#martin fascinated by the movie pictures like a child mixed with a time traveler

[disaster-fruit]

Martín is lucky the guys are unnarmed :')

Im fine with the mug scene then, i stayed with the original because i already expected you'd suggest a different scenario lol i do know you. (not so) heroic rescue it is, so we introduce very early on that martin is no long invincible. I see this becoming a problem often, i'm willing to bet this isnt the last fight he'll get into in the next few days.

The only very minor change i'll make is that instead of this happening after he spent an entire day in the city, its more of a few hours later, like the movie. And thats because... i think martin on his own would get arrested in a heartbeat lol the longer he stays the worse are his chances, until lulu finds him of course to control a little bit his charmingly impulses.

now i'm imagening once they're at the apartment and talked a bit martin goes like I am tired my humble host! *Starts walking around the place like it was his, gets to luciano's room* I see these are the largest quarters of this strange hut! Quite... rustic! Shall do me just fine! Good night! And before luciano can stop him ops he's already sleeping like a rock. FINE luciano can sleep on the couch but sebastian better show up in morning.

As funny as it is to imagine luciano being caught in some sort of fairy tale roleplay, i think i'll stick with fully nude ticnho walking out of the bathroom proud as ever. 1) because it's a good scene for a tiny bit of gay panic, but i think its too early for martin to feel it for luciano naked on his lap (YET) but luciano can be turning his face like uRGH he's handsome and he's hot i see his brain melted down and and went to those shoulders apparently also when sebastian asks why he's naked he just goes 'oh luciano told me to get naked before going into the magic shower' and Sebastian is like..... okay...... i did not need to know that. But okay, misunderstandings apart, sebastian will see what he can do meanwhile luciano watches over martin.

Pulling from memory, in the movie, the first day giselle and patrick spend together, he takes her to his work to ask for his secretary to find some information, she talks to his divorce clients about how they must be in love, patrick gives up on her and gives her some money to go away, sees she can't be on her own, and then the iconic How Does She Know scene. I think we can start on a similar place, with luciano taking martin to his workplace (its not like he'd let him alone on his apartmnet to destroy everything) and asks his secretary to try to find the kingdom he says he's from or any other lead. Martin, however, doesnt entertain this much and waltz way a little after - he's a prince afterall, he doesnt need to tell luciano where he's going.

I say that might happen right after he talks to luciano's clients in a moment he's not around. He goes to them, tells the lady she's very beautiful and that man who loves her must be very happy which yk seems very much like flirting but she's having none of it and is about to tell him to fuck off, when he sees her future husbandn't and starts talking about him too, about how he looks strong and brave like the knights of his kingdom etc etc, and in the middle of his own speech talks about his beloved princess and how in love the two are and then its like wait!!! what am i doing here!!! i must find her immediately i cannot afford these long rests!! so long!!!! leaving the clients very confused and angry at luciano, and him very distressed because great martin escaped AGAIN

So he goes after him and thankfully he's not that far, though i wouldnt be surprised if he's already in trouble again, either in a fight or just falling for some scam of someone trying to take his information or his money (which well its not like he has any either way) and luciano has to rescue him again. I say maybe instead of telling him to fuck off he considers talking to the authorities, certainly they can handle him better than a random lawyer with too much on his plate as it is, but they get distracted half way.

I'm finding trouble fitting the How Does She Know number (though a more prince-ly one instead of princess-ly), though i think martin starting a big musical number in the middle of the Ibirapuera is too good of a scene to miss. But without a Nancy on the story i can't how we'd pull it off. But besides the iconic-ness of it all, i also think its time to confront more directly their ideas of love and intimacy. It's also on this scene where we see patrick's mind starting to change about giselle, with him humming along the song and smiling and ultimately deciding not to leaver her alone and continue helping her.

Another possibility i thought is transferring the number to María and make that the moment they find each other again, but move it way later in the story of course. I dont find it a great solution because again, iconic scene, but it is .... an alternative.

that aside, let's move from the point luciano decides not to take martin to the authorities but instead help him himself. This has mostly comedic potential but also needs to help moving their relationship, foward, their understanding of each other and etc. So, i'll leave it to you to elaborate how you see that going :D

@oxiosa and I are out of control in this Enchanted AU and our first post is already too big. It’s mostly detailing the fairy tale, and you can read it here if for some reason you keep up with our chaotic brainstorming.

Seguir leyendo

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/28/17: THE BELIEVERS

The first time I ever saw THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW in a theater, I was 12 years old. My family took my little brother and me on a short vacation to New York City, and indulged my burgeoning obsession by agreeing to take me to the still-thriving cult’s home base at the Waverly Theater. While I had almost nothing on my mind other than this opportunity to commune with the original cultists, and practice with them in their hallowed chapel, I was already ensconced in a real world of faith and ritual that I had much less ability to address. We stayed in the apartment of my parents’ friend Phyllis Galembo, a noted photographer of religious practice and folk conventions in Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Berkina-Faso, Zambia, South Afica, Egungun and Gelede Benin. I had met Phyllis a few times; I remembered her as warm, energetic, and fairly hilarious. I was curious about her work in my childish manner, without having developed a shred of the intellectual wherewithal to think usefully about these other cultures. In spite of what I knew, I was completely startled by her apartment. It was fairly tiny, as per Manhattan standards, and it thrummed with music that I could only identify as “foreign”. Her walls were covered from floor to ceiling with masks, photographs, costume pieces and art objects from her travels. The effect was overpoweringly fascinating. I followed her around the place for a little bit while she prepared to vacate, and then, like a complete asshole, I asked, because it was my only point of reference for my surroundings: “Have you ever seen THE BELIEVERS?” She tersely spat something about it being “racist trash”, putting the topic straight to bed.

THE BELIEVERS was a movie that I had seen quite a few times on Fox’s weekend horror matinee, my rare and treasured opportunity to watch scary movies, edited for television, with my nose pressed to the screen of our tiny black and white set. This 1987 John Schlesinger thriller concerned a recently widowed police psychiatrist who finds himself embroiled in the grim doings of a deadly Santeria cult. I loved it. Martin Sheen is the traumatized lead, who is trying to juggle a new love with monitoring his young son’s mental health, as a series of apparent human sacrifices arises in New York City. The inimitable, and here, white-eyed Malick Bowens plays a Pied Piper character who makes bloodthirsty acolytes out of rich white socialites who can never have too much money or power. An attenuated dread underlies the film’s seductive, overcast sleepiness, which blankets its intimate images of the New York that is not pictured on postcards. The pensive uncertainty that pervades THE BELIEVERS is punctuated, rarely and unpredictably, with gamey gore, or live bodies erupting with pestilence. While it never achieves the profundity of something like THE EXORCIST, it is not without moments of pathos, like the mourning process of losing one’s mind that a young Jimmy Smitts must undergo. THE BELIEVERS may not be deep, but it is strong.

This is all, of course, without mentioning the issue of race. When the movie came out in 1987, it may still have been possible for many audiences to ignore the movie’s essential xenophobia–that is, more possible than it is now, when discussions of racism make the news with much greater frequency detail, even if the vast majority of us are still struggling to address it properly. Viewers who were primed to condemn negative imagery related to slaves or “savages” were not as often enabled to, for instance, recognize distorted messaging about Afro-Carribean religions that developed under colonial duress. THE BELIEVERS attempts to exonerate itself by taking the popular tack of sorting ethnic characters into “good guys” and “bad guys”. It presents various intelligent, complex, and well-intentioned non-white professionals, often in beautifully photographed Black and Brown neighborhoods where Santeria is commonplace, who wind up serving as a counterpoint to the literally-dark and mysterious interlopers whose activities point to the profoundly evil potential of their shared religion. We still do this today, with this same thematic material, since now we have the option of assigning the locus of evil to Palo Mayombe, a religion whose public image has been permanently and popularly tainted by the real-life murder cult of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo. Many people seem to get a false sense of progress from the fact that shows like Criminal Minds now pompously explain to viewers that Santeria is a nice “one of the good ones” religion without blood sacrifice, unlike that nasty Palo business. THE BELIEVERS had no such contemporary convenience, and has to settle for glibly parsing Santeria from “brujeria”. If the movie is unclear about the nature of Santeria in general, other than some suggestions that it is normal and typically benign, it is not exactly helpful to add to this hazy mix a blacker-than-black witch doctor who has come to America to chew up little boys like some fairy tale ogre.

Does it help that rich white people are the majority doers of evil in THE BELIEVERS? I think the answer is, not totally, but somewhat. There’s something to the notion that the serial child murderers that Martin Sheen encounters are only happening because the greedy desires of Manhattan’s elite insist upon them. And it isn’t only the posh, grown-up ski school villain types, either; Sheen will soon find among the guilty his own ostensibly liberal pals, whose multi-culti home decor serves as a pushy declaration of the owners’ worldliness. Indeed, in spite of their apparent desperation to be perceived as leaping over cultural boundaries, these dashiki-clad white folks are only truly interested in non-anglo cultures when there exists the promise of supernatural power that may beget even greater material wealth. It’s actually a very good allegory for the diluted, cherry-picked amalgam spirituality that festers in the corners of headshops and new age bookstores, where aimless Americans browse for artifacts that will help them “manifest” more love, sex, or money, or reflect negative energies back upon those who have allegedly cursed them–all without having to spend so much as a minute learning about what an orisha is or where dream catchers come from. It is difficult to get past the cartoonish positioning of Malick Bowens as a sort of antichrist, and the way that this real-life religion is depicted as a tool to drown “civilized” society in its own blood. But, at least the movie more than flirts with the option of accusing our white upperclass of polluting and perverting other cultures for the furtherance of their white upperclass endeavors. At its best, THE BELIEVERS seems to say that if this Afro-Carribean religion serves evil, then it is white Americans who make it so.

I was a little nervous about watching THE BELIEVERS as an adult, but I found that I still like it a lot, as a moody, finely crafted piece of entertainment. It was probably my first exposure to Robert Loggia, and it’s impossible to throw that away. For better or worse, it is also impossible to avoid the arguments it raises, in spite of itself, about how to treat the subconsciously malign motivations of good movies. In this context, it’s probably best for me to just say that the number of movies I’ve reviewed here that involve something like naked ladies being chased around with knives, should tell you how I ultimately feel about this level of moralizing about art. So, I’ll just adjourn lightheartedly by offering up to anyone who is reading this, who wants to know who I thought was the most ludicrous celebrity “regular” at the mixed-witchcraft shop up the street from where I used to work, that I’ll happily tell you over DM.