#might change their first name but their last name is still bergman.

[radioromantic-moved]

-teen movie montage where they give the tomboy a makeover but instead of making them feminine they get more masc-

lackadaisy‏‏‎ ‎insert‏‏‎ ‎new and improved babyyyyyyyy <3 (new one is on the right. just in case you couldn't tell. lol) they are now explicitly based off of a norwegian forest cat which is why they got fluffier and it ties in with them being a swedish immigrant. i'm keeping a lot of their personality the same they are a funny little waiter/bootlegger/would be writer who likes puzzles and word games they're just more butch now. if it weren't for the hair they could pass as a man due to their size and build (again norwegian forest cats are like Big Sturdy Guys) so sometimes they'll wear a hat to hide their gender when it's convenient. i take my Gender where i can get it when trying to be 1920s period accurate. idk i'll probably change stuff about them later on i was just struck with the need to redraw them Now and i really like how this turned out so

[kiss-my-freckle]

8x9 Rewatch: The Cyranoid

“I can see it's not Keen. But what I can't figure out is why it's not Keen.” Couple this episode with The Wellstone Agency. Aram and Ressler have what they need to find Liz. They just need to put their heads together. 

This episode gives you everything you need for the rest of the series. If you want my summation, skip to the bottom because I included every pertinent dialogue. 

A parallel to Pete in 5x7.

Man on the phone: They know. I don't know how, but they know.

Pete: They knew I put in a request with CODIS. I don't know how, but they did.

A parallel to Aram in 7x1. The Seventh Seal, for those who don’t know. 

Red: You all look like you're in a Bergman film playing chess with Death.

Aram: Now we are both eating Polish sausage and playing chess with Death.

If you haven't noticed yet, they've got a coffee cup theme going on. This is like their 4th or 5th time with the coffee cups. To understand this, you have to go to the opening diner scene in 2x21. 

Tom: Alright, dream scenario. We finish our coffee...

Bremmer’s statement pushes back to 8x3 and 5x9, for a reason.

Bremmer: He'll never forgive you for this

Cooper: What you did to her, what you did to Katarina, I don't think Elizabeth will ever forgive you for it. Red: She might. Some day. But before then...

Liz: Can you forgive me? Red: Yes. Will you be able to forgive yourself?

Red: I fear she may do something that she can never recover from. And of all the tragedies that you and I have experienced together, that would be the most tragic. We have to do - do everything in our power to prevent that from happening.

Apparently, Neville is the reason Liz lost 30 years with her mother. 

Red: Make no mistake, Harold. By going after Townsend, Elizabeth is putting her life in grave danger.

I like the pest control van Ressler and Park use for their surveillance. The majority of Ressler's scenes push the idea of him turning to Red for help.

Gina: They say two things will survive a nuclear holocaust - cockroaches and twinkies.

A lot of their dialogues push back to Ressler's storyline with Prescott. Turning to Red now to help Liz ... it’s the kind of favor that wouldn't put Ressler in his debt because it's not for him, it's for Liz. if he ended up saving her by pulling her back in, Red would consider himself in Ressler’s debt just as he did with Aram. 

Aram: A war criminal and an international fugitive. Your parents must be proud.

This line of dialogue leads me to believe Neville is an international fugitive because Mary is the war criminal. Aram talks about her crimes later on in the episode. Everyone is led to believe Townsend got his hands on Liz. 

Cooper: You know Townsend. What hope does she have? Red: He's a very dangerous man. Elizabeth kidnapped his sister, and now he has Elizabeth. If I were her, I'd feel pretty hopeless.

Neville knows what Elizabeth looks like, which means he likely saw her in the news when she was on the run in S3. As you watch how Liz controls her Cyranoid, understand this is how much Tom and the woman from Paris have been controlling Liz. It's an emotional hostage-taking.

Liz: No, I know who I am. I am the puppet of some high-functioning sociopath.

Liz: A marionette with a high-functioning sociopath pulling my strings.

When you have someone who controls what Liz believes, and therefore, what she feels... you have someone who has taken Liz emotionally hostage. Period. That's why no one recognizes her. 

Red: I'm not worried about my hide. I worry about Elizabeth's. I strongly suggest you do the same.

Cooper automatically assumes Red killed Rakitin's patsy, and because of that, basically reveals he's the one who has Red's thumb drive. This gives Red his open to demand he return it.

Liz: You believe my mother was murdered by the Kazanjian Brothers. That never happened. They betrayed you, cut a deal with my mother to fake her death and buy her the time she needed to clear her name. Neville: I don't believe any of this.

William: Well, whoever I am is irrelevant. Katarina Rostova is dead.

Neville: Katarina Rostova is N-13.

William: Assuming, for the sake of discussion, you are who you claim to be, what proof could you possibly have? Woman: I have the identity of N-13. William: You're N-13.

Neville Townsend and William Heidegger shared the same belief. Katarina is N-13 and she's dead. By using “N-13″ as an unidentified codename, it allows them to drag out Red's identity reveal further and evens the war with Townsend. Both Katarina and Red are N-13 because Red is Katarina. Liz thinks she's avenging her mother when she's putting three generations at risk... her mother, herself, and her daughter. Using N-13 also makes it possible for Red to survive this war. If they didn’t do it this way, Red wouldn’t, that’s a guarantee. I told people this when they first brought up the idea of Neville being the big bad. If Red’s real identity got outed to the world, he wouldn’t survive it. He’d have to hide out on his island for the rest of his life. 

Neville: Are you saying Reddington killed her to hide the fact he's N-13? Liz: Yes. And I can prove it. That he's the reason your family's dead.

Ilya Koslov is the only person who can prove the identity of N-13 because Dom is dead. It's likely Sikorsky can prove it, but I don't think Liz will be able to push that far. 

Rakitin: The witch hunt is over and there's one less government knob sticking his nose into our business. You should be thanking me.

Red had his witch trial in S6. He’s a witch because he’s Katarina. Rakitin comes off a lot like Tom Keen, and I do think it’s purposeful. He's one of Red's assets.

Red: You tricked them. For a day. Maybe two. But they'll see past it, and when they do, they'll come looking for you.

Katarina: The news of my death would fool most. It won't fool Velov.

I believe his 30 year project is the Devry map and the blacklist, and it's a shared mission because Red is Katarina and Liz is Masha. A mythic battle that he and Liz are central to because they're mother and daughter Rostova. I think he's trying to remove the threats that separated them for 30 years. They've already cleared out the Cabal. Their affiliates likely went blue, so Red and Liz still have a massive blue player war to fight. 

Liz: I wouldn't have gone to the effort of taking your sister, luring you out, of making this pitch unless I was certain. Raymond Reddington killed my mother because she had uncovered the truth.

Most people don’t see it yet, but this war is on the opposite side of S5. 

Liz: You can trust me.

That’s why Liz is telling Neville he can trust her. For the same reason Tom told Red he can trust him. Because Red couldn’t trust Tom, and Neville can’t trust Liz. 

Tom: You can trust me. Red: No, I can't. I hired you to do a job. The rules were explicit, and you violated them. You're unreliable.

Red KNOWS Neville can’t trust Liz. 

Red: Elizabeth Keen is not to be trusted.

Neville is gonna find out she’s unreliable. She’s STILL Red’s daughter lol. This is where Liz's hopelessness will come in that Red spoke of earlier.

Red: He's a very dangerous man. Elizabeth kidnapped his sister, and now he has Elizabeth. If I were her, I'd feel pretty hopeless.

This Cyranoid changed everything when she surrendered herself. 

Cooper: We don't have to find her because she found us. She surrendered herself out front five minutes ago.

A quick gather of dialogues to show you what I mean.

Ressler: I can see it's not Keen, but what I can't figure out is why it's not Keen.

Cooper: Seven years ago - she was kind, enthusiastic, decent. Under your tutelage - she's become someone I fail to recognize.

Red: I'll tell you what she's not doing - behaving like you would.

Aram: Who are you? Liz: You know who I am and why I have to do this. Aram: You forged my signature to get 16 ounces of Semtex. You nearly killed Mr. Reddington and Ressler. I knew who you were, Liz. But I don't recognize who you've become.

Ressler: I'm just saying, if she did reach out to you, if you actually saw her, you might think differently. Aram: Did she reach out to you? Ressler: No, she didn't. But if she did... I'm just saying it might make a difference.

Aram: He didn't "say," he ordered. Ressler: Yeah, but I told you, if you saw her you'd think differently.

Aram: You were right. It is different.

THIS is exactly what the task force needed. To change Liz's face so they can know what they're seeing - a completely different person. Liz IS an imposter. She’s been an imposter since she stepped off Tom’s boat in 2x22. The task force still believes Red is Ilya, but this is where Liz parallels Rederina and both parallel the Deer Hunter. All that’s left for Liz is a gender change. 

She's becoming Tom Keen, but keeping her face. A Pinocchio wife and daughter because they’re holding her emotionally hostage. Tom, by making her believe he’s the father of Agnes. The woman from Paris, by making her believe she’s her mother. Tom and the woman from Paris are pulling Liz’s strings. She’s a fucking marionette. 

Cyranoid: I told you, it's me. Ressler: No.

Cyranoid: Why don't we start with what happened between you and me the night before I went on the run? Ressler: Who the hell are you?

Just like Reddington. “Who are you?” The entire fucking point. Imagine Liz changing her face to look like her Cyranoid. They'd never see Liz again. THIS is what Katarina did by permanently changing her face to become Raymond. You might as well Consider “Raymond” to be Katarina’s Cyranoid.

Dom: Last time I saw my daughter was in this rearview mirror nearly 30 years ago.

Put this entire Post Office playout in 2x22 context and you can see my memory wipe theory. You just have to consider Mary's death like Connolly's. That gif set is here. Liz is wrong. “Almost everything” has changed because she had her memory wiped. The only thing that hasn’t changed is her face. That’ll be left for Agnes. 

Cyranoid: You should let me go. Ressler: Those days are over. Cyranoid: Why? Nothing's changed. Ressler: No. You ordered your puppet to murder Bremmer. Now you're helping her escape. Cyranoid: I've missed you. Ressler: Well, how about we get together? Have a little chat.

I love how Panbaker says this when they haven’t even told her Red is Ilya. 

Panabaker: Which is why I give you a perilously long leash. But it's not so long that I'll approve granting immunity to someone whose identity I am unaware of. Cooper: Ressler, go over the forensics again. Facial recognition, prints. See what you can find. Panabaker: Be good if that included your dignity.

Ressler doesn't see that he has the power to make Liz surrender. They need to stop their physical search and start an emotional one. They lost her in S2. 

Red: She's the master of her own puppet. An avatar of herself.

Liz is a puppet controlling her own puppet. 

It makes her Grendel’s mother. Little Red Riding Hood. 

Liz: Before we had Agnes... I thought Tom and I were gonna adopt.

Tom: Tonight, you are finally gonna see what this little monster looks like.

A parallel to 3x17.

Neville: You need me on your team. This is my price. Are you willing to pay it?

Red: Do you really want your child to pay the price for that mistake for the rest of his or her life?

A parallel to 7x10.

Cyranoid: Your brother loves you very much.

Woman: But she asked me to give you a big hug and tell you how much she loves you.

I believe this will be the means of Agnes’ hit. Revenge for Mary Bremmer. 

Mary: I've done nothing wrong. Aram: Except use chemical weapons on men, women, and children.

Aram: Have you seen what she's done? Chemical Mary. The way her weapons have been used. Against civilians... children. The Agent Keen I know wouldn't use someone like this to get to Townsend or anyone else. She'd arrest her and make sure she couldn't hurt anyone again.

Aram: Whoever she is, she is not our problem. Now, this... this is our problem. Douma and Khan Shaykhun. Syrian children victimized by chlorine gas. We have a war criminal in custody. I am going to confront her with her war crimes.

For the same reason Victor Skovic took over Dr. Krilov’s business when he got arrested. Neville knows his sister. He’ll tailor his revenge to fit her.  

Separating this section. A parallel to 7x10.

Aram: She'd arrest her and make sure she couldn't hurt anyone again.

Ressler: You scrambled my brain, and I'm here to make sure that you never do that to anyone else.

Separating this section. A parallel to 3x15.

Aram: Whoever she is, she is not our problem. Now, this... this is our problem.

Red: Tom is your Tom problem. 

You basically have to put Agnes in Red’s place. She’s the one in danger.

A parallel to 5x8. 

Cyranoid: I don't expect you to understand, but I am doing what is necessary to end this. To stop Reddington.

Garvey: I like to think I'm the kind of man who'd politely ask you to stop this, to let this end here, but I can tell you're the kind of guy who won't get the message and stop.

These bits sell Liz’s surrender should Ressler turn to Red.

Cyranoid: That's why I have a Cyranoid. To eliminate your control.

Cyranoid: You really think you have power over me, don't you?

Cyranoid: I am not surrendering myself to you.

Red: When you love someone, you have no control. That's what love is. Being powerless.

A parallel to Dr. Fulton. 

Neville: Uh, it turns out that you're due for a reckoning.

Fulton: Closure requires a reckoning.

Because Red is Liz’s mother. So run this opposite. 

Fulton: A widow. A mom. A cop. Liz: And one more thing. Fulton: What's that? Liz: A daughter.

A parallel to Ruin. 

Blake: Try and get some sleep. Neville: I always try. And I never do.

Liz: What matters is that I did it and I was good at it. And I didn't lose any sleep over it. Red: You will. One of these nights you will. It's just a matter of when.

Summation.

They’ve covered most of my predictions for this season. Had I grouped these dialogues, you'd see it even more. With Neville, Liz pushes the danger to Agnes. With the task force, she pushes her second memory wipe and her possible surrender later on. A culmination of things for their first hit on my Tom Domino theory, and I do believe this very arc will lead to that reveal. Agnes’ hit is coming and everyone is falling in parallel with each other. They’ll have more coming, so expect a lot of parallel gif sets from me as they do. 

Liz: I want revenge. Alice: You have my full attention.

Liz is seeking revenge for the death of the woman she believes was her mother. That's it. She's not seeking truths, but feeling quite certain Dom framed her mother and set her up as a patsy. Don't confuse a woman willing to break the rules to seek revenge as a woman who's in control of her life. There's no control to have in seeking revenge, only a poisoned soul. The difference between 3a and 8a shows you where they're heading. The only way Liz can gain control of her life is by getting to the truth rather than seeking revenge for what she believes is the truth. Once those truths come to light, Liz will have the power she needs to take control. Because she’s seeking revenge for what she believes is the truth, Agnes will end up in parallel with Red. Liz and Agnes willl basically fall on the other side of The Djinn's episode. She's harming her own daughter by aligning with Neville, and she was stupid enough to take Agnes on the run with her. 

Consider Liz no different than Bahram because this is where they're heading.

Red: Look at that. Pinned like a swallowtail.

Red: I need an ambulance. A man's dying on a cross.

Ressler: So, you go ahead and you nail yourself to a cross...

You simply need to change Ressler's position from the Deer Hunter episode.

Ressler: Don't. Don't ask me to feel your pain, Liz. I got more than enough of my own.

Liz: But if she isn't who I thought she was, if she's a threat - Ressler: Then we'll deal with it.

Because Agnes is his daughter and he’s gonna feel that pain with her. 

Bahram: I wanted to protect you, Nasim.

Tom: We were trying to protect Agnes. Red: I guess that didn't work out.

I’m predicting Neville runs opposite William with the ducks. 

William: There's a park on the corner of Wabash and Grant. I take my granddaughter there to feed the ducks.

Duck, duck, roasted goose. Fire for Agnes. Burn scars like the makeup on the woman at the costume shop. Fire like Alina’s friend. Burns to the face like Mary Bremmer. I think that’s why they’re on the carousel with the unicorn. Unicorns are good luck. Washer necklaces are bad luck. I think he’s gonna drop a deadly weapon through Liz’s skylight on behalf of his sister. 

[aion-rsa]

Best War Movies to Watch: A Complete Streaming Guide

https://ift.tt/32Bbpxh

Sadly, the human race has pretty much never not been at war. We remain an ever violent, combative crew. Hopefully one day that’ll change and we’ll enter an era of unprecedented peace. Until then though, we have the movies!

War might be hell, but war flicks can be pretty great at times! Armed combat and all the other various theaters and forms of battle makes for high-octane drama and gripping backdrops. And that’s pretty much exactly what we are looking for out of our drama films.

What follows is a (mostly) comprehensive list of all the war movies available with a streaming subscription on the major streaming services. If you’re interested in paying per movie, options like Amazon, Google Play and YouTube should help broaden the field. Otherwise, scroll below because the films here are all free with a log-in subscription to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, or HBO Max.

‘71

Available on: Hulu (US), Amazon Prime Video (UK)

An underrated British thriller from the last decade, ’71 turns “the Troubles” in Ireland into a pseudo-horror movie. At a mere 99 minutes, this is lean, economical filmmaking with a barebones premise about a British solider (Jack O’Connell) who gets separated from his unit during a Belfast riot in 1971—the height of British-Irish tension. His plight to survive the night is riveting filmmaking and a grim look back to still fresh nightmares.

The African Queen

Available on: Amazon Prime Video (purchase only in UK)

An unlikely war movie at first glance, The African Queen is very much the story of two middle-aged people caught up in the chaos of the First World War. It’s also a crackling adventure yarn about autumn romance between a drunken river boat captain (Humphrey Bogart) and a Christian missionary (Katharine Hepburn) who’s brother was just killed by Germans in colonial Africa. Both set out to get down the river, and away from the Germans’ reach, in this charming John Huston classic with still stunning location photography.

The Alamo

Available on: Hulu

As an ironically little remembered version of the Alamo siege from director John Lee Hancock, The Alamo (2004) is still the best film version of these events. With a refreshing eye for historical authenticity instead of Texan mythmaking, the movie unpacks the lives of David Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), James Bowie (Jason Patric), and William Travis (Patrick Wilson) with a warts and all approach. It also relays the events of the battle in its actual context at night, and in grim chaos, and gives needed attention to the overlooked contributions of the Tejanos to Texan independence.

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But most significantly, it has a bittersweet soul as expressed in Carter Burwell’s score, which is at its most beautiful when Crockett climbs a parapet to serenade both sides of the battlefield with his fiddle.

A Bridge Too Far

Available on: Netflix (US Only)

The last of its kind, A Bridge Too Far is one of those old-fashioned all-star war epics about World War II that came into vogue between the 1950s and ‘70s. But this nearly all-British production is not about one of the Allies’ greatest triumphs, but rather one of their most disappointing defeats: the failure of Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands.

Director Richard Attenborough and screenwriter William Goldman try to squeeze it all in, which will honestly be exhausting to some viewers. For others, seeing a historically accurate (if too lighthearted) rendering of this battle with the likes of Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, and more will be enough.

Casablanca

Available on: HBO Max

Another Bogie movie where the war is adjacent to the central conflict, Casablanca is the best wartime melodrama ever produced. Some even consider it the greatest American movie for that matter. Actually made during the Second World War, there is a great rush of patriotic idealism and anxious uncertainty about its vision of a seedy Moroccan city that is ostensibly under free French rule, but is not-so-secretly being occupied by the Nazis. There everyone goes to Rick’s, a café run by a disillusioned American (Bogart) who sticks his neck out for nobody.

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But Rick must soon pick up the fight again after an old flame named Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) walks into his gin joint, bringing with her a French husband, a freedom fighter who has the Nazis breathing down his neck. All three are going to make some tough choices, as will complicit French police officer Louis (a marvelous Claud Rains) as the forces of World War II finally start pulling.

Cold Mountain

Available on: HBO Max

An attempt at an old fashioned sweeping wartime epic, Cold Mountain still brings modern historical insight to the oft-mythologized Civil War. The film is about several people from North Carolina’s Appalachian region. Like many Confederate soldiers, particularly from NC, Inman (Jude Law) has no slaves and no real reason to fight for the Southern cause. So after hellish battle, he deserts and attempts to make a sprawling trek back home.

Elsewhere, however, his sweetheart Ada (Nicole Kidman) must make hard decisions of her own with the leering eye of the Home Guard peeking over her shoulder, especially as word of Inman’s desertion reaches the mountains. An odyssey of the Civil War from the vantage of the impoverished it rolled over, Cold Mountain is a refreshing melodrama.

Da 5 Bloods

Available on: Netflix

Spike Lee’s latest joint is also one that opened up wounds from the Vietnam War that never really healed. Set more in the 2010s than 1960s, Da 5 Bloods follows four Black veterans who’ve ostensibly returned to Vietnam to find the remains of their fallen brother (Chadwick Boseman in one of his final roles). But they’re also here to reclaim gold that was stolen back in ’69.

Something of a heist movie, Lee mixes genres yet never loses sight about the anguish of those who fought in a war, and the legacy it leaves even decades and generations later.

The Dirty Dozen

Available on: HBO Max

Even if you haven’t seen Robert Aldrich’s epic 1967 adventure, the term “dirty dozen” and the basic premise of the movie have found their way into popular culture over the decades and influenced recent movies like Suicide Squad.

A grizzled (as if there’s any other kind) Lee Marvin leads a team of prisoners–including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland and more–on a suicide mission during World War II, with full pardons as their reward if they survive. The results are explosive and, at the time of release, controversially violent. They also make for one of the great war movies of the era.

Enemy at the Gates

Available on: Netflix, Amazon (US Only)

Sniper versus sniper; eagle versus eagle. That is the basic appeal of Enemy at the Gates, the rare Hollywood World War II drama where America is not even present. Rather this is a film about the war of attrition between the German and Russian forces at the Battle of Stalingrad, the nightmarish conflict which began turning the tide against the Third Reich. The movie features an all-star cast, including Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, and Bob Hoskins, but it’s the chilly environs of hell on earth which make this worthwhile.

Five Came Back

Available on: Netflix

A film told in three parts, Five Came Back tracks the singular, and now fairly astonishing, choices made by five A-list Hollywood directors: John Ford, Frank Capra, George Stevens, John Huston, and William Wyler. They all chose to leave Hollywood either at the peak of their careers, or at the beginning of it, to make films about the Second World War. Each ultimately served as an officer, and several were in the actual thick of combat to capture war footage (and propaganda) for the first time in history. It was a patriotic and revealing choice then and now, and it’s examined with insight by the likes of Mark Harris and Steven Spielberg here.

Flags of Our Fathers

Available on: HBO Max

Not as good as director Clint Eastwood’s companion film told from the Japanese perspective, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers is nonetheless a worthwhile film. A rather skeptical look at the lives of American marines who were turned into an inaccurate legend by the U.S. military when they were photographed raising the American flag above the sands of Iwo Jima, the picture tracks the home lives of soldiers who did their job only too well and were then asked to return home as glorified heroes… and then live an ordinary American life.

The Four Feathers

Available on: HBO Max

One of the great British adventure films of the pre-war era, The Four Feathers is director Zoltan Korda’s sweeping reimagining of the A.E.W. Mason novel. Set during Britain’s colonial wars in Egypt and Sudan during 1882, the film tracks an English officer who only took a commission in the military to honor his family’s ancient war record. However, when the call of war comes, he fears he would not do his duty in battle and resigns his service… so his three friends and even a fiancée give him four white feathers: white for cowardice.

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To redeem himself, he travels to Sudan and helps the British cause while posing as a local. Filmed on actual African locations and in glorious Technicolor at a time when American movies were afraid to leave California, The Four Feathers is a classic (and politically incorrect) throwback.

Gallipoli

Available on: Amazon

Australian filmmaker Peter Weir has directed just 13 films, but probably 10 of them are classics, and this 1981 drama is one of them. A 25-year-old Mel Gibson stars as one of several young men who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War. They eventually find themselves on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, site of a costly and lengthy battle that ended in defeat, but marked a turning point for Australia’s perception of itself and its place in the world and a seemingly disinterested British Empire. It’s a harrowing tale about the loss of innocence, national character, and the price of war for both.

Glory

Available on: Netflix (US Only)

Arguably the greatest film ever made about the American Civil War, Edward Zwick’s Glory continues to shine like one gallant rush. Based on the lives of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment, the film tracks the hard fight for respect—and freedom—endured by the first African American regiment in U.S. history.

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With a still crackling ensemble that includes Morgan Freeman, Matthew Broderick, Andre Braugher, and Denzel Washington in his first Oscar winning role, the movie both mythologizes and humanizes the 54th’s struggle as the American struggle. It also soars with James Horner’s most transcendent and ethereal musical score.

The Great Dictator

Available on: HBO Max

The rare comedy on this list, The Great Dictator was a film of political courage by writer-director-producer-and-star Charlie Chaplin. Filmed in 1940 when much of the world was already at war, but the United States was not, this Hollywood film made a farce out of the hatred and fascism of the Third Reich, with Adolf Hitler being especially skewered.

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In the film, Chaplin plays both a fictional barber and Hitler-like dictator who switch places in a Prince and the Pauper styled mix-up. Chaplin thus makes a still hilarious deconstruction of Hitler’s madness and insecurities at a time when most Hollywood studios chose to pretend there wasn’t a war going on. The film also concludes in one of the greatest anti-war speeches in cinema history.

Hacksaw Ridge

Available on: HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video UK

The rare film that is told in merely two acts, director Mel Gibson’s World War II drama is fairly underrated. The film follows the remarkable true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), an unlikely U.S. Army corporal since he was also a conscientious objector who refused to hold a gun. Nearly court-martialed for his defiance of orders, as a medic Doss insisted he could serve his country well by saving lives on the battlefield. He got his chance at the Battle of Okinawa when he pulled 75 lives out of the carnage, which is captured in grisly detail by Gibson. Likely the bloodiest WWII movie since Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge is also one of the best.

Hamburger Hill

Available on: Amazon Prime Video (US Only)

This 1987 film set during the Vietnam War recounts one specific mission: a 1969 assault by the U.S. Army’s 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, known as the “Screaming Eagles,” on a well-fortified North Vietnamese position near the Laotian border. Dylan McDermott, Don Cheadle, Courtney B. Vance, and Steven Weber all make early career appearances in the film as young soldiers thrust into a situation where victory almost seems more like defeat—as good a metaphor for the Vietnam conflict as any.

Hostiles

Available on: Netflix

Director Scott Cooper did the rare thing with Hostiles: He looked back at American history with nuance and sincere contemplation. This film is ostensibly about a U.S. Cavalry officer on his final mission, which is to escort a family of Native Americans across the last remnants of American frontier. But when that officer (Christian Bale) knows he’s escorting the dying Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) who led the doomed side of American Indians in previous conflicts—and alongside a woman (Rosamund Pike) who just lost her family to Indian attacks—the ghosts of America’s sins and recriminations walk with them.

The Hurt Locker

Available on: Hulu, Netflix UK

The film which won Kathryn Bigelow the Oscar for Best Director, The Hurt Locker is the first great movie about the War on Terror in the 21st century. Boiling down the madness of war to being like “a drug” for some soldiers, the film essays the high-stake tension—and adrenaline—of being an officer in the Army’s bomb squad who is responsible for disarming IEDs, bomb vests, and other hidden weapons of death.

It’s terrifying… and exhilarating as personified by Jeremy Renner’s addicted Staff Sgt. William James. Also with a career-making performance by Anthony Mackie and a pseudo-journalistic script by Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker gets under your skin.

Platoon

Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video (US Only)

There were plenty of Vietnam War movies before Oliver Stone’s Platoon, but what shook audiences in 1986 is that this was the first time one was made by a Vietnam veteran. Not that Stone didn’t take liberties: He makes his soldier’s eye view of the generation-defining conflict a fever dream of America’s darkest moments in the shit.

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But his lament for the soldier also brought a renewed sense of sorrow and regret to how veterans were treated in the aftermath. With a heartbreaking supporting performance by Willem Dafoe, whose demise in the film has become iconic, there’s a reason for many this remains the only Vietnam War movie of consequence.

Red Tails

Available on: HBO Max

Here is executive producer George Lucas and director Anthony Hemingway’s well-meaning but so-so aerial war epic about the Tuskegee Airmen. The real-life Black pilots, mechanics, bombardiers, and more made up a segregated flank of African American airmen (as well as flyers from Haiti, Trinidad, and other Caribbean nations) in World War II. This film attempts to honor them with a cast that includes Terrence Howard, David Oyelowo, Nate Parker, and Cuba Gooding Jr.

War Machine

Available on: Netflix

David Michod (Animal Kingdom) wrote and directed this Netflix satire set during the ongoing war in Afghanistan, eight years after the 9/11 attacks. Brad Pitt stars as four-star general Glen McMahon (loosely based on real-life general Stanley McChrystal), whose bleak assessment of the situation on the ground puts him at odds with President Obama and others. Like other less-than-reverent films before it, War Machine is interested in the sheer insanity of war: doing the same thing over and over again while hoping for a different outcome.

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The post Best War Movies to Watch: A Complete Streaming Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3kkkpwT

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #1: Lise

In this first instalment of a new feature, long-time member Lise, of Canada, answers our questions about how she uses Letterboxd, and why you should join her March Around the World challenge.

Hi Lise! How long have you been on Letterboxd? Lise: TV was still in black and white.

What do you mainly use Letterboxd for? Just a diary? Long reviews or shorter takes? Hilarious lists, or very f—king serious director rankings don’t @ me? I use the whole shebang: diary, reviews, ratings, watchlist, comments and lists, lots of lists. But mostly I use Letterboxd to keep track of when Jonathan is out to lunch (shameless plug for my He Says She Says list).

Do you rate films? Absolutely. I rely on ratings to add stuff to my watchlist, and I rate to let others know if I liked the film. I don’t read reviews for films I haven’t seen, so without user ratings I’d be snookered.

Tell us about your March Around The World challenge, in which Letterboxd members sign up to watch and review 30 films from 30 different countries during the month of March. How did it come about, and what’s involved? I took over the challenge from Berken, who created it and hosted it for the first year. I thought it was a brilliant way to explore the world on the cheap. The review component is important because it expands Letterboxd’s database, especially for under-seen films. It’s been a great success. Many participants like to create lists, and if they can’t watch them all in March they go at it for the rest of the year, which is great. The most important rule about the challenge is to forget the rules and watch international films during the month.

Still from Djibril Diop Mambéty’s ‘Touki Bouki’ (1973).

What are some of the interesting statistics you’ve noticed from your Marches Around the World? I consolidated all of the spreadsheets I’ve created for each challenge, and there were some surprises. The most viewed film is Touki-Bouki from Senegal (average rating of 3.7). Less surprising is that our most-viewed director is Ingmar Bergman (although I was happy to see Aki Kaurismäki from Finland in second place). The most-viewed countries are France, Japan and South Korea. Another surprise, the best decade is the 1920s (with the 1950s in a close second).

How has March Around the World enhanced your life? I’m not the sentimental type but when we get a new participant in the challenge I get the warm and fuzzies. If the genie were out of the bottle I would request that all overcome the ‘one-inch barrier’ (subtitles). Watching films ‘from away’, as our East Coasters would say, is one of the simplest ways to combat fears and/or prejudices about other peoples/nations/ways of life that we often don’t realize we have. Every time we identify or root for someone who is ‘other’ it chips away at the walls, and as Maya Angelou has said so eloquently, we discover that “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike”.

What are the responsibilities involved in hosting a Letterboxd challenge? It doesn’t have to be complicated. A challenge can be as simple as “watch ten films from your watchlist this month”. It’s all about tags. Define a tag, have people add it to their films and their lists, and then you can easily search for and filter those tags. Easy peasy. Mine is a bit more challenging because it has so many requirements, but thanks to some fantastic Letterboxders who volunteer to help with my spreadsheet (you know who you are), it all gets done in a timely manner.

How do you find the time to watch all those films in a single month?! Jonathan and I have never completed the challenge! Our best year was around 26. That year we got up earlier in the morning and watched the films with coffee, before going to work. That was the best. Nice and fresh and open to anything. Bonus is that we got to think about the film all day and the review-writing in the evening was easier. If it were up to me that’s the way I would watch films all the time.

What other challenges have you taken part in, and how have they enhanced your experience of watching films? Back in the day everyone was making a list tagged with List of Shame that you filled with all those “You seriously haven’t seen that yet?!” films. I’m still chipping away at it, but of course for every film you watch there are ten more you have to see. To help with the List of Shame I participated in Mr Dulac’s 5×5 series, where you selected five films from five directors and watched them at your leisure. It was a great way to complete filmographies. I still go to that list when selecting a film to watch.

Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘In The Mood for Love’ (2000).

What are your four favorites on your Letterboxd profile, and why? In the Mood for Love, because forbidden love is the saddest thing ever, and I could watch Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung go up and down those noodle-shop stairs all day long. The Thin Red Line, because it provides a great sense of place and it’s about the soldiers, not the war. Whispering Star because it is so quiet and touching.

I keep my fourth slot open for a rotating new favorite film that I want everyone to see. I could change these for a different set, but, oh, who am I kidding. I always feel terrible at the thought of ‘demoting’ a film.

What is your favorite or most useful feature? The watchlist, filtered by service. It is my dream-come-true feature. I sort by genre, hide short films, select ‘Stream only’ and ta-da! A list of films I’ve been meaning to see that are available to stream. (Now if only I could do the same for films that I own!) [Editor’s note: filtering by your own personal set of streaming services is a Pro feature.]

What’s a movie you’ve done a 180 on because of other Letterboxd members’ opinions? Great question. Memories of Murder is one of them for sure. I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was when I first saw it, but so many of my friends gave it five stars that I watched it again and understood. And just this week, Moaning_Slug posted an interesting comment on my review of Buñuel’s Viridiana that actually makes me want to take another look.

What’s a movie you’ve really had to dig in on your feelings about, despite what everyone else on Letterboxd thinks? I am not easily bothered by or influenced by others when it comes to the films I love or despise. I seriously disliked Her and Boyhood and pretty much anything by Wes Anderson and all the high ratings have zero effect on me. The technical prowess of a film would never be something that could change my mind (here’s looking at you John Wick: Chapter 2 and 3). What would make me take a second look is if someone were able to point out that I missed something about what the film was saying. I’ve yet to review Jojo Rabbit because while I think poking fun at someone who aspires to dictatorship might actually prevent it from happening, I don’t know what to make of it when it’s making light of a historical or current [aspiring dictator]. Reading reviews about this could definitely influence my take on the film.

Colin Firth in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1995).

What’s your go-to comfort movie? The one with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, the one with Chris Pratt and the talking ‘rat’, and the one with Tony Leung as badge No. 663 starring the Mamas and the Papas.

If and when you go to the cinema, where do you prefer to sit? Behind the shortest person in the room, near the back (I hate looking up—it’s a neck thing).

You’re Canadian. What’s the best Canadian film of all time? South of Wawa, about a donut-shop waitress who receives tickets to a Dan Hill concert in Toronto for her 35th birthday. Okay, so it’s not the “greatest film of all time” but it is my favorite, and it’s got the best last line ever!

These are the Canadian films I’ve seen in order of preference, this is a substantial list of Quebec films and [Letterboxd member] puffin has an extensive Canadian films list (stops at 2018). And I must mention these NFB short classics: The Cat Came Back, The Sweater and one of the most beautifully animated shorts, The Man Who Planted Trees.

When Parasite won Best Picture, what was the reaction in your household? We tested the bounce on our floor boards at Best Director. We tested the bounce on the ceiling boards at Best Picture.

Please recommend three other Letterboxd members we should follow. I can’t count, so here goes. I think everyone should follow Punq for the sheer number of films he watches and reviews, but mostly because I don’t think there is a film made before the 60s that he hasn’t seen. Graham Williamson is a good bet as well. His tastes are eclectic and his reviews are always packed with good observations and information. And I also have to recommend fellow Canuck puffin. I don’t know how he manages to watch so many films and review them. I always enjoy reading Melissa Tamminga, who asks questions and is very thoughtful in her reviews, and I have a soft spot for Peter H, who again personalizes his reviews. Nepotism be damned, Jonathan White always writes honest, interesting and personal reviews.

You also round up Letterboxd members who attend TIFF each year—what’s been a good thing about meeting Letterboxd people in real life? It’s great! Without naming names, I discovered that I could drink a 6'2" Norwegian under the table; a particular New Yorker is so stingy with his ratings that when he gives anything beyond three and a half stars you just have to watch the film; and a New Zealander personally knows anyone who is anyone in the industry over there and can give you all the dirt! Whenever we consider not doing TIFF we are always reminded that it would involve missing our Wednesday meet-up (as well as most other nights where we undoubtedly meet up for beer and film-related arguments), and we easily change our minds.

P.S. In the spirit of connecting Letterboxders… before the TIFF list I thought it would be good idea to create a ‘Letterboxd in [insert City]’ list, Toronto being the first one. It took off, and many users from different parts of the world created lists for their cities; the tag is letterboxdcity.

The March Around the World challenge starts 1 March 2020. Tag your list with ‘30 countries 2020’ and it’ll be added here.

[shieldcodex]

Codex Judicium (2017, 2018-current)

The third and final arc of the SHIELD Codex, because my brain wouldn’t leave me alone. Continues the story directly after An Ocean Deep and Cold, however this arc returns to the original arc’s method of building to a central antagonist and finale. These antagonists (The Children of Thanos, or his Generals, interchangeably) were foreshadowed at the end of the original Codex series, back when I had no idea they’d end up in the dang movies.

This arc is, plot-wise, a little self indulgent (OCs, flerkens, and a lot of worldbuilding headcanon I wanted to play with) and revisits a lot of previous Codex events to build up to its planned finish. These connections will be listed in the notes. This is also the arc where we say goodbye to AOS series canon. The Codex fully diverges after the Framework arc of the show, and, annoyingly on my part, the Codex talks about that arc only in past tense.

The Shadows of Asgard

Synopsis:

Trapped by memories of his past and haunting his own present, Loki, the shadow king of Asgard, finds himself hunted by something far more deadly than any ghost. Without allies or any friendly word to help him, he must figure out why he’s not the hunter’s sole target - and what any chance of surviving his stolen throne might have to do with his buried youth.

Notes: On the one hand, it’s a stand-alone story set previous to the Codex and can be read without ever touching another Codex fic. On the other, I’ve built it into Codex canon and made it part of the basis for the final arc. Although this fic is about a brief, almost romantic part of Loki’s life, the resolution of this fic establishes that relationship as distant, conflicted, and probably platonic from here. While a character introduced will become recurring, the Codex will never change its listing from genfic to OC/Loki.

The Sand Knows Its Purity

Synopsis:

As Kamar-Taj's chief librarian, Wong feels love and responsibility for every sacred book in the world. Leaving the rural Chinese province of his childhood on the way towards safety for his latest rediscovered ancient artifact, Wong thinks a little about the past, about being lost, and about how much it all meant to his future.

Notes: A purely Wong-centric vignette themed after Journey To the West. Wong becomes a moderately important supporting character to the arc (I love Benedict Wong, okay?) and this fic introduces a unique character who returns in Turn the Page.

Fresh Ground

Synopsis: 

Where everyone knows your name is a fine thing if you're a middle-class drudge looking for a drink, Ted Danson, and a guy named Norm. But when you work in Stark Tower - or worse, are an Avenger - sometimes all you want is a coffeeshop that's going to treat you like a normal person.

Notes: Having never done a coffeeshop AU before, this is a coffeeshop short that accidentally ended up foreshadowing the next Halloween fic and thus became a Codex short.

The Ritual of Chud

Synopsis: 

The harvest season always brings with it a sense of ritual to pave the way for the future. It's with this in mind that Doctor Strange and Loki left Wong with a single gentle, but unusual, request: Throw a small Halloween party. Invite a handful of magical guests. Spend the evening telling tales and growing closer together. But why?

Notes: 2018′s Halloween Codex is another story within a story collection with several supporting magical characters (Wanda, Wong, Aggie Harkness, and introducing Pandora Peters of Loki’s WAND division) telling sad or spooky holiday tales. The overall story introduces the first clue to this arc’s set of villains - Ebony Maw.

Offhand

Synopsis: 

The season of greetings and merriment has come around - for Asgard, whose princes are still children easily bored by pageantry. But when Loki has to face a pack of bullies without his brother to back him up, he ends up beginning something that will change his life forever. Meanwhile, in the future, an adult Loki takes in some holiday cheer among his friends, and makes an admission he hadn't wanted to just yet.

Notes: The first winter holiday short fic since Bleak Midwinter, Offhand has a nice but standalone flashback to Loki’s troubles with the palace weapons trainer. There is some foreshadowing about what’s to come next.

Escape Velocity

Synopsis: 

When news comes to Wakanda of a mysterious cache of vibranium destined to hit the international arms market, King T'Challa realizes his efforts to reach out to the world could complicate his role in trying to stop disaster. Instead, he sends an envoy to SHIELD to help pick up where his warriors left off - and asks a reluctant Agent Everett Ross to assist them on his behalf.

Notes: The synopsis is a swerve. Set up as a standard SHIELD op, it ends with space battles and poor Ross helping to pilot a starship. As of 2020, he’s not the first new character to return from this fic - Captain Tam is introduced, Kara is hinted at, and more suspicions about the Children of Thanos are set up. The Grandmaster is also revealed to have ties here, a plot built up from the original arc’s Darwin’s Dragon.

Cat Dads!

Synopsis: 

Minding his own business one spring afternoon, Loki finds himself approached by Nick Fury, who brings with him a most curious situation in need of advice.

It turns out that Goose is carrying a whole, uh, kit and caboodle of trouble inside her.

Notes: Arguably the most popular Codex short whether you read the series or not, Nick Fury as a cat daddy was an irresistible setup. This fic introduces flerkens into the Codex, though, with both Loki and Nebula gaining flerkittens that will become part of later stories.

Turn the Page

Synopsis: 

Torn from one nightmare and tossed into another, Loki isn't touched to discover he's Stephen Strange's first choice to run to when magical attacks strike the New York Sanctum. The goal of this assault? Reclaiming the Darkhold, held prisoner by Strange for the last few years.

Notes: The Darkhold has been the focus point of a sub-sub arc throughout the three series, from the very first Codex story, to Season of the Witch, and finally, at damn last, ending here. Aggie Harkness returns, and some old plot threads from The Janus Paradox get tied off in this one. The epilogue also builds on a hint from Escape Velocity and introduces us formally to another member of the Children of Thanos.

The Queen’s Gambit

Synopsis:

Long ago, Odin All-Father buried the secret of his first two children. Baldur, who tragically never left his crib, and Hela, who rose to power under a deadly shadow. Now an exile on the world that gave her its name, Hela hatefully waits for a freedom she suspects will never come - only to find that a visitor has somehow arrived after all.

Notes: 2019′s Halloween fic is themed after Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and has Mistress Death swapping tales with Hela, herself a would-be incarnation of mortality. This fic builds on Odin’s tale as told at the end of Ocean Deep and Cold, and will return to importance in an upcoming fic.

The Family We Choose (ongoing 4/20)

Synopsis:

Loki has been contacted by Nebula, working on the fringes of the galaxy as an intelligence broker since the fall of Thanos, and he suspects that what news she has to share won't be anything pretty. But things begin to shift beyond his predictions before he catches up with her, as two human friends latch on for the ride.

Notes:

This is where previous plot threads are starting to pull together. Building on the events of The Shadows of Asgard, Darwin’s Dragon, Escape Velocity, Cat Dads, and the entire theme of Loki trying to rebuild his life as a whole person and not just a loner easily driven to madness, this fic is ongoing.

Upcoming:

All these listings are subject to future whims.

The One About Jotunheim - A civil war will threaten to tear apart the fragile peace Queen Farbauti has forged, while Loki, unmoored by the possible ramifications of that conflict, begins to work on another family alliance of his own. This is a tentative synopsis and may change.

1-2 possible shorts, including one with Captain Tam and Kara on Earth

The One About Kings - Odin prepares to pass on his crown at last, but as usual, there are intense conflicts.

The Children’s Crusade - the final showdown between Loki and the remaining Children of Thanos... and a few awful surprises.

The future light - one more postscript.

[tessa-quayle]

full text: 2019 Telegraph piece

check out the pictures here from @ralph-n-fiennes

the article by Hermione Eyre (official link - registration required for a free trial)

Ralph Fiennes does Ralph Fiennes so well. During our interview he delivers everything one might hope for: sensitive introspection, charm, pathos, a touch of mystery and even a (partial) defence of late Soviet Russia. ‘A lot of people didn’t experience it as repressive…’

This in the context of the stunning new film he has directed, called The White Crow, about the defection of Rudolf Nureyev from the Soviet Union in 1961. Oh, and he also impersonates a horse for me. Beautiful whinny. Sensitive nostrils.

‘It’s how I feel as the house lights go down and I can feel the expectation from the audience. You can see it in horses before a race.’ 

As we begin, in a Shoreditch loft studio not far from his home, he seems professorial, in a woolly cardigan, neatly arranging his spectacles, notebook and copy of the latest London Review of Books. When he is ready he gives me that trademark encouraging smile – half little boy, half crocodile.

Career-wise, he has it all. Family life, not so much. His greatest luxury? ‘My independence. I lead quite a solitary life.’ When I ask him if he’s a good uncle to his siblings’ progeny – Mercy, Titan and Hero, to name a few – he says flatly, ‘I could be better.’

His sister, the film-maker Sophie Fiennes, says her son Horace, now eight, really enjoyed the sword fighting in his Richard III, which is, if you think about it, a good outcome for a small boy going to see his uncle play Richard III.

His presence is a mark of quality in a film. Both the Bond and Harry Potter franchises, where he plays M and Voldemort respectively, brought him in for gravitas. Since Rada, he has run the gamut of Shakespeare, from Romeo in 1986 to his award-winning Antony & Cleopatra last year at the National, opposite Sophie Okonedo.

‘She was spectacular. I miss Antony. I found him very moving in his brokenness; his masculinity falling away and him trying to cling on to it. He’s male and middle-aged, and he keeps saying, “I’ve still got it, haven’t I? Haven’t I?”’

Does he recognise that? ‘I am 56 and I try to stay fitter’ – he does cardio and morning yoga – ‘but I can feel myself getting… old. Little shifts of energy and ambition, little impulses. You get tired more, you want to take it easy more.’ Then summoning mercurial energy in that actorly way, he explodes, ‘But I can feel myself fighting that, like, “I’m not gonna let go! Come on, come on. Yeah!” There are plenty of virile 56-year-old men.’

When I ask if he’s got a motorbike yet, like Ralph Richardson, he isn’t impressed. ‘No, my brother Joseph rides a motorbike. He can do fast cars and handle boats.’ Joseph, now 48, will for ever be the young Bard wooing Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, just as Ralph single-handedly made Herodotus hot, that spring of 1997 when we all went to see The English Patient and wept.

Antony gives everything up for sex. ‘Yes, he does, that’s a very real erotic connection, and it’s very emasculating for him.’ Does sex make the world go round? ‘Erm, sex produces more human beings, mostly.’ Nice deflection.

Fiennes married Alex Kingston, his great love from Rada, in 1993. Their marriage ended when he left her in 1995 for the actor who was playing Gertrude to his Hamlet, Francesca Annis, 17 years older than him. Although the relationship broke down in early 2006 amid reports of his alleged infidelity, they still talk, have a deep, mutual professional respect and go to each other’s first nights.

Kingston has since gone on to have a daughter, Salome, with her second husband and Annis already had three children; Fiennes has never wanted his own family. ‘Never say never,’ he demurs. ‘But I don’t feel that’s imminent at all. I love the family and community of plays or the cast and crew of a film.’

He recollects his lines from Man and Superman, the Bernard Shaw play, ‘where Jack Tanner [whom he played] rather brilliantly pours scorn on the idea of happiness: “No family, no marriage, spread your seed, but no marriage!” I love the mischief in that.’

He says, ‘I am the eldest of six,’ as if it explains everything. The Fiennes children were born within seven years. Martha and Sophie make films; Magnus is a composer; Joseph is an actor and his twin Jacob is a gamekeeper in Norfolk. Their foster brother, Michael, now an archaeologist, came to live with them when he was 11, Ralph was two and their mother Jini was only 24.

‘My wonderful parents [Mark Fiennes, a farmer, and Jini Lash, a writer] were pressured by tough financial situations and a very erratic income,’ says Fiennes quietly. ‘They were extraordinarily courageous in giving us love and a sense of home, but also a feeling, early on, of what it is to be a burden on your parents – somewhere I think that’s affected my choices.’

‘We experienced family life with bells on,’ says sister Sophie, who’s currently working on a new series of the brilliant Pervert’s Guide to… documentaries with philosopher Slavoj Zižek. ‘You have lived that and you don’t need to replicate it.’ She remembers that as a child Ralph ‘really liked getting away from us all and being alone’.

He adored his Pollock’s toy theatre and insisted his siblings formed an audience, ‘furious’ if they didn’t comply. He set up footlights in matchboxes. ‘It was magical, very Fanny and Alexander,’ says Sophie, referencing the Bergman paean to childhood.

Ralph always had ‘a love of practical jokes’, she remembers. When they lived by the sea, on the Sheep’s Head peninsula in Ireland, he stood on a rock at high tide and pretended to be drowning.

‘Gave our mother a fit.’ He also called their neighbour to say his wife had been changing a light bulb and was now hanging from the ceiling, twitching. ‘It was April Fool’s. Our neighbour was furious.’

As a young man Fiennes became, after Schindler’s List, the intellectual’s pin-up. Is ageing harder when you’ve been a heart-throb? ‘Look, there’s lots of heart-throbs out there. You see it in younger actors who are having their moment, there’s a new one and they’re written up, how beautiful they are… You see the waves and the breaks, that person had that moment, or that opportunity. There are a handful of actors and directors who stay [the course], but mostly it’s ups and downs.’ In other words, the challenge is to convert being a heart-throb into something more meaningful and lasting.

Such as directing. He directed himself in 2011’s Bafta-nominated Coriolanus with Vanessa Redgrave as his mother Volumnia; in 2013 he directed and appeared as a passion-struck Dickens opposite Felicity Jones in The Invisible Woman.

His latest is The White Crow, based on Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Nureyev. He spent months touring Russian ballet schools before finding Oleg Ivenko, a young unknown from the Tatar State Ballet company, who is devastatingly good as the dancer. Fiennes plays his mentor Pushkin.

I didn’t really want to be in it,’ he says. ‘But I felt this creeping pressure and although I had a cast of wonderful Russian actors and dancers, the Russian producer said to me, ��If you want Russian investment then we need Western names, why aren’t you in it?”’

He will dig deep to make the films he wants to make: has he put his own money in? ‘I have done, yes.’ Would you again? ‘No! I’ve had to put money into all the films I’ve made. They don’t sparkle with commercial appeal.’ Did the money come back? ‘No.’ Harry Potter helps? ‘Definitely. I don’t regret doing it. I have the resources and I believe in the project. You get one life, so f— it.’

The script of The White Crow is by David Hare, who questions the view of Nureyev’s defection as a ‘leap to freedom’, showing instead a certain nostalgia for the Nikita Khrushchev era.

Hare and Fiennes spoke to friends of Nureyev from 1950s Leningrad, twin dancers Leonid and Liuba Romankov, now in their 80s, who appear in a lunch party scene alongside actors playing their younger selves. ‘Liuba said, “I felt free, I felt happy inside myself at that time.” Nureyev was so nurtured and nourished by the dance school.’

The film doesn’t have anything to say about the propaganda and food shortages. ‘If you say I should have laid out a history lesson of the regime, I say no, I think that would have been heavy-handed. I think an audience is smart. You see the ideological pressure of the regime and the constant surveillance Nureyev was under.’

Do you feel the Soviet approach to the arts got something right? ‘I do, because that was, as I understand it, the philosophy of “we’re all a group”, though of course the individual is stifled. I’ve always been moved by what I feel to be the dedication of the Russian arts ethos, the discipline, the intense seriousness with which people take it.’

His love of Russia began in his early 20s, with him performing Chekhov and reading Dostoyevsky; he is now fluent in Russian, has ‘a lingering fantasy of buying a flat in St Petersburg’ and has been presented to Putin. ‘At the St Petersburg International Cultural Forum, which they hold every year. He was very quiet and listening.’

This was before the Salisbury poisoning. Does Fiennes believe Russia was responsible? Briskly, ‘Yes, yes. It seems to me like it was. Clearly there are problematic things with the current regime to our eyes and I do feel it’s been a tricky time since Salisbury, and that’s a shame and sad.’ Oddly enough he knows the town well, having been to Bishop Wordsworth’s grammar school.

‘I had a mostly happy time there. It was an extraordinarily shocking, cack-handed event, unacceptable and wrong in every way. And in reaction the Brits have made things harder with visas and it becomes tit for tat, and the Russians have closed down the British Council, which was a wonderful enabler of cultural interaction. I don’t know if the British Council is a cover for espionage, maybe it is…’ Bond bells are ringing. But you’re M, you must know! He replies, curtly, ‘But I’m not M, am I?’

We return to the topic of growing older. ‘There are pluses to ageing, you know? You can let go of some shit. The competition falls away. You can see the cycles of your own mistakes, hopefully you’re learning… All the things that have caused you upset:  I hurt that person, I got a bad review. You start to feel: did that really matter? The things you were so concerned about just drift away on the current of life. And your idealism is tempered and your vanity gets knocked…’

He brings up, as an example, the 2002 film he made with Jennifer Lopez called Maid in Manhattan, a comedy fairy tale in which he plays a US senatorial candidate who falls for his chambermaid. ‘I saw in the newspaper they had J Lo’s most successful films and’ – big smile – ‘Maid in Manhattan was there, and it came quite near the top’ – bigger smile – ‘and then I read: “Let down by the fact that Ralph Fiennes seems like a serial killer.” Ha ha ha! I had to laugh.

’Cos my vanity scrolled it and then… bam!’ He gives a proper belly laugh. Didn’t he get together with J Lo while they were filming? ‘No. No. I was set up by her manager and the producer. So a picture was taken of us saying goodnight after dinner and sold to the New York Post. It was a decoy, to take the focus away from the fact that she was going out with Ben Affleck.’ You didn’t mind? ‘I did, actually. I thought it was really crap.’ He shrugs, smiles. The things fame brings.

‘I give my agent all these neurotic phone calls, asking about reviews, who said this, who said that, but then, glass of wine, laugh it off.’

I feel I’ve had a flash of the blazing, naughty, fun side of Fiennes; we have known it’s there ever since we saw his suavely clownish Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and his irrepressible Harry in A Bigger Splash (complete with gyrating dance routine). There is a fun side to him, then? He smiles enigmatically as we say goodbye. ‘You won’t ever see that in an interview situation.’ 

[jimmycarrhairlinesurgery]

hey abby guess what. 1-30

1: Favorite season?

you KNOW you KNOW a softe bitch loves season 5 its just pure and nice and comforting to watch and also has so many goode episodes and macden moments in it... i literally have the url iasipseasonfive saved like need i say more

2: Favorite character?

its mac... like ofc it is ive loved dennis and dee in the past and of course i still have a soft spot for the trash twins esp their childhoods but mac’s coming out arc is just perfect and he just wants to be a happy boye! honestly it might change but my big three are den dee and mac sorry gruesome twosome 

3: Favorite cast member?

i kin glennato and like LOVE his weird music taste but i have 2 say kaitlin olson shes so present on social media and the utter reverence with which the other cast members speak abt her is just. beautiful! she’s credited with literally saving the show by making dee just as despicable as the rest of the gang she’s a feminist queen and also managed to cuff rmacelhenney like kudos girl! angel queen gorgeous etc

4: OTP?

it’s mac and dennis honestly their relationship can get my heart pounding and it was the main reason i was drawn to the show in the first place... kings of being repressed sexually and emotionally and honestly i related to that feeling of being repressed and in love w your best friend like not to project on characters that have nothing to do w me but they rlly helped me work through some issues!!! im not as ride or die as before because theyve already done so much but fingers crossed for s14 lads

5: BROTP?

ooooo this is difficult bc i love charmac but mac and dee is the friendship we deserve.... she could help him get over his raging misogyny and he could introduce her to the gay lifestyle how perfect would that be?? also i just feel like when they r alone they could be so nice to each other and i want that for them

6: NOTP?

one of them raped the other, what more can i say?

7: answered

8: Least favorite character?

it has to be frank like i get so angry thinking about how he abused dennis and dee as children he has almost zero redeemable qualities but like.. i could learn to love him if mfhp was a turning point... i just can’t ever get over the fact that he owned a sweatshop the joke stuff just isn’t even funny to me it makes me feel ill

9: Least favorite episode?

uhhhh if you’ve seen iasip ranked you’ll know that we ranked a cricket’s tale and frank’s brother as the worst but i’d also like to put up there the gang goes on family fight bc dennis’ breakdown is painfullll... other episodes that hurt me personally are the gang broke dee and how mac got fat

10: Favorite crack ship?

deetress started off as a crackship but it’s become honestly very serious and i hold it v close to my heart... if you don’t believe me watch one single minute of the boggs ladies reboot.... honorable mention is charden 

11: Favorite headcanon?

hhmm i think that one of my favourite ones of all time is dennis is the bar like that was inimitable... also like hc that dee is lesbian bc she is

12: An episode you wish you could change?

all lethal weapon episodes... imagine how iconic they could be and quotable as well if they didn’t include blackface :(

13: An episode you wish you could write?

i want to write a vegas ep for sure.... like imagine also i would NOT do it justice but the episode where mac and dennis first get together, oof actually you’d do a better job of it tbh

14: Favorite thing about the show?

it has to be rcg like what other showrunners would care so much about the fate of the show and adapt it so much as time goes on... as much as i slander them on this website they really created one of the best shows to ever air

15: Least favorite thing about the show?

hmmm aside from all the blackface and the fact that they should have hired black writers if they wanted to address race in the show.... the fact that the gang r being so mean to mac and the whole ddl thing it’s a nightmare why didn’t they tell us what was going on with dennis??

16: Favorite running gag?

charlie’s illiteracy......... iconique also repressed mac was a good gag while it lasted i am glad he is out though

17: Best Mac shirt?

BEAST COAST

18: Best Dennis rant?

hnndg im gonna have to say the whole keeping the skin,, skin glass box thing in season 10 i forget the name of the episode but GOD that kills me every time glenn really went to julliard huh

19: answered

20: answered

21: Favorite end credits message?

idk i never watch the end credits messages! send me your favourites if you have any lads :)

22: A character you’d write off the show?

ngl probably cricket... he really bores me and like a cricket’s tale cemented that i think everything they can do with the character they have done but for longevity they have to keep him so he can supplement the gang’s schemes

23: An actor you want to see on the show (bonus points if you can think of a character for them)?

ooooooooo i’d love if dax sheppard came back on the show!! also i WISH lili reinhardt could come on but as betty from riverdale.. like a 30 second betty from riverdale cameo would be so ideal you have no idea it would be so stupid but like... hh

24: Favorite fic?

Yphrum’s Law by @lesbianfreyja chapter one made me BAWL (andchaos on ao3) and also anything by @macfoundhispride (yennefers on ao3)  and also your fics michelle !!! everyone go check her out she’s peraltiagoisland on ao3 

25: Favorite promo shoot?

the fuckign ingrid bergman one for season 8 i have no idea why they would do that but it’s incredible..... so niche i feel like it was glennato’s idea

26: Best Waitress hair-style?

sexeyyy episode charlie and dee find love her hair was so pretty long but also i love it now im glad she went brunette again good for her!! any waitress hairstyle is a good hairstyle

27: Fluffy hair Mac or hair-gel Mac?

FLUFFY HAIR MAC ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?

28: answered in GREAT DETAIL

29: Overrated character?

cricket... not to bash cricket again.... but also frank and charlie are overrated imo i can’t understand why charlie is the show’s darling i’ve never been that interested in him

30: Underrated episode?

the most underrated episode of all time is pop-pop the final solution i love it sm.... GOD it’s so good it truly has everything and like the nazi stuff was well executed.. questions abt life and death,,, deception, ryan gosling? i love it also dennis reynolds an erotic life is amazing 

this took me like an hour and a half michelle i hope you’re happy!! also if you’re still reading thank you for putting up w my bullshit

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Lena and the Winchesters, Part 4

WARNING: This part has some heavy themes. There's nothing explicit, but it addresses the other victims of the dragon, because it didn't feel right moving on without it. It's sad, and deals with grief and bereavement that might be uncomfortable for some people. Feel free to skip if you like. Any other plot important stuff will be mentioned in later chapters as necessary.

----

Lucy survives. She spends days in the hospital under a fake name she doesn't choose, but with every day inching them closer to being found out for credit card, she checks herself out AMA as soon as she can manage to stand.  They ditch town the next morning, and hole up in a motel a couple towns over.

Lucy sleeps for days. Dean takes on the task of changing her bandages and checking for signs of infection. As soon as she can keep her eyes open for more than five minutes, she asks for pen and paper.

She hands Dean a list of names and addresses, and when he realizes they're all girls' names, he knows exactly who they are.

"The others who were with you?"

Lucy nods. "I was the only one who could remember them, so they made sure I was the last. So I could tell their families what happened." Her eyes close, in pain-- exhaustion-- anguish. "Rivka was there the longest by the time I got there. She said there had been twelve more before her. She didn't remember their names."

Dean's throat closes painfully. "You did all you could."

"Not enough."

---

The next time she sleeps, Sam and Dean call Bobby from the Impala and explain over speakerphone what happened. Bobby remains skeptical.

"The lore says only an enchanted sword can kill a dragon," he drawls, the sound of book pages turning in the background. "Sometimes it's a specific enchanted sword. You said she ganked it with a rusty pipe?"

"Yeah," Dean confirms. "It was sharp, I guess, but Bobby-- this thing had torn her half to shreds, and she could barely hold a gun, let alone face down a dragon!"

"Well, it wasn't a dragon."

Sam and Dean stare into the phone as if it had grown legs and tried to scamper out the door.

"It was a giant lizard with wings that breathed fire, Bobby," Sam reiterates. "If it walks like a dragon..."

"And freaking breathes FIRE like a dragon!"

"If it don't die like a dragon, then it's not a dragon," Bobby finishes. "If it had been, that pipe wouldn't have done diddly to stop that thing. I dunno what else to tell you boys."

Across the line, a book claps shut, and an audible rustle echoes over the line as Bobby shifts the phone against his ear. "Where'd you say you found this chick again?"

Sam and Dean share a look. Sam shrugs.

"Uh, we'll have to get back to you on that one, Bobby. Thanks for your help!" Dean finishes quickly before ending the call with a hurried push of his finger. Then he releases his breath and leans back in his seat. "Shit."

"That was a dragon, right?"

"What else could it have been? I don't care what some illuminated manuscript says. A dragon's a dragon."

Sam eyes him. "But...?"

"This is getting weird, Sam. Really freaking weird." He scrubs a hand over his jaw. "We can't tell her."

"I think she's gonna remember killing a dragon, Dean."

"No, I mean we can't tell her that it shouldn't have worked. Not until Cas gets back and can tell us what the hell's going on."

Sam doesn't need much convincing. He nods. "Okay. We don't tell her."

-----

Lucy meets with thirteen families. Dean goes with her, but lets her do the talking.

They leave out the part about the dragon, and instead spin a white lie about an all-too-human monster.

"I knew someone had taken her," Rivka's mother says, tears pouring down her face. Hers is the first home they visit. "The police said she probably ran away, but I knew. You escaped?"

Lucy nods. "Because of your daughter's courage, and the others he took. I wouldn't have made it out without them."

Her shorts keep pressure off the bandages taped to her thigh, allowing her soke neasure of comfort. Mrs. Bergman stares at them, and the matching gauze taped to Lucy's neck and chest.

"He did that to you?"

Lucy nods. "Yes."

A fresh wave of tears pours down the woman's cheeks. "I'd like to bury my daughter. Her body..."

"He made sure there wasn't anything left to find."

A sharp whine escapes Mrs. Bergman as she gasps, her chest shuddering under the force of the sobs that start pouring out of her. Dean keeps his eyes on Lucy, and sees her throat bob in a tight swallow. Tears glitter in her own eyes, barely kept under control, but her features remain soft.

"I'm so sorry," she says, voice thick.

"And how do I know you're telling the truth? That you're not just taking advantage of a grieving mother?"

Dean stiffens, offended by even the implication. But Lucy quietly reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a gray pearl earring. The mother gasps, and accepts it with shaking fingers.  "I got this for her... her sixteenth birthday."

"She said you would know it's from her." Lucy swallows thickly, wiping her eyes. "I'm so sorry there wasn't more I could do."

"The man who did this--"

"He's dead. He won't do this to anyone else."

Rivka's mother nods. "Can I ask-- why did you come to me directly? Why not the police?"

Dean falls still. They hadn't gone over that particular question. But Lucy doesn't hesitate.

"They weren't looking for me either. There's no proof that he took us. It's just my word, against a dead man's. I don't know if that'd be enough to keep me out of prison."

Rivka's mother stares at her for a long moment, then simply nods her understanding. Their exchange peters off, until Dean reaches out touch Lucy's knee.

"We should get going."

They lather, rinse, repeat for the remaining twelve families. The conversations follow the same script, almost verbatim, broken up by only a few who knock Lucy into left field. The sister of Jessica Waters, who takes Lucy's hands and whispers a blessing because as a young woman she knows, she knows that this sort of violence could happen to any woman-- could still happen to her-- and she knows that surviving is only the first battle of a very long war.

Like the father of Imelda Santiago, who has already buried his wife to cancer and his son to police brutality, and now his only daughter to police indifference, when they refused to believe Imelda simply hadn't run away or joined a crew. He breaks down the moment he answers the door, as though he can read their purpose in their expressions.

On their way out, he asks Lucy one final question.

"Was she afraid?"

Dean's instinct is to lie, as it always is. But Lucy nods, dislodging tears as her voice cracks. "Yes."

Imelda's father sobs again, grinding his hands into his eyes, Imelda's wooden cross dangling from his fingers. "At least-- at least Jesus was with her, in the end."

Lucy shakes her head no. "Jesus doesn't go to hell, Mr. Santiago. God wasn't anywhere in that room." She takes his hand and clasps it gently. "But you were. Her last thoughts were of you. She loved you so much."

Mr. Santiago wraps Lucy in a tight hug, weeping again as he murmurs his gratitude. Dean watches Lucy slowly stiffen, but from holding back her own tears or from the pain of her injuries, he can't tell. He helps her back to the car, and lets her sit for a long moment. She doesn't speak.

"You okay?"

Lucy's lips pull downwards, but she ducks her chin to hide it. "Last night, I set up a running algorithm to search the missing persons database, for anyone not-found matching my description at the time you found me."

Dean can't say he's surprised. He knows what it might mean, but accepts that while Lucy survived, they might have lost her after all.

"I don't want to stop doing what we do, and I don't know what we'll find, but if I--" her voice cracks, and she stops, fingers trembling in her lap. When she tries again, its in a voice so soft Dean can barely hear it.

"I don't want to die as Jane Doe."

She turns away then, covering her mouth with one hand to stare out the window. Dean can see her reflection in the glass, and gets one glimpse of her tears before looking away.

He squeezes her hand, where it sits on her knee, and nods. "Okay. And we'll face whatever happens, together. All right?"

Lucy nods faintly, but still doesn't look at him.

Back at the motel, she's so exhausted she can barely make it inside. She manages to stay awake just long enough for Dean to change her bandages.

"I think we lucked out, Luce. No infection."

He helps her thread her arms into a flannel shirt and ensures it sits only lightly over her shoulders without pulling or pressing on any of the bandages or bruises. Once she's comfortable, she makes no move to lay down, or rise.

Dean settles next to her on the edge of the bed, close enough for their shoulders to touch. When she finally speaks, her voice is quiet. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming for me."

Dean wraps an arm around her, pulling her closer. Her head rests against his shoulder, and he's glad for the contact, the physical reminder that she made it.

"That's what we do for family."

When the shoulder of his t-shirt grows damp, Dean pretends not to notice.

---

The next morning, Lucy tells them it's time to leave. Sam and Dean are both ready to stay a few more days if she needs it, but she shakes her head.

"I don't want to see this town ever again."

They're back on the road by noon, with Lucy quiet in the backseat. When they stop for gas, Dean blindly grabs a newspaper, hoping the crossword in the back might keep her mind off things.

It sits on the seat beside her for the next three towns, untouched and fluttering in the breeze of the open window. From his seat behind the wheel, Dean watches her in the rearview mirror, and doesn't know how to pierce the heavy silence that surrounds her.

Over the following months, other newspapers join their neglected companion on the backseat, eventually finding their way into the trash. As always, the headlines focus on National City and the chaos that seems to have migrated from Metropolis. It escapes Dean's interest as soon as his gaze skims away from the front page.

With everything that's happened, any headline about National City or its superfeud feels distant. Trivial.

Even if Lena Luthor is going to jail for it.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Interlude, Part 6a, Part 6b

[jewishaxelwalker]

Out from Isolation

Axel Walker does not have a past, a backstory, a history. He's made sure of that.

He torches his records every 25 years.

(also available on AO3)

“Okay so...one more time. Explain it to me one more time. I swear this time, I’ll 100% understand.”

Axel sighed, pulled the spoon out of his mouth and plopped it back into the mostly-empty bowl of frozen yogurt. “Like I said the last three times, I’m immortal. Eternal, to be more specific because like, I can totally die, but it takes some decent effort.” Joey nodded, seemingly to himself, mouthing the words ‘immortal’ and ‘eternal’ a few times, followed closely by the phrase ‘what the fuck’. “You don’t believe me.”

“I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea!” In the dozens of lives he’d lived over the last few centuries, Joey was easily the best friend he’d ever had. And the first person he’d tried to explain the whole ‘I’ve been alive longer than you’d think’ thing to in...a good hundred years. “And some witch just cursed you with immortality?”

“Dolya Nedolya is not a witch.” Axel snapped, testy. Insulting her was a good way to flip his fortunes for the worse. “She’s the goddess of personal fate. Apparently, I was supposed to have this totally kick-ass life, but I was born poor around one of the major plague years, so that wasn’t going to happen.”

He could practically see Joey’s brain desperately trying to dig up remnants of his 9th grade world history class. “So how’d it happen? This Dolya just bopped you on the head and was like bam, immortal?” Axel sighed again, swirling his spoon around in the melted mess that his froyo had become. Should have picked a heartier food to have this conversation over, like pizza.

“Well, I’d just buried my mother. Literally, I was in the cemetery and everything. So this old woman comes up to me and puts her hand on my shoulder, which wasn’t uncommon, people had been doing that all day.” He took a moment to recall his mother, with her dark hair and blue eyes. They’d looked so much alike when he was a young child, same facial shape, same mouth, same eyes. His father had died shortly after he’d been born and he had no siblings, so the pair of them had been thick as thieves until the day his mother died. She had been a weaver, and he’d learned to make simple clothes at her knee, a skill he’d continued to hone over time. No matter the era or place, people always needed clothes.

“Ax?” Joey waved his hand in front of Axel’s face and he startled, not realizing just how long the pause he’d taken had lasted.

“Right, yeah. The old woman. She said she’d come as soon as she’d heard I was on my own, asked what I’d do now. The town I’d grown up in was small, and didn’t really have anything for me now that my mother was gone.” He’d looked for it, the last time he’d been in Europe, but the land had long since swallowed the place where he was born. “She suggested I try Kiev, as a young man with skill could make his mark easily there. I told her that I didn’t want to make a mark, that I wanted to die.”

He’d been in a bad place that day, which was understandable. He was completely alone for the first time in his life, and this nosy old broad wasn’t exactly making his mood any lighter.

“That was about the time she smacked me upside the head and called me ungrateful which, rude. And that’s when I actually went and looked at her.” Dolya hadn’t really been old, more around his mother’s age. Axel had heard stories about fate visiting people, he’d just never thought she’d come for him. He wasn’t that special. “Dolya told me that I’d been destined to achieve greatness, but I’d never do it there or, frankly, then. I’ve always looked young, and I guess Dolya was feeling whimsical that day, because she told me that I'd be 17 forever.” He paused his story there, taking the time to scrape up the last of his pistachio yogurt soup. His mouth was dry. “Well actually she said I'd be 'forever on the precipice of manhood, destined never to topple', which to me was basically the fanciest set of words ever strung together, back when I heard them."

"Which was..?" Axel hoped that Joey didn’t notice his little wince. This was always the hard part.

"I wanna say early 1400s? It's been a long time, and I didn't actually notice that I'd stopped aging until I was 50."

There was a long stretch of quiet, then. Axel could hear kids playing basketball on the court across the street from their apartment. His bowl was empty, the bright yellow spoon from the froyo place seeming to mock him where it sat.

“So you’ve been 17 for like 600 years? Shit, you’ve got that vampire kid beat by miles.” Axel choked on the breath he’d been holding, too relieved to care that his laughter had spiraled into a coughing fit.

“Did you just compare me to the guy from Twilight?! We’re not friends anymore.”

But they were friends, best friends. Friends that shared the deepest of secrets. They talked all through the afternoon, until the day’s shadows lengthened and vanished. Joey asked him about his earliest years (”Isn’t Kiev in Poland?” “Close, Ukraine. I’m not from Kiev, though. The town I was born in was several hundred miles away, and was part of Russia. It might be part of the Ukraine now, I don’t know. I haven’t really kept up with border lines since I came to America.”), and how he’d managed to keep himself alive for so long (”Stayed away from big cities when people started dying like crazy, avoided getting caught up in any big revolutions, stole and hid a lot of gold over the years, and changed identities every 25 years or so.”).

“So wait, is Axel Walker even your real name?” Axel shrugged.

“Legally? Yeah. I’ve got a guy who draws up new identities for me. His great-grandfather and I served in the war together. I just tell him what I want my new name to be, he does the rest.”

Originally, his name had been Absalom. He’d kept that name for a long time, traveling from place to place whenever people began to act like they knew him too well. It worked for decades, too; no one questioned the legitimacy of Absalom the walker, who traveled here and there with his cart and sold the clothes made in his mother’s shop back home. He simply was, and simply did. 

And then some asshole came up with surnames and record-keeping, and his entire way of life went out the window. 

Absalom became Abraham, became Alexander, became Arthur. Then back to Absalom for a brief period in the early 1900s, when he enlisted and was sent back to Europe. From around 1930 through 1965, he was Adam. Safer that way. He might go back to Absalom again some day, if the old-fashioned biblical names ever come back into style.

Joey raised a brow.

“It’s a version of my real name.” Axel relented. Absalom Walker had a paper trail, one he’d tried damned hard to erase effectively but...bits and pieces were still there. And that part of his life, he wasn’t ready to share just yet.

His larger friend shrugged, then stretched his arms above his head, went to stand. “Okay, fine. So now that I know you’re legal to have a beer, want one?” Axel wrinkled his nose, and Joey laughed. “You’re older than dirt and you just...never learned to like beer, huh?”

“You shouldn’t have to learn to like a drink.” Axel grumbled, following Joey to the kitchen. “Beer is just Stockholm Syndrome: the beverage.”

Joey laughed so loud and so long at that, their downstairs neighbor began to bang on her ceiling with a broom. Axel would apologize later, probably. Mrs. Bergman was in her 80s and crotchety as hell, but she also liked to shove fresh batches of aebleskivers at him whenever he went home via the fire escape and passed her window.

“You realize that every time you say something weird now, you won’t be quirky, right? You’re just a confused old man, who can’t understand the youth of today.” Joey gasped once he’d finished laughing, tossing him a bottle of root beer. 

“Joey, you’re 25. You’re not even a youth of today anymore.”

“Maybe, but I don’t remember where I was when Franz Ferdinand was shot.” Now it’s Axel’s turn to laugh and he does, throwing his twist-off cap at his roommate.

He’d expected this to be weird, for Joey to send him packing. To have to up and leave a city yet again  because of something he literally had no control over.

Instead, they’re drinking root beer and laughing about historical assassinations. As you do.

“You know you’re stuck with me, right? I’m gonna be your grand kids’ babysitter someday.” I’ll be a pallbearer at your funeral, he doesn’t say, because that reality is just too sad to think about right now.

“I figured as much, when I woke up from a coma and you’d moved into my place. We’re BFF, bro, emphasis on that second F.” Joey held out his fist for bumping, and Axel took the offer.

Eternity lasted a lot long time, and it could get lonely. But for the first time in quite a while, Axel was content. He’d be set for friendship for the next few decades. 

And who knew, maybe tar could be just as ageless as he was. It couldn’t hurt to try.

[anothergracekellyblog]

TIME magazine - January 31, 1955 Cover illustration by Boris Chaliapin

THE GIRL IN WHITE GLOVES

Almost every morning, a slim figure in a polo coat, leading a small black poodle on a leash, emerges from one of Manhattan's cliff houses on East 66th Street. The doorman gives her a cheery “Good Morning, Miss Kelly.” But outside, no head turns. For, in her low-heeled shoes and horn-rimmed spectacles, Actress Grace Kelly is all but indistinguishable from any other well-scrubbed young woman of the station-wagon set, armored in good manners, a cool expression, and the secure knowledge that whatever happens, Daddy can pay.

A few blocks away, Grace Kelly's name is emblazoned on two first-run Broadway houses, and the same face, without spectacles, makes husbands sigh and wives think enviously that they might look that way too, if only they could afford a really good hairdo. In Hollywood, producers fight over her, directors beg for her, writers compose special scripts for her. In an industry where the girls can be roughly divided into young beauties and aging actresses, Grace Kelly is something special: a young (25) beauty who can act.

A year ago, Grace Patricia Kelly was only a promising newcomer (generally thought to be English), who lost Clark Gable to Ava Gardner in Mogambo. Currently, she is the acknowledged “hottest property” in Hollywood. In Manhattan this year, the New York Film Critics pronounced her acting in The Country Girl “the outstanding performance of 1954.”

CAN’T TOUCH HER

Grace Kelly, with the lovely blonde hair, chiseled features, blue eyes and an accent that is obviously refined, is a startling change from the run of smoky film sirens and bumptious cuties. Said one Hollywood observer: “Most of these dames just suggest Kinsey statistics. But if a guy in a movie theater starts mooning about Grace, there could be nothing squalid about it; his wife would have to be made to understand that it was something fine - and bigger than all of them. Her peculiar talent, you might say, is that she inspires licit passion."

From the day in 1951 when she walked into Director Fred Zinnemann's office wearing prim white gloves ("Nobody came to see me before wearing white gloves"), the well-bred Miss Grace Kelly of Philadelphia has baffled Hollywood. She is a rich girl who has struck it rich. She was not discovered behind a soda fountain or at a drive-in. She is a star who was never a starlet, who never worked up from B pictures, never posed for cheesecake, was never elected, with a press agent's help, Miss Antiaircraft Battery C. She did not gush or twitter or desperately pull wires for a chance to get in the movies. Twice she turned down good Hollywood contracts. When she finally signed on the line, she forced mighty M-G-M itself to grant her special terms. Beamed a New York friend: “Here, for the first time in history, is a babe that Hollywood can't get to. Can't touch her with money, can't touch her with big names. Only thing they can offer her is good parts.”

STEEL INSIDES

She has managed to get the parts. In the short space of 18 months, she has been paired with six of Hollywood's biggest box office male stars - Clark Gable, Ray Milland, James Stewart, William Holden, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant. These seasoned veterans have learned to view with a jaundiced eye the pretty young newcomers assigned to play opposite them. Grace, as usual, was different. Says Holden, one of Hollywood's ablest pros: “With some actresses, you have to keep snapping them to attention like a puppy. Grace is always concentrating. In fact, she sometimes keeps me on the track.” Says Jimmy Stewart: "She's easy to play to. You can see her thinking the way she's supposed to think in the role. You know she's listening, and not just for cues. Some actresses don't think and don't listen. You can tell they're just counting the words.”

Outside the studio, Grace continued to disregard the Hollywood rules. She was friendly, but she refused to court the important columnists. Interviewers who tried to get her to open up came away swearing that they would rather tackle a train window anytime. One producer grumbled that she had “stainless steel insides.” She flatly refused to divulge even the standard data (bust, waist, hips). One columnist asked routinely whether she wore nightgowns. “I think it's nobody's business what I wear to bed,” she said coolly. “A person has to keep something to herself, or your life is just a layout in a magazine."

In the end, publicists had to content themselves with tagging Miss Kelly as “a Main Line debutante.” She is neither Main Line nor a debutante, but she is the next thing to both.

THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

In Philadelphia, the Kellys are about as conspicuous as the 30th Street Station, which, like many of the city's major structures, bears the credit: Brickwork by Kelly. Handsome, athletic John B. Kelly, Grace's father, the son of a farm boy from County Mayo, began business life as a bricklayer. Eventually, he parlayed a borrowed $7,000 into the nation's biggest brickwork construction company. One of his brothers was George Kelly, Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright (Craig's Wife); another was Walter Kelly, the famed “Virginia Judge” of the vaudeville circuits.

All the Kellys, says a friend, are “beautiful, physical people.” Father Jack was a champion sculler; Grace's mother (who is of German descent) was a model, later the first woman physical education instructor at the University of Pennsylvania. Father Jack, who still takes his athletics seriously, went to England in 1920 to compete at Henley. But the Henley committee ruled that he could not compete because he had once “worked with his hands" and was therefore not a “gentleman.” He went on to the Olympics, where he soundly thrashed the Henley winner, and triumphantly sent his sweaty green rowing cap to King George V of England with his compliments. The moment his son John B. Jr. (“Kell") was born in 1927, Jack resolved that he would win at Henley; he began training the boy personally at the age of seven. In 1947 Kell righted an old wrong done his family by going to Henley in the colors of the University of Pennsylvania and scoring an impressive victory for Penn and Pop.

CHURCH & ATHLETICS

Of the three Kelly daughters, Peggy was the oldest and a cut-up, Lizanne the youngest and an extrovert. Grace, the middle one, born Nov. 12, 1929, was shy, quiet, and for years snuffled with a chronic cold. The big, 15-room house in plain East Falls, across the Schuylkill River from the Main Line, was the meeting place for the whole neighborhood. “There was a lawn out back with swings and a sandbox, a tennis court and the usual things like that,” says Grace. Summers, the Kelly family had a house on the Jersey shore at Ocean City. As regularly as she marched the children to St. Bridget's Roman Catholic Church every Sunday, Mrs. Kelly marched them off to the Penn Athletic Club for workouts. "There's a certain discipline in athletic work,” says Mrs. Kelly. “That's why Grace can accustom herself to routine and responsibility.” Sister Peg organized home theatricals. "Somebody else always got the lead,” Grace recalls, without rancor. Even then remote and self-absorbed, Grace used to write poetry, some serious, some "little gooney ones” that showed a neat turn of phrase. Sample, written when she was 14:

I hate to see the sun go down And squeeze itself into the ground, Since some warm night it might get stuck And in the morning not get up.

Little Grace went to the local Ravenhill convent school, then to Stevens School in Germantown. By the time she was eleven, she was appearing in a local amateur dramatic company. Turned down by Bennington (she flunked math), Grace got herself into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. From the first, her family was dubious about an acting career. “We'd hoped she would give it up,” says her mother. Snorts Father Kelly: “Those movie people lead pretty shallow lives.”

THE “CLEAN” WAY

But Grace knew what she wanted. To assure her independence, she got a job modeling, was soon making $400 a week posing for Ipana, beer ads, Old Golds. Photographer Ruzzie Green describes her as “what we call ‘nice clean stuff’ in our business. She's not a top model and never will be. She's the girl next door. No glamour, no oomph, no cheesecake. She has lovely shoulders but no chest. Grace is like Bergman in the 'clean’ way. She can do that smush stuff in movies - remember all those little kisses in Rear Window? - and get away with it.” A friend remembers her at this period as “terribly sedate, always wore tweed suits and a hat-with-a-veil kind of thing. She had any number of sensible shoes, even some with those awful flaps on front.”

She did TV commercials (“I was terrible - honestly, anyone watching me give the pitch for Old Golds would have switched to Camels"), doggedly made the rounds of summer stock (New Hope and Denver) and casting offices. “I've read for almost everything that's been cast. I even read for the ingenue part in The Country Girl on Broadway (left out in the movie ). The producer told me I really wasn't the ingenue type, that I was too intelligent looking.”

Then she read for the daughter's part in Strindberg's grim The Father. She got the part and won good notices, but the play lasted only two months. Grace went back to TV (“summer stock in an iron lung") to play in such varied offerings as Studio One, Treasury Men in Action, Philco Playhouse and Lights Out.

FIRST FAN

Once before and once shortly after she left dramatic school, Grace turned down $250-a-week movie contracts: “I didn't want to be just another starlet.” Now Hollywood reached for her again but failed to get a firm grip. Director Henry Hathaway gave her a bit part as the lady negotiating a divorce across the street from the man on the ledge in Fourteen Hours. But she refused a contract; she did not feel ready yet. She did accept a one-shot offer from Producer Stanley Kramer for the part of Gary Cooper's young wife in High Noon.

Fourteen Hours produced her first fan, a high-school girl in Oregon who started a fan club and kept Grace posted on new members. Grace thought it a hilarious joke. “We've got a new girl in Washington,” she would cry in triumph. “I think she's ours, sewed up.” In High Noon her finishing-school accent sat awkwardly amongst the western drawls, and her beauty made little impact. What was more, from High Noon determined Grace Kelly got her first real self-doubts about her planned progress. Says she: “With Gary Cooper, everything is so clear. You look into his face and see everything he is thinking. I looked into my own face and saw nothing. I knew what I was thinking, but it didn't show. For the first time, I suddenly thought, ‘Perhaps I'm not going to be a great star, perhaps I'm not any good after all.’” Grace hustled back to New York to learn how to make it show.

THE “TOO” CATEGORY

She was still learning (with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse) when 20th Century-Fox called her to test for a role in a film called Taxi. Dressed in an old skirt and a man's shirt on her way to class, “I walked into Gregory Ratoff's office, and he threw up his arms and screamed, 'She's perfect.' In all my life, no one has ever said, 'You are perfect.' People have been confused about my type, but they agreed on one thing: I was in the “too” category - too tall, too leggy, too chinny. And Ratoff kept yelling around, 'What I love about this girl, she's not pretty.’” But the producer did not like her, and another girl got the role.

Director John Ford saw the test, however, and wanted her for Mogambo. Even then, Grace did not come running. When M-G-M offered her a seven-year contract starting at $750 a week, she demanded a year off every two years for a play, and permission to go back to New York, instead of hanging around Hollywood, whenever she finished a picture. She was only 22, and all but unknown. But M-G-M agreed to her terms. Says Grace: “I wanted Mogambo for three things: John Ford, Clark Gable, and a free trip to Africa.”

In Africa, Grace picked up a lot of film technique from Ford and developed a hero worship for Gable. Ford was soon predicting that she would be a star. For her performance as the cool English wife stirred to sudden and thwarted passion for White Hunter Gable, Grace won a “best supporting role” nomination for the Academy Award.

RESTRAINT & CONTROL

M-G-M still seemed uncertain about what to do with her. But Alfred Hitchcock, also impressed by the Taxi test, snapped her up for Dial M for Murder, then for Rear Window. Says Hitchcock: “From the Taxi test, you could see Grace's potential for restraint. I always tell actors don't use the face for nothing. Don't start scribbling over the sheet of paper until we have something to write. We may need it later. Grace has this control. It's a rare thing for a girl at such an age.” Director George Seaton adds: “Grace doesn't throw everything at you in the first five seconds. Some girls give you everything they've got at once, and there it is -  there is no more. But Grace is like a kaleidoscope: one twist, and you get a whole new facet.”

Under Hitchcock's expert direction, Grace bloomed in Rear Window. As a sleek young career girl, she distilled a tingling essence of what Hitchcock has called “sexual elegance.” She was learning her trade. The way she walked, spoke and combed her hair had a sureness that gives moviegoers a comfortable feeling: she would never make them wince with some awkwardness of misplaced gaucherie. Exhibitors, who know a good thing when they see the turnstiles click, began dropping Hitchcock and Stewart from their marquees and advertised simply: “Grace Kelly in Rear Window.” In Hollywood, the stampede was on.

MORE THAN BEAUTIFUL

When the stampede started, Grace was in a bathing suit dutifully splashing around a Japanese bathhouse as Navy Pilot Bill Holden's wife in The Bridges at Toko-Ri (a movie that does little for Grace except establish the fact that she has a better figure than normally meets the eye). At about the same time, Paramount's producer-director team of William Perlberg and George Seaton got word that Jennifer Jones, scheduled to play the title role in their next picture, The Country Girl, had become pregnant. They asked M-G-M to lend them Grace. This time M-G-M said no. Grace still gets angry when she thinks about it. She went to her agent, says Perlberg, and told him: “If I can't do this picture, I'll get on the train and never come back. I'll quit the picture business. I'll never make another film.” Actress Kelly had her way. M-G-M lent her out to Paramount again, but this time jumped the price from the $20,000 charged for Toko-Ri to $50,000 and demanded that she give M-G-M an extra picture (her contract calls for only three a year).  

The Country Girl was final proof that she is more than merely beautiful. The well-bred girl from Philadelphia is completely convincing as the slatternly, embittered wife of aging, alcoholic Matinee Idol Bing Crosby. She slouches around with her glowing hair gone dull, her glasses stuck on top of her head, her underlip sullen, resentment in the very sag of her shoulders and the dangle of her arms. She looks dreadful. Said Seaton: “You know that old cardigan sweater she wears? Well, a lot of actresses would say, 'Well, why don't we just put a few rhinestones here? I want to look dowdy, of course, but this woman has taste... and before you know it, she'd look like a million dollars. But not Grace. Grace wanted to be authentic.”

Bing Crosby, a little nervous himself at undertaking so exacting a dramatic role, was dubious about his untried costar and said so. But before the shooting was over, Crosby was telling Seaton, “Never let me open my big mouth again,” and talking of taking Grace out dancing.

BAGS PACKED

Hollywood is now eager to adopt Actress Kelly, white gloves and all, and is trying hard, with the air of an ill-at-ease lumberjack worrying whether he is using the right spoon. But Grace shows no interest in the Hollywood way of life, or even in having the customary swimming pool ("I don't swim that much"). Thus far, she has lived with a sister or a girlfriend in a furnished, two-room North Hollywood apartment, acting as if she considered herself on location, with her bags packed ready to go back to New York.

Young men who are eager to brighten her after-hours life come away baffled. “If she doesn't think a joke is funny," one complained, “she doesn't laugh." Wolves are discouraged when Grace briskly pulls on her glasses (her lovely blue eyes are nearsighted) and assumes her Philadelphia expression. Some suspect that she is, as Oscar Wilde put it, “a sphinx without secrets." Publicity men despair of her. “A Grace Kelly anecdote?” said a friend. “I don't think Grace would allow an anecdote to happen to her.”

A few of Hollywood's older, more sought-after men have concluded, from time to time, that they were just the boys destined to discover and unlock the real Grace. Each time, Grace has resisted unlocking, though whenever her father reads in a column of a new “romantic attachment,” the family gets alarmed. “I don't like that sort of thing much," snorts father Kelly. “I'd like to see Grace married. These people in Hollywood think marriage is like a game of musical chairs." When the gossips reported that Ray Milland was leaving his wife for Grace, mother Kelly hustled out to California to set things straight. Milland insists that he only took her to dinner once; Grace says nothing. Most recently Grace's escort has been Dress Designer Oleg Cassini, onetime husband of Gene Tierney and professional man-about-ladies. The Kellys deplore all such gossip-column romances. "I don't generally approve of these oddballs she goes out with,” grumps brother Kell, who is still national sculling champion and works for his father's company between workouts on the Schuylkill. “I wish she would go out with the more athletic type. But she doesn't listen to me anymore.”

Some of Grace's admirers fear that M-G-M may do to her what the studio did to Deborah Kerr - lash her down to "lady" roles and keep her there. Even after The Country Girl, the best M-G-M could think of was to assign Grace to Green Fire (which she did as her part of the bargain on Country Girl) and then offer her Quentin Durward. Grace, who sees the satin-lined trap as clearly as anyone, refused the Durward part after reading the script. “All the men can duel and fight, but all I'd do would be to wear 35 different costumes, look pretty and frightened. There are eight people chasing me: the old man, robbers, the head gypsy and Durward. The stage directions on every page of the script say, 'She clutches her jewel box and flees.’ I just thought I'd be so bored..."

RELUCTANT SCENERY

While waiting for M-G-M to think again, Grace retired to her three-room apartment in a huge, modern building in Manhattan (masonry by Kelly), where she lives alone with her poodle puppy, Oliver. Her amusements range from photography (she develops her own negatives, sloshing around her bathroom in the dark) to word games.  A favorite game is one devised by Alfred Hitchcock when he met Lizabeth Scott and got to wondering what would happen if other people dropped the first letter of their names: Rank Sinatra, Scar Hammerstein, Reer Garson, Orgie Raft, Ickey Rooney. Four times a week she puts her hair up into a ponytail, dons a leotard, and goes off to classes in modern dancing and ballet. Wandering near Broadway, she avoided the Broadway theater where M-G-M publicized Green Fire with a huge poster of a bosomy girl in sexy green drapery with Grace's head but another girl's body. “It makes me so mad,” says Grace. “And the dress isn't even in the picture.”  

Last week M-G-M's Production Boss Dore Schary summoned Grace to Hollywood to propose a new picture - a western with Spencer Tracy scheduled to costar. After two days of talk, Grace was still noncommittal; she would wait, she said coolly, until she had seen the completed script.

It is possible that Grace might yet win an Oscar for her Country Girl performance, and even M-G-M would have a hard time turning an Oscar-winning actress into a road-company Greer Garson. Furthermore, Actress Kelly is determined that that will not happen to her. Says she, setting her beautiful chin: “I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face. If anybody starts using me as scenery, I'll do something about it.” If all else fails, Grace could conceivably break her contract and return to television. Or she could try the stage, where acting talent counts for more, and the competition is tougher. She could always give up the whole thing for the role of wealthy young socialite. But if her studio mentors are wise, and if Grace is as wary as she has so far proved to be, the young beauty from Philadelphia may yet become an authentic jewel in Hollywood's tinsel crown.

[gettingagriponthings]

Reading Through 2019 (Part 1)

As always, I had a lot of fun with reading this year. I found a couple of new used bookstores that I love, I made good use of libraries, I discovered new authors and doubled down on some favorites, I created a #Bookstagram account, and maybe most importantly...I got really good at reading on airplanes!

Heading into 2019 I knew that with a new work commitment (I took a job that had me travelling about 75% of each month) I had to be realistic with my reading goals. I cut my goal down to 25 after reading 40 books last year. This turned out to be a wise move and I comfortably hit my mark. I got in a good mix of Fiction, History, Biography, and Memoir.

Here’s what I read this year (in chronological order):

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, by David Remnick (2011, 704 pages) This is the best book on Barack Obama (not including his memoir, Dreams from My Father) that I’ve come across. Remnick is a talented writer and successfully combines compelling prose and detailed research with a tremendous number of interviews of folks close to the 44th president from the different parts of his life. I took my time reading this one, usually in 20-30 page chunks in bed before sleeping.

Leadership: In Turbulent Times, by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2018, 473 pages) I read this entire book on a long day of travel between Des Moines, Iowa and Newark, New Jersey. An important endorser gave this book to my boss and I got to read it. I saw DKG speak about Leadership at the 2018 National Book Festival and was completely taken by her. This is a good book with a relatively unique format, to be coming from a historian, that works well to instill some solid lessons from the individuals profiled in the book: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and LBJ.

One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School, by Scott Turow (1977, 288 pages) A fun book to read, though maybe not the most original. I don’t think I got much substance from this that I didn’t get from the book The Paper Chase, which was published six years earlier.

Liar’s Poker, by Michael Lewis (1989, 310 pages) I’m a big Michael Lewis fan so I was excited to tear into his first book about his time at the legendary investment bank, Solomon Brothers. Lewis’ characteristic mixture of accurate, educational factoids and history, hilarius details, and masterful storytelling were all mostly in place in this book. This is a great book for anyone interested in finance, but will definitely keep you entertained even if that’s not exactly your forte.

The House of God, by Samuel Shem (1978, 416 pages) Hilarious. Disgusting. True. These are the overwhelming reactions I got from this book. Shem (real name, Dr. Joseph Bergman) got a lot of flack from the professional medical community when he released this satire depicting the hell that is the intern year at a top hospital just after graduating from a top medical school. This book is not for the faint of heart, but seems to give some genuine insight into the old, elite, and maybe a bit self-important profession of medicine.

“LAWS OF THE HOUSE OF GOD I Gomers don’t die. II Gomers go to ground. III At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse. IV The patient is the one with the disease. V Placement comes first. VI There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a #14 needle and a good strong arm. VII Age + BUN = Lasix dose. VIII They can always hurt you more. IX The only good admission is a dead admission. X If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever. XI Show me a BMS who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet. XII If the radiology resident and the BMS both see a lesion on the chest X ray, there can be no lesion there. XIII The delivery of medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.”

Beneath a Scarlet Sky, by Mark T. Sullivan (2017, 513 pages) Another book that I read entirely on a series of airplanes. This time I was travelling between DC, Indianapolis, El Paso, and Las Vegas, before heading to Wisconsin to return it to my girlfriend’s mother who lent it to me. We both agreed that this historical fiction piece was a little light on beautiful writing, but more than made up for it with compelling prose and historical detail. Recommended for history buffs who might want a unique look at a subject (the Italian experience in WWII) that doesn’t get as much artistic coverage as some others.

Spy Master, by Brad Thor (2019, 402 pages) I picked this one up to pass the time in a Wisconsin airport during a long weather delay back to DC. I’m a casual fan of paperback espionage/military/government thrillers and hadn’t read a Thor book before. Not my favorite practitioner of the genre, but I wasn’t disappointed.

When Life Gives You Lululemons, by Lauren Weisberger (2019, 352 pages) Another airport bookstore special - I loved reading this book. I had a short break from work when I got this and was looking for something to totally get me out of my headspace. Emily Charlton (the protagonist from Devil Wears Prada), and her world of celebrity sex scandals, coverups, and adult irresponsibility did the trick.

Losing Earth: A Recent History, by Nathaniel Rich (2018, 224 pages) A compelling and heartbreaking quick read history of when the US government almost preemptively tackled climate change. Picked this one up from the new releases section of my local library.

Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead (2009, 273 pages) An interestingly constructed recounting of childhood from a super talented writer. Recommended for Black people, for a summer read, or for those looking to escape to the summer in their mind in the middle of an urban winter.

The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis (2018, 219 pages) The second of three Michael Lewis books for me this year. Fascinating dive into parts of the federal government that most people don’t understand at all. I saw Lewis speak about this one at the 2017 National Book Festival when he was still in the writing process.

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System, by Henry M. Paulson, Jr. (2010, 528 pages) The 2008 financial crisis is one of my very favorite historical (weird to say as we all lived through it) events to read and study about, and Hank Paulson, then the Secretary of the Treasury is my favorite character within the all encompassing drama. This book is FULL of technical details that you’ll savor if you love federal government of finance. The lack of personal anecdotes was a bit disappointing (though totally in character for Paulson) and might make this a tough read for those who aren’t active nerds for the topic.

The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe (1983, 369 pages) A candidate for favorite book of the year. I’ve read other Tom Wolfe material before and loved it, and this one did not disappoint. Wolfe was a standard bearer for a style of writing called “New Journalism” that aimed to communicate real stories that read like a novel. He nailed it with this book detailing the creation of NASA’s successful Mercury effort to reach the moon ahead of the Sovient Union. High octane and drama, comedy, historical accuracy - this book’s got it all.

“After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod?”

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘AUTUMN SONATA’ “People like you are a menace”

© 2019 by James Clark

      I can’t, for the life of me, regard Ingmar Bergman’s film, Autumn Sonata(1978), as the flat-out domestic clash others choose to believe. What is the real fascination and entry-point here, to me, is that the film’s protagonist, Eva, played by actress Liv Ullman, is made to look like a carbon copy of the actress, Ingrid Thulin, in the Bergman film, Winter Light (1963). Whereas Ullman generally holds forth as a flakey dreamboat, Thulin forever relishes looking and behaving scary. And, moreover, the latter’s performance, as an off again/ on again lover of a rural clergyman, looms very large in Autumn Sonata.Arguably the most contentious and demanding of all Bergman’s films, Winter Light needs to be carefully fathomed, if nonsensical soap opera is to be avoided here. Thulin’s Marta, in that 60’s puzzler, perseveres as a fatuous humanitarian infatuated by an angst-ridden atheist priest. The latter has come to detest her ugly body and her even more ugly attitude. But he is very fortunate that the sexton of the church (a retired, hunchback railway man, named Algot) is a far deeper student of spirit than he (which is to say, a far better acrobat)—quixotically larding his sense of Jesus as a misunderstood, sensualist mortal (mortal, period)—and, as such, a slow-dawning supplement of the so-called expert’s long-held, heretical orientation. It is this ironic eventuality of risk-taking which opens the door to Marta being still in the picture and now a beneficiary of a regime of that “juggling” of opposites so dear to the vision of this film series.

The return of the aura of Marta within the orbit of Eva effectively messes up the facile supposition that we are here to deal with the dynamics and possible salvation of a family. One other inspired touch, apropos of the elephant in the parlor, is the choice of career-long wayward Ullman’s adversary, namely, Hollywood star, Ingrid Bergman, a career-long, banner sentimentalist, in her swan song, as Eva’s mother—light years away from all her other pleasing roles confirming eternal feminine wisdom. As if to lend a hand in clarifying where these rather abstruse landmines lurk, the first scene ignores “timeless truths,” in order to broach something quite new. Eva is married to another clueless preacher, Viktor (no less), who idolizes her imaginative—Algot-like—zeal, and his is the sermon of the day. With Eva at her desk in the blurred distance, there is Viktor, just outside the study, addressing us, in close-up, with some good news, pertaining to her apparently significant, individual source of reflection, salient in its disinterestedness. (A preamble, to that singularity we’re supposedly to buy into by means of the acolyte/ guide, is Victor’s sense of seeming miraculousness in becoming her husband. This would constitute a sort of inversion of Jof and Marie, from the mother lode that is The Seventh Seal. It would also constitute this Norwegian backwater being a vaguely subversive agency.)

  At that doorway, where we meet them, Viktor also provides a smattering of Eva’s rather cosmopolitan background. She had a several years’ relationship in Oslo with a medical doctor and had written “two small books” during that time, before cutting off the technician. (We should, on the basis of that sketch, recall the imaginative protagonist in Bergman’s film, Through a Glass Darkly[1959], who comes to grief with a husband/ doctor, loathing her failing to worship in the church that is rather bloody-minded science for the tone-deaf and feeble courage, and convincing her that she is schizophrenic and needing to be locked up in a mental hospital. In her being violated, she comes to regard God as a giant spider. As it happens, Ingrid’s role here, as Charlotte, a famous classical pianist, comes to show us her technique on the keyboard, which reveals one hand in action being like a flitting spider. Moreover, in the Ingrid vehicle, Gaslight [1944], she finds her run-of-the-mill-crook/ husband attempting to see herself insane, and ripe for suicide and a nice payday.) Eva’s next gig was as a journalist; and in that capacity she met Viktor at a bishop’s reception where she wouldn’t have to linger long—though seeing in Viktor a gentle front to make some progress.

On the day we meet them, he explains that he often pauses by her workshop/ study/ dining room to try to imagine how newish thoughts come about. Pulling out one of the “little books,” he tells us, “This is the first of her books. I like it so much. She has written, ‘One must learn to live. I practice every day. My biggest obstacle is that I don’t know who I am. I grope blindly. If anyone ever loves me as I am [which is to say, loves her vastly unusual and usually hated presence], I may dare at last to look at myself [to become a factor in a hitherto, totally, hostile jungle]. For me that possibility is fairly remote.’” Viktor reverts to his own statement, to confirm to us that the mild spouse looms, notwithstanding a strong loyalty, as part of the jungle which bedevils her seemingly placid home and militant planet. “I’d like to tell her just once that she is loved wholeheartedly, but I can’t say it in a way that she’d believe [she in fact not looking to him for accompanying her high-risk leaps]. I can’t find the words [he can’t find the daring].”

   He leaves his post as Eva approaches us, folding a letter to Charlotte (of whom there has been not a word  in seven years). Coming to his office, she’s of a mind to have Viktor read aloud what she’s now proposed for their partnership, with the one silent partner. (First, though, we hear from the active partner that she has learned, from a mutual friend, that Charlotte’s lover, a Renaissance man, Leonardo [no less], has died.) “Dearest, Mama, I know what a terrible blow this must be to you. [She and he actually knowing nothing of the sort.]  I was wondering if you’d care to come to visit us for a few days or weeks. Please don’t say no, right away… We have a piano and you can practice all you want to. [A vaguely cavalier gambit.] It would make a change from a hotel. [Superstars don’t usually get kicked around like that.] …We’ll make a fuss over you and spoil you.” [The ambiguities of “fuss” and “spoil,” in play.]

For whatever reason Charlotte agrees to come, it is clear the fjord locale is not the attraction. On reaching Eva’s bailiwick, the visitor is most struck that her drive has aggravated her chronic back condition. “Well, here I am,” the communicator fails, a communicator who had failed to look at the letters mentioning that their four-year-old had drowned several years ago. (Don’t for a second imagine that this is a family reunion or any form of family. Both of the women are out for something transcending family. And both of them crash miserably.) Charlotte does feel obliged to say, “It’s beautiful here,” and promises to her daughter’s hope, “Indeed, I will” [stay a long time]. Getting down to business, Eva asks, “You’ll give me some lessons, won’t you?” Charlotte’s, “Yes,” could just as well mean, “That wasn’t what I came to do here.”

Eva, I think, when you take account of her daily “practice,” could well be using Charlotte’s disarray in order to challenge the long-term, almost forgotten, contempt she sees everywhere, but particularly in the mother who could and should be exposed as being far from the real deal. And what chased Charlotte out of the woodwork? The end of a gratifying liaison in an ancient villa, the loss of which prompting a revamp of her solicitousness? (She will mention, after the skirmish to come, “I am always homesick, but, moreover, I find it’s something else I am longing for…”)

   The musical royalty inherent in Charlotte, after iterating that her back hurts (sign of a weak backbone?), dashes into a long account of being wonderful under the stress of Leonardo’s final days. (Travel does have a way of crowding out what you really should be attending to. Rather than shooting her geriatric face off, her agenda would be better met by listening and watching.) “I sat with him through his last day and night. He was in bad pain. They gave him shots every two hours. Now and then he cried because it hurt. He wasn’t afraid of dying.” This tug-of-war about grace might have been an avenue taking her and us a long way. Losing, as she carelessly does, such a field of well-being and ascendance might have put Charlotte seeing some playability about the hosts, a primer in a new solitude. Being an acrobat of high distinction in the mode of music does closely coincide with juggling as to others. Could she take that opportunity with Eva and Viktor? Did Leonardo open a door to her where there is much to be learned and enjoyed? (During the brawl to come, Charlotte reveals that her nothing of a set of parents—nothing but money—hurled her into a process of regarding nothing but the gratifications of brilliantly hitting the right notes.)

Eva’s moment to shine would be at the piano and its heretic arrangements. But her mother has tossed such a load of dismal screwballs at the outset as to shred her (truth to tell frail) reflective traction. (What looked, to her, at that sanctuary at the silent desk, being a go, nearly instantly becomes the ruin of all her rosy plans. The paragon of a range of sublimity puts foot to the floor a very common bilge of gossip pertaining to her friend’s cancer implicating the factor of plague, so omnipresent in the films of Bergman, where the functional so rapidly slips to the dysfunctional.) “The sun was blazing down and there were no awnings.” Then there were troubles securing a better room in the hospital. She opens the window at sunset (without any sharing of the beauty). “He said it wouldn’t be long…”—the kind of insert familiar from the world of Nicholas Ray. “The nurse said I should eat. But I wasn’t hungry… The smell was making me sick. Leonardo dozed off; then woke up and asked me to leave the room. He called the night nurse, and she came with a shot. A minute or two later, she came out and said Leonardo was dead… We had lived together for 13 years. And had never had an angry word. As often as I could, I went to see him at his villa near Naples. He was kind and thoughtful and happy about my success… One day, he gave me a long look and lovingly said, ‘This time next year I’ll be gone… but I’ll always be with you.’ It was sweet of him to say so, but he was apt to be rather theatrical… I can’t say I go around grieving. Of course he left a gap but it’s no good fretting… Do you think I’ve changed much?” “You’re just the same,” Eva tells her, having been seen, by quick cuts, overrun by Charlotte’s remarkable grossness.

   The visitor/ technocrat eventually notices the disappointment and tears on her daughter’s face. “Did I say something wrong?” the star asks. Eva brushes it off as being excited and a bit tense. Tentative hugs break up to news of such a supposed vacuum here, specifically, activated by Eva’s church accompaniment and recitals. This prompts Charlotte to compare that virtual nothing with the five school concerts she gave in Los Angeles, each time seating 3000 children. “I played and talked with them. I was a huge success…” That unspoken provocation, now part of a new realization that her mother will always be a sterile, but volatile, brute, shifts the sophisticated hope into the shadows in order to posit a cheap assault of her own. With the fanfare,  “There’s something I have to tell you,” Eva melodramatically discloses that her cerebral- palsy-victim-sister, Helena, whom Charlotte consigned to a clinic of the hopeless, years ago, to forget (later she will reason, “Why can’t she die?”), has for the past few years been living with the hosts. The doting mother had prefaced her annoyance with, “Some people are so naïve.” When Eva retorts, “You mean me?” the now feeling-besieged guest snarls, “If the shoe fits.” Not surprisingly, on meeting the one she hoped to never see again, she takes off her wristwatch, and, placing it on her daughter, tells her, “It was a gift from an admirer who said I was always late…”

A quick cut from this bemusing good deed finds Charlotte in her room devouring a cigarette and firing off the soliloquy, “Why do I feel like a fever? Why do I want to cry? I’m to be put to shame. That’s the idea. A guilty conscience. Always a guilty conscience. I was in such a hurry to get here. What was I expecting? What was I longing for so desperately?” Cut to the dining room where the hosts, putting out the best tableware, have become tentative, and in the case of Eva, pathological. “You should have seen her when I told her Lena was here! She actually managed a smile…” What she actually managed managed—along with the hostess who imagined taking the classy road—was to obliterate any traction toward disinterested discovery between them. Now tightened like snare drums, the duration of the visit becomes a fevered battle, testing us to see through shabby rhetoric (like the dead sermon of Tomas, in Winter Light, and the dead childishness of Isak, in Fanny and Alexander).

We’ll cover this death march in two ways: a brief unpleasantness which probably never should have seen the light of day; and, a more extensive survey, of the textures of civilized hate. “I’ll cut my visit short,” the world traveler tells herself. “Then I’ll go to Africa, as I originally planned” [hoping to find in exotica the coverage she hardly dares to admit she lacks]. At any rate, she is ruthless (not the same thing as resolute) in her makeover. (“I held her [Helena’s] face and felt the disease twitching at her throat muscles.”) What needs to be recognized here, for Bergman’s work, is that the convention of family, for all its pragmatism and caring, is grossly overrated and stands essentially as a means of instinctively crushing serious lucidity, which is to say, serious love.  Eva is embarrassed in her no longer seeing any point of contributing her musicianship in Charlotte’s presence, while being forced to suffer it, anyway; that night, the hostess invades the top dog and rains a dismal hurricane upon her mother, for having been a very poor instance of the form. The visitor leaves in the morning, never to be seen again.

   However unforthcoming the interplay proves to be, it’s a gold mine treating of endeavor and its quicksands. With Charlotte dressing like a Mayan goddess for the Nordic 4 pm dinner, and handed, by a phone call from her agent, a small fortune for a week’s labor, she’s ready for what’s left of the day. Before she has surfaced, however, the hospitality-2 slips into a register often heard in the films of Nicholas Ray. Eva blurts out, “It’s like a ghost falling on top of you… Do you think I’m an adult?” Viktor tells her, “I guess being an adult is being able to handle your dreams and hopes, not longing for things… Maybe you stop being surprised.” Eva adds, “You look so sensible with your old pipe. You’re very adult.” (Viktor being a cipher; but her rapid decline being chilling.) After the end of that premature dinner, there is,  by the protagonist’s one and only fan (unaware that the recital is now a bad idea), his urging her to what in fact  is an arrangement of a Chopin prelude being shot forward a century to come forth as discrete notes reaching for others of that kind and taking the pulse of the infrastructure of sound itself. “But you wanted your mother to hear you play,” the innocent calls out. A nervous and unnerved performance ensues, with cuts to Charlotte, clearly unimpressed. The latter’s formulated politeness—“Eva, my darling. I was just so moved—adds to Eva’s annoyance. “Did you like it?”/ “I liked you.” The expert adds, “We each have our own.” The hostess’, “Exactly,” does not rise to diplomacy. Nor does her insistence to have Charlotte deliver her own rendition. Not only does the guest provide a powerfully professional effort; but she adds a conceptual commentary, which comes to bear as an exploding of the revolutionary’s emotionality. “Chopin was emotional but not sentimental. Feeling is very far from sentimentality. The Prelude tells of pain, not reverie. You have to be calm, clear and even harsh. Take the first bars, now. It hurts but he doesn’t show it. Then a short relief. But it evaporates immediately, and the pain is the same. Total restraint the whole time. Chopin was proud, passionate, tormented and very manly. He wasn’t a sentimental old woman. The Prelude must sound almost ugly. It is never ingratiating. It would sound wrong. You have to battle your way through it and emerge triumphant.”

Eva gives credit to Charlotte’s cogency, particularly since it is, appearances notwithstanding, surprisingly close to her own cogency. Crowning her lecture, the leader of thousands intimates, “For 45 years I’ve worked at these terrible preludes. They still contain a lot of secrets…” (Secrets, in fact, which Eva, the fragile rebel, had broached at her hermetic writing table, and also, perhaps, in face of the sentimental accompaniment of the popular music of her era. Thereby, not only the rather heroic involvement with Helena, but the shrine she has maintained in her dead son’s bedroom, being for her a way, “to let my thoughts wonder”  [also a shock to Charlotte], implies, despite quixotic concomitants, a concern for some kind of holistic action, which her present guest seems intent to avoid at all costs. During the cattiness when setting the table, Eva emphasizes her upbringing in the style of “beautiful words,” which she equates with a large measure of phoniness (and explicitly nails hapless Viktor—he’ll tell the inoperative mother-in-law that Eva’s tenure here involves never a moment of love [in fact, her experience in total never entailing love]—for his being one such weakling when trying to be affectionate). And yet, at the shrine for the boy, she runs with “beautiful words,” hoping to mesmerize the multi-faceted celebrity along a course of rather facile “secrets.” “All I have to do is concentrate and he [toddler, Eric]is there. Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, I can feel him breathing in my face… It’s a world of liberated feelings… There must be countless realities, not only the reality we perceive with our dull senses… It’s just fear and priggishness to believe in limits…” Eva looks to the Mom who is not a Mom, to corroborate these findings. Charlotte, for all her scandal, is far too savvy to buy into that scenario.

And that rebuff, in the vernacular of another era of confusion—Viktor telling Charlotte, “She [Eva, the myopic seer] got lazy, gazing at the play of light over the mountains and fjords”—goes viral soon after the clichés of pleasant dreams are done. Just before that, however, a little pothole springs up, when Charlotte (never straying from the forum having made her a rich goddess) brings up the loveless marriage. “If only you’d leave people alone!” Eva snaps, before assuring that she’s cool. The cool one fumes in the stairwell, while the pragmatist counts her recent inheritance and fantasizes giving the hosts a better car. “It’ll cheer them up.” Where things stand now—livid that she’ll never be part of a majority—nothing could cheer her up. Hearing Charlotte having a nightmare provides a pretext to attack. The aftermath of such an event being a prelude, for Bergman’s work,  to cling to security, there is the mother, who isn’t a mother, fishing (as her daughter had gone fishing) for solicitude: “You do like me, don’t you?” / “You are my mother,” comes back, as if she’d pulled a handgun. Ready to be devastating, the one who loves no one plays a game of love. “Do you like me?”/ The rapid response is, “I love you. I broke off my career to stay at home with you and Papa.” Eva adds the cutting complement, “Your back prevented you from practicing six hours a day. Your playing got worse and so did your reviews. Have you forgotten it? I don’t know which I hated more, when you were at home or when you were on tour. I realize now you made life hell for Papa and me.”

She’ll go on to skewer the guest for being unfaithful to her father, amused by the attempts to maintain that everyone in the loop was cool. She’ll go on all night in that domestic vein, while the concise drama comprises her caring not a whit about that matter (while confronting her impotence as a thinker and cowardly laziness as a human being, along with large amounts of wine, put her in a temporary perspective of such madness). Of course, some sanity would prevail—one of Eva’s eyes fastened over the glass, her eye distorted—as she cries out, “I’m so confused! I thought I was grown up and could look clearly at you and me. Now it’s all one big muddle!” But when Charlotte attempts to state the obvious, “You’re exaggerating,” she’s met with, “You’re interrupting!” After more ridiculous momentum, the interrupted (largely self-interrupted) investigator asks, “What am I to say?” The nasty drunk replies, “Defend yourself!” [the ugly brawl, in Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953, putting in a brief visit]. To which the sort of Merry Widow asks, “Is it worthwhile?” Eva relives a time when Helena was hale, if not hearty, and Charlotte and Leonardo came by the homestead for a visit. The celebrity soon hopped off to Switzerland to prepare more fabulousness, and Leonardo was confronted by an adolescent Helena being infatuated by him. The less than Renaissance Man rudely bolts to Alpine power, disturbing the young girl to a point of her condition flaring up. This memory becomes an indictment going so far as to Eva’s accusing her mother that her poor behavior was the cause of the sister’s being a cripple. (“He left on the last plane…” [a touch of Casablanca melodrama].) “There’s only one truth and one lie. You’ve set up a sort of discount system with life, but one day you’ll see that your argument is one-sided. You’ll see you’re harboring a guilt, just like everyone else…” During the long night, Charlotte had had her own confusion and tears, in addition to needing to lie on the firm floor to offset a lack of backbone. Eva had spent most of the night in a chair which becomes an ironic throne, to Charlotte’s being a supplicant. The last word really registering, as the night dribbles down to clichés, like an Ingrid Bergman movie, is the visitor on the way out: “What guilt?”

Eva takes a walk in a graveyard by the fjord, untrammeled by the bilious self-expression that shot down the proposals of the thinkers of the day before. It’s getting dark, and the mystic has an agenda—making dinner for Helena and Viktor. But the rather alarming multi-tasker gives us a break. Though being surrounded by the dead, she commences a dialogue (frequently complemented by cuts to Charlotte and her agent, in a first-class train coach, on the matter of “something else I’m longing for…” as they flee from a cursed detour). “Are you stroking my cheek? Are you whispering in my ear? Are you with me now? We’ll never leave each other.” [The artist/ profit-center asks her neat-as-a-pin associate, “What would I do without you?” She’s suddenly troubled and looks into the darkness outside, her reflection leaving her cold.]

   Once again, Viktor addresses us about his wife’s singularity: “She’s in such distress since Charlotte left so suddenly. She has not been able to sleep. She says she drove her mother away and can never forgive herself.” Once again, he’s to read out loud a letter to Charlotte, which can’t be seen as annoying. “Dear, Mama, I realize that I wronged you. I met you with demands instead of affection. I tormented you with an old hatred that’s no longer real. I want to ask for your forgiveness. I don’t know if this letter will reach you. I don’t even know if you will read it. Maybe everything is too late. But I hope all the same that my effort will not be in vain. There is a kind of mercy, after all. [It’s interplay by her has not been well engaged by the puppy-love that she’s reached.] I mean the enormous opportunity of getting to take care of each other. I will never let you vanish out of my life again. I’m going to persist. I won’t give up, even if it is too late. I don’t think it is too late.” [“Beautiful words, going nowhere.”] Though Bergman would have regarded the films of Jacques Demy as an abomination, the latter helmsman, a student of Robert Bresson, does, in his musical fantasy, Donkey Skin (1970), provide an oracle right out of our guide here, to wit, “Life is not as easy as you think.”

We’ve been challenged, by Autumn Sonata, to investigate a musical cosmos both elegant and vicious, both solo and infinite. (The backdrop of the initial credits presents us with a wildfire [perhaps including blood].) Each of the protagonists readily sees through the other’s shabbiness. Charlotte refers, with much validity, to her daughter’s being a “crybaby.” Eva, finding her mother a lot like her long ago, Oslo boyfriend, describes Charlotte as, “People like you are a menace. You should be locked away and rendered harmless.” While Eva dabbles with, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” Charlotte, far more self-critical and sophisticated, notes, “Leonardo [in a seer role] once said, ‘A sense of reality is a matter of talent. Most people lack that talent and maybe it’s just as well.’” She asks if Eva knows what he meant. Recalling her mantra, “One must learn to live. I practice every day…” she comes to the matter differently. Talent and practice. The colloquium being a bust. But not a waste of time.

[mitchbeck]

CANTLON'S CORNER: WOLF PACK OFF-SEASON REPORT VOLUME 2

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The name of the game this week in hockey is, "Transaction-Time!"  On Tuesday, the New York Rangers made a big move in a trade with the Carolina Hurricanes. The Blueshirts acquired a right-handed shooting defenseman, Adam Fox, and signed him to a contract on Thursday. The highly-regarded two-way playing Fox couldn’t come to a deal with the Hurricanes, so Fox, who was drafted originally in the third round (66th overall) in 2016 by Calgary was traded in the Doug Hamilton deal. The junior defenseman said he would return for his senior year at Harvard. Then he would be able to go the free agent route since he would be 22 and unsigned next spring. This allowed him under the current CBA to become an unrestricted free agent and seek a deal with any of the other 31 NHL teams.  Carolina opted to make a move now, gaining a second-round pick in this year’s draft from the Rangers and a third rounder in 2020. The third-round pick will be converted to a second-round pick if Fox plays 30 NHL games next season. Fox’s early hockey resume is quite extensive. He had 116 points in 97 games with the Crimson and led the NCAA in points scored. He was a Hobey Baker finalist and played on two US WJC teams, winning gold in 2017 and bronze in 2018. He was a First team All American all three season at Harvard, this season he captured ECAC Player of the Year and Ivy League Player of the Year. He was named the 2019 Walter Brown Award winner as the best American college player in New England and was named Harvard’s John Tudor team MVP for the season. This makes the already defensive slot (presently 18 defensemen as of today) an even more crowded field. Among the blueliners, the Rangers have four making upwards of $4 million plus, which means trades and contract burials are coming. This answers the question on two Group 6 defenseman, John Gilmour and Rob O’Gara, who will more than likely not be resigned come July 1st. Fox, with his newly minted Rangers credentials, will play for Team USA at the upcoming World Hockey Championships in Slovakia. Part of that is because Rangers GM Jeff Gorton is on the US squad’s Advisory panel, and the team's GM is current Rangers assistant GM, and Hartford GM Trumbull native, Chris Drury. The Fox deal was announced last Thursday, and Friday morning the team officially announced that they signed last year’s number one selection, (9th overall) the 6’4 right-winger, Vitali Kravtsov, to a three-year entry-level deal. The 18-year-old, left-handed shooting right-winger played for Traktor Chelyabinsk (Russia-KHL0 and had a very strong WJC in Vancouver/Victoria, BC. Both Kravtsov and Fox will make $925K-NHL/$70K-AHL on their ELC deals. Kravtsov has a European assignment clause in his deal. It might be classified as an anti-Hartford clause. It likely has a pre-determined time frame for him to play in Hartford. If it's exceeded then he could invoke the clause and be assigned to Europe to continue his development. The Rangers announced the signing of Kravtsov in the morning and in the afternoon they made it known they had signed Russian goalie Igor Shestyorkin, 23, a fourth-round (118th overall) pick in 2014. He gets a two-year ELC contract at $925K-NHL/$70K-AHL and he too has the same clause as Kravtsov. Shestyorkin’s (translated American version is Shesterkin) numbers are jaw-dropping, but a word of hockey caution. Russian hockey in the KHL is played differently than the NHL or the AHL. The international ice surface 200 x 100 skews the numbers a bit. That’s not to diminish his obvious talent, but like Alexander Georgiev, he will require an adjustment to the ice surface that is 10 feet shorter. The stats he has are gold-plated. This season, he posted a 24-3-1 record, a KHL record 1.11 GAA, a .953 save percentage with 10 shutouts for SKA St. Petersburg. In his KHL career, his record was 88-16-7 with a 1.68 GAA and 27 shutouts in total and career .935 save percentage. Shestyorkin was a two-time KHL All-Star and captured one KHL Gagarin Cup in 2016-17. There is a chance the trio could start next season in Hartford to make the pro adjustment for possibly a month or two, but the new coaching staff in Connecticut's capital has not been named and it won't until the Rangers announce their new President either at the middle or end of this month. The trio will be at the Rangers post-draft Prospects Camp starting on June 24 at Chelsea Piers in Stamford while the Rangers regular practice facility in Tarrytown, NY is undergoing renovations. No signing is expected for defenseman Yegor Rykov who played for HK Sochi (Russia-KHL) this year and was acquired from the Devils at the trade deadline in the Michal Grabner deal. One other prospect of note is on another goalie, Olof Lindbom (no relation to former Wolf Pack Johan Lindbom) who was drafted in the second-round (39th overall) last year. He will play next season for both Mora IK (Sweden-SHL) and Mora IK J-20 team in the Super Elite junior-level league. Lindbom, now age 18, would be eligible to play for the Sweden WJC team. He played with Djurgarden IF (SHL) and J-20 teams this season but missed most of the year with an injury. He was available for the just completed league championship final which they lost.  AHL CALDER CUP PLAYOFFS Call ups still affect AHL teams even in the playoffs. The Charlotte Checkers whose start their Atlantic Division Final series with Hershey on Friday lost AHL Baz Bastien winner  Alex Nedejlkovic because Carolina’s Petr Mrazek was injured in Game 2 of their series with the Islanders so Nedejlkovic was recalled, Now the Hurricanes now have a commanding three games to none lead in the series. Ex-Pack Dustin Tokarski who will start Game 1 has been his back up and was loaned to Charlotte with the Hurricanes loaning back Josh Wesley on February. Tokarski is likely heading to Sweden next year according to Swedish Hockey News.se,  He is being pursued by four teams in the Swedish Hockey League in Rogle BK, Oskarshamn, Leksands IF and Orebro HK, they are in the hunt. Charlotte recalled goalie Jeremy Helvig Florida (ECHL) to be Tokarski’s backup while they are battling in ECHL Southern Division Finals with Orlando up two games to one. Jake Bean, AHL First Team All-Star defenseman was also recalled with the injury to Hurricanes rearguard Jake Muzzin than seems to be a longer-term injury than Mrazek’s. Hershey recalled goalie Parker Milner (Avon Old Farms) from South Carolina (ECHL). Toronto with a three-goal second captured Game 1 of North Division Final with Cleveland. Jeremey Bracco’s four assists, Trevor Moore two goals and an assist, ex-Pack Chris Mueller’s goal and an assist and defenseman Rasmus Sandin paced the Marlies' efforts. Simsbury’s Tommy Cross had a goal and assist for the Monsters. Toronto reassigned ex-Sound Tiger goalie Eamon MacAdam to Newfoundland (ECHL) currently in the ECHL North Division Finals against Manchester. The Central Division Final between Iowa and Chicago is a good matchup saw the Wolves capture game one as Cody Glass scored the game-winner late in the first overtime for a 3-2 win. AHL regular season MVP Daniel Carr posted two assists to lead the Wolves offense. Iowa’s Gerald Mayhew’s scored his sixth goal of the postseason to pace the Wild offense. Out West in the Pacific Division Final San Diego will take on Bakersfield starting Friday and the Gulls got a nice reinforcing shot for the postseason with #1 Anaheim draft pick Maxime Comtois arrival from Drummondville Voltigeurs (QMJHL) who were eliminated in the semifinals by the Halifax Mooseheads in a seven games as they won Game 7 in overtime 2-1. PLAYER & COACHING MOVEMENTS Mathieu Olivier, son of ex-New Haven Knight Simon Olivier, was signed to a two-year, two-way contract by Nashville after a strong season on Milwaukee. The contract is a free agent one-year AHL deal. As we first reported, defenseman Julius Bergman, who played just eight games for the Wolf Pack and who was acquired from Belleville in a trade, will return to Sweden to play with HC Frolunda in the Swedish Hockey League (SHL) next year. Ex-New Haven Nighthawk and Ranger, George McPhee, relinquishes his Vegas Golden Knights GM title and has promoted Kelly McCrimmon, the brother of the late Whaler Brad McCrimmon, from assistant GM. McPhee will retain his President title and be overseeing all of the hockey operations all the changes are effective September 1st. In the German DEL Championship finals Adler Mannheim knocked off EHC Munich is six games. On the victorious side, the Eagles featured ex-Sound Tiger Mark Katic, Ben Smith (Avon/Westminster Prep), ex-Wolf Pack’s Luke Adam and Chad Kolarik. Adam is heading to Dusseldorfer EG next year and Kolarik is heading to Austria and EC Salzburg (Austria-EBEL). EHC Munich featured former CT Whale John Mitchell who after three years with the team announced his retirement from pro hockey at the conclusion of the playoffs. Ex-Wolf Pack, Evgeni Grachev, leaves Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg (Russia-KHL) to Avangard Omsk (Russia-KHL) next season. Ex-Pack Malte Stromwall leaves KooKoo (Finland-FEL) for HK Sochi (Russia-KHL). Ex-Wolf Pack and Sound Tiger Andrew Rowe leaves Mora IK (Sweden-SEL) for SC Rapperswil-Jona (Switzerland-LNA). The Swedish LeMat Trophy final is over with HC Frolunda Indians winning the title with 4-2 series-clinching win Thursday at home over Djurgarden IF. HC Frolunda won all their playoff games at homes. The team features captain Joel Lundqvist, the twin brother of Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, and ex-Sound Tiger Rhett Rakhshani. Ex-Pack Carl Klingberg re-signs with EV Zug (Switzerland-LNA) for next year. Ex-Sound Tiger and Canadian Olympic goalie, Kevin Poulin, is likely to be leaving Eisbaren Berlin (Germany-DEL) for Cologne (Germany-DEL). Ex-Sound Tiger Sebastian Collberg heads from Timra IK (Sweden-SHL) to EC Graz (Austria-EBEL) for 2019-20. Ex-Wolf Pack/CT Whale Andrew Yogan goes from HC Innsbruck (Austria-EBEL) to Alba Valon (Hungary-EBEL). Ex-Sound Tiger Tyler McNeeley departs from SC Bietighein-Bissen (Germany DEL-2) for Tolzer Lowen (Germany DEL-2). Jared Mudryk, the last member of the first Danbury Trashers team (UHL) team that is still playing active, played with ECDC Memmingen (Germany Division-3). He has announced his retirement. That leaves Jean-Michel Daoust from the second Trashers team as the only one left playing. He split this season with three teams, Thetford Mines and St. Jerome (LNAH) and a new six-team senior league that popped up this season, Vaudreuil (OASHL). Not until November when the Canadian senior hockey season begins will we know if Daoust will be the last Trasher to play or will share the honor with Mudryk. In the Czech Elite League (CEL) Final HC Ocelari Trinec captured just their second ever CEL title beating HC Liberec four games to two winning Game 6 by the score of 4-2. HC Kladno, led by 47-year-old Jaromir Jagr, won the relegation round and will be promoted to the CEL from Division 2 level. In the IIHF Division Group-A tourney underway in Kazakhstan, a few familiar names abound on some of the six teams. South Korea has an assistant coach former Ranger Sergei Nemchinov, while the head man was the Olympic team head coach, Jim Paek, Belarus has former New Haven Nighthawk Andrei Kovalev as an assistant coach and Lithuanian head coach is former Ranger player and Islanders assistant coach and NHL player, Daniel Lacroix. The World Championship that starts in Slovakia saw Canada name former CT Whale Jonathan Marchessault to the team along with Sean Couturier, the son of former New Haven Nighthawk, Sylvain Couturier. Team Sweden added William Nylander, the son of ex-Whaler/Ranger Michael Nylander. Some more AHL’ers head to Europe. Jakub Jerebek San Antonio leaves for Vityaz Podolsk (Russia-KHL) and Axel Holmstrom officially leaves Grand Rapids for HV71 (Sweden-SHL). Goalie Eddie Lack of Binghamton is according Swedish Hockey News close to signing a deal with Leksands IF (Swede-SHL) and former Ranger Josh Jooris is expected to leave Toronto (AHL) for HC Lausanne (Switzerland-LNA). That makes 10 players so far to leave for Europe and there will be more to come. UCONN get another college commit in Russian Yan Kuznetsov who played for Sioux City (USHL) for this coming fall. Stefan Miklakos is leaving Avon Old Farms (CTPREP) to play juniors for the Lone Star Brahmas (NAHL) and will be at Army (AHA) in 20-21. Zach Tonelli, the youngest son of Islander great John Tonelli, and who plays at Taft Prep in Watertown, announced a commit to Brown University (ECACHL) for 20-21. Colby Audette, from the Lewiston/Auburn (ME) Nordiques (NA3HL) commits to the brand new Albertus Magnus College (NESCAC) program that starts in New Haven in the fall. He is no relation to the former NHL player Donald or his son Daniel who plays in Laval. Emmett Powell, from Milton Academy (MAPREP) commits to Wesleyan University (NESCAC) located in Middletown. Brady Berard, the son of former UCONN assistant coach (AHA years) David Berard (Holy Cross AHA head coach) announced his commit to Providence College (HE) in 2022-23 at the age of 15. He is expected to attend Mt. St. Charles (RIPUB) next year. Another quartet of college players signed pro deals. Peter Krieger from the University of Minnesota-Duluth (NCHC) heads to Vasterviks IK (Sweden-Allsvenskan) and teammate Parker MacKay also goes from the two-time defending national champion University Minnesota-Duluth (NCHC). He signs with Texas (AHL), Mario Ferraro leaves UMASS-Amherst (HE) signs with San Jose (NHL/AHL) and Sasha Larocque Ohio State (Big 10) signs with Colorado (AHL). That makes 169 Division I players who signed pro deals and a total of 193 collegians at all levels to sign pro deals in the US and Europe. Andrew Gaus (Taft Prep) has completed his Yale degree but will be a graduate transfer and play next year with Colorado College Tigers (NCHC) joining him as a fellow grad transfer will be goalie Ryan Ruck of Northeastern (HE). Cam MacDonald of the Selects Academy at South Kent Prep is heading to Sioux Falls Stampede (USHL) in the fall. Read the full article

[bleedingcoffee42]

Casablanca AU

This is all @lonepiper5758 ‘s fault for mentioning a Notorious AU which I quickly jumped on and then jumped to Casablanca because of Ingrid Bergman.

 I still don’t know who is going to be Lazlo.   So for now his name is the filler and this could go in any direction.   As always.  Just drabbles here so I can get it out of my head.  Going with the Royai version, but I’m getting my friendly flirty Hyuroi in there too.   This song shall be my choice for As Time goes By because dammit is is one of the lyrics and I do love this song.

xxxxxxxx

“Lazlo needs to leave the country and he needs papers to do so.”  Hughes said and refilled his drink from the bottle on Roy's desk.

“Why would I help him?”  Roy asked and leaned back in his chair as Hughes leisurely sat on his desk swinging his leg and helping himself to his private stash of bourbon.    “Where would I get official documents like that?”

“You tend to like your lost causes and underdogs.”  Hughes set a shot glass in front of Roy and then refilled his own.  “You also tend to get involved in conspiracies like this by nature of your business.”

“I run a bar.  My Mom's bar.”  Roy said and lifted the glass and looked up at Hughes.  “I'm also not hiring you as a bartender after you get fired for your shitty investigation techniques if you can't figure out how to fill these glasses with equal amounts of booze.”

Hughes's glass was almost overfilling, almost.  He carefully slurped some bourbon off the top before throwing the rest into his mouth.   He watched Roy's eyes the entire time trying to see if he was hiding anything.  “I walked in today and was shocked,  shocked, that this establishment was hosting some form of illegal gambling.  I mean once you open the doors to that then it becomes known that you will deal in just about anything. Like smuggling or travel documents.”

Roy smirked.  Hughes's sarcastic comments got louder the more he drank.   Roy picked up a brown envelope and held it up in front of his face.  “By the way, here are your winnings.”

Hughes grinned and set the glass down to take the envelope.  “Got a wife and kid to feed.”

Roy studied the man sitting on his desk and lifted his glass and observed. “It's half full.”

“See you're a 'half full' kinda guy.” Hughes replied.  “Which is why you would help this Lazlo guy escape.  So he could maybe change the world.  Stop the next war.   Get back to his family.”

Roy cocked his head.   “Must you dance around this topic all night?  I do have to open for business eventually.”

“I am an incredible dancer.”

“You dance like you borrowed your body and haven't figured out how to use it yet.”  Roy countered.

“You bitter asshole, someday you're going to fall in love and get yourself a wife and then you won't be able to resist going out and making a fool of yourself with her.” Hughes snorted and to his surprise he saw a  flicker of sadness in Roy's eyes.   There had been someone.  

“You're already taken.”  Roy said and puckered up and blew a kiss before drinking his half-shot of bourbon.  

“Speaking of wives, Lazlo is rumored to be traveling with someone.  I don't think it's too much of a leap to assume it's his wife.”  Hughes said.  

“Don't you have people that you work with that you should be discussing this with?”  Roy asked and set the shot glass down.   “I'm running the local gambling and drinking establishment that you suspect of being a haven of illegal dealings and operations.   Why are you bothering me with this, you're the police chief?”

“It's good for business to cooperate with the local police.”  Hughes smiled.

“Maybe you should go back to work so I can start doing my job.” Roy stood up and  Hughes leaned towards him.

“Everyone is looking for Lazlo. Everyone.   Be careful with this one Roy, you have no idea how far up the chain this goes.   I'm not asking you to turn him in, just turn him away.”

“From what you're saying, I'm the only one who can help.”  Roy saw Hughes wink before jumping off his desk and straightening out his uniform.   “So I might as well sign his death certificate before delivering him to you.  I hear there's a reward too.”

“We both know you won't do that.   You soft-hearted bastard.”  Hughes picked up his hat off the desk and lowered his voice.  “Just...be careful.  I don't want you mixed up in this one.”

“Go to work Hughes.”  Roy said and buttoned up his shirt and  straightened out his loose tie to prepare for the evening.   “I don't have any damned papers.   They have no reason to come to me.”

“Have a good night, Roy.”  Hughes said and put his hat on.  

Roy watched him leave then turned to his mirror and tied his bow tie.   So much for being a neutral party here.  Those papers Hughes was hunting for were currently stashed in an old cookbook in the kitchen.  Yoki had come in last night, panicked and looking to 'store' them somewhere for a small fee.   At least he got payment up front as now Yoki was dead and Hughes was trying to find where those damned papers were.  

Xxxx

“Miss Riza?”  Catherine lit up and went over to hug the woman she never thought she would see again.   “Is it really you?”

“Yes, Catherine.”  Riza felt her rib cage scream as Catherine hugged with all the power of the Armstrong family.  “How are you?”

“Great!   Remember Jean?” Catherine grinned and showed her her wedding ring.   “We got married last year!  He works for Roy now and I get to play here instead of those stuffy pretentious music halls.  I love it!”

“Married?”  Riza said and sure enough there was a ring on her finger.   She never thought Jean would make it past the first date, but good for him.  “Congratulations!”

“He took off his shirt to help me move the piano and I just...was smitten.”  She said and sat back down at the piano.  “He's amazing.  I had no idea he was hiding that body under his shirt.   I love a man who can really take care of himself, you know?”

Riza didn't understand the Armstrong family at all but she wasn't going to admit that.   Havoc was probably still shocked by it.   He seemed resigned to just flirting with her and working the bar for Roy, but something clearly changed. Good for him.   “How's Roy?”

“Still keeps himself in shape.  I think it's because he doesn't sleep and needs something to do.   Nice abs, but no where near the broad shoulders and muscle mass of Jean. Plus, he's short.”  Catherine said and then looked at her.  “Oh, you mean is he married?”

“I...”  Riza wasn't sure what she really wanted to know.  “Is he well?”

“Well he's OK.”  Catherine said.   “For an alcoholic.”

Riza could hear her change in voice. “You want me to leave him alone?”

“You broke his heart Miss Riza.” Catherine said.   “I'm sure you had your reasons...but you didn't have to see what it did to him.   So...I'm glad you're well but you made your choice.”

“I did.”  Riza said and toyed with the small candle on the table.   “Just one song before I leave?”

“I can do that.” Catherine said and saw the sad smile.  “Just not that one.”

“Please?  Play it Catherine.”  Riza said softly.  “Play it for me.”

Catherine wished she couldn't remember that night so easily, Riza and Riza dancing as he sang to her.   Madam dimming the lights so everyone only saw them on the dance floor, lost in each others smiles and eyes.   Roy singing like he used to, with a voice that would melt anyone who heard it.   The entire bar stopped to listen and watch as two people fell in love.   Then furlough was over and they went back to war.   Eventually Roy came home, broken and without the woman he fell in love with.  

“Please?   I...just need to hear it one last time.”  Riza said and felt herself get misty eyed.  “I'll leave after.”

Catherine grudgingly laid her fingers on the keys and started to play that song from that night long ago. That song that she hadn't played since.   The patrons went about their business not knowing the significance of the song but she could feel Havoc's eyes on her from the bar.  

“Sing it?”  She asked.  The song was something she had never heard set to music before and not heard since.  It was  something Roy had written.   She could see Catherine struggling with it but eventually she closed her eyes and her voice filled the bar.

“Sometimes there are days one has to go....”  Catherine hadn't though about the words to  this song in years.  And now she wondered if it was an explanation from Riza as to why she left Roy.  “Turning his back on what is precious...”

Riza could feel the lump in her throat as she heard the words.   It wasn't Roy's voice but she could still hear it in his.  Feel him close to her, singing softly in a private serenade as they danced too close in front of all those people.

“Men are sad creatures, huh?” Catherine's voice got a little louder, it was hard to not get into singing the song.   Roy wasn't here, he'd never have to know.  This song he wrote, seemed so personal now.  He wrote it while he was at war.   He wrote it to express himself and try to remain human in an inhuman situation.   “Dragging weight that can't be extinguished on their backs.”

Riza blinked, her eyes were getting damp.   They had talked about what they had done, about the weight of their actions.   They had found each other during the worst time in their lives and he had shown her the light of hope at the end of it all.   He understood they could never made amends for what they did, understood when she said they would carry the dead on their backs forever.  

“Boy, embrace your ambition...” Catherine's voice carried.  No going back now.  She could feel the passion and pain of the songwriter and wanted to understand him better.    “If you possess darkness in your right hand.....and dreams in your left hand...”

Fools.  Naive idiots thinking they could protect people.  Thinking they were doing the right thing when all they were doing was killing people for a government that never cared about right or wrong.   And him, the dreamer.  The dream still existed in him, he wanted to change things.  Roy Mustang hadn't lost himself entirely and that was why she was so drawn to him.  A humble hero and a battered idealist, but not a broken man.   Not until....she broke him.

“Wowow, My Train in rain is the vision waving its hand Time goes by a memory of that person?

Drown out the screams”

Roy walked into the bar and was met with the chorus of a song he wrote, a song he never wanted to hear again.  Enraged he stormed over to the piano immediately and slammed his hand down on it and hissed.  “God dammit I told you to never play that again.”

Catherine stopped immediately and watched his face change as he looked past her to see Riza.  Then his anger melted away and all she saw was pain.   She got up and pushed her stool in to retreat to the bar where Havoc was waiting.  

Riza couldn't believe how he still took her breath away, how he could still stir in her the emotions that made her stomach tighten and heart pound.   She couldn't even blink away the tears forming in her eyes, fearing he would vanish if she took her eyes off him for a second.  

Roy stared at her, the last person he thought he would see again.   Riza Hawkeye's beautiful face haunted him every night as he reached out for her and she vanished into thin air.   He never forgot a detail about her, not her big brown eyes welling up with tears or the way her lips pursed when she was trying to be strong.  It was the Riza he fell in love with, the one struggling to keep herself together despite the damned world trying to destroy her.   He fell in love with her strength and here she was, strong enough to sit in his bar and have that damned song played for her.

[dweemeister]

NOTE: Despite the fact The Magic Flute was originally released on Swedish television on January 1, 1975, it debuted as a theatrical film in the United States later that year in November. As per the rules I set out for this blog, Bergman’s The Magic Flute will be treated as a theatrical film.

The Magic Flute (1975, Sweden)

I imagine that when some people read that this film review concerns an adaptation of an opera, they will stop reading at the word, “opera”. As someone who was taught classical music from an early age, I get it. Opera seems inaccessible, and a several-minute aria just to get a plot point across can seem daunting (not just for the audience, but the performer too). But as with any artistic medium, there will always be points of entry for newcomers. Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is one of them. The Magic Flute is one of the more accessible and most performed operas in Western classical music, and it just so happened to be Ingmar Bergman’s favorite. Bergman saw the opera when he was twelve years old, leaving an immediate impression. Unable to afford the record, he attempted to recreate The Magic Flute with marionettes at home. By the mid-1970s and having cinematic and stage production experience in his oeuvre, Bergman dared to imagine filming his favorite opera.

There are numerous cinematic opera adaptations. But they are underseen and largely unavailable to North American viewers – I am not including filmed opera performances in this distinction (e.g. the Metropolitan Opera’s popular live feeds that are presented in movie theaters and public television). Invariably, Bergman’s The Magic Flute is mentioned on the rare occasions when opera films are discussed. Sometimes, due to contempt for opera or a lack of understanding about classical music, it is the only such opera film discussed, and usually never from a musical lens.

In this adaptation, Bergman attempts to meld the distinct artifices of cinema and opera together. The viewer is never transported to a fantastical world, as the film possesses no “fourth wall” to begin with. We see an audience – look closely and you will see Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist in the audience – waiting in anticipation during the overture, and the action takes place on what appears to be a homely community opera house. On occasion, we will see the performers backstage preparing for their musical entrances. When their performance begins, they inhabit the world of the opera.

This peculiar dynamic Bergman creates is less believable on a more gargantuan stage. The stage’s production design and deliberately low-budget (but charming) costume design suggests we are experiencing a performance given by a small community opera company. La Scala this is not, nor is it the Met or Paris Opera. Bergman wished to shoot the film at the Drottningholm Palace Theatre in Stockholm, a small eighteenth-century theater that still uses mechanisms dating back to its inception. Unfortunately, that theater was deemed too fragile for film equipment. Nevertheless, Bergman and production designer Henny Noremark (who also served as co-costume designer along with Karin Erskine) concocted a workaround. On a soundstage at the Swedish Film Institute, the production design team painstakingly crafted a facsimile of the Drottningholm Palace Theatre’s interior. The Magic Flute appears to be an inexpensive production, but it is anything but. The stage is intimate, inviting, personable.

In brief, Mozart’s opera is set in Egypt and concerns a mother-daughter dispute rife with misunderstanding. The protagonist, Prince Tamino (Josef Köstlinger), is contacted by the Queen of the Night (Birgit Nordin). She asks him to free her daughter Pamina (Irma Urrila) from the clutches of a high priest named Sarastro (Ulrik Cold; doesn’t that sound like a villainous name?). After being shown a portrait of Pamina, Tamino falls instantly in love with her – that’s opera logic, you know. Tamino is joined in his adventures by Papageno (Håkan Hagegård), an overly talkative bird-catcher dressed like a bird. But Tamino will learn more about Sarastro’s priestly order and becomes interested in joining. The Magic Flute has been interpreted as heavily influenced by Masonic themes, and modern analyses clash as to whether its portrayal of the Queen of the Night is misogynistic (see: Sarastro’s belief that Pamina should not be subject to the Queen’s feminine manipulations) or proto-feminist.

Also featured are the conniving Monostatos (Ragnar Ulfung) and, in the second act, Papagena (Elisabeth Erikson). The Magic Flute benefits from an excellent recording by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Eric Ericson.

Opera films tend to adhere closely to the work composer and librettist. Bergman exercises some liberties with Mozart’s music and Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto*. Instead of the original German, this film uses a Swedish-language libretto by the poet Alf Henrikson (this Swedish-language version debuted at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1968). No offense against the Swedish language, but this Swedish-language version of The Magic Flute makes the musical phrasing awkward. Mozart’s opera was composed with German in mind. German may not be a listenable as Italian in an operatic setting (it could be worse, it could be English – as in the otherwise excellent 1951′s The Tales of Hoffman, adapted from Jacques Offenbach’s opera of the same name), but this should have been Bergman’s first choice.

The decision to cast singers with sweeter voices rather than full, unamplified ones assumes that an audience cannot tolerate a soprano’s high notes. "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" – commonly known as the Queen of the Night aria – demands full-bodied womanly rage to sing. The soprano should sing this forcefully, but not harshly. It feels like Bergman is asking Birgit Nordin to hold back her vocals during the aria (which also sounds rushed in the second half). Whether in an opera or an operatic adaptation for film, this is not an aria that should be sung with anything less than full power. Bergman should let Nordin sing this aria as it should be sung. To do so invites a starker contrast between those few minutes and the rest of the film – a show-stopper as Mozart intended it to be.  Nevertheless, Bergman’s decision to prioritize acting over musicality – however it grates upon my senses – works for all the other roles. Nykvist’s cinematography pulls close to the actors’ faces, demanding more facial acting from the cast (who are all lip-syncing) than they might be used to. The cast succeeds in this challenge, approaching a type of acting they are unaccustomed to.

The setting of Bergman’s Magic Flute strips away much of the opera’s original Egyptian setting and settles for a vaguely European design. The Queen of the Night-Sarastro conflict becomes a parental dispute, as Bergman makes Sarastro Pamina’s father. A few trios in Act II have been eliminated. Also in Act II and to the film’s detriment, Bergman changes the order of appearance of two Papageno-centric scenes to the point where they no longer make any narrative sense.

Where Bergman’s The Magic Flute triumphs is its representation of the nature of live opera (and, by extension, live theater). When one experiences an opera or theater, everything onstage is an interpretation, a living fiction. The events onstage and the music transport one from reality, without ever truly leaving that reality. Moments in which Swedish text of the libretto appears in front of the actors (sometimes held by the actors themselves) precede the creation and widespread use of surtitles in opera houses today. By making somewhat indistinguishable the actors’ transition between the “real” and operatic worlds (during the intermission’s last moments, we see actors smoke a cigarette and two others playing chess), Bergman shows that the viewer is as much a part of the performance. We assign as much meaning to the unreality of an opera as the actors. The whimsical comedy of The Magic Flute – one filled with imperfect protagonists and subplots that never quite cohere – makes Bergman’s metatextual commentary more apparent and approachable.

The Magic Flute followed two heavy Bergman dramas in Cries and Whispers (1972) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973). Having watched twelve of his forty-five feature films, The Magic Flute is, by some distance, the liveliest Bergman film I have seen. I do not expect any others to be as light, as comedic as this – the key difference might be that Bergman is adapting material, rather than using an original screenplay of his. It is refreshing to see an Ingmar Bergman without a gripping existential crisis, mentally disturbed characters soliloquizing their plights.

In The Magic Flute, the relationship between our lived reality and theatrical artifice holds for every person that engages with the performing arts. Debuting in Vienna in 1791, The Magic Flute, Mozart’s final opera, was not composed for aristocratic patrons, but commoners. Almost two centuries later, the in-film audience of Bergman’s adaptation is comprised of various genders and races. That universality of the theatrical experience is reflected in their faces, interspersed on occasion alongside scene changes and still moments. The universality of Western classical music, in this case Mozart’s, is etched in their gazes. Nykvist’s camera keeps returning to one young girl in particular. She is always smiling, obviously enchanted by The Magic Flute. Perhaps she is feeling things akin to Bergman the first time he experienced The Magic Flute – unburdened by cynicism, more accepting of unreality.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

*A librettist is the opera term for a lyricist. The Magic Flute is a Singspiel opera, which means it contains snippets of dialogue. Schikaneder wrote both the lyrics and dialogue.

[nh0betsm-blog]

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