#musical festival chronicle spoilers

[senshidaily]

sera myu appreciation press footage from the musical festival chronicle!

[staarry-skies]

MARISA as Human!Luna

[crazykacey]

Okay so I wrote some sort of summary of the plot of Sera Myu Chronicle. I might have already forgotten some things and such and my grammar sucks cause it's super late so yeah AND SPOILERS!!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS

So the musical actually has its own plot and isn't just the previous musical made into a concert. It is kind of a pseudo sequel to the previous musical ir something. At the beginning Luna mentions something about an old evil returning, referring to Snow Kaguya, after that the 4 inners are talking about going to eat shaved ice(kakigori) at this new place and wondering where Usagi is, as she wanted to go the most. Chibiusa and Mamoru appear and they reveal that Usagi flunked another test and is forced to study by her mom (& Artemis). Then a totally not suspicious person called Ms. Frozen appears telling them that she's the inventor of the new famous shaved ice and is planning to hold an audition to cast people to be in a commercial advertising the shaved ice. And she heard the girls sing so she wants them to take part in the audition. Some songs are sang and Luna feels left out as she would like to sing as well but cannot do that since she isn't a human. "Ms. Frozen" appears and reveals her true identity to Luna and brainwashes her and turns her into her human form calling her Snow Luna. She is then ordered to capture the Silver Crystal or smth along those lines. Some songs are sang and later Snow Kaguya/Ms. Frozen and Mamoru have some sort of ab lid corner where they talk about Riona's (Mamoru's actor) past roles in Sera Myu and kinda fool around but at the same time when he answers each question, the Snow Dancers freeze a part of his body. (They had these badges that had ice"氷" written on and then just stuck them on) One of them actually hit Riona in the face accidentally with the badge which created a funny ad lib. After that Snow Kaguya attacks and tries to brainwash Mamoru which SURPRSINGLY doesn't work. After the Senshi realize what is truly happening, they go on the offensive only to realize that Snow Kaguya has brainwashed Luna. They start going back and forth with the Senshi trying to get Luna back to her senses and Snow Kaguya trying to keep Luna brainwashed. They eventually manage to save Luna and return her to her cat form and they reassure her that there are things that only she can do and all that nice stuff. They then realize that they left Artemis all alone when Usagi escaped her home and get all panicked and they sing a new song as they curtain closes.

After that the special guests arrived which in this case were, Akiko Kosaka, ANZA, Hisano Akamine, Misako Iwana, Emi Kuriyama and Akiko Miyazawa. Surpringly there wasn't any talk show or anything, like in Ai no Sanctuary, which was kinda sad since they just performed their medley and... left. Well they did talk like a minute or so, ANZA mentioned that most of the people in the audience probably weren't even alive when they started Sera Myu and says that everyone was probably able to watch the old musicals later from video tapes and Youtube and that was when Kosaka-sensei stopped her and told her she can't say that. So I guess they are pretty much aware about the copyright mess with Banmyu lol )and iirc ANZA has mentioned the musicals being on Youtube on one of her and Kosaka-sensei's livestreams). And THEN they left. But while there was no talk show, in the pamphlet, there is a Q&A with all of the guests so I guess it was just a time management issue. After that the service numbers started and we were allowed to stand while cheering and I was at first literally the ONLY ONE who was standing XD after a while some girls behind me stood up, probably cause they couldn't see anything from behind me. The staff where just holding these signs saying that's okay to stand but everyone just ignored them. Kinda rude lol It was only when Moonlight Densetsu started when more people started standing and there were 6 songs in the service numbers so yeah. Also there was no curtain call rip

[abnerkrill]

And with my last film watched, it’s Venice roundup time babey! may contain mild spoilers but I keep it vague. from worst to best! featuring a somewhat arbitrary rating scale because the big screen festival ambience obliterates my objectivity.

[please note that I did not attend blonde, the son, or white noise so I have no opinions on those.]

I give 1.5 stars to CHIARA, an Italian biopic about St. Clare of Assisi. There are fragments of a great film in here and some surprisingly hella cool musical sequences, but also some laughably bad shots and cringe-fail dialog. I mostly felt disrespected by its approach to history: why oh why are we turning 13th century saints into girlbosses?

I give 2 stars to the short HOUSE COMES WITH A BIRD, which is oh so beautiful but extremely dumb. Feels like an advertisement—and that’s because it is! Made for Miu Miu. I am begging Pedro Pascal to let me choose his projects for him from now on.

I give 2.25 stars to DON’T WORRY DARLING. Florence Pugh, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, Kiki Layne, costumes, production, cinematography, and score are top-notch. However, Pine, Chan, and Layne are hilariously underutilized. The script sucks ass and the sci-fi twist is so riddled with plot holes it instantly sinks. And Harry Styles is bad in this, folks. Get that man an acting coach—or far away from film sets.

I give 2.5 stars to MONICA, a family drama about a trans woman who returns home to care for her ailing mother. Gorgeously shot with a star turn from Trace Lysette, but frustratingly empty, slow, and ultimately somewhat hollow.

I give 2.85 stars to POUR LA FRANCE, a family drama about immigrant identity, patriotism, and regret. The weakest of the “Sad French films about brotherhood” trilogy from Venice (also including ATHENA and LES MIENS.) Felt like it could’ve used some restraint and cutting—it lags and continues where it ought to pull back and stop.

I give 3 stars to LETTER TO MY MOTHER FOR MY SON, another short I thought was touching but leans too advertisement-esque at times. If Miu Miu et al insist on funding films (good) they could at least refrain from having all their films double as branding exercises (bad.)

I give 3.5 stars to DEAD FOR A DOLLAR, a fun Western that literally made me go 🤔 in the theater when Rachel Brosnahan’s character refers to a Black man as a “man of color.” Like, what? This isn’t the 21st century, babes. Waltz and Dafoe seem a little confounded at times, torn between playing this as a Fun Cowboy Yarn or a Serious Morality Tale. Also, the color grading is way too fucking orange. Take it easy on the Instagram filters, I am begging you.

I give 3.75 stars to KHERS NIST (NO BEARS), a relatively short and sweet punch in the face about the hubris of filmmaking. It does what it does very well, but I couldn’t help but feel like its own layers of artifice hinder it from full effectiveness.

I give 3.85 stars to THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, which maybe deserves a higher objective score but which I simply do not vibe with. I just wanted to shake the characters and tell them to get over themselves :( It’s such a beautiful film though, and these actors do not miss. I’m in love with Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. Also, slight criticism over the shooting of the violin playing: Gleeson clearly can play, but not all the shots line up, which is just such an easy fix and so frustrating to musicians in the audience.

I give 3.9 stars to BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS, the tantalizingly divisive surrealist film from Iñárritu that will spark delicious Film Twitter Discourse for months to come. There are episodes in this long, winding tale that made me weep, and there are some that made me cringe in horror, and some that made me go :o dang I didn’t know he was allowed to go there. The long-awaited final scenes of this 3-hour film reward your patience, if you allow it to unfold in its own time. An epic, and a weird one. If you can stomach it, it will amaze.

I give 4 stars to TÁR, thee Cate Blanchett film that will surely get her an Oscar nom. Someone on Twitter called it “more of a full-body possession than a performance” and honestly that description kinda slaps so I’ll repeat it here. I’m really glad this film pulls no punches but I also cringe to think about the ways it’ll be misinterpreted. My complaints are limited to how Lydia Tár acts as a symphony orchestra conductor, with so many dick moves that surely the orchestra members would’ve revolted by now. Final note: I’m so glad we have representation for women who are shitty husbands :’)

I give 4.1 stars to L’IMMENSITÁ, a film that ostensibly stars Penélope Cruz but is actually about her trans son Andrew played so, so well by Luana Giuliani. The bittersweet coming-of-age scenes strike true and the musical sequences are transcendent. Prepare the tissues.

I give 4.1 stars to LES MIENS (OUR TIES), the next-best sad French film about brotherhood. This is a stellar family drama, at times hopeful and gently tragic, but always tender. Wonderful film—could’ve easily turned tacky and overly sentimental, but balances it all well.

I give 4.2 stars to THE WHALE, the film I thought I’d hate but reluctantly love! The fatsuit is problematic and there are indeed elements of framing his eating disorder as something horrific or grotesque, but overall the film treats Charlie (Fraser) with compassion and dignity, and he’s a well-written, fully-realized character. The real standouts are Sadie Sink as his daughter and Hong Chau as his friend and caregiver. They are both so incredibly good that I already weep at the fact that they can’t both win best supporting actress at every awards show ever. Also deals with religious trauma surprisingly well—a huge surprise considering I usually dislike Aronofsky.

I give 4.3 stars to BLUE JEAN, which I thought was another short with the Miu Miu project until it actually played and it��s a full-on feature 😭 This is the lesbian movie I really wish I’d had earlier in my personal journey. It’s open and raw, but insists on compassion when considering the perceived failures of closeted or non-activist queer people in the 80s. This film was made by queer women and it shows. Watch it!

I give 4.3 stars to MASTER GARDENER, an imperfect film I will gleefully defend. Hit me up if you hate it—most people do! I repeat as always that Paul Schrader is really just making different versions of the same film over and over again, so if you don’t like Schrader you won’t like this, but if you do like Schrader you’ll like this. Thorny, stilted, gloriously particular, this is Paul Schrader at peak Paul Schrader. I have never been so in love with Joel Edgerton, and Quintessa Swindell is my personal breakout star of Venice.

I give 4.4 stars to SAINT OMER, the French feminist take on Medea that I loved so very much. You can tell that director Alice Diop is a documentary filmmaker because it often feels documentary-like, which is absolutely a strength here. Quiet and gripping, a must-see for the classics intertextuality girlies.

I give 4.5 stars to BONES AND ALL. I love this film to bits and I sense it will affect my thinking and my storytelling impulses for a long, long time. A road trip, a coming-of-age film, a gory cannibalism film, an indictment, a poem, a love letter. Might have turned me into a real Timothee Chalamet fan when I was always somewhat neutral about him before. Taylor Russell is magnificent. This films says to love and be loved is to feed and be fed, and IT’S RIGHT.

Finally, I give a whopping 5 stars to ATHENA, which someone on Twitter called “Mad Max on the streets of Paris,” if that gives you a sense of the vibe. This is the film of the fucking year and believe you me they’re going to name some other film Best Picture at the awards shows but they will be wrong, I say. THEY WILL ALL BE WRONG. I am begging you to watch it on the biggest screen possible; it also releases on Netflix later this year. Breathtakingly original, vibrant, dynamic, violent filmmaking at its finest. We will all soon be in love with Sami Slimane’s Karim—especially Enjolras girls, calling it now. It’s the revolutionary leader vibes which honestly is all I ever wanted. It’s the love and tragedy and grief and brotherhood of it all. In conclusion:

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, now go set an alert for ATHENA’s release date and do come bother me with ultra-specific questions about any and all films.

[rpgmgames]

February’s Featured Game: Ressurflection

DEVELOPER(S): charlottezxz ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Fantasy, Cartoon, RPG WARNINGS: Paranoia, fear and tension, mild swearing and blood. SUMMARY: Ressurflection is a Fantasy/cartoon RPG set in the fictional universe of the Arbvar and taking center stage primarily at the coastal city of ‘Horizon Bluff’. Its story and game play are heavily character driven, with its narrative divided into two parallels told both within and outside the mirror itself. Ressurflection’s core themes draw from our inevitability of fearing death, and that at some point or another, we all must accept it, and to treasure what’s really important in the time that we have.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *charlottezxz: Hiya this is Charlotte, lead game developer for Ressurflection! I’m some silly, overactive drawing monkey who works a lot with Narrow on Ressurflection! I’m always sketching and conceptualizing monster bois, taking a lot of inspiration from various games, primarily monster hunter! I’ve had avid interest in the Indie scene for a while now and a lot of the great friends I've made have been due to it and a lot of my recent favorite games have come from it! I would have had Narrow say a few things here but he’s hiding in a corner somewhere!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *charlottezxz: Ressurflection started out as what can be described as two separate stories. Myself and Narrow wrote our own stories and every so often we swapped over ideas or combined them together with each other. One day I said to ourselves ‘You know what? This could work quite well as a game rather than just a story’ so eventually Ressurflection was conceived, around the idea of a mythical mirror capable ‘Ressurflection’ the title of the game. We’ve gone through quite a few iterations of the story before it came to its current form and to be honest if we even showed or compared them side by side they’d be pretty unrecognizable as the same thing except for certain characters, locations and the mirror itself to identify its primordial form having any kind of ancestral relevance to how it is today. As for what Ressurflection is about, I think our synopsis can get that across quite nicely! ‘Horizon Bluff has always annually held its ‘Legend of the Wyvern Glass’ festivities. The Wyvern glass was a long lost mythical mirror, once fabled for its power of ‘Ressurflection’ and coveted by a kingdom now all but gone. That is quick to change however with the arrival of the Roulette Runner’s circus to the coastal city of Horizon Bluff. Trouble is soon to set in motion not just the kingdom’s sudden reappearance but the entrapment of one of their own acrobats within the mirror silver. Yet things are soon to worsen...with the spread of a purple ‘corruption’ across the city and the fact that our most unfortunate trouper is far from alone within the mirror, finding himself at the mercy of its ‘Mirror Maiden’. > The apparent all powerful manipulator of its realm…’

How long have you been working on your project? *charlottezxz: Conceptually we have been working on it for 4 years which is hard to even fathom, however that’s more tinkering around the idea for the story and conceiving it as we learnt the engine. The blog itself is hitting its 4th birthday in February! Ressuflection’s development went on as i attended university, so its always been a side lined hobby of ours.Steam says 108 days worth of hours in the engine and most of the game progress other than concepts has been done in 2019. So I could say 4 years for the ideas/stories and concepts and a year of that for actual game making!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *charlottezxz: We each have our own inspirations, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy 9, Xenoblade Chronicles, Monster hunter and many older PSX titles such as Medievil, Tomba and Heart of darkness are great influences and inspirations to me personally. The dark, dangerous environments of Heart of darkness contrasted by some innocent characters, the monster designs in capcom’s franchise and the storytelling and themes with a cinematic approach to cut scenes found in some of FF9, Xenoblade and Lost odyssey, a lost game stuck in the recess of the xbox 360. There are many more but these spring to mind first and foremost. Narrow himself draws inspiration from games such as Earthbound, the Persona series and FF10!

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *charlottezxz: We started the project in VX ace to begin with, until MV released. It was in Ace that I experimented learning RPG maker and in the early days of MV too. Although before Ressurflection’s time i also dabbled a bit in XP. MV seemed more in line for what we wanted, as i really wanted to try animating beyond SV sheets and do more, with Java being a bit more flexible and the scope of it being able to allow dragon bones later. However it hasn’t been without its hiccups! Part of that is the sheer amount of time you underestimate games and certain elements to take in their development. That and everything that comes with it, streamlining, trimming the fat...in the past week alone i spent days optimizing pictures, sounds and music in the game to cut down the staggering file sizes they were. So far they have retained their form without being as costly on the MB! Since I do the vast majority of the game development myself, everything takes a lot longer to develop. You underestimate all the little things to consider and that you may need later. By the end of development, I hope to have the vast majority of the game consist of custom assets and be able to truly call it something that is ours. Though that path is long ahead we won’t stray too far from it.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *charlottezxz: The game itself has always been a story-driven RPG at its heart, although certain game mechanics have been scaled down or developed further from puzzles to battle flow. As mentioned previously, the story has changed considerably which changed the direction of the overall narrative and gameplay as a whole. Certain characters and scenarios have been culled completely too. At its start the story wasn’t as heartfelt nor was the scope of the story all that big - Oh and the game had a time limit, a bit like Majora’s Mask! But it is a lot more meaningful now and we hope that you will enjoy it when the time comes.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *charlottezxz: It has been just myself and Narrow for the majority of the development but we reached a point where we wanted to reach out to find a musician for our game. We eventually came across Geoff who has done the majority of our music up until recently. However we have had friends help and contribute along the way such as Harry helping sprite some NPCs for me, Bart helping formulate and do some math balancing, Vaijack has also contributed to music making him our second musical boi and more on the way, our preliminary demo testers( it would take a little to list them all) and more peeps i’ll be sure to credit!

What is the best part of developing a game? *charlottezxz: For me it has to be conceptualising all the little ideas we have and bringing them all into being. This is especially so for any monster and character bois! I spend a lot of time visualizing and planning the design of areas, locales and creatures. Would this thing live here? Why would it be this way? If this is a historical town wouldn’t it have x and x? Then when we ultimately put it together, and all the pieces of the puzzle line into place and then you can just...experience, the final thing, that for me is the best part in developing our game for me.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *charlottezxz: I learn best by doing, so more often than not I just dive into things, including the engine blind and tussle around with it. It’s a silly way of doing it, but I've often found myself learning more that way than following tutorials. Although in any game I've played, RPG maker or not, i do like to ponder and deconstruct scenes within them. The Witch's house, Pocket Mirror, Dreaming Mary, Mad fathers and Ib are all wonderful games that are great to learn from, dissect and understand what makes and made them tick. This applies across any game I've played or intend to play! I look at game making as one giant puzzle with lots of intricate little details that need to be solved, it’s more fun and engaging that way!

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *charlottezxz: There’s some characters I like a great deal, but i can’t talk about as it would be spoilers to the plot, that and it’s hard to pick any overall favorites. Charm comes across as a fun character to write for as she’s quite witty and sarcastic, the kind of dialogue that comes a bit too naturally to me. She’s a budding magical prodigy of the circus under the tutelage of Jerine. She bigs herself up a lot but isn’t quite ready to deal with the problems of the adult world just yet, as much as she strives to get into it. Then there’s the likes of Ashley as well, she’s the loudest circus member and a close friend to Zakai, its ringmaster. She’s a super hard working down to earth country girl who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and jump into the thick of things. Honestly I love all the cast, but there’s those two for now!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *charlottezxz: I would say ideally we should have had all our ducks in a row before we dove into development. My development style is very messy, especially since when we started development we had a lot of learning ahead of us. That combined with focusing on a lot of coursework and real life things meant I often forgot how we made things for consistency. This has improved considerably since i started getting more organised now, keeping lists and things tabbed for reference. My desk has bits of paper kept with it with information I need to retain. I forget far too many things for my own good, but now I'm taking better count measures! I would advise anyone to keep tabs of important information about your game such as consistent sprite style sizes, resolution size, x and y positions of certain things and important variables and switches.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *charlottezxz: There’s a few ideas bounced about to do side stories for some of the cast of characters in the circus, such as before they became one and the origins of how certain members joined the circus essentially the ‘First Stringers’ and ‘Second stringers’, these being those that joined afterwards. These would be great to do as small little episodes added onto the game post development, but currently they are just ideas and won’t be given too much thought until the game is either done or close to fruition.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *charlottezxz: My most hopeful thought is for people to enjoy the game and have as much fun and interest in it as myself and Narrow have had in creating it. It’s the kind of game we want to make and hope that the characters and story chime with people enough for people to see the journey through to its end! It’s a big scope of a project but i have endless enthusiasm for it, no matter how long it takes it will get out there at some point!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *charlottezxz: That the games story and overall feel doesn’t quite hit the right notes, it's always a little back concern. From a technical perspective I would say that the game might have some oversighted bugs or critical crashes that slip under the radar or not run as smoothly on other PCs on release. We will do our best to optimise the game as much as possible for MV and squash those pesky bugs during testing, but it is on our minds often as a niggling fear.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *charlottezxz: Gut everything from the base project that you know you most definitely will not be needing and give all your files smart tags and naming conventions. It would be great if MV allowed for sub folders, but it does not so naming your files smartly is key to finding what you need. Any of these files you know you will use often in certain ways, make them common events and call for those in events and cut scenes. This saves you mass editing them later. With naming conventions this could be Actor_1_Hurt or Chapter_1_NPC. Anything you want at the top of the list name it with _ to begin with. The bigger our project gets, the more important this has become for us and we hope it serves other inspiring devs well all the same.

Question from last month's featured dev @rojisroomrpg: How do you keep yourself happy and healthy when making your game? *charlottezxz: I’m normally a happy-go-lucky person, so I'm rarely not happy when working on Ressurflection. It's the happy little hobby I devote most of my spare time to. However, recently i would say my hands, wrists and neck have been hurting from spending a little too much time drawing assets and pieces for the game. Taking more breaks and spreading that time with other activities in between has helped to ease that pain and i would like to advise any dev to do so for their own health, including always having one or two bottles of juice, water or whatever beverage always at hand to sip at as you dev away!

We mods would like to thank charlottezxz for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Ressurflection if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[armsdealing]

Smoke runs three Youtube channels with different types of content each:

SmokingScreen: a collaboration with fellow youtubers and filmmaking enthusiasts Jade Alexander and Deangelo Wright, SmokingScreen is a film and TV show review channel known for it’s in-depth analysis of popular and indie films, not just in terms of plotline and characters but in terms of filmmaking (cinematography, music, design, behind th e scenes material), in order to better understand the themes and intentions behind each film they choose to review. On top of that, they go out of their way to travel to various film festivals throughout the year, handpicking their favorites and making recommendation lists and spoiler-free videos to bring attention to them before their public release. Started in 2012, the longrunning channel boasts 5 million followers and it’s one of the more well-known review channels in the platform. It has over two thousand videos and it has reviewed over 2,7k films (and a hundred or so TV shows). Though all three contribute to the review writing process, the channel is normally hosted and voiced by Deangelo and Jade, with Smoke writing and researching, and ocasionally appearing on screen (though mostly preferring to stay behind the scenes), and Jade cutting and editing the material as well as general upkeep of the channel. They also run a website with written versions of their reviews, recommendation lists, and polls, and run a biweekly two hour podcast (since mid 2018; previous to that it used to only for the awards season) where they talk about movies they haven’t gotten a chance to make videos about. The channel itself posts a new video three times a week in a mon-wed-fri schedule. 

The festivals they visit (or have visited in the past) include: Sundance, Slamdance, TIFF, the LA Film Festival, the Pan African Film Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival, the NY Film Festival, and the Tribeca Film Festival. They hope to add Cannes and Venice to the list soon. 

Art of The Film: a more lowkey, low profile, channel that sprouted from SmokingScreen in 2017, it’s ran entirely by Smoke (who goes simply by Theo, and never shows his face) and it’s where he analyses various famous films from the direction and screen writing angles, in order to discuss the visual storytelling techniques used. In contrast with the higher energy SmokingScreen, AOTF is more laidback in narration and pace, and it’s updated once every two weeks. A good real life equivalent is LFTS, but you didn’t hear that from me. 

Smoke Carter: Smoke’s personal channel for actual projects and efforts, it features many of his short films and BTS materials from things he has directed, including music videos for local music artists and performers and alternate reality games he’s worked with. Also includes, of course, known pieces of his like his well-beloved absurdist comedy and 7-episode miniseries keeping score (that ran from 2013 to 2016) and his New York subcultures/countercultures documentary series The Sleepless Chronicle.

[butdidyousee]

Title: “The Christmas Chronicles” (2018)

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Staring: Kurt Russell, Darby Camp, Judah Lewis

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Directed by: Clay Kaytis

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Run Time: 104 Mins

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Opening weekend numbers: 20 million streams, equivalent to $200 million(Netflix)

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Screen it, Stream it or Skip it: Stream it.(duh)

——————————

Kate and Teddy are brother and sister who have always enjoyed Christmas with family. After their dad passes away, Teddy’s love of Christmas and belief started to fade with him, But after a chance encounter with Santa clause(while trying to catch him) on Christmas Eve. The kids got more then they bargained for. After breaking his sleight and loosing Santa’s reindeer, it’s now up to the kids and Santa to restore everything back to order before Christmas comes or else chaos and spirit will leave the world causing/ creating dismay.

Fantastic Festive Family fun, is the best way I can describe this beautifully shot and directed movie. I truly believe this is going to go down as a classic and age very well for years to come. I give this movie a 3.6👍🏻 out of 5.

Kurt Russell does an immense job of playing one of the best iteration’s of Santa I have yet to see. Darby Camp is one of those kid actresses who you will see for years to come(if her star doesn’t burn to bright and burn up). She is just adorable enough and plays the role to truly feel like she means every word she’s uttering.

The film is a super easy watch and is fun for kids and adults alike. There are quite a few Easter eggs to keep adults entertained and the story holds tight, without taking itself to serious.

I did find myself wondering if this movie could have been better shot in 3D, particularly the scenes involving the reindeer and the elves. These Were colorful enough and sleek enough to merit the effects.

This film comes off as a hallmark film to start and then ends up being one like a Disney channel original movie with a much better budget. The story is well written and very entertaining in a simple way. In my opinion this is perfect for holiday movies mainly because I don’t think you need piles of fluff when it comes to Christmas movies, mainly for the fact that the setting of Christmas itself already plays a huge role in surroundings. I also enjoyed the (spoiler alert) great musical number. The length of the film felt perfect and wasn’t to time consuming or heavy. I also suggest watching this movie while decorating or maybe wrapping presents. It truly sets the mood around the house.

The music was also wonderfully curated, besides the musical number by Santa and the inmates. But, I did hear some reused score from what I thought was a few songs from “Frozen”(2013). After doing a bit of research, I found out that music was reused from the movie “The Polar Express”(2004) at least in 2 separate scenes.

I didn’t have to many qualms with the film. I didn’t feel like it was some sort of master piece, but I did enjoy it over all.

The ending brought a tear to my eye and was a great little wrap up to this beautiful story. Also, the surprising reveal of Mrs.Clause had me smiling from ear to ear. If Netflix keeps this pace up, I can see a lot of the original content truly surpassing what the studios are creating and giving people a reason to stay home.

Don’t forget that insta cuts my posts down, so please follow the link in the bio to see my full review of The Christmas Chronicles.✌🏻

[brennanreviews]

Review: The Christmas Chronicles (2018)

Rating: 4/5 magical Santa hats

In Short: The Christmas Chronicles is actually a lot of fun. I went into it expecting something more like a hokey Hallmark Christmas special, but if you have any inclination to fun, classic, 90s holiday movies such as Home Alone, then this is worth your time. 

Full review after the jump.

Meta

Release: November 22, 2018 via Netflix Runtime: 1h, 44m Director: Clay Kaytis Producers: Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan, Mark Radcliffe Screenplay: Matt Lieberman Starring: Kurt Russell as Santa Claus, Judah Lewis as Teddy Pierce, Darby Camp as Kate Pierce

Resources

Trailer Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes: Critics 65% (Fresh), Audience 88% (Liked it) IMDb: 7.5/10 Metacritic: 52 (all scores as of this writing: AM, 25 Nov. 2018)

The Good

The story isn’t complicated and it doesn’t have to be: After the disastrous crash of his sleigh, Santa lays out in plain and simple terms for our protagonists what needs to happen in order to get Christmas back on track. This makes it accessible for everyone: The stakes are high, yet simple, and we have lots of fun along the way. Chronicles is predictable at times, but that’s part of its charm in this style.

We see a lot of the Elves in the trailer, and while their reveal in the film kind of feels like a monster-movie reveal, they lend a lot of fun and support right when both Santa and Chronicles needs it most. They are pretty and believable, and I can easily see Netflix taking these elves and making a limited-run festive series for kids out of them. They do look a little Gremlin-ish, however.

Kurt Russell is an excellent St. Nick. The gruff, no-BS style is refreshing, but he’s also still full of the love and Christmas spirit we expect from the Jolly Elf.

The Bad

[Spoilers in this bullet] Clichés are not inherently a bad thing, and we certainly get a lot of them in Chronicles, but Santa gets arrested in the middle of this film and is rescued by his elves and it’s all very The Santa Clause; if it’s an homage, it’s very heavy-handed. I get that this is the logical way to get Santa out of the way to give the kids (Lewis and Camp, both not bad) some room to grow and problem-solve together, but the film would have benefited from a fresh take. Santa’s blues jam in the jailhouse was a highlight for me, however.

If you’re going for that 90s Christmas style (and it’s clear that they are, here), the music is critical. It needs to be thematic, playful, simple, and memorable, and while I’m not sure it’s reasonable to ask for John Williams (Home Alone) on a project like this, Christophe Beck’s score doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Santa has some fun tech in this that I would have liked to see explored a little more. I’m a big nerd, however, so maybe that’s just me. 

The Loose Ends

[Spoilers in this bullet] A lot is made of Santa’s missing magical hat but at the end of the film it didn’t matter anyway? Did I miss something, here? This felt very much like the ending of Thor: Ragnarok when Thor figures out he can lightning without Mjölnir (but without the character development to get there). Or is it more like “That’s my secret, Cap: I’m always angry.”? Did I mention I’m a huge nerd?

Chronicles has some fun with the Santa Claus mythology, in both good and questionable ways. Wormholes? Good! Santa running around Chicago out in the open getting exposed to dozens of people? Questionable. Also, why does Santa need a magical toy sack if he can just make whatever gifts he needs to appear out of thin air?

All Things Considered

At the risk of sounding cliché: The Christmas Chronicles is a fun, fast holiday adventure for the whole family. An excellent Santa in Kurt Russell is held up by a strong supporting cast of both small humans and animated creatures. Chronicles is a modern tribute to 90s holiday classics and while it’s not without its inconsistencies and problems, it’s certainly worth enjoying with your family alongside a cup of hot cocoa this holiday season. Just be sure everyone’s wearing Aunt Peggy’s ugly Christmas sweaters. 

4 magical Santa hats out of 5.

[aion-rsa]

No Time to Die Trailer Teases Bond’s Struggles in a Changing World

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James Bond has spent nearly sixty years on the big screen consistently overcoming elaborate, seemingly-insurmountable attempts on his life from an assorted array of ostentatiously megalomaniacal madmen. However, pandemic-era delays clearly have his number, having forced No Time to Die, the franchise’s long-heralded 25th official film, into over a year’s worth of release date retreats, now leaving it to finally face the music in October. Interestingly, the film’s new trailer seems to thematically parallel its potential box office plight, since our out-of-retirement MI6 agent seems perplexed against an unseen, intangibly-operating global threat.

Daniel Craig’s long-heralded curtain call in the Bond franchise seems ever-imminent with the opening moments of the latest No Time to Die trailer, which retrospectively recalls Agent 007’s earliest moments with a freshly-issued license to kill in 2006’s Casino Royale before quickly chronicling the events of the three subsequent sequels, notably the ominous line from 2015’s Spectre, in which Christoph Waltz’s evil mastermind, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, said Bond was merely “a kite dancing in the wind.” Likewise, the trailer-showcased return of an incarcerated Blofeld feels equally ominous, since he further implies that Bond’s love, Madeleine Swan (Léa Seydoux), has a secret that will prove to be “the death of you.”

With that set, check out the brand-new trailer for No Time to Die just below.

Perhaps summarizing Bond’s status in the film, Ralph Fiennes’s returning M provides a rather inauspicious briefing to the aging, freshly-reinstated MI6 agent, stating, “We used to be able to get into a room with the enemy. And now, they’re just floating in the ether.” Indeed, the film seems to lean into the notion of Bond’s increasing helplessness in the face of an unseen ubiquitous threat; a threat personified in this film by Rami Malek’s main villain, Lyutsifer Safin, an eccentric, facially-scarred scourge who brings unprecedented intelligence and an unconventional skill set to the table for this cinematic spectacle. Additionally, Safin seems to see himself through an oddly-heroic lens, through which he somehow draws direct personal parallels to Bond—apparently even when it comes to his amorous feelings for the potentially-dubious Madeleine.

However, the trailer also seems to convey the idea of Bond being an Austin Powers-esque agent frozen in time—a notion that arguably mirrors evolving cultural attitudes. This will apparently be conveyed not by his enemies, but by his newest ally, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), one of MI6’s newly-minted “00” agents, who happened to inherit the 007 designation of the retired Bond. Consequently, what stands to be the central relationship complementing the film’s action dynamic will focus on the recently un-retired Bond’s interactions with the agency’s new hotness, potentially setting up a generational struggle—even if Lynch, currently at 33, is only two years younger than Seydoux, who plays the onscreen love interest of the now-53-year-old Bond actor. Yet, the trailer also seems to tease an overall watershed moment, almost akin to the way GoldenEye felt upon its 1995 arrival, in which Pierce Brosnan’s debuting version of 007 initially seemed out of place in a post-Cold-War world.

Read more

Movies

No Time to Die Festival Premiere Confirms James Bond Is Not Moving Release Date

By David Crow

Movies

Casino Royale and GoldenEye Director on What’s Next for James Bond

By Don Kaye

Nevertheless, despite No Time to Die being finished for the better part of two years now, studio MGM, director Cary Joji Fukunaga, along with star Daniel Craig and the rest of the cast have managed to keep a lid on spoilers. Indeed, the film was first slotted for a February 2020 release date; one that, upon the arrival and surge of the pandemic, would get kicked back several times in increasingly-longer intervals. The false starts have been frequent, even manifesting with last year’s premature dropping of the film’s Billie Eilish-performed theme song. However, the studio and its distributing partners have exhausted its options past the point in which it would be financially feasible to continue delaying the release.

Thusly, as the new trailer confirms, the film is forced to stick to its latest October domestic date. It’s not far removed from the current Delta-variant-attributed anemia of the box office, which, tellingly, was topped this past weekend by the Candyman reboot’s meager $22 million haul. Indeed, we are at a point in which last year’s once-scoffed-at $363.6 million box office haul of Tenet has since become an ignominiously aspirational benchmark for much bigger movies.

The pandemic-era predicament is one that even continues to affect the mighty, money-printing Marvel Cinematic Universe. Having now eschewed the day-and-date premium streaming strategy of Black Widow, the Disney subsidiary will premiere the hyped tentpole title, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, this Friday, Sept. 3, for what would normally be a booming Labor Day weekend—a release that now almost feels like a walk down the proverbial Green Mile. However, it might not be wise to discount the built-in fanbase of the James Bond franchise, which maintains a remarkable staying power that not only crosses generations, but even transcends the typically segmented genre interests of audiences. Consequently, No Time to Die has as much of a chance as any blockbuster to break box office ennui and, in the very least, take its place as the year’s top hit.  

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It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of business No Time to Die drums up at the box office when it hits U.S. theaters on Oct. 8.

The post No Time to Die Trailer Teases Bond’s Struggles in a Changing World appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[everyrubicon]

It’s Yuletide!

I’m here!

Dear Yuletide Author,

First, thank you so much for writing for one of these fandoms!!! I'm really psyched about Yuletide. I'm going to enjoy what you write. So, know that.

Apparently my style is to throw everything up here and let you decide if you want to use any of it. Fandom-specific behind the cut.

story stuff I like: found family/team as family, competence porn, family dinners, undercover as lovers, there's only one bed!, training, first times (of anything), discovery, adventure, romance, journeys (emotional and physical),  vulnerability, talking through their shit, women being awesome, AUs, crossovers and fusions, gen fic, slice of life, learning to work together, missing scenes., case fic, world building, rituals/traditions, powers/abilities explored, time travel/loops, academia, folklore, they're in space!, take your fandom to work day, hygge, game night, five times

random stuff I will always love: flying (space, super powered, airplane, all of it), horses, knives, swords, swimming, libraries, sheets, that feeling of coming back home after a long day/trip, road trips, banter, laughter, concerts/live music, movie nights, old marked-up maps, , people who answer the phone without saying hello they just leap into the conversation or answer the question they know the person calling is going to ask, cellos, books, notebooks, brownies, sunsets, bonfires, that part of the morning where everything's still and it's not light out but it's not still night and the birds aren't even up yet, rain on the roof, leather, the smell of a bookstore

sexy times, should you want to include them: f/f, m/f, threesomes (+), orgasm delay, semi-public sex, enthusiastic consent, poly are all a green light

crossover/fusion fandoms: MCU, Legends of Tomorrow, Killjoys, Agents of Shield, Wynonna Earp, Farscape, X-Men, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, anything else it looks like I post a lot about.

stuff on the no list: rape, abuse, non-canon permanent character deaths, a/b/o, mpreg, watersports/feces, age play, bleak endings/hopelessness, betrayal, longstanding lies

squicks: pregnancy, infidelity, homophobia, hate in general, calling each other mommy/daddy, betrayal [If you, my sweet summer child, are now wondering what the hell a squick is, it's the kind of thing that, when you see it in the tags, you just keep scrolling past, or hit the back button, even if it's your OTP. You're not triggered, but you're not really into hearing it, thanks anyway.]

The fandoms:

Motherland Fort Salem: I love the world building here, but also the relationships between all these women. you don't have to include every nominated character, and feel free to bring others in-- I ran out of slots.   The request's words stand, but if you're looking for a little more... I'm hella curious about Anacostia. What's it like growing up an orphan in a military school? Did she hate that she had to enlist? Could she not wait? What does she do now that following orders got her cadet killed? Is that why she freed Scylla. And speaking of: did she skulk by the house Scylla went to so that she could check it out, or to join, or to just know where the hell the girl went/see if she was safe? Did Scylla know she was followed?

The Gifted: this family is so good for each other. If you wanna include Lorna, that's awesome, if you would like to keep her out of this, that's also awesome. I really enjoyed seeing how these three (and with Lorna, pre-Clarice) leaned on each other in turn, they kept each other going. I'm totally down if you want this to be a John/Clarice/Marcos deal, too. I think Marcos could have used a little more love in season 2, the boy was *stressed.*  

Maybe they've gotta move again? So road trip with the three of them in the car/hotel/side of the road while John goes to get gas he didn't think they'd run out of quite so soon. Training is always good, so maybe they try new power tricks together?

The way Clarice kept John grounded, focused, on the here and now instead of the responsibility and weight of the mission when he got stressed was something I really liked about their relationship.

Marcos and John have been together for a *while,* but they can be very different. One of my favorite exchanges between them happens when Marcos is pining and fretting over Lorna and the baby, and John says hope's a powerful thing, he just has to keep holding onto it. And then Marcos looks up at him and says hope is what's been killing him.

Chronicles of Elantra: I started reading this series back when it started, and then somehow took a break, but this year I caught back up. Now I'm only three behind--the last I read was Cast in Flight. So if you could please avoid spoilers for those last few, I'd appreciate it.

Okay, I totally missed nominations, which means I missed a chance to nominate characters. If you wanna stick with just Bellusdeo, that's not a problem. I like all of them. Teela, Anarion, and Mandoran, with Bellusdeo and Helen rounding out the home squad are my favs. Kaylin and Severn, too-- and him, not Nightshade, for the record. What's it like there on non-world in peril again time? Does Moran ever crash there now? What's Helen like with everybody?  In the books, we only really get Kaylin's pov, so it'd be interesting to see the same place or thing or story through someone else's.  

it's the weirdos and outcasts coming together that I love.

The Old Guard: I really love the side by side ass-kicking duo of Nile and Andy, they've got their shit handled. Or, the fighting shit, at least. I really love how tired Andy is of the world. If anything resonated with me in 2020, it was that. Her yelling at Booker to not leave her alone and living was *painful.* I like to think finding Nile put a little more interest back in Andy.

I have a deep fondness for them using their not-dying to thwart people--the car crash, the far too long fall, the plane in the movie. Yes, I'm a-okay with you using the movie cannon. They're not all that different (yet, just started the second arc), honestly, and I think the actors were prettier than the drawings, so that's who I see in my head.

Nile's whole art history interest is fantastic, too. And you know it wasn't just Rodin Andy knew. But how many "historical figures" did they run into? What have they seen? What do they still want to see? What do they all want to show Nile? (I'm feeling very 5 things about that, and if you are, too, run with it!) What human festival things do they check out? Burning Man? Oktoberfest? Pride? ...have they stood guard ove

I know this is really long, but please remember optional details are optional--if none of this helps, ignore it! I can't wait to read what you write, either way.

[anneapocalypse]

On Sister’s Age

or, Why Kaikaina Grif is most likely an adult.

Spoilers for season 15.

There’s a joke Kaikaina makes upon her first appearance in Blood Gulch in season 5 that has led some fans to believe that she must be under 18. I’m not going to tell anyone they can’t have headcanons that play fast and loose with canon (though this particular read does affect other parts of canon, but I’m not going to get into that here), and I’m not here to tell anyone they have to interpret canon the way I do. I do, however, want to look at what the canon actually says, and what reasonable interpretation can be drawn from it.

This is a Watsonian analysis, meaning I am extrapolating purely from in-universe textual evidence, not from authorial intent or “Word of God” statements.

Here’s the actual dialogue in question from season 5, Blood Gulch Chronicles episode 81:

Sarge: Alright missy, there's just one thing I don't get. How'd you join the Army? Kaikaina: What do you mean? I just signed up. Sarge: But you're a... you know, you you got lady parts. Kaikaina: So? Sarge: So unless this is the cooking and sewing Army-- Kaikaina: No, I meant to join the real Army. Sarge: Does your gun shoot brownies? Kaikaina: What? Simmons: You'll have to excuse Sarge. He comes from the old school. Kaikaina: [Aside to Simmons] Thanks. By the way, nobody says "old school" any more. [To Sarge] Actually, they told me I was too young. So I grabbed an extra suit of armor, and boosted a shuttle! Grif: Glad you learned something from me. Kaikaina: Nah, I'm just kidding! I always wanted to do something like that.

I’m including this whole segment for a reason. Let’s take a look at what happens here. Sarge expresses befuddlement at Kaikaina’s admission into the military, to which Kai first responds, “What do you mean? I just signed up,” expressing confusion as to why she wouldn’t be allowed in the Army.

It’s worth noting that Kai’s joke about boosting a shuttle comes after Simmons tells her to excuse Sarge, at which point she responds to Simmons with a wry aside--then turns back to Sarge and makes a joke about being ineligible to join the Army in another way.

The salient point is that she says, very clearly, that she’s joking. “I’m just kidding! I always wanted to do something like that,” that meaning boosting a shuttle. So she definitely did not actually boost a shuttle, meaning she presumably gained legitimate passage aboard a military transport (which is what a Pelican is--they aren’t civilian transports, they’re tactical dropships). 

Further evidence that Kaikaina is legally enlisted in the UNSC comes in the next episode:

Kaikaina: The cool thing is that I was lucky enough to get sent here! They said your Commander died, and I needed to replace the missing man.

It simply doesn’t make sense to take this statement at anything other than face value, because without being legitimately enlisted in the military, there’s no reason Kai would have access to that information. 

The fact that no other troops were sent to replace the late Captain Flowers further supports her statement. Caboose was deployed to Blood Gulch at the same time as Donut, suggesting he wasn’t a replacement for Flowers but a simple troop increase applied equally to both teams. (Season 15 further supports this, actually, if you accept its premise that the Blood Gulch team dynamics were modeled after an existing prototype outpost. Kaikaina does not correspond to anyone in the prototype base, and is therefore an outlier, deployed due to an unforseen circumstance--the death of Captain Flowers.)

Her enlistment is further confirmed in the season 14 episode “Why They’re Here,” when her name appears on the roster for potential reinforcements to the Blood Gulch outposts. Not only does this confirm her enlistment, it means she was already enlisted at the time the Blood Gulch outposts were being established, and probably joined the Army not long after her brother shipped out. She could’ve been going through Basic Training during the events of seasons 1-4. This suggests that we can put her age at at least 18 right at Year 0 ABG, or the timeline marker of Alpha’s arrival to Blood Gulch. By the official timeline (with the requisite grain of salt I always give book!canon), we’re now about six years out from Kaikaina’s arrive in Blood Gulch, making her at least 24 in the present day.

In conclusion: canon evidence strongly suggests that Kaikaina Grif is legally enlisted in the UNSC Armed Forces, and is therefore at least 18 years old at the time of her deployment. Her joke about being too young appears to be just that, a joke.

As a footnote: on the off chance that Kai is actually underage when she comes to Blood Gulch? Going by the canon timeline in the Fan Guide (again grain of salt, but it is the only official timeline we’ve got), even if she was as young as 16, she’s now at least 22 in the present day.

Hey, at least we know she can legally drink at her music festivals!

[aion-rsa]

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Operation New Improv Moves

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This My Hero Academia review contains spoilers.

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 5

“We’re birds of a feather.”

Battles are chaotic and it can be easy to focus on only the immediate danger within them. Survival can give the illusion of strength, but sooner or later this facade crumbles away without the right preparation. “Operation New Improv Moves” is an exciting My Hero Academia episode that presents another grueling fight between the students of Class 1-A and 1-B, but it also speaks to how essential it is to adopt a bird’s eye view perspective. This vantage point, which considers the whole situation and doesn’t get lost in the specifics, proves to be fundamental in not just battle, but also life. Hawks emphasizes this to Fumikage Tokoyami during his internship and it’s a pivotal lesson for his current clash against Class 1-B.

“Operation New Improv Moves” does primarily focus on the second battle in this Joint Training Arc, but it’s exciting that the first fight’s conclusion still has everyone abuzz. Midoriya’s brawl isn’t for a while, but he already can’t help but devise a strategy with Mineta. Mina Ashido’s Instant-Kill Floating Ball also better be the Chekhov’s Gun of this Joint Training Arc. This season has largely been fun and games so far, but it’s nice to see a fire get lit under everyone as their competitive instincts become unleashed.

Shinso and Asui were the big stars of last week’s win for Class 1-A, but they’re still frustrated over their inability to pull off a flawless victory. It’s a throwaway moment, but All Might actually dwells on it quite a bit with the other Pro Heroes. They break down why “frustration” is the perfect emotion to feel after a victory and that there are few expressions that are more representative of a hero. Shinso and Asui’s self-criticism expands into general pointers for the entire team by Shota Aizawa. 

This is a stretch of episodes that’s designed to be about combat, but it’s appreciated that the previous fight’s results are studied. The entire team learns how they can generally improve upon their performance and it opens the door for all of these characters to debut new strategies whenever they’re next in the spotlight. In contrast, Vlad pushes much more of a tough love approach on Class 1-B’s students. They receive derision and frustration more than they do encouragement and advice.

Class 1-B also exhibits some reverence towards Kirishima and other heroes for their work against the Shie Hassaikai. It’s a fleeting detail, but it helps continue to flesh out My Hero Academia’s growing world. Some of the students from Class 1-A have achieved remarkable things, even by Pro Hero standards, and so it’d be kind of ridiculous if nobody was talking about it. It also plays better that Class 1-A doesn’t get cocky from these past achievements and it’s instead their opponents that mystify them through these rumors over their past.

“Operation New Improv Moves” provides an especially exciting and eclectic mix of fighters. From Class 1-A is Tokoyami, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu, and Aoyama, all of which have extremely unique Quirks that have never fully gotten their due yet. Class 1-B pulls together just as interesting of an assortment of heroes.

Itsuka Kendo has gotten some attention before in the series, but the rest represent some of Class 1-B’s weirdest individuals, with Quirks that pull from mushrooms, comic onomatopoeia, and living darkness. Before literal darkness takes over the battlefield, there’s some metaphorical shade thrown at Yaoyorozu from Kendo over how they both “fit into the same box.” A very “there can only be one” Highlander mentality begins to fester between students, but it’s best reflected in Tokoyami and Kuroiro. 

Everyone in this fight has a lot to contribute, but it ultimately turns into a war between shadow-centric Quirks between Fumikage Yokoyami’s Dark Shadow and Shihai Kuroiro’s Black Quirk. It was inevitable that My Hero Academia’s Joint Training Arc would pit counterpoints of characters against each other, but “Operation New Improv Moves” is thrilling rather than predictable simply because Tokoyami and Kuroiro’s Quirks are so powerful and mysterious.

This season’s secret weapon continues to be an inspired use of Quirks when it comes to battle strategy rather than victory through brute force. Tokoyami’s Dark Shadow can unleash vicious attacks, but here he uses its size and maneuverability to scout the entire field and immediately locate the enemy. Unfortunately, Tokoyami’s increased aptitude with his Quirk only becomes more of an advantage for Kuroiro. Kuroiro’s Black Quirk allows him to commandeer Dark Shadow and turn it against Tokoyami’s team in a very powerful display. 

What’s also so effective about the competitive nature between Tokoyami and Kuroiro is that it functions as this collective origin story for this rivalry. “You and I share a destiny,” Tokoyami coldly hisses at Kuroiro. “Operation New Improv Moves” successfully turns two fringe characters into individuals that feel like they could fuel their own spin-off, which is really the power of My Hero Academia’s characterization and what this new season has the ability to tap into. I’m not sure if Tokoyami’s accusation that Kuroiro is a “Dark Fallen Angel” is based on anything, but it’s a straight up savage burn and an effective way to label your opponent as the villain in this feud. 

Read more

TV

My Hero Academia’s Deku and Bakugo on Season 5, Class 1-B, and Dark Betrayals

By Daniel Kurland

TV

My Hero Academia Season 5: What to Expect

By Daniel Kurland

The choreography around Tokoyami’s flailing Dark Shadow and Shihai Kuroiro as they move around the pipe-filled area gives this episode such a gripping visual quality. It’s easily one of the best uses of an environment for a fight that My Hero Academia has ever done. Both the Dark Shadow and Black Quirks are already fascinating, but they really get to show themselves off through the labyrinthine nature of the battlefield. The “flying” solution to Tokoyami and Kuroiro’s feud plays well and also feels like natural development for Tokoyami’s character. Deku’s been on the sidelines for a lot of this season, but I love that his reaction to this is a freaking “Egg of Columbus” reference as if it’s a totally natural thing to reference in this situation. 

It comes as a surprise when the episode jumps back in time a few months to chronicle Tokoyami’s Quirk development alongside Hawks, but it’s an approach that actually really works well despite how it stops the action dead in its tracks. Not every episode should resort to this strategy, but it provides valuable context for not only Tokoyami’s evolved powers, but also the ideology that drives him forward. More Hawks is also never a bad thing.

Tokoyami and Kuroiro are mostly able to resolve their fight, but that’s merely one piece of this busy battle. The final moments of “Operation New Improv Moves” initiates “Plan B” where Kinoko Komori unleashes a fungal apocalypse on the battlefield that forces Class A to quickly develop a new battle strategy that carries over into the next episode. 

When it comes to the supporting players in this fight, I’ve always been very skeptical of Yuga Aoyama and his Navel Laser Quirk as anything other than comic relief, so I was kind of hoping that this battle could legitimize the hero. “Operation New Improv Moves” features more smart use of Quirk application since both Aoyama’s Navel Laser and Toru Hagakure’s Invisibility Quirk both make use of light refraction, which allows them to actively mess with Kuroiro’s strategy. Aoyama still isn’t elevated above a novelty supporting character, but this does allow him and his Quirk a little more depth that goes a long way. It’s possible that both he and Hagakure will both have more to do in the concluding half of this encounter. 

The animation in this episode that brings these fast-paced Quirks to life is a triumph, but Yuki Hayashi’s score is so excellent here that it deserves some special attention. Hayashi has never been a slouch, but he’s seriously upped his game for this season and every scene becomes more powerful thanks to the operatic music that accompanies these tense moments. It’s the first time in a while that the series’ music consciously stood out to me in terms of its ability to match the animation.

If there’s any major problem to this season of My Hero Academia so far is that there’s a strangely reflective quality to the episodes that bides a lot of time and leaves every episode feeling padded. This look to the past makes sense on some level since this season is all about a reunion and a chance at redemption between 1-A and 1-B from the events of season two’s Sports Festival. However, “Operation New Improv Moves” definitely gets indulgent in this regard. There are several moments where U.A. High’s faculty reflect on the progress that their students have made, which it’s possible to do without devolving into full-on flashbacks of old footage. 

All Might’s memories about Midoriya even feel trumped up to some degree and certain moments like his performance in the School Festival concert shouldn’t necessarily be included among Midoriya’s mastery of One For All or his defeat of Kai Chisaki. My Hero Academia is a rare example of a shonen series that doesn’t get lost in filler material and it’s an incredibly faithful adaptation of the manga, but sometimes the cost of this is episodes that subtly run the clock and don’t really get moving until the halfway mark. When “Operation New Improv Moves” is focused on battle it’s absolutely fantastic, but it shouldn’t have to tiptoe around its action to this degree.

“Operation New Improv Moves” could be a tighter episode in some areas, but it still succeeds and even improves upon last week’s solid battle. It’s comforting that My Hero Academia allows this fight to spill over into the next episode and that every showdown in the Joint Training Arc won’t have the same “one and down” structure to it. There’s a strong mix of action, character development, and emotion through this exercise and it does exceptional work to highlight some of the anime’s unsung heroes. This battle continues to rage on, but Tokoyami’s narrative softly receives resolution as he passes the torch over to Yaoyorozu for the next leg of this confrontation. 

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And the biased commentary protest group continues to fight the good fight. Never surrender. 

The post My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Operation New Improv Moves appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[aion-rsa]

How Darlene Love Brings the Holiday Spirit and Soul to The Christmas Chronicles 2

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Spoiler Alert: Santa Claus blows a mean sax.

The high point of Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles 2 comes at its least festive moment. The young and grieving teen Kate Pierce (Darby Camp) is mistaken for a runaway and taken away by airport authorities–while being lost in time–all the flights on Logan International Airport’s big board turn from hour-long delays to outright cancellations, and joy in that small part of Boston drops to 7 percent. People are all up in each other’s grills, nerves are frayed, and complimentary hotel stays are not going to cut it. They are not a merry bunch. If ever there was a time for a holiday miracle, this would be it. Only now, when things are at their darkest, does a flustered ticket agent named Grace (Darlene Love) reach for the public address microphone–and deliver “The Spirit of Christmas.”

Darlene Love may have the grace to carry a sleighful of holiday cheer but, as the song says, “You can’t change the world alone, sometimes you need a little help.” The rock and roll icon who has become an evergreen voice of Christmas decades ago pages Santa Claus (Kurt Russell), who is on hand to offer his full support. Too jolly to provide merely a baritone backup, Santa pulls an alto sax out of his bag for a spirited solo.

Darlene didn’t just bring the spirit of Christmas. She brought the soul, the Disciples of Soul to be specific. In fact, the new gospel-infused holiday tune was written by Steven Van Zandt, and backing was done by his long-time band, along with two members of one of his other groups, Bruce Springsteen’s E. Street Band.

Van Zandt and his Disciples of Soul backed Love when he produced and wrote songs for her 2015 album, Introducing Darlene Love. The title was ironic, as Love had been in the business long enough to be an institution. She didn’t only have her own hits with her group The Blossoms, they sang back-up vocals on iconic rock and roll classics like the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life,” as well as songs by Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, the Righteous Brothers, Dionne Warwick, and Luther Vandross.  

Van Zandt is also a very versatile support player. He had Tony Soprano’s back when he played consigliere Silvio Dante on The Sopranos, and he backed Russell when the actor belted out “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” in the original 2018 Christmas Chronicles. Both holiday films were directed by Chris Columbus, who directed Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), which also just so happened to feature Love singing a Van Zandt number, “All Alone on Christmas.” That tune has since become a Christmas standard of its own, even appearing unironically in another Christmas movie classic, Love Actually.

But then you’re never alone on Christmas if you have Love, and she’s been a voice of the holiday since 1963 when she sang “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” Written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, and co-credited to Phil Spector, the song was part of the compilation album, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. It was released as a holiday single on the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and didn’t make the charts. Spector released it again for the 1964 holiday season, but the tune again didn’t make it down many more chimneys.

Love had a string of hits during the 1960s, including “He’s a Rebel,” “The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love.” But the song “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” recorded in a decorated studio even though it was 100 degrees outside, only played a muted part in any Christmas playlists.

That all changed when David Letterman christened Love as the “Christmas Queen.” In 1986 Love played herself in the off-Broadway jukebox musical Leader of the Pack. Paul Shaffer, who was the musical director of NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman, played Spector. The night after Letterman saw the show, he brought joy to the Worldwide Pants production audience, announcing he’d just seen a show with the greatest Christmas song he’d ever heard.

Backed by The World’s Most Dangerous Band, Love performed “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on Letterman’s show every December from 1986 to 2014. She only missed one year, 2007.  When Letterman left networks in 2015, Love took the tradition to ABC’s The View where she continues to pour on the cheer.

The song topped Rolling Stone’s 2010 list of “The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Songs.” Since 2016, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” has been on the Billboard Holiday Airplay chart every year. It hit No. 29 the first week of January in 2020. You can hear it in Goodfellas, right after Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Burke tells his crew not to spend their Lufthansa Heist money in one place.

A veteran live performer, Love also takes “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on the road. Every year from the middle of November until early January, the singer performs “Love for the Holidays” shows across North America and Europe. This year, Love will stream her “Love for the Holidays” spectacular. Filmed in November at New York City’s Sony Hall, the concert will be available online via ShowClix on Dec. 5 at 8pm. The proceeds will be gifted to theaters and arts institutions which have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic across the country.

The Christmas Chronicles 2 is available on Netflix.

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Supernatural Gets Its First Wood Nymph

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This article contains spoilers for Supernatural season 15 episode 14 “Last Holiday.”

If you’re a fan of fantasy, you’ve probably heard of a wood nymph, or Dryad, before. Many of us will have first met them in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, where they appear as the female spirits of the trees, but their history goes back much further than that, to Greek mythology.

There are lots of nymphs in Greek mythology; they’re minor deities associated with different parts of nature. They look after everything from wells, lakes, and springs, to beaches, pastures, and cooling breezes. Water nymphs of various kinds were called Naiads, and nymphs associated with woods and trees were called Dryads, though any of them could be called simply Nymphs. Pretty much any type of tree could have a Dryad associated with it, but they were especially connected with oak trees. Oak trees were often thought of as sacred – the oldest oracle in ancient Greece, the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona, worked by having the priestesses listen to the sound of the wind in the sacred oak tree.

Dryads tend to make brief appearances in Greek and Roman poetry, often in groups. They sing at marriages, or mourn at funerals, and they dance in the woods. They’re all female, and the Roman poet Ovid described them as richly dressed and even more richly beautiful in his poem Metamorphoses.

All of this sounds quite different from Mrs. Butters’ lifestyle and appearance in Supernatural! Mrs Butters is an attractive lady, but a fair bit older than most Greeks and Romans tended to imagine Nymphs (who are immortal and ageless). Her clothing is nice enough, but warm, sensible 1950s woollens probably isn’t what Ovid had in mind when he described them as “richly dressed”. She doesn’t tend to dance or sing much, and strangest of all, she’s nowhere near a wood or trees of any kind.

Mrs. Butters does have some things in common with her ancient forebears, though. She may not dance and sing like a Narnian Dryad, but she does love to party. Her time with the Winchesters is mostly spent celebrating every festival and special occasion they can think of to celebrate, one after the other. That’s a thoroughly suitable job for an ancient wood nymph. Being outside the city, in the wild, wood nymphs were associated with nature, and that meant wildness, and that meant partying. They usually hung out with the satyr-god Pan, the extremely well-endowed god who invented Pan pipes, and sometimes with Dionysus, the god of wine, theatre, parties, ecstasy, and wildness.

By throwing parties all the time, Mrs. Butters brings a bit of wildness and a party atmosphere to the bunker. She does it in a very different way to an ancient wood nymph, though. Mrs. Butters is, in many ways, the exact opposite of an ancient wood nymph. She’s like a fantasy of motherhood – middle-aged, smartly dressed, spending all her time cooking for the boys in the kitchen, sending them out with packed lunches while she stays home and cleans. It’s no wonder she misses her forest, where in her natural habitat she’d be chilling out in a Bacchic orgy (sex optional), drinking wine, making music, and dancing among the trees all night long.

The main trait Mrs. Butters seems to share with her more natural Dryad cousins is her fierce protectiveness of her home and family. The Hesperides, who guarded the golden apples belonging to the goddess Hera, were Nymphs of the evening and of sunsets, but they were sometimes also thought of as Dryads of the apple trees, and they were fiercely protective of the golden apples on the trees they guarded, alongside a terrifying serpent. Hercules once killed the serpent and stole the apples, but they were able to get them back in the end, and they guarded other treasures, too.

Other Dryads sometimes lived in secretive woodland groves and were justifiably afraid of anything that threatened the woods’ destruction. The Greek poet Nonnus, in his poem Dionysiaca, described the terrified prayer of a Dryad whose woods were being cut down to build ships, and who was desperate not to be sent to inhabit a myrrh-tree (myrrh being associated with death and mourning). So Mrs. Butters’ desperate desire to protect her home and her family makes sense, though it’s perhaps a bit surprising she’s not more concerned about what might have happened to her forest while she was away.

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Ancient nymphs were often described as ‘haunting’ whatever area they belonged to, whether it was a river, a beach, or a woodland grove. Perhaps that’s where Mrs Butters has the most in common with them, as when she put herself on standby, she left herself to ‘haunt’ the bunker, unseen and unheard until the system was restarted. She’s a much more benevolent presence than most of Supernatural’s ghosts though – OK, so she tried to kill Jack and she tortured Sam and Dean a bit, but just about every character on the show has done that at one time or another, so she’s no worse than most!

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Examining Bill & Ted’s Excellent Pop Culture Adventures

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Bill & Ted Face the Music is OUT NOW! Excellent! (Loud screeching guitar solo). And really, the dim time-traveling duo have returned just when we need them the most. Since first making their debut in the 1989 sleeper hit Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, these characters — portrayed with glee by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves — have become that unique thing: A sci-fi/comedy franchise that somehow is both a cult sensation and a mainstream success. Following the unexpected success of the first film, the sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was released in the summer of 1991. Fans expecting more of the same were instead treated to a rumination on life and death that featured everything from aliens to evil robot doppelgangers of our leads. But the inventiveness of Bill and Ted creators Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon worked against him, and the film went underappreciated during its original run.

In the nearly 30 years since their last big screen outing, the legend of Bill & Ted has only grown. Much has been made about how the pair influenced everything from Beavis and Butthead to Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob, and while there’s validity to these claims it’s important to remember that the template for Bill and Ted was forged as far back as 1980s teen sex comedies in which goofball/borderline stoner characters were used to great effect. (See also: Sean Penn’s performance in The Beaver Trilogy, a terrific cult effort that was a dry run for his take as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Ultimately however, Bill and Ted have endured because their films are smart and strange with terrific performances, a game supporting cast (George Carlin as Rufus is particularly great), and a fun concept that merges teenage wish fulfillment with offbeat science fiction concepts.

So with the final, for now anyway, Bill & Ted film upon us, we thought we’d look back on the characters’ first three decades with an exploration of how their impact has reverberated throughout popular culture. From misguided TV spinoffs to audacious rip off ads, this is a journey that you will find to be most excellent indeed.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adentures (Animated)

No one expected Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure to be a success. At the time, most everyone involved with the film — with the notable exceptions of George Carlin, Bernie Casey, and Jane Wiedlin — were unknowns. Furthermore, the film had the kind of small budget that screamed straight-to-video. So when it became successful, the decision was made to strike while the iron was hot, and so Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures was born. Produced by Hanna-Barbera and aired on CBS, this cartoon chronicle of Bill and Ted’s ongoing adventures had them encountering everyone from Little Richard to William Shakespeare. Giving the enterprise an air of legitimacy was the fact that Winter, Reeves, Carlin, and Casey all reprised their roles. After the first season, the series switched to the Fox network, with DIC Entertainment (creator of shows like Inspector Gadget and The New Archies) taking over production. The big name stars were jettisoned and the show took a dip in quality. It ran for another eight episodes before whimpering out of existence. But for the actors who voiced Bill and Ted on this iteration of the show, they were just getting started…

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures (Live Action)

Cartoon spin-offs of sitcoms like The Brady Kids and Fonz and the Happy Days Gang were commonplace on the televisual landscape of the 1970s and ’80s. But what made Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures so unique, and probably the only truly memorable thing about the whole affair, is how what started as an animated version of a popular film ditched its actors for the toon’s second season and then these replacements went on to anchor a live-action version of more or less the same show. That’s some inverse Coy and Vance/The Dukes of Hazzard nonsense right there. Evan Richards and Christopher Kennedy once again portrayed Bill and Ted respectively when Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures hit Fox in 1992. Don’t lay the show’s failure on their performances though, they did a more than passable job of walking in Winter and Reeves’ footsteps. It was the lack of budget and, you know, creativity that quickly and rightfully doomed the series. Yet around the same time as the Wyld Stallyns were ending their television run, they were thriving in another medium.

Bill & Ted Comics

Bill & Ted’s first foray into comics was a straightforward adaptation of the first film that DC Comics released and is noteworthy merely for Angelo Torres’ fun art. After this release, Marvel got the license to the characters, and a Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey adaptation soon followed with work from Milk & Cheese‘s Evan Dorkin. The comic subsequently spawned a 12-issue ongoing series in which Dorkin let his imagination run wild. As someone who is obsessed with the things I am speaking with experience when I say that most licensed comics are a slog to get through. That is not the case here, and Dorkin’s work with Bill and Ted stands alongside of Carl Bark’s Uncle Scrooge efforts and Roger Langridge’s The Muppets comics. (To prove I’m not being hyperbolic here, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Comic Book was nominated for a Best Humor Comic at the 1992 Eisner Awards). There have been other Bill & Ted comics in recent years, but none have reached the stellar heights of Dorkin’s work with the characters. Fortunately, he has returned to the fold with the just-released mini-series Bill & Ted Are Doomed, so spread that news to comic lovers far and wide.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal

Unfortunately, Bill & Ted’s Most Excellent Cereal was anything but. Imagine stale Cinnamon Toast Crunch mixed with decades old marshmallows and that begins to describe the heinous experience that downing a bowl of the stuff was like. That said, I still have the phone booth cereal premium that came shrink wrapped with it and that is, of course, excellent.

Bill & Ted’s National Air Guitar Championship

In the summer of 1991, MTV went all in with its promotion of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. As a result we have the above Bill & Ted’s National Air Guitarist Championship contest, which features an appearance by a bemused William Sadler (who rules, always) and introductions from Dweezil Zappa, who seems like he can barely hold in his contempt for the entire enterprise.

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Premiere Party

Another A/V relic from MTV’s summer of Bill & Ted is the premiere party the network hosted by Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Featuring Pauly Shore on hosting detail and appearances from a bunch of bands who were about to rendered irrelevant due to the rise of grunge, this program is a journey back to a simpler, less flannel-centric time in our now-distant past.

Bill & Ted Action Figures

Looking back now at Kenner’s Bill & Ted Excellent Adventure action figures, the main question I have is just why didn’t I snatch these things up when I saw them in the closeout bins at Kaybee Toys? Genghis Khan in a Wyld Stallyns shirt? The second I’m done this article I’m heading over to eBay.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure Sideshow Figures

With nostalgia being one of the few things that 2020 has yet to destroy, the deluxe action figure market is booming. NECA is currently offering stunning figures based on the Bill & Ted saga, and for those who really want to up their uncanny valley collecting game there are these toys from Sideshow that well set you back $399. Decide for yourself if this is excellent or bogus.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure

In the 1990s, LJN was notorious for making confounding Nintendo Entertainment System games out of popular movies. Jaws, Friday the 13th, Back to the Future, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure were all given the LJN treatment to various degrees of frustration. My personal memories of playing their Bill & Ted title solely consist of wandering around in a daze wondering what the hell was going on. Wait? Was the game secretly a stealth 2020 simulator?

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Musical Adventure

The invaluable Bill & Ted’s Excellent Online Adventure website is the Internet’s greatest resource when it comes to information on these characters. While researching this piece I was blown away to discover that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Musical Adventure exists, and the site breaks it down thusly:

It was in 1992 that Dean Collinson, a singer, songwriter and actor, first saw the Bill and Ted movies and set about to write a musical version of our favorite movies with his writing partners Mick Walsh and Gene Jacobs.  In October 1998, Dean Collinson would win the Vivien Ellis Award for Best New Musical Composer for the music to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Musical Adventure.

The musical seems to have been staged at least a couple of times, once as a three week run during the Edinburgh Festival at the venue The Pleasance in Scotland.  The other was a condensed version on May 4, 2000 as part of a program called “Musical Futures” at the Greenwich Theatre in London. 

Unauthorized though it may be, this thing sounds glorious. You can hear the songs and learn more about it here, and whoa, you should. Spoiler alert: There is no song called “San Dimas High School Football Rules.” Tragically.

McDonald’s Ads

Speaking of unauthorized, McDonald’s produced and aired the above commercials that shamelessly tried to ride Bill & Ted’s pop culture coattails. There’s a lot that is wrong with this, but the main thing is probably how you just know that Bill & Ted are In-N-Out burger dudes.

Weezer – Beginning of the End Music Video

The Bill & Ted movie soundtracks have contained everyone from Kiss to Slaughter. Apparently now the pair are listening to Weezer? I mean, I guess the franchise’s ultimate message is that we all eventually give up our youthful dreams and become what we fear most. And what I fear most is ever having to endure another conversation about Pinkerton, so I suppose I’ll end things here. Just do me a favor, be excellent to each other, okay?

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