Eddie from the dead seconds later anyhow. I'm stunned the movie couldn't even do a fake out death properly, which is so fucking easy that even Disney can do it. Eddie dies and is revived in less than fifteen goddamn seconds. The camera doesn't even linger on his body to sell the emotion (not that we'd ever have one, he is just barely a character anyway) before it just takes it right the hell back. That's filmmaking 101, for God's sake, and the movie blows it too.

-The last scene in the movie. In its entirety. I haven't been that exasperated since I stupidly forced myself to watch Pacific Rim: Uprising. There are so many things wrong with it that it's hard to know how to tackle it. I don't care that Eddie stopped that guy from extorting the shop owner--he openly turned into a 10 foot tall alien and ate a guy in front of her, and the movie just laughs and shrugs like it's just totally fine, like that woman isn't about to lose her shit, call the cops, or fuck, the NSA/FBI/CIA/Avengers on Eddie for making her a witness to murder, and endangering pretty much anyone around them. To say nothing of the fact that there is no reason a 10 foot tall alien with a million sharp teeth needs to say a single word to threaten someone. You are the threat, buddy. Your existence is the threat. Why did you need to insist on threatening to bite things off? You're terrifying and nothing you say is going to somehow make you scarier, especially when you just ate the guy anyway. It's like they just made that scene for the final trailer, much like that "I thought she was with you" comment all the way back in Batman v. Superman despite in-canon it made no sense. It's so unnecessary. And don't get me started on the fact that the crook actually asked the giant alien who it is. Fuck you. That was a lazy, transparent attempt to spoonfeed the wretched cliche that Michael Keaton's Batman made famous. (Consequently, all movies ever, please stop doing this cliche. Stop it. Just find another way to announce yourself. It's really tired, y'all, let it go already.) No human would ever look at that thing and ask it who the fuck it is. He'd piss himself and die of fright. Period. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Piss. Die. Period.

-Nitpick: Why was there that weird Godzilla (2014) trailer noise every time Venom attacked someone? Did they just steal it from public domain? They used it almost like the Inception horn cliche that Hollywood was obsessed with for a while and it took me right out of the scene every damn time.

-Nitpick: They really thought we're so stupid that we needed Kasady to actually say his character's name out loud. Look, you fuckers, you know goddamn well that end credits scenes are extras and that people can go home and Google things instead of you literally spelling it out for us. Hell, you know that not that many Average Joes and mainstream people went to this movie anyway since Venom is a second-stringer villain and your main demographic is die-hard Eddie Brock fans anyway. So having Kasady say the damn name “Carnage” in the post credits scene really was the final fart in my general direction. Give us some fucking credit, man. Venom has barely five plotlines to his whole character anyway. Of course we knew you were going to drop Carnage for the Sequel Hook, you condescending twat of a film.

Look, I get it. I'm hypercritical because I write fiction for a living. There are plenty of movies where turning your brain off is required in order to enjoy it, but I think this movie is asking me to get an entire lobotomy to be able to swallow the big-ass pill it's offering. It's just so sloppy and uncaring and yet it's holding its grubby little hands out for your money and your love and I think it's undeserving of it on every last level. It has zero comprehension of what it's trying to accomplish since it's a money grab, and its artistic choices are nothing short of bonkers. It's so strange that it even veers outside of the So Bad It's Good category for me. I can't in good confidence recommend it to anyone even though it's almost like a study in what not to do in both comic book movies and movies in general. It's weird in a distasteful way rather than in a charming way for me, honestly. I know people have rallied around it for being different and out there, but I don't think different and good are the same thing in Venom's case.

#Venom #Venom 2018 #Eddie Brock #film review #movie review #film rant #rant #movie rant #spoilers #spoiler alert #don't @ me #i don't care #anti Venom

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thenatureofnarrative · 4 years ago

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Best Films of 2020

The basis of my annual list is simple, these are the films that were, for me, mesmerizing and memorable. These were the cinematic experiences that either provoked a depth of emotion and/or provided a whole lot to talk about. These are the films that I could not forget and I cannot wait to see again.

After you read this year’s list, you can also find last year’s list here, and if you’d like to watch an epic conversation about the best films of the year I encourage you (or dare you) to watch this video. You can also follow me and my reviews on Letterboxd.

1. Time

Time is a documentary that doesn’t feel like a documentary, but rather sets itself apart as a transcendent piece of visual poetry about the perseverance and devotion of family in the face of injustice. This film is so many different things, and yet is one cohesive lyrical experience. This is a story about love and commitment. This is a story about parenthood and motherhood. This is a story about the forgotten and the voiceless, those discounted and discarded by an oppressive and racist system of incarceration. And this is a story about repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. Time is an 80-minute cinematic experience that beautifully and seamlessly ties all these threads together, through the singular voice and expressions of wife and mother, Fox Rich. I’m telling you, you’ve never seen or heard a film like this before. The way it’s shot, the way it sounds, the way it’s cut together, and the way it lets us linger and just sit with this woman and her family as they wait, but most importantly, as they persevere and fight for the release of their husband and father. Time is a masterpiece, and I can’t wait to watch it again and share it with others. On Amazon Prime.

2. First Cow

First Cow, Kelly Reichardt's masterpiece, was the most unexpected cinematic experience of the year for me, and I'm not even quite sure why. Maybe it was because I had heard such strange things about this film? Maybe it was because I've never actually seen any of Reichardt's previous films (though I am well aware of them)? And maybe it was because I genuinely didn't know what it was about? Whatever the reason(s) may be, I was truly captivated by the charming sincerity of this simple historical tale. In the first half-hour, the cinematography and production design was giving me made-for-TV-Canadian-heritage-moment vibes; and I don't mean that as an insult. I didn't know what to make of this film at first. It was like - - The Oregon Trail: The Movie - - which made me feel nostalgic and all the more intrigued. But this is Kelly Reichardt's genius: an unexpected, perfectly paced and plotted tale. I mean, sincerely, this film is the perfect example of how a story should unfold, of how the pieces of a narrative should be laid, and how the rug can get pulled out from under you at the end. Even though I didn't feel particularly emotional while watching the film, it was the ending - - Good Lord - - that ending! I mean, I was putty in Reichardt's hands. She got me. She totally got me, and I loved it! How foolish of me to think the final act would become something else, how susceptible and satisfied I was when, in the end, the story was pure and true. And that's all I'm going to say about it, because you need to see this film. On Crave-HBO and Rental Services.

3. Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee’s latest offering of cinematic greatness is less a work of protest and more a re-education. With Da 5 Bloods, history is given a voice, those oppressed and ignored now share the stage and their stories. At this point in his illustrious career it’s almost hard to believe that Spike Lee can still surprise us, but with Da 5 Bloods he masterfully and brilliantly blends together multiple cinematic styles and genres; and deserves an Oscar for it. Through the reunion of four Vietnam vets, who return to Ho Chi Minh in search of the lost remains of their fallen squad leader, an unbelievably heartfelt, exciting, and at times, shocking, story is told. A story that defies convention and summation; a film that genuinely has to be seen to be believed. For its entire two and a half hour runtime, we are never bored, always engaged. Some might accuse this film of trying to be too many things, but two transcendent performances keep us anchored through it all. Unnervingly, Chadwick Boseman plays a small role as the departed squad leader, appearing in flashbacks and as an apparition to one man. This one man is, Paul, played by Delroy Lindo, who portrays this grief-stricken and traumatized protagonist with staggering strength; and deserves an Oscar for it (though some suspect his departed co-star might win posthumously for another film). Nevertheless, Da 5 Bloods is a memorable and meaningful work of art and an essential education. On Netflix.

4. Judas and the Black Messiah

While watching Judas and the Black Messiah, I couldn’t help but draw lines of comparison between it and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). Both films are award-worthy pieces of penmanship. Both films are brimming with award-worthy performances. The distinction is, however, that TTOTC7 is a terrific piece of entertainment, while JATBM is an important work of history. Director Shaka King has carefully crafted, not only a captivating piece of cinema, but a necessary education about the historical efforts of the Black Panthers and the cyclical-social struggle of standing against injustice while resisting the influences of political coercion and moral corruption. And while Daniel Kaluuya, as a true thespian, gives a commanding and courageous performance, I believe the work of both, LaKeith Stanfield and Dominique Fishback, deserve more attention and award consideration. Their performances brought a depth of soul and struggle that was especially agonizing to watch during the film’s conclusion because not a single person in this story is a caricature. These are real people with real motivations living out the truest of conflicts: the preservation of power vs. justice for the oppressed. On Rental Services.

5. The Trial of the Chicago 7

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a terrific piece of entertainment. This true story, adapted and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is expertly written and structured, condensing a complicated six-month trial into a brisk and captivating two hours. For some, the story’s brevity is a cause for concern, but for me, in terms of cinema, I could not escape the momentum all three acts uniquely displayed, effectively intercutting several testimonies so that we would feel the chaos and uncertainty of the proceedings. Across the board the cast is incredible, but I believe it’s John Carroll Lynch, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II who are most worthy of award recognition. And yet, we cannot ignore the necessity of a fully-embodied antagonist, performed perfectly here by the great Frank Langella. The truth is, TTOTC7, doesn’t work without Langella’s performance. In the hands of another actor, Judge Hoffman could have come off as cartoonish, because his behaviour and actions seem so unrealistic and unbelievable, but thankfully, due to Langella’s craft and care, we do believe it, and it makes us angry for all the right reasons. Nevertheless, in the end, TTOTC7, isn’t a perfect film, but it is a great one. On Netflix.

6. Possessor

You probably shouldn’t watch this film. Fair warning. It is extremely graphic and violent, and yet, profound in its artistry and themes. The visuals are both simple and mysterious; clever and confounding. Possessor is a story that forces you to confront the frailty of the human condition, both physically and psychologically, and consider how easily influenced our sense of being and identity can be. While watching this film I couldn’t help but think how aptly equipped filmmaker, Brandon Cronenberg, would be to direct the next Christopher Nolan screenplay. Their themes and skills would be a perfect match. Young Cronenberg (son of David Cronenberg) is a remarkable director and provides us with some of the year’s best cinematography; along with another terrific performance from my favourite “young” actor, Christopher Abbott. On Crave-HBO and Rental Services.

7. Soul

Pixar’s Soul is a masterful, moving, and unpredictable work of art. This may not be a film for the youngest ones, but it is for the young at heart, or more specifically, those whose hearts are in a middling crisis of some sort. On the macro-level, there is absolutely nothing generic about this film. Whether in a spiritual plane or a material one, everything on screen is detailed and nuanced. From the philosophical and ontological, to the cultural and vocational, every audience member is invited to experience a universal narrative through a very specific lens; and there is tremendous power in that. Even though, in the Pixar family, Soul might be a stylistic cousin of Coco or Inside Out, and explore a narrative arc similar to Woody’s experience in the Toy Story films, it still sets itself apart as a work of Ecclesiastes. This is the sort of artistic confrontation one needs when dreams and passions are no longer sufficient, and one’s calling is no longer a pursuit of something unattained but a present embrace of an already unfolding narrative. Soul is a profound and beautiful work of art. On Disney+ and Rental Services.

8. The Climb

The Climb was one of the biggest surprises of the year for me, and the funniest film of 2020. Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have crafted a hilarious and wildly entertaining portrayal of friendship; fiercely loyal, desperately-co-dependent, backstabbing friendship. And while the story may not explore any great psychological depths, no scene in this brisk roller coaster is wasted. Every sequence is an elaborately choreographed vignette, a clever and creative single-take or “oner.” And even though the visual craftsmanship might strike some as excessive, I found it elevated the excitement and unpredictable nature of the story. From opening sequence to touching conclusion, The Climb, is a surprising and side-splitting comedy about enduring friendship, a story of despicable people doing despicable things in hilarious ways. On Rental Services.

9. Horse Girl

Horse Girl is a surprising film, with a truly stunning and subversive narrative. Alison Brie has always been a strong performer, but her performance in this film is award-worthy, and has sadly been overlooked this year. In the first half-hour we are charmed by Horse Girl. For those of us who love Duplass productions, or quirky films about lonely people, we are easily won over at first, but then this story takes a serious turn and we realize we’re watching a shockingly poignant portrayal of mental illness. Nothing is taken for granted or included without careful consideration in this story. Everything, every scene and every interaction, draws us in and allows us to experience the symptoms and disillusionment of a loved one losing their grip on reality. It’s heart-breaking. It’s harrowing. It’s tenderly rendered. My only wish while watching was for a more intricate or visually complex composition. Nevertheless, Jeff Baena’s Horse Girl is still a terrific achievement and one worth typing into the search bar. On Netflix.

10. The Father

The Father is a stunning achievement in directing and editing, especially when you consider it as a first-time feature, from an artist adapting their own stage play. This is a heartbreaking, harrowing, deeply empathetic portrayal of dementia and mental illness, as we experience it through eyes and mind of the afflicted. In a single apartment, every doorway and room is a different memory or time in one's life, and even though our protagonist appears to be in a familiar space, they cannot grab hold of the present. It’s almost scary how realistic Anthony Hopkins’ performance is. Both he and Olivia Coleman are fully embodied, and it’s devastating to watch. This film is a remarkable achievement. On Rental Services.

Honourable Mentions (alphabetically):

The Devil All the Time: A masterclass in southern gothic storytelling; it’s bleak, dark and disturbing, and deeply compelling. On Netflix.

Extraction: A truly impeccable piece of action cinema, with just enough heart and soul to keep the story grounded. On Netflix.

Mank: A black and white talky-bio-pic about a Hollywood socialist who’s dependent upon millionaires that manipulate their audiences with familial metaphors and manufactured newsreels. Watch with subtitles. On Netflix.

Minari: A simple and sobering tale about familial struggle and heartache, with a striking deftness to each and every character, across the generations, from children to parents and grandparent. On Rental Services.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Every year there is one film, one story, that is so honest, vulnerable and raw, that it’s hard to watch and yet undeniably essential and important. This is that film. On Crave-HBO and Rental Services.

Nomadland: With more focus than a Terrence Malick film, and less obligation than a documentary, Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland is a beautiful and innocent observation of our unknown neighbours. On Disney+.

One Night in Miami: The best ensemble of the year, with carefully crafted, fully embodied, sincere and nuanced performances from every cast member. On Amazon Prime.

Promising Young Woman: A unique and unpredictable thrill. Emerald Fennell’s award-worthy screenplay walks a tight-rope between black-comedy and revenge-thriller. On Rental Services.

Red, White and Blue: Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology of five films is a marvel, but Red, White and Blue is the cornerstone at the center of it all. On Amazon Prime.

Sound of Metal: A deeply affecting story about recovery, discovery and the stages of grief - - all explored through the experiences of our deaf protagonist. I wept through this one. On Rental Services.

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trashartandmovies · 4 years ago

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Berlinale Film Festival 2021, Industry Event, Day 2

One of the great treats of going to a film festival is getting the chance to wake up and see some transgressive mindfuckery first thing in the morning. This can be either thrilling, like seeing ANTICHRIST at 10:00 AM in Toronto and then being excited to see if the rest of the day’s movies can top that; or it can knock you out for the rest of the day, like seeing IRRADIATED at last year’s Berlinale and needing to process my contempt and hope for humanity.

Of course, part of the thrill of these experiences has been sitting with an audience and going through the mindfuckery as a collective, feeling the energy, seeing people walk out, getting through it together. When things are moved online, and the timing and schedule of your streaming film festival is more or less up to you, many pleasures are lost. But I have to say, there was a thrill in getting up at sunrise to put on some headphones and sit with THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST, an effectively wild and perverse shriek of a movie from first-time director Dasha Nekrasova, and part of this year’s Encounters section.

Shot in New York City, on beautiful 16mm film, THE SCARY is a steep plummet down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, triggered by the death of Jeffrey Epstein and two roommates moving into a new apartment on 61st Street that may be linked to the man and the sex trafficking ring he was involved with. These details are merely the place setting for an aggressive and sometimes messy assault on good taste and mainstream cinematic conventions. The two roommates descend into different kinds of madness — Addie seems to be possessed by some sort of evil within the apartment, while Noelle is quickly consumed by the conspiracy theories circling Epstein, the royal family, pizzagate, etc. Wedged between the two is Nekrasova herself, playing an amateur sleuth who indoctrinates Noelle with lurid websites, pharmaceutical speed, and sex. From there, the rabbit hole just keeps getting wider and weirder, Addie becomes obsessed with Prince Andrew and creepy tarot cards keep popping up. There will be blood.

I found it all pretty damn intoxicating, but I can understand that others will be put off by its shrillness and lack of subtlety. While the movie is dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, and it gets some inspiration from EYES WIDE SHUT, it’s more along the lines of John Waters crossed with John Carpenter. If you hated FEMALE TROUBLE, you may want to stay away from THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST. Otherwise, this movie sits comfortably next to the kind of outre indie horror movies that got passed from VCR to VCR in the late 80s and early 90s. But what really makes THE SCARY kick, is how directly it speaks to the age of QAnon, the equal parts seduction and repulsion of violence, and the horror that comes from being trapped in a system you have no control over. My only complaint is that the film leans a little too heavily on old horror tropes right at the end, but this couldn’t take away the thrills it provided up to that point. I’m already looking forward to how Nekrasova might follow-up this one.

This year’s Golden Bear for best film went, deservedly, to Radu Jude’s BAD LUCK BANGING, OR LOONEY PORN. Another extremely transgressive film, this one takes a flamethrower to contemporary values in Romania and any other place where racism, sexism and authoritarian fetishism have taken root — meaning, it’s both very specific to Romania and quite universal.

The movie begins with a very graphic and absurdly funny home porno, being shot on a phone. Soon enough, we find out the woman in the video is Emi, a respected history teacher at a private school in Bucharest. The first act of the movie is Emi walking through Bucharest. The city is littered with signs of capitalism run amok, juxtaposed against fervent religiosity. Gambling and wholesomeness. Tastelessness and righteousness. The camera makes these connections with some choice camera panning maneuvers. These movements bring to mind Robert Altman’s style of movement — casual yet smart and impactful.

As Emi makes her way to her destination, the film’s regard for realism begins to deteriorate. Bit by bit, drivers begin showing less regard for the safety of pedestrians. Everyone is foul-mouthed and inconsiderate of others, even while wearing pandemic masks. If you can’t afford a car, who cares about you? It’s not that far from reality, but the pointed exaggerations start piling up and lead us into the mid-section of the film, where we’re treated to an A-Z montage of our most pressing issues and what’s wrong with the world. It both serves as a rundown of the topics that are going to present themselves in the final act of the movie, as well as more visual evidence of our corrupted values and moral decay. It’s a bitter and bleak hoot.

It’s all leading to a confrontation between Emi and her school’s parent-teacher board. It’s one of the most absurd, insulting and cuttingly insightful trials put on film. What are a teacher’s responsibilities outside the classroom? What if the teacher in this situation were a man? What if the teacher is also including lessons about Romanian history that today’s citizens would rather not deal with? All of this and much more is on the table for riotous discussion. More than once, someone cackles the Woody Woodpecker laugh when the debate really goes off the rails. While the visual language in the final act settles into a more conventional groove, the sound editing is something of a tour de force. It’s punchy, freewheeling, obscenely hilarious and brings the movie to an unbelievable final moment.

BAD LUCK is a hard act to follow. If I’d known how ambitious it was, I would have saved it for day’s final screening. But for better or worse, the next film was a very quiet, understated Competition title — this one from Hungary (which was well-represented this year), entitled NATURAL LIGHT. Written and directed by Nagy Dénes, this is a gorgeously shot war-is-hell movie that follows a weathered unit of Hungarian soldiers as they try to round up Russian partisans during WWII. Yes, the title of the movie perfectly describes the golden, autumnal hue of the movie, as it is primarily set in barren forests, small, sooty villages and fields with plenty of mud.

The film is based on a massive book by novelist Pál Závada, but Dénes made the interesting decision to just focus his movie on a few days in the life of István Semetka, who is forced to step up and take charge of his unit early on in the film. Aside from capturing the unrelenting force of their natural surroundings, cinematographer Tamás Dobos also does an amazing job of capturing people’s faces — not unlike the films of fellow countryman, Bela Tarr. Ferenc Szabó, who plays the beleaguered Semetka, has two of the most soulful eyes I’ve seen on screen lately. This is of critical importance since the film has very little dialog until a couple of well-written monologues at the end. Semetka’s eyes say it all.

As mournfully beautiful as it is, NATURAL LIGHT isn’t an easy movie to sit through. It’s quiet and heartbreaking. But this level of sorrow and atrocities is also very familiar to cinema. In a way, it’s unfair because this story, in its way, is unique. But the message of how indifferent war is to soldiers with good intentions, has been told before. Few movies, however, have told it in such a wordless and poetic way.

Throughout the history of film, there’s always been a struggle to turn good theater into cinematic art. When talkies began and TV took off, we turned to the wealth of good theater scripts that already existed as readymade source material that could meet the demand for content. Sometimes it works, and the scripts can be well-adapted into the cinematic language. Other times, it’s like we’re just looking at a filmed documentation of a theater piece, which relies heavily on the strength of the words and performance, and not on any tools of the filmic trade. Denis Côté’s new film does a neat job of adding a new wrinkle to this long tradition of finding ways to turn monologues and long chunks of dialog between two people into an engaging work of film.

Côté has always had a strong experimental streak to his work, and even though he wrote this script and titled it “Social Hygiene” in 2015, it would seem that the current pandemic gave him the final push to turn the unusual idea of long, socially distant conversations in a field into a movie. Aside from a few shots that follow a young woman as she walks through nature, says hi to some livestock and offers an intermission dance sequence, SOCIAL HYGIENE is a series of static shots, framing different sections of rolling Canadian countryside, and containing a couple of people talking to each other across a certain distance. The framing, the sounds, the tone and rhythms of the conversation, are all very stylized. And in its way, perfectly cinematic. Côté pays attention to the ambient noises during these scenes. Birds turn into a cackling audience, construction noises go quiet and resume at just the right moments — it’s all very well-orchestrated.

The story and conversations of SOCIAL HYGIENE have nothing to do with the pandemic. It’s the fairly universal story of a charismatic, smooth-talking guy of unmet potential, who is consistently disappointing the women in his life. This man is Antonin, and we first meet him as he bickers with his sister. While Antonin is married, he’s currently living in a friend’s car, getting by through small-time theft and avoiding plans that might improve his lot in life, like working on that screenplay he’s been kicking around. Both his wife and his mistress try to prod him in the right direction, but he’s such a charmer that he enjoys spinning his destitution as the life of a lovable rogue, who’s morals and values can’t be met by traditional means.

More than any other film seen, so far, from this year’s Berlinale lineup, SOCIAL HYGIENE had me laughing-out-loud the most. And I’m very willing to admit that this is likely due to how much I related to Antonin’s faulty reasoning. But it’s also due to the fact that the script is supremely sharp and its deadpan delivery brought to mind Hal Hartley’s films. Like Hartley, Côté is anti-realist in his staging and delivery, meticulous in his timing, and yet uses humor to get at some very fundamental human dilemmas. I love Hartley and miss his sensibility dearly. So, yes, I loved every minute of SOCIAL HYGIENE.

Even with a press pass, it can be a challenge to sit for every Competition screening. There are simply too many other films that call for your attention. But in this streaming scenario, I was committed to seeing every last one. I felt like I didn’t have any good excuse not to when you can make your own daily schedule. So, Xavier Beauvois’s ALBATROS (or DRIFT AWAY, as it may end up being called in your neck of the woods) got a late Tuesday night home screening. It didn’t go down well.

The only one of Beauvois’s previous films that I’m familiar with is 2005’s THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT, which follows a homicide detective in La Havre. ALBATROS follows a police chief in the much more idyllic region of Normandy. Jérémie Renier plays the cop, Laurent, and just as the movie starts, he’s just proposed to his girlfriend of ten years, with whom he already has a young daughter. In the next scene he’s cleaning up after a suicide on the beach, and then there’s news of child abuse by local resident, and his friend is at the end of his rope dealing with farming regulations. Things are piling up quickly, and the chipper Laurent is soon getting edgy and taking his work home with him.

The beginning of the movie isn’t bad. It’s clearly building to something and it can hold your interest while it does that. But when that shoe drops, the film goes off the rails and descends into a completely ridiculous and phony final act. It doesn’t help matters that Beauvois never really finds an interesting visual language with which to tell this story. From the get-go, his camera is just there, shooting scenes and conversations in a way that makes everything seem slightly off and unnatural. It feels like things are being staged, much as the wedding photo on the beach that gets interrupted by a death at the very beginning. Unfortunately it never shakes this feeling, and two hours later, you can’t believe that you’re watching an ending so clichéd that Hollywood would probably think twice before giving it a greenlight. It’s the kind of denouement that is so cheesy and unearned that instead of choking back tears, you feel completely cheated.

Aside from ALBATROS, Day Two was a rich abundance. The punk stylings of THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST, the anarchic Molotov cocktail of BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONEY PORN, the austere meditation of NATURAL LIGHT, the playful theatrics of SOCIAL HYGIENE — these all had something special to offer. Tomorrow, we’ll visit China, France, Georgia and, once again, Hungary, for two more films with big rewards and two that struggled to transcend their formal trappings.

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thechurchillreview · 7 years ago

Photo

Contains minor SPOILERS.

Cala Maria gif courtesy of @casioonaplasticbeach.

The debut game of Studio MDHR is the completely hand drawn 1930s cartoon inspired Cuphead for the Xbox One and PC. Particularly the Fleischer Studios short starring Bimbo known as Swing You Sinners! (1930). For example, Cagney Carnation’s idle animation is one a ghost has in it. A later significant donnybrook borrows from that cartoon’s aesthetic and characters too. There’s visual grain filter and simulated 24 fps too! There’s a deliberate color inconsistency between Cuphead’s design and the hues for his victory screen: a commonality found with older cartoons. An Inkwell Isle II boss character speaks with a Porky Pig inspired stutter whilst possessing a moniker close to a famous animator’s (Grim Natwick). Natwick, in real life, spoke with a stutter, making a double reference to cartoon history.

As a cartoon fanatic and a seeker of run and gun games, I had to check out Cuphead for sure!

On Xbox One.

My name is OrchardBlossom.

Cuphead has been in development for seven years and is the final result of seven people animating it is beyond mind blowing. Their names are Chad Moldenhauser, Danielle Johnson, @jake-clark, Thomas “Smo” Smolenski, @habihanna, Joseph Coleman, and Tina Nawrocki. Take a bow y’all! *Throws roses, kisses, glitter, and confetti*

Cuphead, is, as cliche as it sounds, a dream come true for me.

The moment I tried the Sony Imagesoft (publisher) and Traveller’s Tales (developer) Sega Genesis game Mickey Mania in the early 90s, I’ve been relentlessly searching and totally craving another release that utilized hand drawn animation that pulls from classic cartoons. In it, Mickey Mouse can toss marbles at foes and his HP that’s represented by fingers on his glove is 5. The player goes from left to right avoiding by jumping over or trouncing adversaries. Mickey Mania’s opening level is the culturally and genre significant Steamboat Willie (1928) and a later one is a favorite of mine known as The Lonesome Ghosts (1937). Often I’d avoid enemies and not proceed so I could soak in the game’s distinctive visual aesthetic for a second longer. Similarly, I’d prolong a couple of clashes in Cuphead for that very same reason. Despite never winning against the final fight in that damned The Prince and the Pauper (1990) stage, that Mickey Mouse game still retains a special place in my heart. In fact, when taking a slight break from Cuphead I fired up my Sega to only lose against Captain Pete…Again.

25% of Cuphead features run and gun stages that bring to mind Mega Man, Contra, Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug, and Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. Your introductory HP is 3 and can be higher if you sacrifice the strength of your weapons via purchased charms. Charms are bought using Coins found in levels and around the hub islands of Inkwell Isle.

With this currency, charms or weaponry can be bought at Porkrind’s Emporium. For instance, the Smoke Bomb Charm makes your dodge waaaay more efficient. The Coffee Charm is ideal for plane boss battles since you cannot make your Shrink dodge any better in them: this allows you to obtain Super Arts of powered up techniques faster. Cuphead’s basic projectile weapon is known as the Peashooter. The boomerang-like Roundabout is your best bet against most bosses if you’re adept at facing the opposite and firing it. Chaser is a weak homing weapon that’s perfect for boss battles that require both tricky and constant dodging (like the final phase of queen bee Rumor Honeybottoms). Experiment with your six firing weapon selections and find what’s the most comfortable for you though. Remember that Cuphead and Mugman can fire while ducking/moving and their firing angle can be adjusted.

Likewise, in a plane, one can use the gun or bombs. I didn’t realize this until late in the game, ha ha!

The remaining 75% of Cuphead consists of brimming with personality and creativity boss battles alongside some toe-tapping worthy jazz-infused tracks. Cuphead is a game that takes patience, analyzing patterns, learning to properly parry (leads to the capability of utilizing stronger weapon moves and Super Art techniques), knowing when to stop firing versus dodge some more, ducking, and changing your weapon set or Super Arts when necessary. Now, it is possible to hold down the fire button and switch between weapons on the fly. I personally found it overwhelming, an additional challenge of sorts, that made it increasingly harder to accurately concentrate during either run and gun stages and boss battles.

So, in Cuphead, you will die a lot. I guarantee it. I died 1111 times beating it on Normal mode alone. I didn’t give up nor go above 3 HP. It was immensely satisfying when I won against everything.

But I feel this by design: the game’s mechanics are solid and each time I lost I didn’t blame Cuphead since everything is clear. Trial and error is in the game’s DNA. Controls aren’t an issue essentially. They’re quite responsive, so each failure unquestionably feels like my fault. If an attack or enemy isn’t pink, it cannot be parried, so it must be avoided or slain. The directions in which bosses bombard you don’t change at all (besides after a phase alteration where new moves are still very much broadcast)…The order isn’t consistent however. And my advice is to always stay on guard. Sometimes, the smartest attack is to wait though.

Whenever you do lose, a progress bar is unveiled about how dismal or great your overall performance was. Along with a taunting quote from a boss. Like Wally Warbles, a Woody Woodpecker colored bird says, “Even without my feathers, you’re in for stormy weather!” Talk about adding insult to injury! This actually compelled me to keep going. I wasn’t deterred because I learned from my errors and mistiming mistakes until I won. I can defeat some of the initially seemingly impossible boss battles without taking a hit now.

In short, Cuphead is tough yet fair in my eyes.

Alas where it falters most is the usage of two boys as our protagonists. I get that is supposed to be a homage to Mickey Mouse (with a hint of Felix the Cat?) and the long forgotten Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with each sporting said famous character’s colors/gloves. That’s cool I guess.

Still, not Cuphead and his sister? Because it isn’t like Betty Boop isn’t that famous or anything right? Or how about neither a guy or girl? They’re anthropomorphic characters with a cup and a mug for heads! Why solely men…?

Cuphead is a tale of owing a debt to the Devil through gambling. They are forced to collect soul contracts from the lives of others the Devil and Dice King’s casino have corrupted. Or lose their own lives instead as grisly punishment. The minimalist plot is conveyed through a excellently done storybook motif. I prefer Cuphead’s bro Mugman who told him to stop gaming when the Devil challenged him.

Mugman’s the one I never get to play as. XD

Yes, despite the game creators (Chad and Jared Moldenhaur, brothers) stating Cuphead wanted to avoided a damsel in distress narrative as the main one a.k.a. a retro concept that should stop being the norm. However, there’s a small juxtaposition between this and Cuphead writer Evan Skolnick. In Cuphead, women are unfortunately in short supply. The most prominent recurring one (Legendary Chalice) is literally trapped and has to be saved to unlock the powerful Super Art abilities located in the Inkwell Isle Mausoleums. I mean our introduction to her in the game is the word “HELP” with an exclamation mark for emphasis. Saving her grants you more useful Super Arts that assist in stage and boss fights, but aren’t necessary to beat the game. To achieve victory, the player must parry all of the spectral threats to release the straw-halo spirit from a repeated prison thrice times throughout the course of your journey.

For some reason, a celebatory background statue of her can be seen in Rugged Ridge, suggesting her character was once one of considerable prominence in this game’s world (or storyline I suggest). My real query is why the Legendary Chalice has “legendary” in her name in the first place? So, why couldn’t she of been similar to a Great Fairy from the Legend of Zelda series then? As the protagonist Link, you locate the Great Fairy fountains and she gives you something for the effort. Or what if the Mausoleum parry challenges were meant to prove that Cuphead and Mugman are worthy to own the sacred Super Arts Legendary Chalice has in her possession?

I sincerely wish her character’s background had been suitably expanded on. Like maybe she sees potential in them for completing the Mausoleums in Inkwell. Perhaps her role in the game could of had more meaning? How it stands with Legendary Chalice simply plays into a classic video game trope I’ve always loathed. The damsel in distress the Moldenhauser bros tried to not use.

Others women talk to you in the hub world or ask for assistance in some way. Like a fish fishing, for one! How wonderfully weird. Is she a cannibal by chance?

What remains are bosses. Ahem, how few there are that is, yeah. Out of twenty plus bosses only seven feature women with five being the actual focus.

The introduction to planes battle has Hilda Berg: an Olive Oly zeppelin that transforms into the constellations Taurus and Sagittarius (they are coded/drawn as men) during the fight. Another is a drunken martini glass that’s part of an alcoholic beverage trio you might contend with. The Domino mini-boss has two halves: the top is a hat and bow while the bottom is a skirt with that same bow serving as hers. This half has distinct lashes and red heels as well. There’s the Betty Boop sound effect laden Cala Maria, the gigantic mermaid seen in each trailer for the game’s release. Sally Stageplay is the most memorable for me with her battle taking place in a theatre with a live audience: it opens with a wedding and has her theatre husband in the background not contributing to the fight while trying to take care of a baby. There’s the aforementioned Rumor Honeybottoms, in an intense scenario which pushes you to your platforming and parrying limits. My favorite in terms of concept to execution is in the Inkwell Isle II level Sugarland Shimmy! She is called Baroness von Bon Bon.

Here’s an intriguing fact: the singer for the seemingly masculine Cab Calloway influenced antagonist Dice King is sung by Alana Bridgewater (her vocals are fantastic!).

All in all, I recommend Cuphead. The indie darling is an equally exhilarating and addictive game with a superb soundtrack to boot! On top of that, Cuphead’s nods to video games and animation history are an impeccable fusion I couldn’t get enough of. Cuphead’s fun and challenge is raised with a friend on-board for the surreal worth taking ride. You can revive your teammate for a price (they return with 1 HP left and any subsequent revivals become increasingly harder to pull off) through parrying their ghost or taking HP (Like a thief…Blargh. ) from one another upon dying in boss battles or levels.

Oh, there is indeed a lower difficulty, but the developers will sadly not let you truly finish the game if you select it. Bosses lack entire phases and overall health. Locking content in this manner does disappoint and irk me for those that desire the full Cuphead experience. Especially for those that are already put off by the game’s difficulty curve as a whole from the get-go. Since part of Cuphead’s joy is seeing so much creative and stunning animation lovingly crafted on display. Listening to new music. Drinking in the atmosphere prior to being killed for the umpteenth time due to miscalculating a parry or boss attack. This is lost for those that choose Simple. *Sighs despondently*

As are the game’s wonderful secrets I won’t divulge here.

On the other hand, folks should give Simple Mode a gander to check out lost animation Normal and Hard Mode doesn’t have. ;)

A PSA for those seeking an A rank on the Run and Gun stage Funfair Fever! Um, there’s a glitch in the game that won’t allow this achievement. Meaning, you have to conquer it with a P (Pacifist: only parrying, no shooting) rank as an alternative. I spent hours attempting to secure an A rank to no avail until I succeeded with the P rank I needed towards earning a game secret. This has just been patched.

My recommendation for Cuphead would be loftier if gender representation had been better and Simple Mode had encompassed all of the game. It doesn’t. You’re mocked by Dice King and that doesn’t seem right to me. No one deserves to be made fun of for playing something that is meant to be purely entertainment.

My feelings towards the red skinned turban wearing genie magician guy in the game bother me as well. Like he’s time period accurate and ultimately offensive. Should of done some in-depth research before posting this. :(

P.S. Dr. Kahl, is named after animator Milt Kahl, but modeled after Sonic’s Dr. Ivo Robotnik and Mega Man’s Dr. Wily. You’ve been warned. So many deaths were caused by him. So. Many. Losses. *Shudders*

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dweemeister · 7 years ago

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My alternative 90th Academy Awards

So here’s another annual tradition... my alternative Oscars ceremony. This is what this Sunday’s Oscars would look like if I – and I alone – stuffed the ballots and decided on all of the nominations and winners. Non-English language films are accompanied by their nation of origin (in FIFA three-letter code).

90th Academy Awards – March 4, 2018 Dolby Theatre – Hollywood, Los Angeles, California Host: Jimmy Kimmel Broadcaster: ABC

Best Picture: LADY BIRD

The Breadwinner, Anthony Leo, Tomm Moore, Andrew Rosen, and Paul Young (Cartoon Saloon/GKIDS)

Call Me by Your Name, Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, Rodrigo Teixeira, Marco Morabito, James Ivory, and Howard Rosenman (Sony Pictures Classics)

Coco, Darla K. Anderson (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Dunkirk, Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan (Warner Bros.)

Faces Places (FRA), Rosalie Varda (Le Pacte/Cohen Media Group)

The Florida Project, Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch, Kevin Chinoy, Andrew Duncan, Alex Saks, Francesca Silvestri, and Shih-Ching Tsou (A24)

Lady Bird, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and Evelyn O’Neil (A24)

Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson, Megan Ellison, JoAnne Sellar, and Daniel Lupi, (Focus/Universal)

The Post, Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, and Amy Pascal (20th Century Fox)

The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Out of the running in real life are Darkest Hour, Three Billboards, and Get Out. And taking the maximum of ten spots, in their place enter The Breadwinner, Coco, Faces Places, The Florida Project. That’s two animated movies, a documentary, and a neglected critical darling... come at me? I was lukewarm over Darkest Hour, pissed off over Three Billboards, and I honestly don’t think Get Out is as effective a horror movie or a commentary on racial relations that it wants to be.

Lady Bird would be my winner, with Phantom Thread your runner-up and either Faces Places or The Shape of Water as your third spot. For Lady Bird, it would be harder to find a movie with as much empathy as it this calendar year. Maybe not the most technically gifted filmmaking of the nominees, but it accomplishes its conceit with an open ear and an open heart. Bravo.

I noticed that I don’t have time to write on all the Best Picture nominees anymore, like in years past. I only got to Dunkirk and The Post – both of which are on the outside looking in.

Best Director

Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk

Dee Rees, Mudbound

Agnès Varda and JR, Faces Places

CONTROVERSY. Dee Rees nominated in Director, but Mudbound isn’t nominated for Picture! In all honesty, I couldn’t find the excuse to nudge Mudbound out for any of the nominees I placed above. But to focus on the positive, del Toro is going to make it three Mexican Best Director winners in the last four years... that is exhilarating. Nolan is my close second choice here, and falters a bit because I didn’t personally enjoy the structure of Dunkirk all that much.

Best Actor

Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name

Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Andy Serkis, War for the Planet of the Apes

No CMBYN fans, there will not be any justice for you on my blog either. Because the best performance of the year by an actor of a leading role was done in motion capture... it was Andy Serkis as Caesar in War for the Planet of the Apes. It’s been high time to honor Serkis in what is his best work – aside from his performances as Gollum – to date.

Best Actress

Ahn Seo-hyun, Okja

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

Meryl Streep, The Post

The quieter performances aren’t going to win at this year’s Oscars. McDormand’s flashier performance in Three Billboards will overshadow Hawkins’ nuanced, silent performance in SoW. That’s wrong to me, as I think Hawkins does so much physically that is so taxing for any actor that would dare take a role like that. South Korean child actress Ahn Seo-hyun just sneaks in for Okja.

Best Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water

Bob Odenkirk, The Post

Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World

My least favorite acting category this year. So I’ll toss it to Dafoe for The Florida Project... who, on Sunday, is probably going to lose to a flashier performance in Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards (who shouldn’t have been nominated). Plummer and Odenkirk are in a close battle for second.

Best Supporting Actress

Mary J. Blige, Mudbound

Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip

Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread

Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird

This is Manville v. Metcalf for me. And for playing the deeply layered, deeply conflicted, tough-love mother in Lady Bird, this has to be Metcalf for me. It is ta transcendent supporting actress performance. And yes, I snuck Tiffany Haddish in here... because why not?

Best Adapted Screenplay

James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name

Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, The Disaster Artist

Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green, Logan

Dee Rees and Virgil Williams, Mudbound

Aaron Sorkin, Molly’s Game

If I ran the Oscars, the 89-year-old James Ivory wouldn’t have won an Oscar by now either. I hate to type that, but timing is a funny thing! Fate and time are funny things, aren’t they? This category isn’t close. Dee Rees makes history as the first nominated black woman in this category!

Best Original Screenplay

Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread

Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch, The Florida Project

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, The Post

Jordan Peele, Get Out

I’ve already commented how much I think Get Out is more flawed a movie than most believe. This comes down to Anderson and Gerwig for me... and my Best Picture winner, I think, is blessed with the screenplay of the year for capturing a time, a place, and its characters at a certain point in their lives so wonderfully.

Best Animated Feature

The Breadwinner (Cartoon Saloon/GKIDS)

Coco (Pixar/Walt Disney)

The Girl Without Hands, France (Shellac/GKIDS)

Loving Vincent (Next Film/Good Deed Entertainment)

Mary and the Witch’s Flower, Japan (Studio Ponoc/GKIDS)

SHOCKER. For me, I was considering a tie in this category (which has happened six times in Academy Awards history... so I guess I have to save it for once every fifteen ceremonies or something) between Breadwinner (write-up) and Coco (write-up). This would be Cartoon Saloon’s first win in my alternate universe... in that same alternative universe for 2009, The Secret of Kells would’ve lost to Up; for 2014, Song of the Sea would’ve lost to eventual Best Picture winner The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

Coco fans, don’t despair though. Keep reading... because your movie isn’t going home empty-handed.

I totally disrespected Ferdinand and Boss Baby didn’t I?

Best Documentary Feature

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Kartemquin Films/Public Broadcasting Service)

Faces Places, France (Le Pacte/Cohen Media Group)

Jane (National Geographic)

LA92 (National Geographic)

Last Men in Aleppo (Aleppo Media Center/Larm Film/Grasshopper Film)

I don’t think this would be Agnès Varda’s first Oscar in my alternative universe? I’ll get to doing the 1960s someday. :P

Best Foreign Language Film

Faces Places, France

The Insult, Lebanon

Loveless, Russia

Mary and the Witch’s Flower, Japan

The Square, Sweden

Best Cinematography

Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049

Janusz Kaminski, The Post

Rachel Morrison, Mudbound

Jonathan Ricquebourg, The Death of Louis XIV (FRA)

Hoyte Van Hoytema, Dunkirk

Morrison makes history by being the first female nominee in this category and as its first winner. Sorry Roger Deakins! You probably would’ve won earlier in my alternative universe anyways.

Best Film Editing

Michael Kahn, The Post

Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos, Baby Driver

Gregory Plotkin, Get Out

Lee Smith, Dunkirk

Sidney Wolinsky, The Shape of Water

Best Original Musical*

M.M. Keeravani, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Coco

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, The Greatest Showman

*NOTE: Best Original Musical – known previously as several other names – exists in the Academy’s rulebooks, but requires activation from the music branch given that there are enough eligible films. To qualify, a film must have no fewer than five original songs. This category was last activated when Prince won for Purple Rain (1984).

You know, this might change some day if I sit down and watch Baahubali 2. I’ve listened to the soundtrack, but I haven’t seen the songs in context. Sorry Indian cinema fans! Coco fans must be getting mighty mad at me for now... but Coco’s musical score – outside of two original songs (“Remember Me” and “Proud Corazón”) and one non-original song (“La Llorana”) – isn’t the best out of context. The Greatest Showman – I think Pasek and Paul are far better lyricists than they are composers (and yes, that’s a problem) – has songs that do very well in and out of context, and takes the win in this category.

Best Original Score

Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water

Alexandre Desplat, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Michael Giacchino, War for the Planet of the Apes

John Williams, The Post

John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

It really comes down to Valerian, Apes, and Jedi. And in this titanic battle over science fiction and space opera, it is Desplat for the much-maligned Valerian taking the Oscar home. The score combines seamlessly enormous orchestral and electronic elements to a degree that I haven’t heard from Desplat yet. It barely edges Williams for The Last Jedi... which benefits from some of Williams’ best action scoring in years and a repackaging of older themes in ways showing off the dexterity of the maestro. Giacchino is third, with Desplat for SoW in fourth, and The Post in fifth. Jonny Greenwood for Phantom Thread is the first man out.

Best Original Song

“Mighty River”, music by Raphael Saadiq; lyrics by Mary J. Blige, Saadiq, and Taura Stinson, Mudbound

“A Million Dreams”, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, The Greatest Showman

“Mystery of Love”, music and lyrics by Sufjan Stevens, Call Me by Your Name

“Remember Me (Recuérdame)”, music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Coco

“This Is Me”, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, The Greatest Showman

Also proudly the winner of the 2017 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (some of you know what that means), “Remember Me (Recuérdame)” has everything you want – interesting musicality (even though I still think that descending line, which begins with “For ever if I’m far away / I hold you in my heart” sounds far more like something Randy Newman would compose than something distinctly Mexican) meaningful lyrics, layers of meaning within the movie it comes from, and a life of its own when separated from that movie.

Showstopper “This Is Me” comes a distant second, with the others in a scrum for crumbs. I really like “A Million Dreams”, though. My sister will take me to task over how much I enjoyed The Greatest Showman’s soundtrack (which I enjoyed despite finding it musically uninteresting).

Best Costume Design

Jacqueline Durran, Beauty and the Beast

Jen Wasson, The Beguiled

Nina Avramovic, The Death of Louis XIV

Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread

Luis Sequeira, The Shape of Water

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, and Lucy Sibbick, Darkest Hour

John Blake and Camille Friend, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Neal Scanlan and Peter King, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen and Félix Puget, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Arjen Tuiten, Wonder

Best Production Design

Dennis Gassner and Alessandra Querzola, Blade Runner 2049

Jim Clay and Rebecca Alleway, Murder on the Orient Express

Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau, and Jeff Melvin, The Shape of Water

Hugues Tissandier, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Aline Bonetto and Dominic Hyman, Wonder Woman

Best Sound Editing

Mark Mangini and Theo Green, Blade Runner 2049

Richard King and Alex Gibson, Dunkirk

Al Nelson and Steve Slanec, Kong: Skull Island

Matthew Wood and Ren Klyce, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

James Mather, Wonder Woman

Best Sound Mixing

Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin, and Mary H. Ellis, Baby Driver

Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill, and Mac Ruth, Blade Runner 2049

Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, and Gary A. Rizzo, Dunkirk

Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern, and Glen Gauthier, The Shape of Water

David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce, and Stuart Wilson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best Visual Effects

John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert, and Richard R. Hoover, Blade Runner 2049

Scott Fisher and Andrew Jackson, Dunkirk

Ben Morris, Mike Mulholland, Neal Scanlan, and Chris Corbould, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Scott Stokdyk and Jérome Lionard, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Dan Lemmon, and Joel Whist, War for the Planet of the Apes

Best Documentary Short

Edith+Eddie (Kartemquin Films)

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (Frank Stiefel)

Heroine(e) (Requisite Media/Netflix)

Knife Skills (Thomas Lennon Films)

Traffic Stop (Q-Ball Productions/HBO Films)

My omnibus review of this year’s nominees can be read here.

Best Live Action Short

DeKalb Elementary (Reed Van Dyk)

The Eleven O’Clock (FINCH)

My Nephew Emmett (Kevin Wilson, Jr.)

The Silent Child (Slick Films)

Watu Wote: All of Us, Germany/Kenya (Ginger Ink Films/Hamburg Media School)

My omnibus review of this year’s nominees can be read here.

Best Animated Short

Dear Basketball (Glen Keane Productions)

In a Heartbeat (Ringling College of Art and Design)

Lou (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Revolting Rhymes (Magic Light Pictures/Triggerfish Animation Studios/BBC)

World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts (Bitter Films)

My omnibus review of this year’s nominees can be read here. I took out Negative Space and Garden Party for my winner In a Heartbeat and World of Tomorrow Episode Two. If you haven’t seen In a Heartbeat yet... first, where the hell have you been? Under a rock? Here’s the link.

Academy Honorary Awards: Agnès Varda, Charles Burnett, Donald Sutherland, and Owen Roizman

Special Achievement Academy Award: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Flesh and Sand

MULTIPLE NOMINEES (22) Nine: The Shape of Water Seven: Dunkirk; The Post Six: Phantom Thread Five: Blade Runner 2049; Lady Bird; Mudbound; Star Wars: The Last Jedi Four: Call Me by Your Name; Coco; Faces Places; Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Three: The Florida Project; Get Out; The Greatest Showman; War for the Planet of the Apes Two: Baby Driver; The Breadwinner; Darkest Hour; The Death of Louis XIV; Mary and the Witch’s Flower; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Wonder Woman

WINNERS 4 wins: The Shape of Water 3 wins: Lady Bird 2 wins: Dunkirk; Faces Places; Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets; War for the Planet of the Apes 1 win: The Breadwinner; Call Me by Your Name; Coco; DeKalb Elementary; The Florida Project; The Greatest Showman; In a Heartbeat; Knife Skills; Mudbound; Phantom Thread

16 winners from 25 categories. 45 feature-length films and 15 short films were represented.

Questions? Comments? Personal attacks? Fire away!

#90th Academy Awards #Oscars #31 Days of Oscar

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hellomissmabel · 7 years ago

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The worst in us - part 3

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Bucky x reader, Steve x reader

Warnings: Mentions of abortion. Talk of sex and female body parts. BuckyNat.

Word count: 2.905 (not counting the recap from the last chapter)

Summary: Y/N tries to shove Bucky out of her mind and her heart, which of course doesn’t work.

A/N: Inspired by the word “Onsra” (Boro) - that heart-wrenching feeling you get when you realise a love won’t last. Written for @howlingbarnes her “languages of Love” challenge.

Part 1 - Part 2

Previously

“I’m sorry but I didn’t catch your name,” he half-whispers so only you can hear him.

“Doctor Y/L/N. Y/N.”

“Y/N,” he smiles warmly, adding complementary wink to add to the tension wrapping itself around your hearts. “It was nice meeting you.”

It’s impossible, right? That history would repeat itself? That you would fall in love with Natasha’s husband just like when you were younger and fell in love with her boyfriend? All those old feelings of guilt and remorse and self-blame have lingered even after all these years. You couldn’t allow yourself to get heart palpitations over a man that was already taken, not a second time. He will just use you.

So you did the one thing you thought would most definitely work. You focused yourself a full 200% on your job. When one baby had popped out, another followed and so on so forth. You worked as hard as you could, helped as many women as you could deliver their baby. And still, you couldn’t get those baby blues off your mind. So you hit the replay button every single day. Work hard so you don’t have to think about anything else.

This became your weekly routine. You didn’t have to think about Bucky for the rest of the week. And the week after that. And the following week. But once you were in the safety of your home and you didn’t have your work to plunge yourself in, your mind automatically conjured the image of his heart-breaking smile. This happened every time you saw a dark-haired man pop up on the screen of either your television or computer or even your phone.

So you eventually had to admit the ugly truth to yourself; you were smitten. Smitten by a married man you’ve only met once, during the birth of his baby girl. A man you’ve only spoken to once, after the birth of his baby girl. It also didn’t help that that his face was on every tabloid in the city. James Buchanan Barnes, the millionaire who bets on the bigger picture and speculates on taking risks. That’s how they profile him, that’s the kind of man Natasha married and the kind of man you’ll have to forget about. Because you can’t go back to that life again.

But what you didn’t know was that Bucky found himself equally swallowed by conflicted feelings. He always approached love like something that could be bought if you had enough money. Or at least that’s what his father lectured him about. But Bucky wouldn’t be his mother’s son if he didn’t believe in true love, didn’t hold out even the tiniest of hope that one day, that very special girl would cross his path and they’d fall in love. But grown-up Bucky allowed his lust for drop-dead gorgeous women like Natasha and his greed for more money take over, and he had carefully boxed away his desires for ever finding true love.

But just like Pandora, Bucky opened a box he shouldn’t have. That same box he had so carefully stashed away, he opened again that very moment he rushed into the delivery room and saw you. He felt a spark, that same spark that ignites when he sees the first rays of light seep through the curtains in the morning, announcing the beginning of another exciting, enticing day full of new possibilities. And it was you that lit the match, it was you that opened the curtains for him.

Yet it troubles his mind. So he bites his tongue, carries on with his day-to-day life. he doesn’t want to get hurt and neither does he want to hurt anyone else. But oh my, he would life off nothing if he could only change the past.

Meanwhile Steve, poor Steve, was trying his very best to take you out on the most mind-blowing dates. He took you swing dancing on your second date, a private wine-tasting on the third and the fourth date consisted of a home-cooked meal on the balcony of his Brooklyn apartment, falling asleep underneath the a starry sky, just like in the novels and the movies.

But enough is enough, you had decided for yourself. You simply couldn’t go out on any more sexless dates with Steve, all the while the blue-eyed stranger lingered at the back of your mind. So as soon as your fifth date arrived, you tore the clothes from off his muscled and toned body and got straight to it. Of course Steve already knew how to indulge your body so it would yield to him in a heartbeat and a sigh, treating you to the best night of your life.

Being with Steve was effortless and it almost helped you erase all memories and all thoughts about Bucky. There was nothing you’d rather do on your day off than spent the morning getting peppered with kisses from Steve, brunching at your favourite café and exploring the hidden parts of New York. Nothing you’d rather do than close the curtains and fall asleep in his arms once the sun had gone down and the city had somewhat grown silent. Because even though this city never sleeps, doesn’t mean you didn’t need your beauty sleep either.

It was on one of those days, where you were peacefully woken from your much-needed and much-deserved beauty sleep by your charming boyfriend, that the world had decided to turn its back to you.

It had started off small, like all great and disastrous things. You got up and stole a kiss from Steve, putting on some clothes and doing your make-up. Normally you’d take a shower together but since you both overslept a little, you skipped these kind of morning pleasantries and headed straight to the café. Once you’d sat down at your usual spot, Steve’s phone rang mercilessly, abruptly putting an end to your happy daze.

“It’s doctor Laufeyson,” Steve explained to you as he listened to the speaker on the other end of the line. “I need to operate.” Pressing a loving kiss to your cheek, he left with the promise of making it up to you next time. So here you were, sitting all by yourself in misery and self-pity.

“Mind if I join you?,” a familiar voice asks you, drawing your attention to that same set of oceanic pearls you’ve been begging to erase.

“Sure,” you reply dryly, your eyes scanning the room in a daze of panic, goose bumps rising as his gaze lingers a little too long on your face.

The owner, Scott, immediately recognises you as soon as he steps outside the kitchen and brings you both the menu. “So…,” Bucky says as his eyes scan the menu as you kindly thank Scott. “You come here often?”

“I wouldn’t say often,…,” you answer reluctantly, your resolve dissolving every waking second. You catch a waft of his cologne as the door opens and another costumer comes in. It’s not a strong, masculine and woody scent like Steve’s, but a bit more elegant, refined and certainly suitable for a businessman.

“But long enough to be on a first name base with the owner,” Bucky chuckles in victory, calling you out on your bluff without blinking an eye. “Surely you can tell me what’s good here, hm?”

It amuses him, the way you’re struggling not to lung yourself at him and revel in his toxicity. Because that’s exactly what he is, a beautiful and exotic creature, deadly to the human touch. You’ll wither and die if your planet ever ends up spiralling in his galaxy. You’re already compromising your emotional compass by just talking to him.

When Scott comes back to take your orders, you and Bucky both choose the banana pancakes with whipped cream and hot chocolate sauce. You never take anything else but pancakes, either with chocolate pieces or blueberries or any other topping that appeals to your senses but Steve’s isn’t big on pancakes and prefers the French toast with bacon and maple syrup. It seems like you and Bucky have the same taste in breakfast food. Great, just great.

Scott tells you he’ll make quick work of your order and you hand him back the menu. “So how’s the baby doing?” Crossing your arms over your chest, you lean back in your seat and study Bucky’s face.

“Ellie’s fine. But I don’t wanna talk about the baby.” He mimics you and leans back in his seat as well, folding his hands in his lap and quirking a brow. “I wanna talk about you.”

“But I don’t wanna talk about me,” you state frankly, taking a no-nonsense attitude.

Bucky completely ignores you and asks the first question that pops into his mind. “Why did you decide to become a gynaecologist?”

You let out a frustrated sigh, but you know that going against Bucky will get you nowhere, so you decide to indulge him just this once. “I guess it just happened. My mentor in med school pitched the idea to me and I helped out in a couple shifts. And it all just clicked in my head. That this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

“Staring at vagina’s all day long? I wouldn’t mind doing that either,” he grins cockily and you wish nothing more than to wipe it off his face.

He’s an offensive little fucker and as you throw your napkin at him, you decide to play along with his game. “I bet you did exactly that before you married Natasha. You certainly strike me as the type.”

He feigns to be insulted by your insinuations, crossing his hand over his heart, but does not reply to or refute your statement. It’s a small victory but a victory nonetheless and Bucky decides to let you have it. He’s got other plans for you.

You welcome Bucky’s silence, eager to ask a question of your own. “How did you and Natasha meet anyway?”

He wets his bottom lip, his eyes never letting go of yours. “She was one of my blind dates.”

One of his blind dates? Natasha never struck you as the type to agree to a blind date. Ever since she was a little girl, she’s always been basking in the attention of men. First it was her father that showered her with gifts and when she was old enough to start having boyfriends, an entire list of suitors followed suit. Never would Natasha agree to go out with a man that could potentially not only be ugly but also as poor as a beggar.

“I just like dating,” Bucky explains as he sees you struggling to wrap your mind around his answer. “I like to charm women, compliment women, make them feel special. There’s something incredibly sexy about a woman’s blush.”

“I bet you like ripping their panties off after dinner much more,” you mutter under your breath, too quiet for Bucky’s ears to catch anything.

“With Natasha it was different,” he continues in a softer tone. “She didn’t consider me as a piece of meat and I didn’t see her as my next plaything. We got engaged a year later.” Even though he does his best keeping up a happy façade, his words had a sad ring to them. “But two weeks before the big day she got cold feet, returned the ring and everything.”

“Why?,” you ask bewildered. That didn’t seem like Natasha either. She always made a point of marrying rich, accumulating wealth and becoming a prominent high society figure. It’s nothing like her to pass out on an opportunity to marry one of Manhattan’s most eligible bachelors.

“She met someone else. Said it was true love and all of that.”

And there you have your answer. True love, the boogieman of fate. “Then how come you…”

“Are married and have a baby? Isn’t it obvious? Natasha’s broke! Her daddy gambled it all away! And in case you hadn’t noticed, I have money, loads of it. And the other fella didn’t. Her one true love,” he scoffs, resuming his haughty attitude.

“But if she doesn’t love you…,” you shake your head. You could never live with someone, let alone marry someone that doesn’t love you. It’s simply unfathomable to you. You want that, true love, but you know it will always be a fairy-tale for kids to lure them into the world of grown-ups. And then they will see, they will realise that life makes no distinction between the believers and the non-believers.

“We have an agreement. She gets a monthly allowance and in exchange she’s my prize bunny. She goes to big events with me, attends family dinners, keeps up a good front and makes the world believe everything is a-okay with the Barnes’ household. Plus, I wouldn’t have received a big chunk of my father’s inheritance if I didn’t marry before I was thirty. Otherwise it would’ve all went to my uncle Fury and I can’t stand the bastard.”

“So you both married for money,” you state flatly, a general disappointment in human nature seeping through your words. “I hope for Ellie’s sake that this little arrangement of yours doesn’t backfire.”

“That is, if Ellie is mine to begin with.”

With impeccable timing, Scott stops at your table with two stacks of banana pancakes. Bucky seals his lips, the tension palpable. As soon as Scott sets down Bucky’s plate and takes a step back, he gives you a thumbs up and a questionable look. You nod and smile, giving him a sign that there is nothing to worry about. Scott squints his eyes at you and mouths an “are you sure” and again, you nod and smile. When Scott is off serving another customer, you look back at Bucky, who’s already digging into his pancakes like a starving man.

You take a bite from your pancakes, a moment that should be blissful and provide you with instant happiness. Instead, all you can think about is Bucky and all you can go is keep your eyes locked on him. Money exerts a peculiar power on people. Yet he doesn’t strike you as the type to allow himself to be caged nor tamed by a woman such as Natasha.

Both of you continue to eat in silence, until you can’t resist the urge anymore. “Doesn’t it bother you, that Ellie might not be yours?,” you choke out while fidgeting with the quartz pending hanging around your neck, eyes still glued to his face.

He sighs and puts down his cutlery, wiping his mouth with the napkin before answering. “It does. It bothers me a great deal. But I don’t mind raising a kid. What I do mind is that Natasha wants a divorce. She wants to be with him, the other guy.”

“Then why not divorce her? I’m sure there are plenty of other women out there who’d give about anything to be your wife.”

“I can’t divorce her.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?,” you continue to press.

“Both,” he replies coldly, but you can read between the lines, stare right through his cold-blooded appearance.

“You’re not afraid of raising a kid, you’re afraid of raising a kid that isn’t yours, isn’t it?”

From the corner of your eye you can see him stiffen. “Let’s just say I know what it’s like to be a bastard. I don’t want history repeating itself.”

“I’m sorry, Bucky. But maybe you should consider a paternity test? You deserve to know the truth.”

Bucky’s had enough. Although you’re quite the exquisite human being, he can’t stand it when people are prying into his personal life when he clearly just wants them to leave him be. And that, that also includes young gynaecologists he may or may not take a fancy to.

“Listen, Y/N,” he growls at you. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m perfectly capable of taking care of my family and myself.”

You return to your pancakes, feeling slightly hurt. “I’m sorry I even asked.”

Yet subconsciously, he contemplates your answer, mulling over the words in his mind. Maybe you’re right, maybe he should ask for a paternity test. Ellie does deserve to grow up with a father, whether that be him or any other man Natasha’s slept with. But it doesn’t take away the fact they made a deal. It doesn’t lessen his jealousy. Why does Natasha get to have something he’s been searching for his entire life? Something she never asked for? It angers him and at the same time fills him with despair.

“Oh, don’t you dare judge me. I know you grew up in the Hamptons, too. Natasha has told me a few things about you.”

“I bet she told you her version of the truth. Added a little salt and pepper, omitted everything important,” you scoff at him.

The Hamptons is filled with sinners, so why should you be the only one to pay? The answer is simple; you’re the only one that possesses a shred of remorse and in this day and age, remorse is something preyed on by the vultures such as Natasha Romanova.

“She actually didn’t tell me that much. She did however tell me you stole her boyfriend away from her. But what happened after that, I had to find out myself. You see, I have enough money to hire a private investigator and guess what he found, hm?”

You close your eyes, dreading the accusation that is about to come. This is it, this is your judgment day when you’re called upon to make amends for your sins.

“You lied to Nat,” he says in an harsh tone. “You didn’t lose your baby, you had an abortion.”

Part 4

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fibula-rasa · 7 years ago

Photo

She Couldn’t Afford a Date

But those days are over, for now Claudette Colbert gets what she wants -- when she wants it

By Nanette Kutner

Like Claudette Colbert’s best picture… it happened one night… a rough twelve years ago.

Mark Hellinger, then a long-legged columnist bordering upon the skinny, accidentally met me and, out of the corner of his mouth, muttered something about having a pair of tickets for an opening to which nobody wanted to go. “So will you?”

Such an invitation was anything but flattering. But I went.

“I don’t think it will be much good,” said Mark.

Neither did I.

We were wrong. Not only was it much good, it was a riot.

There was an actor in it called Walter Huston. You know what happened to him. There was a new likeable chap named Norman Foster. There was also a girl. She didn’t wear any smart costumes, this girl. She wore a tailored suit costing twenty-seven dollars. A tailored suit with a very short skirt and you noticed her legs in the sheerest of stockings. Then you noticed her acting. The girl’s name was Claudette Colbert. The play, incidentally, was “The Barker.”

During intermission, the first night big-wigs stood around the lobby. There was a kind of scared young man there also. He didn’t know much about the theatre and the first nighters didn’t know anything about him. But there he was -- Claudette Colbert’s brother -- and he was going to find out whether his sister was in a hit -- or bust.

So he simply walked straight up to one of the critics. He picked a good one, Walter Winchell.

“What do you think of the play?” he asked.

Mr. Winchell’s answer was no answer to give anybody’s brother. Mr Winchell is alleged to have said, “How can I think of the play when all anyone can think about is that girl’s legs!”

And the moral of the story, and it has one, is this…

Claudette Colbert tells me she paid for those stockings herself. And she had to buy a new pair every night. And she didn’t have any too much money either. You see, this was her first hit. Before, there had been long stretches of no work, many rehearsals, short runs and salaries that were promises.

“Yet I had to have the stockings.” said Claudette. “They were too sheer to be good for more than one wearing. They cost plenty. Still, they were worth it, for I wore them in order to call attention to my legs.

“You know what competition is on the stage or, for that matter, in any field. The beginner has to stand out. If I couldn’t act, it would have been a different story. They might have notice my legs, yes, but that would have been that. I knew I had the ability to back up the attention I received. It was just that in order to attract it first, I had to take advantage of every point.

“This business of standing out from the rest, of not being lost among the herd, that’s something.” She sighed, adding, “I don’t mean now, when I can afford my permanents. I mean at the start.

“Listen.” She leaned forward eagerly. “There was a time I couldn’t afford a boy friend. Honest. I had exactly five dollars as spending money for three whole months.

“Now, how many boys will invite a girl out, a girl who can’t possibly keep up? Don’t misunderstand, I think that after a boy grows to know a girl and her real values, what she wears doesn’t matter so much. But you’ve got to catch his eye first -- like the stockings in the play. That’s one reason why it costs to be a girl, only,” and she laughed that every ready laugh of hers, “don’t you dare call this piece ‘The Woman Pays.’

“I do think few men realize what it actually does cost, in plain dollars and cents, for a girl to go out with them. Young boys are always grumbling about their expenses, how they have to squander their allowance on the girl friend, dinner, a movie, perhaps a soda later, maybe a taxi or gas for the car. I’ll bet it never dawns on them what it costs the girl -- a new dress, a hair set, stockings, a hat to go with the dress.

“The ‘go with’ part is always the worst. Years ago, a best beau presented me with a bright red leather pocketbook. I owned absolutely nothing that went with it. So I had to pawn a ring in order to hie myself out and buy a complete outfit, or he would have been insulted upon seeing me not carry his gift.

“And when a girl likes a boy she goes out of her way to please him. I know a girl who fell in love with a man who wanted her to learn to rhumba. She spent twenty-five dollars on a series of lessons and,” here came the Colbert laugh again, “before she had taken them all, she had lost the man. She only had the remainder of the lessons -- and the bill.

Girls always feel they have to dress to attract men. I marvel when I pass an office building and see the young women come swarmig from the place, each one looking spotless, smart, dressed to kill, her skirt the correct length, her coar the right coat. This is especially true of American girls.

“They can say what they want about the French, but actually it is only the very wealthy French woman, the one with unlimited funds at her command, who is capable of outdoing others. She makes a career out of clothes. The little midinette you are always hearing about could take a few pointers from the American girl.

“I look at her -- our truly unbeatable American girl. An I’m glad to have this chance to express my admiration. I (Continued on page 86)

know how much pinching and scraping goes into that Sunday best. Believe me, I know.” She smiled reminiscently.

“See these,” she held out her hand for me to examine her fingernails.

They were nails that didn’t look as if they belonged to a movie star. Here were no long pointed claws. Here were just normal nails covering the tips of nice shaped fingers, used to working. They were neatly, evenly polished, these nails, and not too red.

“I manicure them myself,” said Claudette Colbert.

“What, you!”

“Yes, me. You see, when I was broke, I had to do it. And I got so in the habit that now I can’t bear ro have anyone touch my fingers.”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door. It was the maid carrying a tray crowded with tea things.

“Right here, please.” directed Colbert, pointing to the low table in front of the sofa.

Without the slightest trace of formality, she was on her knees, pouring tea, carelessly shoving plates around, childishly stuffing a piece of sponge cake into her mouth and making an awful face after she had tasted it.

She was acting all over the place, and she was doing this to be kind, to show me she was regular and to make me feel at home.

This was her dressing-room at the studio, a room with a homey look, a room that didn’t appear too new, a room giving the effect of sunshine although little sun entered, of gay drapes and upholstery and maple and a certain youthful daintiness, a room like the Claudette of pictures, Claudette of the heart-shaped face.

She’s not like that. She has re-decorated her home for the third time. And her face is not so heart shaped. And her manner not so girlish. Instead, there is something surer about her, something sturdy. She knows what she wants. She gets what she wants. She has a strength and a poise and a will of her own. You feel it, every minute.

Her laugh is deep and hearty and always ready, a shade too ready. It is a spotlight, vacuum cleaner kind of laugh, picking up everything and seemingly glad to turn on herself.

“I know I’m difficult copy,” she remarked.

I tried to analyze why she is difficult copy. She isn’t like a blank wall star, the kind that never speaks unless you dig for the words. No, Claudette Colbert rattles on and on. She dominates and steers the works. I have only seen this conversational competence, this deliberate willingness-to-talk in one other person… Grace Moore.

Yet, nearly everything she said, when analyzed, was nothing, was the talk of a clever woman, chatter, chatter, in and out, swiftly, smartly skirting danger signals.

So it got to be small talk. Talk about shoes.

“I always wear opera pumps. It makes a woman’s foot look prettier. And I’ve suddenly acquired -- growing of the feet! I’ve gone from Triple A to Double A and I see in the future just a plain ordinary A!”

Talk about cigarettes. She smokes the nicotineless kind.

Talk about hair. Hers is lighter than you’d expect. She wears it short with the bang curly, and it’s soft like Shirley Temple’s.

Talk as mixed as a salad. Her house is being fumigated against termites. Her sinus is totally cured. A lunatic wrote threatening letters and how wonderful she thinks the G-men are. And, suddenly, excited talk about the picture, just completed.

“Ben Hecht wrote it. He’s called it ‘It’s a Wonderful World.’ When he was asked why, he said because most people are worried to death nowadays. When they discover a title like that shining at them, ‘It’s a Wonderful World,’ they’ll want to go right in and see it. Maybe he’s right.”

She is thrilled about this picture because she worked with Director Woody Van Dyke.

“His technique is unique. Imagine, we finished in fifteen days instead of the customary eight to nine weeks. Why, it usually takes me fifteen days to powder my nose.” Claudette laughed.

“We went right through that picture, all one takes. That’s his method. Then he previews it, sees what’s wrong, and goes to it with re-takes. It’s a marvelous, exhilarating method, perhaps, the method of the future.”

She talked about the theatre, and she talked as someone talks who loves the theatre. She knew all the good plays. She has great faith in good dialogue.

Look at ‘It Happened One Night.’ That was all in the dialogue. Why, we did it again on the air, only the other evening, and it still sounded swell.”

Another knock on the door, this time a young man to get her to choose a still from “Zaza.”

“It’s to be given to a perfume manufacturer because he makes my favorite kind.”

When I left her she stood in the doorway in her print dress, green and garnet colored, a large pin looking like a garnet colored starfish at her throat, a garnet colored coat on the chair behind her, while outside, a patient chauffeur sitting at the wheel of a limousine.

There she stood, Claudette Colbert, with all the accessories, all the trimmings, far, far away from the girl with five dollars, the girl who couldn’t afford a date. And not really far away at all, because she still remembers and understands and is very grateful. She hasn’t forgotten how to put herself in your place, and so, you like her a lot.

Claudette Colbert feature from Modern Screen, August 1939.

#claudette colbert #old movies #classic film #classic movies #old hollywood #film #film stars #1930s #vintage #interview #magazine #botd #modern screen

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khiphop-discussions · 7 years ago

Text

SMTM6 Ep.5 Comments/Highlights

I’m giving the world longest and hardest eye roll at the producer team ranking.

Bitch...I would be talking so much shit if I was on this show. I don’t really fuck with Kasper either but all the smug looks and giggling I would’ve been like “Yo, shut the fuck up. what are you laughing for?” (that’s the first thing that I said in my head when I saw all that)

There’s only like 3 girls left out of 35. Truedy, Asol, and Kasper

Double K’s voice is so fucking cool. How dare he.

Hanhae wanting to look cool lol

Look at my best friend Young B!

Thank you captain obvious for saying you think Kasper will be eliminated

Tiger JK is so petty lol he started insulting Double K when he picked DoPark team.

Ja Mezz saying “OHHHHHHHH” to himself when he got called. Bitch if that ain’t me...

Junoflo’s dopey ass laugh at Sleepy’s joke lol

Zico’s ass so easily excited and it’s starting to irritate me. Someone: *breathes into the mic* Zico: *gasps deeply, puts hands over mouth, jumps a bit, grabs and looks at Dean*

Everyone is so sad to see Sleepy go.

This episode is moving by quick. I think because they are showing so many different people. Part 2

Hangzoo goes Double D but fakes them out...They rude as FUCK this season. He goes Team Zean

This third battle and everybody’s like “I think they’ll call me” Well DUH it’s only two more matches left you HAVE to get picked pretty soon.

Jay Moon is still there? I have him leaving probably.

Woochan would have done good in that group though? They aren’t that good. Sohyun or 1Kyne is the second best so the level isn’t that high. Woochan’s gonna have a hard time in that 4th group though.

Now let’s see if this group can be above expectations.

Prince of the Birds goes first. That was whack though

1Kyne killing it though. He messed up a bit so he’ll probably get eliminated.

Woodie should go...

Did she just say Nucksal unnie? lol

1kyne left. At least we got to see you dude! It was nice seeing you, enjoy vacation! Or enjoy being back if you’re back already lol

Woochan, Daeil, Junoflo, Asol, Truedy, P-type, and one more person I can’t think of right now are the final group. Maybe Olltii? (actually Woochan and P-Type weren’t in that group)

I’m so damn tired of Nucksal. How you just gone moonwalk back? He’s on Team DD

Wait but there’s still people left over so will there be a 5th battle? Yeah there is. I know truedy gets eliminated at some point.

Woochan kinda sounds like Samuel Kim. But they are both young boys so it’s probably the universal puberty voice.

Jay is being fucking irritating now too....

I think Juno gets 1st place too

I liked Asol on that cypher

Sungpil gets eliminated so I guess Truedy just doesn’t get picked for a team and that’s how she gets eliminated. No, actually TWO rappers got eliminated from here. I guess they tied and that’s how she goes home. I feel like that should mean the 5th group no one gets eliminated but I’m sure that’s not how it’ll go.

Juno is so handsome

He rude lol

Woochan. I wanna bake him cookies and buy him powerpuff girls ice creams from the ice cream truck.

Bitch...he said Mino (the guy’s name is Rhino). I don’t even know if he was trying to be shady or not but if he was then that’s some top tier shade and I appreciate it Woochan lol

Rhino ain’t bad.

KG isn’t good in this round to me but I’ve never been that big of a fan. He was better in other rounds.

I think Woochan is gonna be eliminated everyone else just too good.

One of his bars said “one punch” I don’t think he’s referencing that group but that would be hella cool if he was considering the Samuel comparison lol.

Oh shit. It was Ocean. I forgot about him. Sorry Ocean but we needed Woochan. I can’t believe Wonjae got ranked lower than Woochan but apparently he did. I guess people are getting tired of the same thing.

Chan got 3rd place

KG got first. I thought he’d get last and get eliminated

His team is to be continued. So that’s all for now!

#smtm6 #smtm #show me the money 6 #khh #khiphop

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facebookfacepalmed · 5 years ago

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Strange Fruit

Um, I’m not going to argue racial prejudice isn’t a real thing. Racial prejudice is a real thing. Maybe the most real thing there is in America.

But, Bill Cosby wasn’t “lynched”. He was found guilty of crimes that it appears by all but a few accounts he ACTUALLY COMMITTED.

Harvey Weinstein is going to be tried. The jury isn’t just out, it hasn’t been seated yet. But he is awaiting trial.

Roman Polanski was charged with a crime like Cosby’s pled guilty, fled the country, and was convicted in abstentia. He is still a convicted felon, and if he returns to the U. S. he will be imprisoned.

Bill O’Reilly and Charlie Rose lost their jobs, albeit with ridiculous severance packages. But, they were also not charged with crimes. James Levine was fired too. All of theses cases are accusations of sexual harassment, which though perfectly horrible I hope we can agree falls a degree or two short of drugging women and raping them while they were unconscious.

There are cases pending against Donald Trump. I don’t think they’re going to go anywhere, but still....juries not seated.

As for Woody Allen, the accusation was investigated, and no charges were filed because there was insufficient evidence to get a conviction. In fact, outside of Mia Farrow’s accusation, there was NO evidence the crime had taken place. There’s disagreement about this I know, and many people are convinced he's guilty of something. At the very least, leaving your girlfriend for her 19 year old adopted daughter seems morally questionable, but it isn’t illegal. And pedophiles don’t usually have only one victim, and they don’t usually molest their victim only one time, in a house chock full of potential witnesses. Doesn’t prove his innocence, I know; but I think it speaks to his likely innocence of the charge of pedophilia.

Is there a disparity between how blacks and whites are treated by the justice system? Absolutely. But Bill Cosby is an odd choice for poster child, and, to me, the “lynching” graphic is an insult to the thousands of black men in our sordid history who were actually lynched....especially those who were either innocent or had no opportunity to have their day in court. Cosby still hasn’t been lynched, had a trial with competent representation, and wasn’t found innocent. Regardless of how these other celebrity cases were or are being handled, and we can argue their results had more to do with wealth and power than race, Cosby didn’t get a raw deal.

Perhaps Weinstein will have an outcome similar to Cosby’s, and if he is found guilty and receives a severe sentence, I hope somebody doesn’t feel compelled to draw a cartoon portraying him as a martyr being led into a gas chamber alongside a list of gentiles who were alleged to have committed similar crimes but got away with it. Yes, prejudice against Jews is a real thing too. But Weinstein appears to be as poor a choice as Cosby to prove the case.

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o-sacra-virgo-laudes-tibi · 7 years ago

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@catwinchester

Against my better judgement, as I am sure I am going to be either ridiculed or ignored (or both), I wish to reply to this comment, because it personally insulted me and I feel it is unfair. I want to be a mature adult and state my case. I hope that I don’t let my snark get the better of me, but no guarantees.

I would have respected your argument if you hadn’t gone in the direction you did in the fourth paragraph.

The point that @levicooksupsomebullsht, @wolfpawn and myself were making was that this was a CHILD, and I guarantee you that this kid, working in this industry, was prompted to say those things to that actress. Hopefully, in a loving way by someone who is just trying to watch out for him, but I am sure he was made to do it. Yes, I am assuming that. Because it isn’t natural for a child to ask consent to give an adult a kiss. A peck. That’s how it was described. Children generally don’t think about things like that. They have an innocence that has been currently destroyed by our culture. And this story just made me see that much more clearly.

Simone (the actress) knew it was in the script. SHe knew it was coming. She sounded like she was nervous about it. Concerned. When I read the story, I was sure she was going to say something about how she felt bad that this child felt the need to ask for consent for a PURELY NON-SEXUAL THING. Because it was a kiss - a PECK. But no, That isn’t what happened, and I felt she missed the point of her own life-lesson and turned it into something...wrong. I got angry, I admit. I should never comment when I’m pissed. Quite frankly, I should never comment at all, because NOBODY listens, instead I get shat on like in replies like this one. Villainized and shoved into a category that is entirely unfair.

The thing that angered me was the fact that whenever a child and an adult are in a situation like that, the responsibility is ALL on the adult. The child shouldn't even have had to think about it. The fact that the innocence has been stolen from children upsets me enormously. WHY SHOULD THOSE THOUGHTS EVEN HAVE OCCURRED TO HIM? Whether it honestly came from him or from someone else. He’s a good kid, I agree, because he showed respect. But the actress MISSED THE POINT.

However, you had to go there with the “blame women, shorts skirt, blah blah blah” stuff WHICH DOES NOT APPLY to this situation. And does not apply to me or @wolfspawn (as I don’t really know the other one, but I know her). You made an assumption, too, which was worse than any we made.

I would have felt the same if this was a man and the child was a female. I literally cannot say this enough -- IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT THIS WAS A WOMAN. IT has to do with the fact that this was an ADULT and just because the child was MALE it became THIS. What if the child had been a girl? Would anyone have even thought twice? We would NEVER have even heard about this story.

This had nothing to do with a short skirt or being drunk. This was a non-sexual thing turned into something sexual. That upset me. I was not blaming a woman for not setting boundaries but that’s how it was taken -- which, admittedly, could be my fault because I didn’t explain myself thoroughly, I was just angry about it and venting that anger. I don’t think with my sexual organs so it didn’t occur to me that it would be turned into me being accused of prejudice against women. I NEVER “pass the buck” to a woman in a sexual situation. I personally want Hollywood to go bankrupt with all the lawsuits and I want every production company that ever employed a predator and looked the other way to be shut down -- even if it means we get no movies, television shows, whatever, for years. I am even pissed at Tom Hiddleston (the only reason I even know about you, I have read your work and even voted for you on Kindle Scout) for working with Woody Allen, a known pedophile, and I know you are too because I’ve read your fiction. But at the same time, women have their share of the blame. Not all of it, not even half, truthfully, but in this modern world, they have more power than they think and women are too often given a pass for doing things that a man would have been crucified for in this current atmosphere (like Katy Perry making a kid kiss her on American Idol -- if an older man had done that to a young girl, he would have been tarred and feathered or worse). In this situation, this was not a man, this was a child. SHE was the adult. She has responsibility as the ADULT. CHILD and ADULT, not man and woman. I hope that you have read far enough and LISTENED to my words to get that. IT has NOTHING to do with sexual boundaries. And it has nothing to do with her being a woman.

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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‘Why Are You Pissing In Our Face?’: Inside Warren’s War With the Obama Team

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/why-are-you-pissing-in-our-face-inside-warrens-war-with-the-obama-team/

‘Why Are You Pissing In Our Face?’: Inside Warren’s War With the Obama Team

Elizabeth Warren was in the president’s head.

From the summer of 2010 through summer of 2011, the usually unflappable Barack Obama spent long hours agonizing over the then-Harvard Law professor – so much that his aides felt it was distracting from more pressing national concerns, according to interviews with numerous former White House officials.

Story Continued Below

Warren had become an unlikely star of the left amidst the financial crisis with unambiguous moral outrage and an ability to explain complex financial topics in ways that made them fodder for dinner-table conversation. Improbably, she had turned a largely powerless congressional panel monitoring the bank bailout into a national bully pulpit of populist fury. Her target was not just the big banks but the new Democratic administration which she suggested had been co-opted by them.

She parlayed her newfound status into a push for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. As the legislation was about to pass in June of 2010, Warren met with the president’s adviser David Axelrod and was blunt: she wanted Obama to nominate her to run the agency or she could continue probing the Treasury department’s every move.

“I took it as a message, I think she meant it as one,” Axelrod says. Warren sent the signal that she could either be inside the tent pissing out or outside pissing in, Axelrod says, quoting a vivid Lyndon Johnson quip.

Obama was equally straightforward. “Tell her to keep her mouth shut,” he said, according to Axelrod. “She may well be the choice, but we can’t surface that now.”

Even though she had infuriated many on his own economic team, Obama did want Warren inside the tent. After he signed the Dodd-Frank legislation in July of 2010 with her in the front row, Obama tried to find a compromise.

One White House official suggested to Warren that the president would nominate someone else but she would be the bureau’s “cheerleader.”

“It was insulting. And I wasn’t going to do it,” Warren recalls in an interview this summer from the presidential campaign trail in Iowa, dodging whether she found the suggestion sexist.

What about a special adviser? No. The bureau’s public spokesperson? Nope.

Obama then tried to make the personal sell. On a sweltering day in September of 2010, they met in the Oval Office and Obama took her to a private garden to pitch a vague role setting up the agency under Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. With Obama cool in his shirtsleeves and Warren sweating in a jacket because she felt her shirt underneath was too revealing for a presidential audience, she again said no.

“I was not going to set that agency up asking Tim Geithner every day ‘Mother may I?’” Warren says now. “It just wasn’t going to work.”

‘That’s not a success’ As Warren campaigns to become the 46th president, she doesn’t mention the 44th very much.

When she does, it’s usually to praise him. Asked in April at a CNN town hall what their main philosophical difference was, Warren did not name any. “You know, I’m going to take this in just a little bit different direction, if I can,” she said and then gushed about Obama’s steadfast support for the CFPB. “I will always be grateful to the president for that,” she said.

But interviews with more than 50 top officials in the Obama White House and Treasury Department, members of Warren’s inner circle at the time, and Warren herself, reveal a far more combative relationship between her and the administration than she usually discusses on the campaign trail. Tensions between Warren and Obama were palpable to White House aides, even as she reserved her real fury for Geithner and White House National Economic Council chief Larry Summers, whom she regarded as predisposed towards big banks over families struggling to save their homes.

For Warren herself, the years of the financial crisis are now the touchstone of her political career, validating the conviction at the heart of her presidential candidacy: that the system is rigged.

The acrimonious differences between Warren and her allies, and members of the Obama team, led in part to her decision, with prodding from Obama himself, to leave the administration to run for the Senate rather than continue pursuing the leadership of the consumer-protection bureau. But they never fully abated, and now represent dueling approaches to Democratic economic policy-making, presenting the possibility that the next Democratic president will have ascended to the height of Democratic Party politics in part by bashing the previous one.

Thus, while former Vice President Joe Biden often boasts on the campaign trail that his and Obama’s efforts saved the economy from another Great Depression, Warren regards the Obama administration’s top-down response to the financial crisis as part of the reason a man like Donald Trump won the White House eight years later.

“I believe the recovery should have been from the ground up, and people with Geithner’s and Summers’ background would never see the world that way — they just don’t see it that way,” Warren says. “America works great for the wealthy, and the well-connected — that was demonstrated big time during the financial crisis…Donald Trump stepped into that, and said, ‘If your life isn’t working great, blame them.’ His version of ‘them’ is anyone who doesn’t look like you.”

As for the Obama team’s arguments that the financial rescue was a success — the bank bailouts ultimately made a profit, a depression was averted, and GDP growth resumed faster than the aftermath of most financial crises — Warren considers them obscene self-congratulation.

“Sure, the banks are more profitable than ever, they are bigger than ever, the stock market is through the roof,” she says. “But across this country, there are people who still pay the price for a financial crisis that they didn’t cause and that they never had a

chance to survive….That’s not a success.”

‘Why are you pissing in our face?’ In Warren’s mind, the administration’s priorities were simply out of whack: banks were getting more attention than people.

The Obama Administration felt more urgency to save the large financial firms than to prevent home foreclosures.

“When I raised it with Tim, he reassured me that they’d done the calculations and it was all going to work out. And what he meant was the survival of the banks,” Warren says, recalling a meeting in the Treasury building in the fall of 2009. “He says ‘We’ve foamed the runway — enough that the big banks can land.’ And the fact that millions of families were losing their homes, that millions of people lost their jobs, you know, savings, just wasn’t part of that calculation.”

Some White House officials also brought concerns about foreclosures to Geithner, and his perspective was that saving the financial system was the necessary first step. Stabilizing the housing market was like bringing down unemployment in that “it will trail,” Geithner explained, according to Axelrod’s memoir,Believer.

“Yeah, exactly,” Warren says now, scoffing. “That’s how they thought of it.”

Summers bristles at the attack on him and Geithner.

“Everyone had the same objective of preventing a Depression,” Summers told POLITICO in a statement. “Without saving the financial system we did not think that was possible. The one time when the no bailouts strategy was tried — with respect to Lehman [Brothers] — it was a catastrophe.”

Despite attempts to gloss over past disputes by focusing on areas of mutual agreement like the CFPB, simmering bitterness remains between Warren and large swathes of the Obama administration. In interviews, many former White House and Treasury officials say they consider Warren a self-serving grandstander who cast them as villains while they were trying to save the global economy from catastrophe — a job they think they did pretty well, all things considered.

Geithner, who declined to comment for this story, wrote in his memoirStress Testthat he felt Warren “was better at impugning our choices — as well as our integrity and our competence — than identifying feasible alternatives.” He added that “[h]er criticisms of the financial rescue, if well intentioned, were mostly unjustified.”

Other Obama administration officials call her a “professional critic,” “sanctimonious,” and a “condescending narcissist.” As one former Treasury aide put it: “We’re with Barack. We’re the liberals. Why are you pissing in our face?”

“She loved herself and some of her staff had a God view of her and that’s not aligned with government and bureaucrats which require teamwork.” —Obama Administration Official

One of the administration officials adds: “She loved herself and some of her staff had a God view of her and that’s not aligned with government and bureaucrats which require teamwork.”

People who worked closely with Warren at that time but who are not on her presidential campaign are equally scathing about Obama and his team.

“Tim and Larry and those guys, they are the villains of the Woody Guthrie song,” says one, a reference to the lyric “Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen” in ‘Pretty Boy Floyd.’

“Obama called the bankers ‘fat cat’s once and spent seven years feeling bad about it,” ridicules another.

“The Treasury crew especially thought they were the smartest guys in the room and the attitude was ‘We’re saving the world, what the fuck do you want with us?’ ” says one more.

It was amid these fights with the economic team that Obama wrestled with what to do with Warren’s request that she head the CFPB (Obama, through his spokesperson, declined to comment on his relationship with Warren). Senate Republicans and even some Democrats were adamantly opposed and Obama’s political team said getting the 60 votes necessary for her confirmation would be almost impossible. Plus, some in the administration worried about having such a political lightning rod in charge of a new agency trying to establish itself.

Liberals, who were already frustrated with Obama, were clamoring for him to nominate her. At the same time, some members of his administration despised Warren and wanted nothing to do with her.

Obama was conflicted. The 2010 midterms were coming fast, the economy was still struggling, the most ambitious climate change bill ever to pass the House had stalled in the Senate, and myriad other issues loomed. But top administration officials remember Obama spending an inordinate amount of time going back and forth about what to do with Warren.

Then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, with an eye on the elections, became frustrated with the time-suck and recalls telling top officials that “the idea of financial reform, banking reform is a lot bigger than one office and one person,” emphasizing it had nothing to do with Warren herself.

Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s close adviser, acknowledges that “we did spend a lot of time talking it through” but says she thought it was merited given the importance of the bureau.

“She was someone whose name came up a lot,” Axelrod allows, referring to Warren.

“It was really eating away at him,” Geithner wrote.

Obama found a temporary middle ground in September of 2010 — naming Warren as an assistant to the president and a special adviser to Geithner with significant autonomy to staff the agency while delaying the decision on who to nominate as director.

Several months later, the White House embraced a more permanent fix: have Warren run for the Massachusetts Senate seat that Democrats had lost to Republican Scott Brown and nominate someone else to head the CFPB. “It wasn’t just an elegant way to solve the one problem, it was a really appealing way to solve the other, which is how to get that seat back,” recalls Axelrod.

Jarrett remembers she “drew the short straw” in being tasked with bringing the idea to Warren. That’s because she had been a Warren ally in the White House during the CFPB deliberations and retained a sense of respect for her, even while acknowledging that she “broke a lot of eggs.”

“It didn’t go so well, initially,” Jarrett says with a laugh, recalling her efforts to persuade Warren to give up personal control of the consumer-protection bureau. “It’s your baby and she wanted to see it grow up so I understood completely why she would have reservations about changing course.”

At Obama’s direction, Axelrod, who lived in the same apartment complex as Warren, met with her and her husband privately and encouraged her to make the Senate run. Sens. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer lobbied her as well and promised to help her assemble one of the most experienced campaign teams money could buy. With a national profile that could help her raise money, Warren was an ideal recruit for the Democrats’ top Senate target in 2012.

As Obama and Warren both mulled what to do in early 2011, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts — who worked closely with Warren during the passage of the financial reform legislation — got the president’s ear at a photo op and encouraged him to nominate Warren for the CFPB anyway.

“I said, ‘Well it’s a win-win. Either you appoint her and she gets confirmed. Or she is rejected and she wins the Senate seat,” Frank recalls. “And he said, ‘Do you think she wants to be a senator?’ and I said ‘I think she wants your job but she’s go to start somewhere.’”

“And he said, ‘Do you think she wants to be a senator?’ and I said ‘I think she wants your job but she’s go to start somewhere.’” —Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

Frank ended up being right. As Obama increasingly shied away from nominating her to lead the CFPB and others lobbied her on the Senate run, she warmed to the idea, recognizing the potential power of the senatorial pulpit.

In July 2011, nearly a year after he signed the Dodd-Frank bill and after Warren had spent 10 months standing up the agency in a way that even impressed some critics in the Treasury Department, Obama took the middle ground. With Warren by his side, Obama nominated former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to lead the CFPB. That same day, progressives called on her to make the Senate run. Less than a month later, Warren began a “listening tour” back home in Massachusetts to explore it. The field thinned and no other big-name candidate stepped forward to challenge her. She promised she wouldn’t go back to D.C. just to be the “100th-in-seniority, be-polite-and-make-no-difference senator from Massachusetts.”

Before going back to Massachusetts for the Senate run, Warren met privately with Obama one last time. “It was hot! He liked to be outside for these meetings,” she remembers, bemused.

They discussed a bit of everything but Warren says she urged him to surround himself with more people who she felt understood the level of anger in the country. “That’s how I saw it. That this crisis is not over,” she says.

“That the survival of the big banks is not the measure of recovery.”

“You guys are on the same team?” Warren said yes before she understood the job.

It was November 2008. Obama had won the presidency days before. Reid, the Senate majority leader, called to offer Warren – comfortably ensconced in her teaching position at Harvard Law School — a part-time job on a 5-person oversight panel charged with monitoring the $700 billion bank bailout known as TARP.

On paper, the panel was mostly useless. The legislative text tasked it with writing a report every 30 days and allowed it to hold hearings but didn’t give it the power to subpoena witnesses.

After saying “yes” to Reid, “I remember reading the, what is it like four lines, and I thought, ‘Whoa, that’s it?’” Warren says.

With little statutory power, Warren plotted out another strategy: Be loud.

She had experience with that approach. During the decade-long battle over bankruptcy code reform that ended in 2005, Warren says, she learned how to create political leverage for herself and her cause through the media.

“I was so naive at the beginning, I thought ‘All I have to do is explain it,’” she recalls of her initial work with Congress on bankruptcy first on the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in the ’90’s and then as a Harvard professor in the early 2000s. “I started to understand in that process, how the only way to get Congress on the side of families that were broke was to bring public pressure on them. So in that space of time, during the ‘Bankruptcy Wars,’ I must have spent a million hours on the telephone with reporters starting with ‘B is for bankruptcy.’”

She testified before Congress, wrote op-eds blasting legislators including then-Senator Biden, and became an early entrant in the progressive blogosphere with “Warren Reports,” a group blog hosted by an offshoot of Talking Points Memo. She called lawyers looking for clients who showcased problems with the financial system whom she could then provide to reporters. “If you’ve got no stories to tell, there are a lot of reporters who won’t talk about it,” she explains. “And if the reporters won’t talk about it, then the world isn’t going to hear about it.”

So when she returned to D.C. in 2008 and became chair of the oversight panel, the mandated monthly report became a monthly media tour. It would begin before dawn with an aide bringing her an Egg McMuffin but no coffee (“Can you imagine me on coffee?!,” she once explained to an aide who asked how she didn’t drink it.) Warren talked to everyone. She bashed the banks and the Obama administration onFox and Friends, inThe New York Times, and in Michael Moore’s 2009 documentaryCapitalism: A Love Story.

The oversight panel and its few dozen staffers were relegated to the Government Printing Office where mini-forklifts, easy-to-assemble furniture that would occasionally collapse, and boxes of printer toner made up the workspace.

But the location came with access to Senate Recording Studio. Warren surprised members of her own staff by producing monthly videos of herself explaining each report. She and aides also created a comprehensive website with a regularly updated “blog.” Commonplace now, these digital tools weren’t being used by many members of Congress in 2008.

Going so public was also a way to “start plowing the ground for the legislative changes that I knew were coming because every day that the stock market dropped I’d think about: ‘So, Congress is going to have to act. What are they going to do?’ ” Warren explains.

She also criticized Obama directly, telling author Ron Suskind at the time that she didn’t know why Obama was making certain moves because “He meets with bankers. He doesn’t meet with me.”

Her national profile reached the point-of-no-return in April 2009 after an appearance onThe Daily Showwith Jon Stewart. “That is the first time in six months to a year that I felt better,” Stewart said after she summed up the financial crisis. “I don’t know what you did just there but for a second that was like financial chicken soup for me.”

Her most sensational moments, however, were when grilling Geithner. The new Secretary of the Treasury had been president of the New York Federal Reserve in the lead-up to and during the worst of the financial crisis. Obama believed Geithner’s selection would help ensure stability across administrations while the financial system was on the brink of disaster whereas Warren saw it as putting the people who helped create the crisis in charge of solving it.

A former student once dubbed Warren’s teaching method as “Socratic with a machine gun,” and in 2009 and 2010 Geithner was at the end of the barrel. Her questioning was so brutal at times that it stunned some of the Republicans working on the oversight panel.

Before a 2010 hearing about the status of TARP, Warren and Geithner made friendly small-talk in the anteroom, remembers Ken Troske, a conservative economic professor at the University of Kentucky on the oversight panel’s staff. “Then we get into this hearing then she climbs down his throat in ways that are extraordinary,” he recalls. “I mean, you guys are on the same team?” he remembers asking himself.

“You set aside 50 billion dollars and what do you have to show for it?”Warren demanded of Geithner at the hearing.

“The point is they ultimately lost their homes. So what is the metric for success here?” she added.

“Time is also running out to make certain that TARP money is used to help families and small businesses the way it was so quickly used to help Wall Street,” she pressed him at the same hearing.

“It seems clear that Treasury’s efforts to reduce mortgage foreclosures is not working,” she said.

“I’m losing the logic here, Mr. Secretary,” she said at another hearing.

“A.I.G. has received about $70 billion in TARP money, about $100 billion in loans from the Fed. Do you know where the money went?” she asked at one, betraying a slight smirk as she did.

Such scenes made an impact.

“It was a viral thing,” Axelrod acknowledges.

Geithner accused her of distorting the truth and defended his actions. “There is no job growth without economic growth, no economic growth without access to credit, no access to credit without a stable functioning financial system and our emergency programs played an essential role in starting that process of recovery and repair,” Geithner said.

Many in the White House felt Warren’s critiques were righteous but dumb and following them would have hurt the very people she claimed to be championing. Geithner later wrote that “her TARP oversight hearings often felt more like made-for-YouTube inquisitions than serious inquiries.”

“One thing about her conversations with Summers and with Geithner, they couldn’t talk over her head.” —Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

But making them for YouTube and a wide swath of people was precisely the point.

“When Elizabeth was as blunt and direct as she was in standing up to Geithner in those hearing, people in the progressive world were electrified by it and heartened that someone was willing to stand up to a Democratic White House,” explains Mike Lux, a longtime Democratic operative who was an ally of Warren’s during the financial crisis.

As Obama positioned himself between the bankers and the pitchforks and took a hard turn from campaign poetry to governing prose, Warren’s furious rhetoric filled a populist void that many on the left had hoped Obama would occupy. Her response to the financial crisis led New York Magazine to declare in 2011 that “in large swathes of blue America, Warren’s star actually eclipses Obama’s.”

Reid, who appointed Warren to the oversight panel and has been an admirer of her presidential run, says he thought Warren clashed so fiercely with Geithner and Summers in part because she understood financial markets well enough that they couldn’t condescend to her.

“One thing about her conversations with Summers and with Geithner, they couldn’t talk over her head,” says Reid, adding that Summers, a former Treasury secretary himself and president of Harvard University, wasn’t used to that. “I met with Summers many, many times and, frankly, he talked about a lot of things I didn’t quite comprehend. But with her, that wasn’t the case.”

“Honk if I’m Paying Your Mortgage” But some of their ideological differences were also rooted in their divergent backgrounds.

Geithner’s upbringing was “very privileged” as he writes in his book. Self-deprecatingly, he admits to being waitlisted at Wesleyan and Williams but accepted at Dartmouth in part because he was a legacy student. He then worked for Henry Kissinger in the private sector before ascending to the upper echelons of the Treasury Department under the tutelage of Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Summers, who himself was the son of two Ivy League professors. Geithner flew around the world responding to macro financial crises and then served as president of the New York Fed from 2003 to 2009. He was a registered independent when Obama nominated him to be Treasury Secretary.

Taking cues from former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan who often used impenetrable jargon, Geithner deliberately spoke in “understated, nuanced, deliberately dull language that wouldn’t move markets or depress confidence,” as he later wrote. Despite persistent charges to the contrary — including from allies of Warren — he never worked at a bank or financial firm before the crisis. Nonetheless, he was ensconced in and a product of the economic establishment. He had a healthy dose of noblesse oblige and an earnestness about public service.

Warren came from a working-class family in Oklahoma that faced its own micro financial crisis when her father had a heart attack. She earned a debate scholarship to George Washington University, but dropped out to marry her high school boyfriend whom she later divorced. She ultimately graduated from the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School and worked her way up to the highest rungs of legal academia — from teaching at the University of Houston to Harvard and becoming one of the country’s foremost experts on bankruptcy.

“Maybe this is what lots of people do who grow up with no money, but I’ll tell you this: I taught everything about money,” she declared at a recent rally in Seattle, explaining her zeal for teaching topics like bankruptcy and finance.

“The one thing you need to know about Elizabeth Warren is that you don’t get from Norman, Oklahoma, to where she is right now and take the journey she took without a steel spine and an indefatigability.” —David Axelrod

She served on the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in the late ’90’s, and then watched Congress largely ignore the commission’s recommendations and pass a more pro-industry reform. Well before the crisis hit, she had often found herself fighting against the establishment Geithner represented. She spoke unapologetically and bluntly.

When the crash came, Warren saw a reckoning for a system she had long said was fraudulent and the chance to revamp it entirely. Geithner felt his first, second and third priority was to save that same system from collapse because then no other goals were possible.

“Old Testament vengeance appeals to the populist fury of the moment, but the truly moral thing to do during a raging financial inferno is to put it out,” he wrote. “The goal should be to protect the innocent, even if some of the arsonists escape their full measure of justice.”

In the fall of 2009, Geithner invited Warren and others overseeing TARP to the Treasury building for a briefing on the broader recovery efforts. At one point, Warren interrupted him to ask about the department’s response to the housing crisis.

“After the rush-rush-rush to bail out the big banks with giant buckets of money, this plan seemed designed to deliver foreclosure relief with all the urgency of putting out a forest fire with an eyedropper,” Warren wrote in her 2014 memoir,A Fighting Chance.

“We couldn’t fix the economy by fixing housing, but we could do the reverse,” Geither explained in his book, a sentiment he shared in a subsequent oversight hearing.

Geithner was also concerned about the politics of bailing out millions of people who were on the verge of being foreclosed on while the vast majority of people were managing to pay their mortgages on time.

The first Tea Party rallies had begun to spring up after a cable news rant by financial pundit Rick Santelli who focused on this point: “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” he asked. “Honk if I’m Paying Your Mortgage,” with the Obama logo as the ‘o’ in “Honk” became a popular right-wing bumper sticker.

“[T]here were real fairness issues, as well as political issues, around using tax dollars to help their neighbors who got in over their heads,” Geithner wrote.

That perspective was particularly infuriating to Warren. She had spent much of her career trying to debunk what she called the “myth of the immoral debtor”– essentially the stereotype that people in debt were spendthrifts and deadbeats when her research in bankruptcy courts showed that the majority of people facing bankruptcy were working class people struggling to hang on.

When Geithner explained his perspective on the issue at a fall 2009 meeting, Warren later wrote that she “felt as if one of us was standing on a snow-covered mountaintop and the other was crawling through Death Valley. Our views of the world — and the problems we saw — were that different.”

“The Two Warrens” The 61-year-old Harvard professor and the 49-year-old Secretary of the Treasury were fighting over their seatbelts.

It was the fall of 2010. Obama had recently made his compromise appointment for Warren to stand up the CFPB which also meant Warren was moving into the Treasury building. The mood in the building was tense according to people in both camps, but Warren and Geithner each wanted to make it work.

On Warren’s first day, Geithner gave her a cop’s hat — Warren had often referred to the CFPB as a “cop on the beat”– and invited her out to lunch, as she recalled inA Fighting Chance.

“Put on your seat belt, Mr. Secretary,” Warren told him on their way to the restaurant.

Explaining that the car was bulletproof and the driver was well-trained with a gun, Geithner replied, “I don’t have to…We’re safe here.”

As the car sped along, Warren replied “What? Are you kidding?” She recalled that she may have raised her voice as she said: “What good is that if we get hit and this thing turns over a few times and you smash your head against that great bulletproof window?”

His seatbelt remained unfastened. (He fastened it on the way back from lunch, she noted.)

It was a bumpy start that got bumpier when someone anonymously told POLITICO that Warren’s new office was getting a fresh paint job and furniture, a makeover at odds with her populist brand. Geithner personally apologized to Warren for the report. “You could feel the frustration in the building when she was hired,” says one former Treasury official.

But as she came in and began working, some administration officials felt like there were “two Warrens.” In public, she was all righteous fury. In private, they say, they often saw a more reasonable figure.

Some administration insiders saw the “two Warrens” as proof of her hypocrisy. Her allies saw it as proof of her effectiveness. They note that her public rage had a strategic purpose and forced people to pay attention to her and her issues.

“They thought she was just doing it for publicity instead of doing it to create leverage to get in the room,” says one official who worked both at the CFPB and in the Obama administration. “She created an outside pressure base that allowed her priorities to be heard.”

Even those most critical of Warren say she brandished her pragmatism more than her populism while at Treasury, and say she was effective as a result. She readily brought in some top Treasury officials and her first hires for the consumer agency were a surprising mix of people from financial-services firms like Capital One and Morgan Stanley along with bureaucrats and academics. The Inspector General, whose job is to find problems, was rather complimentary of Warren’s tenure. Some ex-officials also say they were impressed at the administration skills of an academic with almost no management experience.

“She was very focused on talent and culture, talent and culture, talent and culture,” says the same official. Another former CFPB employee fondly remembered that when she had a baby, Warren’s gift was a baby-sized silver spoon — a joking nod at her own soak-the-rich reputation.

Some Obama administration officials felt that Warren’s pragmatism in setting up the CFPB validated their own response to the financial crisis.

“She was meeting with the stakeholders, she was choosing her battles wisely,” says Axelrod. “It suggested to me that while there’s no doubt that she is an ideologue in some ways and speaks in sort of these pugilistic tones that she also has an understanding that governing requires a different approach, a different set of skills.”

There is still some uncertainty, however, about how a President Warren would govern. “We don’t really have a large enough sample size, because she’s only run one thing, and she ran it for 10 months,” Axelrod says.

Obama v. Warren continued The Warren-Obama brawls never really stopped.

After Massachusetts voters elected her to the Senate in 2012, Warren was far more wary of media but used her new platform to stay loud. She eschewed the playbook followed by Hillary Clinton and other new senators with a national profile, which was to lie low.

In 2013, she helped sink Summers’ nomination to be chairman of the Federal Reserve, a position he had long pined for and that, according to Axelrod, Obama had promised him at the outset of the administration. She followed that up with a 2014 memoir in which she wrote that Summers had warned her that she could either be an outsider or an insider but that the first rule of being an insider was not criticizing other insiders.

“I guess recollections differ,” Summers says now, in response to her depiction of his advice. “I’ve never before been accused of being biased towards going along to get along and I don’t think that was my advice. My recollection is that Elizabeth asked how her commission could have greater impact. I responded that if they sometimes praised something that was done they would have more impact than always excoriating policy makers.”

In late 2014 and early 2015, she almost single-handedly killed Obama’s nominee for the undersecretary of domestic finance, Antonio Weiss.

“Enough is enough,” she wrote in a scathing Huffington Post piece attacking Weiss’s work in the private sector particularly on corporate inversions. Her opposition was rooted in her broader critique of the administration that began during her time as a TARP watchdog.

“It’s time for the Obama administration to loosen the hold that Wall Street banks have over economic policy making. Sure, big banks are important, but running this economy for American families is a lot more important,” she wrote.

Some administration officials again saw what they considered opportunistic grandstanding. “It made Treasury less effective and it hurt President Obama,” says one former White House official.

And Obama vented his frustrations with Warren publicly when it came to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the fast-track authority he wanted to negotiate it.

“Elizabeth’s a politician like anyone else,” Obama said in 2015, adding that her arguments “don’t stand the test of fact and scrutiny.”

The comments drew a rare public rebuke from Ohio’s Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, a TPP opponent, who said “I think the president was disrespectful to her” and that Obama “has made this more personal than he needed to.”

Even in the final weeks of the presidential race in 2016, when most Democrats were closing ranks, Warren wrote to Obama urging him to unilaterally replace his chairwoman of the SEC, Mary Jo White, with another SEC commissioner. Warren had been feuding with White since 2015 when she wrote a 13-page letter to the SEC chair bluntly telling her that “to date, your leadership of the Commission has been extremely disappointing.”

The Obama administration had repeatedly defended White but Warren wrote to Obama that “Chair White’s extraordinary, ongoing efforts to undermine the agency’s central mission make such a step necessary.”

One former Treasury official says people in the department were glad Warren addressed the letter to Obama so he could finally understand what it was like to have to deal with her on a daily basis.

The president didn’t budge.

The Warren Winnebago Three years later, Warren is casting herself as the standard-bearer of the party Obama once led.

In rural Western Iowa, she is sitting in a Winnebago with “HONK IF YOU’RE READY FOR BIG STRUCTURAL CHANGE” printed on the back. When one person honks during a 30-minute drive, Warren yelps “We got ‘em! They honked! Big structural change! Yes!”

With a Starbucks venti iced tea in hand and a half-eaten banana on the table, Warren looks cool in a thin, light pink cardigan despite just finishing an hour walk in the hot sun surveying flood damage in Pacific Junction. The Winnebago is stocked with healthy snacks including Boom Chicka Pop, Avocados, Cheez-It Extra Toasty and BelVita crackers. There are some cookies with “PERSIST” written on them from a devoted fan with a bakery along with Michelob Ultras in the fridge. An aide stands by the fridge door because it wildly swings open every time the Warren Winnebago turns too sharply to the left.

Don’t go too far to the left, the reporter jokes, lamely. Crickets from Warren and her aides.

She is talking about how she witnessed firsthand, in the Obama administration, how powerful institutions had more access to power than those most affected by the crisis.

“Who comes into the office of the Secretary of Treasury? Who comes in to the Federal Reserve Bank to plead their case? Who’s on the phone with the top economic advisors?” she asks rhetorically.

“It’s not the poor guy down the street who’s been cheated on his mortgage and is six days away from the sheriff coming and moving him and his kids out on the sidewalk. And that’s — that’s how the system is rigged…They have 1000 points of access to every decision maker in Washington. And regular families, they got none. They got nothing. And that, that, tilts every decision, every day, just a little bit.”

Warren insists that she doesn’t question the motives of the people who served in Obama’s Treasury Department. But asked if she thought they had been “sort of captured by the system–” Warren jumps in: “That’s it. They just they saw the world differently. They had spent all their time with giant banks and their representatives. This is my point about how Washington works.”

Such broad-brush comments inflame former Obama advisers. Many regard her as insufficiently grateful to Obama and Biden and others in the administration.

“Elizabeth Warren would be a beloved Harvard Law Professor not a presidential candidate if @barackobama and @JoeBiden had not worked with her to make her idea to form a consumer financial protection bureau law,” former White House communications director Jen Psaki tweeted in April.

Beyond the question of her loyalty, some question the soundness of her ideas. Summers, for one, has co-written two op-eds arguing against the underlying math in Warren’s wealth tax, the central means for how she says she will pay for her ambitious liberal agenda.

While many on the Obama team take issue with agenda items such as imposing a wealth tax and furthering trade protectionism, they wonder if Warren, in the Oval Office, would more closely resemble the pragmatic figure who reached out beyond her inner circle to set up the CFPB.

“The global political world is filled with people who capitalize on anger and she has,” summed up one former Obama official, who recalled her as a “demagogue” on TARP.

Begrudgingly, however, the official and several others say they have gained some new respect for her by watching her closely on the presidential campaign trail.

“I certainly like this Elizabeth Warren more than the Elizabeth Warren of that era.” —former obama official

“Ironically, and I give her credit on this, part of the reason she’s doing well politically today is that she has put forward plans that have details,” the former official says. “I certainly like this Elizabeth Warren more than the Elizabeth Warren of that era.”

But the differences between the two camps may be difficult to bridge. Were she to get the Democratic nomination, the ex-Obama team may rally around Warren to defeat Donald Trump, but some worry about what she would do if confronted with an economic crash of her own.

“Financial crises are not morality plays,” says Summers. “Senator Warren was right and made a huge contribution by pushing for the CFPB but the idea that once crisis took hold you could resolve it from the bottom up was unrealistic and would have been catastrophic if attempted.”

#Foreign #Obama #Politics #Warren

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resultnorth1-blog · 6 years ago

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7 Tips to Prevent Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease Prevention is something that's sadly becoming a more and more prevalent topic these days. More and more cases of this horrid disease are showing up every year, with some strains of Lyme Disease even proving to be deadly, so having a lot of Lyme Disease Prevention Tips at your disposal is key to avoiding truly this horrid disease.

What? Did I really say “deadly”?

Yeah, how's that to make you sit up and pay attention, right? I mean, hearing about regular Lyme Disease is bad enough, but deadly? Sigh.

It's enough to make me want to move to Hawaii where (so far) there have not been any cases of Lyme.

Anyhow, let's take a step back and learn about Lyme and Lyme Disease Prevention Tips so we can be better armed against this nasty enemy.

What is Lyme Disease?

Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness that has become a widespread epidemic in recent years. It’s known as “The Great Imitator”, because it resembles many other different diseases, yet does not respond to the treatments for those diseases. While it can seem like it's everywhere, it's not; and Lyme disease prevention is your best bet for avoiding this disease.

Lyme can really seem scary, especially when you see that there are over 300,000 new cases each year. It baffles doctors and patients alike, is notoriously difficult to diagnose, and can really cause serious damage in the people it affects. It is frightening. I understand; I’ve been fighting my own Lyme battle for the last 2 years.

The good news is; that Lyme transmission is easily preventable with the proper precautions. Though it’s possible Lyme can be transmitted through any biting insects, pregnancy, or even sexual transmission; your biggest chances of catching it is from a tick bite–so that’s where I’ll focus on Lyme disease prevention.

Is it Lyme Disease or Lyme's Disease?

Before we get on with tips about how to prevent Lyme Disease, let's make sure we're calling the disease by it's proper name, shall we :)? You will likely see Lyme Disease referred to in both ways.

However, “Lyme's disease” is not the correct name.

Lyme Disease (not ‘LYME's Disease') is named after Lyme, CT where the first major outbreak was, which is why it's called Lyme and not Lymes or Lyme's.

So though I'm not writing about “Lymes disease prevention”, we will be talking about “Lyme Disease Prevention”–get it :)?

Lyme Disease Symptoms

One of the scariest parts of Lyme Disease is that it's difficult to diagnose. Lyme Disease Symptoms resemble those of many other ailments and many doctors really don't know what to look for or how to diagnose Lyme Disease.

Many people think about the supposedly telltale bulls-eye rash when they think about Lyme, however, most people either don't get a rash or don't remember seeing one.

Often people with Lyme Disease don't remember getting bitten by a tick. But since some ticks are as small as a poppyseed (yes, it's true), that isn't surprising.

It's actually suspected that many people are bitten by a tick long before any Lyme Disease symptoms show up. As such, the thinking is that at some point after the tick bite, your immune system suffers an insult (excessive stress, another illness, etc.) and then the disease takes root and the Lyme Disease symptoms become obvious.

Typical Lyme Disease Symptoms:

Bulls-eye rash (however, fewer than 50% of people remember getting a rash)

Flu symptoms such as fatigue, fever, chills, muscle aches, and headaches

Neck stiffness

Chronic / Late-Stage Lyme Disease Symptoms:

Lyme Disease Symptoms that show up later and are indicative of a chronic case of Lyme Disease go far deeper, and can include:

Chronic fatigue & pain in joints and muscles

Muscle twitching

Chronic flu-like symptoms such as headache, fever, and neck stiffness

Bell’s palsy

Brain fog

Noise & light sensitivity

Insomnia

Blurry vision and floaters in eyes

Dizziness & tinnitus

Tremors and tingling in hands and feet

Chest pain & heart palpitations

This is not an exhaustive list of symptoms, and it also doesn’t include common symptoms from Lyme co-infections (which are very troubling indeed).

Confused about what to make of all of this? Yes, it's very complicated.

The best thing you can do is to pay attention to how you’re feeling and make note of any changes to address with your doctor. To find a doctor that knows how to treat Lyme disease, check out ILADS.

Lyme Disease Prevention Tips

While Lyme disease is scary, here’s the thing; you shouldn't let the fear of it stop us from enjoying the outdoors. Being in nature is good for the soul and for the body. Keeping your immune system is key so that you can fight off all kinds of infections, including Lyme Disease.

Having a healthy immune system is the single biggest step we can take to being prepared for any type of invasion; and managing stress is a big part of that.

Of course, avoiding tick bites is key. Following are tips for not getting bitten by those pesky ticks in the first place.

Lyme disease prevention is about addressing all possible avenues for transmission which means thinking about a lot of different angles.

Stay on the trails

If you know you’re going to be out hiking, it’s always best to stay on trails. Not only will you be less likely to get hurt or lost, but the paths that are cleared out are usually wide enough to prevent ticks on weeds and grass from being able to attach onto you as you brush by.

These trails are maintained for a reason, so stay on the path to stay away from ticks!

Cover Up

One of the best Lyme Disease prevention tips is to dress for success, and I don't mean putting on heels or professional attire.

You can prevent simply by wearing tall socks and pants when hiking in the woods. The ticks can’t bite through the material, so it helps provide a barrier between them and your skin.

But always be sure to check your clothing when you return home before taking them off and immediately get rid of any ticks that you find before putting clothes in the laundry or anywhere else.

Also, light colored clothing is best so that you can more easily spot ticks when examining your clothes.

Bug spray is your friend

If you’re not going to be on wide, maintained trails, then bug spray is a great tool for Lyme disease prevention. DEET is a chemical commonly found in bug and pest spray helps repel bugs. However, it’s also a harsh chemical, so I use this as a last resort.

One alternative to using DEET is using the gentler rose geranium essential oil, which helps to deter ticks from attaching to your skin. But, essential oils tend to absorb and evaporate quicker than chemical bug sprays do, so be sure to re-apply frequently.

You can also buy a natural tick repellant with addition ingredients in it that are meant to deter ticks.

Keep your pets out of bed

If you think that avoiding hiking will keep you from getting Lyme, you are incorrect. Many people who contract Lyme disease don’t get it from the woods, but instead from their pets.

Keeping your animals up to date on their tick meds, and not letting dogs sleep in bed with you is one huge way you can minimize tick bites. This is especially important because ticks can hitch rides onto your family pets, and then sneak over to you at night and attach somewhere you may not see.

Eat to Prevent Lyme Disease

Some say that what you eat can help prevent Lyme Disease. It's not that these things do anything to your body to prevent a disease, but apparently ticks just don't like them so these are basically edible tick repellents.

Garlic

Apparently ticks don't like garlic. Not sure if that's really true or not but it's a delicious repellent at worst!

You could take garlic pills (those are odorless and you'll thank me for that!) or add extra garlic to just about everything you make to help ward the ticks off.

B Vitamins

Some say that ticks don't like B vitamins at all, and some say that B1 is the vitamin that they don't like. There are lots of testimonials online about how effective people have found B vitamins to be as a way to prevent Lyme disease. Here is one of them. This B vitamin complex is a great option for those with MTHFR issues and this is a B1 option from a trustworthy company.

Tick-proof Your Yard

Keep foliage under control

Mow the lawn regularly

Considering having mulch between more woody areas and the lawn

Stack wood in a dry area

Build a fence to prevent stray animals from bringing ticks into your yard

Remove any trash or debris from yard (rodents and ticks like to live there)

Check Yourself Daily

It used to be that checking for ticks after being out in the woods was enough.

Not anymore.

Again, panicking isn't the answer, but ticks and Lyme Disease are spreading, so being cautious is important.

Every day, especially after being outside, check your head, body, and clothing for ticks. Ticks can be as small as a poppy seed–so look carefully!

How to Remove a Tick

Even if you follow all of the Lyme Disease Prevention tips here, you still might end up with a tick on you, so it's important to know what to do next.

First of all, DO NOT put peppermint essential oil (or anything else for that matter) on the tick to get it to detach. This startles the tick, causing it to regurgitate into your body and bloodstream, which increases the chances of Lyme & co-infections infecting you.

There is one correct way to remove a tick

Use tweezers to remove the tick from your skin.

Using very fine-point tweezers (or a tick removal kit), grasp the tick as close to the surface of your skin as you can and pull upward firmly, but slowly.

Make sure the entire tick comes out and doesn’t leave any parts in your skin.

Once the tick has been successfully removed, send it in for free lab testing. This way you can hopefully find out which diseases the tick has been carrying, so you can get a head start on treating Lyme Disease or keeping an eye out for symptoms.

Lyme Disease Prevention After Tick Bite

If you have a tick bite, you’re at an advantage compared to those who never realize they’ve had one–you get a head start on Lyme Disease treatment (let's look at the bright side on this one–if there is a bright side of Lyme!)

Topical Treatment for Tick Bite

After a tick bite, the first thing you should do is clean the wound, and then make a paste out of andrographis tincture mixed with bentonite clay (there are many benefits of bentonite clay, but the possibility of a tick bit is only one reason this helpful substance should be in every house).

Apply the paste to the bite area and let it dry, then wash it off, re-applying every few hours for a couple of days so long as it’s not irritating your skin. Herbalist and Lyme expert Stephen Buhner recommends this as a way of drawing the toxins out of your skin before they have an opportunity to really get deep into your body.

Immune System Support after Tick Bite to Prevent Lyme Disease

In addition to treating the actual bite, you’ll also want to boost your immune system. This will help your body to be ready to fight off any invaders that may have made it into your bloodstream through the bite.

Buhner suggests supplementing with astragalus tincture (at 3,000mg daily (for adults) for 30 days). This is the best way to focus on Lyme disease prevention after a tick bite has already occurred.

Astragalus is great at boosting your immune system, but it’s worth noting that those with an active autoimmune disease exercise caution with astragalus.

Eating well is another way to support your immune system. Adding some of these foods that boost your immune system is one way to do that.

Conclusion & Encouragement

For more information about Lyme Disease, this post on Lyme Disease facts is loaded with lots of helpful information. Some of it is scary, but it's good to be armed with the truth.

However, keep in mind that if you get bitten by a tick and get Lyme Disease, it’s ok; just figure out what’s next. Deep breaths.

Lyme is not a death sentence, and it doesn’t define you. There are many of us in that fight together, and I can assure you, there is hope for healing.

So take hikes, go camping, breathe in the fresh air, and enjoy being in nature. Wear your pants and socks, and keep your bug spray close. Lyme disease prevention tips can be super helpful.

Then if you do end up with a Lyme Disease Diagnosis, partner up with others to get help on dealing with this disease, and get on with your life.

Have you done any of these Tips to Prevent Lyme Disease? Which Lyme Disease Prevention Tips will you try first?

Stefani is a boy mom and wife on a mission to provide natural healing hope for autoimmune disease and Lyme disease, and encouragement for raising healthy kids in a toxic world. She blogs over at Natural Paleo Family where she loves to cook real food meals, healthy desserts, and embrace the craziness that is life.

Source: https://wholenewmom.com/health-concerns/lyme-disease-prevention/

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