#one - they cast a ton of hot actors

[hotvintagepoll]

Marjorie Main (The Women, Summer Stock)—a world weary dame who wore her midwestern accent on her sleeve. marjorie main kills it as a reno ranch owner in "the women" (1939) and as warm mother hens <3 she was no shabby actor either! this scene with her and humphrey bogart fucking haunts me [link]

Zero Mostel (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Producers)—Archetypal. Comedian of all time. The worst combover in cinematic history, probably. Could make more laughter with one muscle in a singular eyebrow than 98% of all men across the face of the earth. Hardcore Committer to the Bit. Man of all time, and also told HUAC directly where they could shove it, which is a primally appealing and scrungly quality.

This is round 1 of the contest. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. If you're confused on what a scrungle is, or any of the rules of the contest, click here.

[additional submitted propaganda + scrungly videos under the cut]

Marjorie Main:

Zero Mostel:

"The chase scene in FORUM is just. it's fucking iconic. It's one of the funniest pieces of cinema I've ever seen in any context, everything about it is genius, and the heart and soul of it is Zero Mostel as Pseudolus. Casting him alongside a young Michael Crawford (of later Phantom of the Opera fame) really highlights the differences between the young romantic lead and the older, sensible, and yet entirely scrungly middle aged man (Mostel was 55 at the time) somehow manages to come off as even more desirable. He has no shit together, not very good plans, is panicked for most of the story, and the charisma of a champ. His flailing, helpless attempts at fighting the gladiator is so... he's so scrungly. "

"He's not fancy, he's not pretty, he's not good at much of anything, but he is Genius despite that."

"There is a magic to Zero Mostel that he manages to bring to roles where he is simultaneously the worst person ever, and also, compelling in every possible way. He had his biggest period of fame in middle age after he got taken off the Hollywood blacklist, and being a fat middle aged man with thinning hair is what gives every single bit of his characters power. As the original Max Bialystock he would eat the entirety of The Producers except that Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom is a genius casting decision, as Mostel's intensity against Wilder's deep discomfort ends up being the right chemistry. In many ways he reminds me of Buster Keaton, the pinnacle of hot scrungly little guy—a unique and expressive face, an instinctive understanding of comedy, active at the same time, and also they were both in FORUM together. Mostel came from an Orthodox Jewish family, was a trained painter with a degree in art, spoke four languages, and when he was blacklisted during the Red Scare and brought before the HUAC, he didn't just refuse to name names, he made fun of the senators. He was disabled after an accident, and still did dancing in movies and things like stunts in FORUM. He did a ton of work on Broadway too, including originating Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, making the musical more Jewish as he did so. Frankly, I don't think any of those roles (or the eventual later film versions of Fiddler/musical version of the Producers) would work with anyone else. It had to be a fat balding middle aged leftist Jew from Brooklyn. The scrungly is essential.

"the scrungle factor of max in every version of the producers is through the roof but nathan lane does it as suave scrungle. zero mostel does not do suave scrungle. he does old jewish man getting into an argument with the rabbi at the full synagogue passover seder about how much wine has to be in the glass for it to count as "one cup" scrungle; he does old jewish man whose entire fridge is full of pickled herring scrungle. it's offputting in all the ways that make it genius."

[spaceorphan18]

Okay, some Glee discourse, because it's been a while ::

@lilacdaisyrose mentioned in a comment :: I’m so shocked that Ryan Murphy actually revealed that!! Also, I’ve always wondered (sorry kinda related), at the time was Adam quite a big thing in the Klaine fandom? To me I find Adam so confusing because there’s so little character development and I always wish there was even a bit more, but also wonder why they introduced him if they weren’t going to really add to his character? 🙂

Okay. So. There are a lot of components to this. In order to understand the whole Adam thing, you kind of need to have the context of what was going on within fandom at the time.

The short version (because this deserves it's own psychological thesis piece) is that Kurt Hummel had a huge fan base that had been fractured into many different sub fandom groups, all of them centered around shipping him with different characters. But mostly the big divide was between people who liked Kurt with Blaine and people who didn't.

[This whole sub culture fandom thing is so fascinating, and I really should write up a giant master post about it some day.]

So, we got wind that Adam was coming some time around Christmas (And, I mean, originally his name was Paul, and it was Paul's Peaches. I wonder why that didn't clear Fox Standards and Practices, huh.) And so the Anti-Blaine Kurt Stans got a hold of this info and just raaaan with it. Like, it did not matter who he was or what kind of character he was -- he was not Blaine and that's ALL that mattered.

So, Adam became a thing before he was even a thing.

A couple of things happened, though. First of all, like usual and typical, the Klaine fans (and I mean, I'm not even getting into the sub culture of Klaine fan divides either, because that is another post) began harassing everyone - including the actor, which, you know, made him a little cold (understandably). He did one interview attempting to insinuate that his role was important, but it definitely bristled and I don't think it was his best PR move, but that was lower compared to all the rest of the nonsense going on.

The big thing that happened was that Adam's first song -- the remix of Baby, Got Back, was tied up in some legal issues. Basically, Ryan Murphy used the mix without crediting or even asking the person who mixed it if they could use it. Now, they got permission from Sir Mix A Lot (or whomever did that song originally) but then it got into some weird legal gray area stuff, and blew up in the media and left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. So the general audience soured on him pretty quickly.

On top of that -- there was a shit ton of stuff going on BTS -- Cory's addiction was becoming a problem, the network wanted to kill the show, the tinhatters were driving Chris to murder, like there are a bunch of layers of stuff going on that made all this complicated, and it all kind of results in Season 4 just being wonky on a lot of levels.

(Btw - do Kevin and Jenna talk about Adam at all? I haven't listened to the podcast in a long, long while, so I don't know, but my curiosity is piqued.)

But during that time, this was when the Glee cast was finally beginning to set some boundaries concerning social media, but Ryan Murphy was beginning to try to use it -- and he kept getting himself involved in fandom, and flying a little too closely to the sun. I do think Klaine was always where he wanted to go (because the actors (mostly Chris) did complain -- which, again deserves it's own post). But they were loud, and they were obnoxious about it.

No, Klaine fans did not like Adam. At all. They wanted him gone, and we wanted reconciliation. But the Anti-Blaine Kurt stans made Adam the measure of who Kurt's bf should be. They did not really care that Adam only had three episodes and very zero development and was clearly dropped like a hot potato because it's obvious Kurt still has feelings for Blaine because, you know, Kurt's sleeping with Blaine while this whole dating Adam is going on but...

It was just a mess.

The other thing you have to remember is that -- while this was live, we didn't get the chance to just watch quickly in succession and go onto the same thing. Those of us who were spoiled knew of this character for months before he appeared. And it was a whole fucking long time before Love Love Love finally closed the door on it officially. So while he was only around for those three episodes, the open endedness of it last a LOOOOONG time. And no one knew what was going on.

So the shipping wars, as usual, continued on and on and on.

I'm trying to think if I at all answered your question, lol.

Why did they create him? the tl;dr version is that since Season 3, they had Klaine (the now b-couple) mirror Finchel (the a-couple) -- prior to that Finchel was the b-couple and Wemma the a-couple, and Glee loved to do parallels with them. But Wemma really wasn't a thing much by season 4, and Klaine was much more popular, and my god they just loved having Kurt be Rachel lite sometimes that they're basically telling the same story with both couples.

So, Rachel gets a season long boyfriend only to wind her up with Finn again (only the cory stuff threw a wrench into that). So, clearly, Kurt needed to have one, too. But also -- they needed to have Kurt do something. They weren't going to put Klaine back together until sweeps week, or the finale because that's how network tv paced things back in the day. So Adam was just subpar character development.

I don't know what their original intentions for the character were. I don't know if they knew. I think they had their story up until 4x15 (overall) and then it got rocky because things with Cory were getting weird and it all just fell apart.

I do think, like Darren, the actor playing Adam got a three episode contract, and they wanted to test the audience's reaction. Clearly, it did not go well, and the added legal issues of the song just kind of made them sweep it under the rug all the faster.

Hopefully, some of my rambling made sense.

Maybe at some point in the future, I'll do an expansive history of the Kurt fandom series.

Or y'all can keep asking questions. What ever you'd like to do <3 lol

[nightcolorz]

I'm scared people will like Marius when he comes into the show. It happens when a certain actor plays a character that shouldn't be liked so well. But the actor is so well liked. I have a feeling certain fans are going to be ignoring his past and what he has done to Armand.

I mean tons of people love Marius in the book fandom so that’s kind of an inevitability. And I’m not the type of person to be upset by people liking a problematic character. But either way, honestly I hope Marius gets a show fan base 😭😭 that sounds weird coming from someone who hates on him all the time but, the way I see it, if people like Marius that means they r doing his character right. He’s a terrible person but he is definitely a likeable and charming terrible person, and if hes cast as someone who’s likable and charming then they’ll be doing smth right. I feel like if a character is well written regardless of how terrible they r someone is going to Stan them, and if nobody likes Marius in the show that would be a bad sign for how the writing is going. I also think it’s important to Marius’s character that he is well liked and respected and continues to be regardless of the crazy shit he does, and to have that affect he has to be likable and sexy lmao. I wouldn’t want the “ppl reduce terrible person character’s complexity bcus they think he’s hot” thing to happen tho, that’s always annoying. But regardless of what happens and who’s casted, the fandom is gonna find one way or another to be stupid about it lol.

[clovermarigold]

Could you do a one shot of MK1 Johnny with a street racer reader?

Johhny Cage x Street Racer Reader

Johnny was in peak of his career, every movie he was in earning award after award. He was practically expected in every action movie of the decade, along with the occasional rom com. So here he is, looking over the long list of films his agent had procured for him to star in. Most had been by the request of their directors, but a few were movies his agent went out of his way to look into.

Being that films took years of work to film and edit, reshoots and last second voice overs, Johnny could only really commit to one, and the occasional small series or backup role. Looking through the list his attention was caught by a high pace action movie where he would star as the lead; an undercover cop trying to crack down on Los Angeles' street racing epidemic, only to be drawn into numerous hijinks.

It seemed like an interesting concept, the script was good, and he did have experience with this studio and director. But the real draw was the warning that was attached with the script.

Due to the risk factor involved in numerous stunts, scenes, as well as for realisms purposes. All cast members will be required to take safety courses as well as in constant supervision of professional consultant at all times.

He was going to be doing his own stunts and working with a real street racer. If that didn't have 'Cage Flick' written all over it in bold he didn't know what did.

He of course got the part, he still questioned why the audition was even necessary.

His first day on set was simple enough, meeting the cast and crew, as well as a few brief investors for the movie. That was until he met you.

You had grown up in LA and gotten into street racing fairly young, so naturally you were the best pick for this job. And the producers were willing to pay a fuck ton to be able to advertise that extra layer of 'authenticity'.

You were an instant hit with the cast, getting along with nearly all of them instantly. Johnny in particular was rather captivated. It was your first time meeting such a high-profile celebrity, even as a born and raised LA resident.

The attraction on Johnny's part was immediate. Confident, hot, and looked damn good in the driver seat.

Throughout shooting, you had coached Johnny on safety guidelines and how to do complex drifts and turns.

That wasn't to say the attraction was one-sided. Hell, you had thirsted over this man with your friends when you binged his movies. So, when you heard the director making fun over him about his less than hidden attraction towards you, you took your chances.

A hand guiding his when instructing him how to use the gear shift, giving him pats on the back when he figured out how to pull off the reversed driving sequence, and being extra sure he was behind you when you decided to bend over to inspect the hood of the car. (there was nothing wrong with it)

Despite what media would have you think, being an actor is a very busy and grueling job. Johnny had wanted to ask you out a number of times, but by the point he had enough courage and confidence that you were also interested, filming had wrapped up.

So here he was, sitting in an Italian tux, surrounded by some of the most talented minds in the filming industry, with an Oscar nomination, wondering where the hell it all went wrong.

"Johnny" he looked to his co-star sitting to his left. Looking down to see the small bound together papers with the word 'draft' on it.

"It's soon, but, by the looks of it.... It's been greenlit" A sequel?

Well, seeing as he was the main lead, it was no doubt they'd need him to come back. And if they did?

He knew the condition he was going to demand if they wanted him.

Maybe he could finally ask you out for that drink.

[dylankenobi]

I saw a performance of Henry V today that made the choice to cast a hot Latino man as Henry. Istg every single woman in the audience was in love with him by the time the show was over.

It all started when he's calling out the traitors, and in this production, they had him straddle one with a knife to his neck. There were a few wolf whistles for that.

Then, adding fuel to the fire, his armor was sleeveless and he was kinda ripped and had veiny forearms and hands.

Finally, in the romantical scene with him and Kate, the audience was yelling for them to kiss. So the actors had a ton of chemistry and even I was smiling and low-key blushing through it. One person even yelled in a bad French accent, mimicking Kate, "ze kiss!!! Mwah!!" And when they finally did, it was loooooong and women screamed the whole time.

So during curtain call when Henry was bowing, every single woman, and only the women, screamed. Fully screaming. I think...this may be theater girlhood

[speedierthanasubmarine]

I decided to watch helluva boss and imma do 2 separate posts for seasons 1 and two (why did I write it like that…?)

Season one

God I love this show. The writing is way more my speed than Hazbin hotel on Amazon, I enjoyed the writing in the pilot, but once Amazon took over the humor just didn’t really land for me, and tbh the plot took over and I started focusing more on that, and in general I’m more partial to the rapid fire YouTube dry comedy and this sentence is a friggin mess- I found HB SO FREAKIN FUNNY

Dude when he goes “FUCK, a new hole” I lost it

“Just try and sue us”

“We’re rich and we’re hot”

“I can just buy all the things!”

“You should commit die”

“Hehe, Trumpet!”

These are just my kinda lines, I don’t know how to explain it, I was wheezing all throughout the season

The music OH LORD when I say I’ve listened to stolas’s lullabye, lulu land, cotton candy, and house of ozmodius like 100000 times I’m… exaggerating but like you get the point the music here is friggin fantastic I also really like how a lot of the music is diegetic, I think that’s a fun touch. I don’t remember whether this is the case in Hazbin, but in this one it was like… I don’t know, it made sense that they were singing when they were singing… am I articulating myself well? I don’t care, iykyk if not, no prob

The animation is great, Viv loves them spinny shots and I am here for it. The amount of genuinely amazing action scenes is super impressive, and even the chill scenes have a ton of personality

The voice acting might be what steals the show for me, idrk anyone’s names cept Alex Brightman but BLITZS VA NEEDS AN AWARD, also slight tangent but I don’t know what it is with stolas’s va but he sounds a lot like a bird in the same sense that Gary Oldman sounded a lot like a bird in Kung Fu Panda 2, what is it that casting directors recognize in actors that screams bird?! Because both of these men are just SO BIRD DOES ANYONE GET WHAT I MEAN moving on, Ozzie’s voice was also effing PERFECT it slid silkily over me like… silk butter or smtg it was the perfect lust voice, I loved it. Everyone else was also great, but they were extra great.

It was also just so fun? Like in hazbin there’s very little just… shenanigans to enjoy, nothing wrong with that because it’s not that type of show, whereas this season is jam packed with them. Like I’ve heard that everyone hated episode 4, but like I don’t know I loved it😆 I just found it to be good old fashioned chicanery, and I liked the chaos and stupidity of it, made for some entertaining TV. This story engine is just mad entertaining for me.

I also enjoyed the writing of most of the characters (Millie, Moxxie, Loona, and Octavia still leave a bit to be desired imo, but whatever, they can’t all be winners and there’s nothing wrong with them) Blitz kinda reminds me of a Barney Stinson type character, which I really enjoy, and I also really like how his boss persona kinda infects everything he does while simultaneously being what’s screwing him over, his nature is kinda like a snake swallowing its own tail, which is tragic and beautiful, and Stolas compliments him well by being, not an enabler, but… I don’t know a clever way to say this… Stolas is a wreck in the best way and he just works. He’s short sighted, like extremely so, like how he thinks sleeping with Blitz will fill his emotional void so he does it but it just drives them further apart so it’s like he’s in a hole and in order to get out he’s gonna dig to pile up dirt so he can climb out but he’s an idiot and that’s a stupid idea and I loved his whole arc. Very enjoyable stuff drama.

Kinda random but whoever Viv’s foli artist is also deserves an award, the sound effects in this show are pristine and it’s incredible (yes I’ve seen the scene where the gun sounds go off a few seconds too late, and yeah, mistakes happen, but every bone crunch sounds and other stuff like that being so enunciated in an indie show is extremely impressive)

Anyhoo, very fun, very emotional, nice to look at, very funny, yada yada- altogether great season 1.

[popculturebuffet]

Here Comes Garfield: The Garfield Movie Review!: Colossal, Stupdendous one might go as far to say.. Mediocre (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to here comes garfield, my look at all the garfield specials and now his film career. Which I realize now means I probably have to do Garfield The Movie At Some Point... and... Tale of Two Kittles.. and Pet Force...

That exesntial horror aside, today that means we're looking at the recently released Garfield Movie. The Garfield Movie comes to us from Columbia Pictures, which Sony will never let you forget is 100 years old and they own every year of that now with the 100 years logo they plopped in front of this and Ghostbusters: It Was Meh.

The film has gotten the predictably mixed reactions from a less ambitious kids film: Kids clearly love it, my own niece and nephew included, Critics loathe it and a lot of people who saw it ironically gave it one star on Letterboxd. In other words it'll likely get at least one more sequel and possibly a streaming spinoff on whoever pulls the biggest dumptruck of money up to sony's house.

So let's dig into this film: Why it's such an easy target, how good it really is, what dosen't work, and what delicoius layers it has.

The Chris Pratt Problem

Before we get into the movie, let's get into WHY it became such an easy target. And the first and biggest reason is the simplist: who they choose to play the fat cat the cool cat the nobody's fool cat: Mr Chris Pratt

Chris Pratt's casting became a meme quickly and it's understandable why: Not only was this on the heels of his questionable (if ultimately decent enough) casting in Mario but both castings felt.. Lazy. Like an exec googled "Celebreity Man" and went with the most afforadable option. Pratt isn't a bad actor. As a person... I didn't have the bandwith to full research that and shift out the genuinely douchey actions from the internet herasy. Seems like he might be bit of a dick, can't prove it. But as an actor he can be good: he was great on parks and rec, in the lego movie and in the guardians trilogy. The probelm is like a lot of actors, once he got famous, he started becoming the best imintation of himself: most of his parts like jurassic world tend to just be him doing what people now expect to be Chris Pratt TM performances. For instance Star Lord.. is a fleshed out hot mess of a character, with some depth and some genuinely emotional moments despite often being the butt of a joke. The Guy From Jurassic World.. is just that without the depth or any real character beyond "Raptor Pal who wants to bang Bryce Dallas Howard". It's not all his parts, the bullk is still good, but he's sliding very comfortably into not giving a shit if he dosen't have to and it's not a good look. I love Ryan Renolds but he can also be like that, and his better roles are when he dosen't like Deadpool. For as big a thing as it's become and as much money as he's making you can tell he's making the third one not because it'll make him even richer, but because he loves the part.

With both of these rolls it feels like Chris signed on because

He DOES give it a decent try, being pretty good as mario and alright as Garfield, but it's easy to see why there isn't a ton of enthusasim. When Ben Schwartz got Sonic the Hedgehog he was fukcing pumped, brought it and really sunk into the role. He's easily one of the Blue Blur's best voice actors and you can tell he loves the franchise. I'm not saying you have to love a franchise going into a part.. but it dosen't feel like Chris Pratt really put his soul into it and as corprate as Mario and Garfield are, these are characters with life to them. I'm not saying you can't do a good roll for a paycheck, see Orson Wells as Unicron, but fans aren't going to give you a lot of room if you don't seem to give a shit you got such a big part that is important to them.

I don't think Pratt sinks the film.. but he was far from the best choice. The best choice, in my opinon.. would've been nick offerman. He's a big comedy name, has a lot of talent, has done plenty of voice acting, currently headlining fox's best show The Great North, and has that low sarcastic voice that can be used for a bunch of diffrent moods. Jason Mantzokus is a close second choice as his gravly ness fits garfield and he can both be earnestly sarcastic AND energetic, both things garfield needs. I know the latter is ironic but the guy is emotive when necessary. But putting aside my choices he just feels like he's doing "Chris Pratt". He's good ENOUGH, but the film could've found better and has such a standout cast, including another possible choice in Brett Goldstein, that he sticks out as the guy whose just kinda.. there.. and he's in the lead roll. he's not bad and gets some great deliveries in places, but he's servicable. It's a hard roll to nail, for me only Lorenzo Music and Bill Murray have truly got it, with Frank Welker trying his best but just not quite nailing it. There's a reason there was a bit of a gap before Welker took up the roll: Music is a hard mountain to climb, Murray happens to just exude slacker energy it's not easy. But they could've tried HARDER instead of going with "well generic hollywood guy will sell tickets"

Garfield Sells Out

The next issue is one I can cover pretty quickly:

The Garfield Movie has gotten flack for it's various bits of product placement: Garfield eats POPChips, there's Olive Garden leftovers in the fridge, and his dad orders things from Wall Mart. There's also possible FexEx and Tinder advertisment I missed I found looking at articles or two and credit to the daily best for the first and reddit for the second. There are adds for big corportaions in this film and while that's not NEW , until a discussion with my friend Emma I hadn't realized how much the MCU advertizes (And just for clarity I love a lot of the mcu and Emma is neutral), it is wince inducing in a film primarily aimed at kids. It works decently for adults (raises hand), but I get the target demo and while they get advertised to plenty, it's still scummy to cram this into the movie itself.

I have nothing against the food tie ins: Stouffers doing one for their lasanga is too sensical not to do, as is having olive garden make a cameo in the film itself, Tastykae's garfield cake was adorablea nd delicious, and popchips, while certainly not the kind of greasy snack garfield would gravitate too, are the kind of casual snack food I could see him at least trying... or more accurately Jon buys them, Garfield eats everything else because he assumes like many boomers "Healthy=bad" and finds out he was wrong and orders more. It's still mildly manipulative, but it's nothing new: Kids get sold food to them all the time.

That being said.. it's still fucked up how much product placement is in the film, even if it's spread out well and while I do wish we'd stop getting SO MANY ARTICLES on it included Cracked claming the drones in the film are Sony trying to get kids to accept drones more

I get the impulse: We want to protect children and while I was originally going to be more critical of this, the more I thought about it the more scummy it felt. The Product Placement isn't to say add a layer of authentiity by using a real brand or because it's fun, it's just.. so cheap and blatant. It's just whatever brand wanted that garfield money. The film does HAVE food at the center: Garfield meets John in an itallian restraunt and has to pull a milk heist and neither place is a real life brand.. which begs the question why all the others were flavor blasted in there. There's no real need to shill and the movie would've been fine doing tie ins out of universe. I get we live in a corprate hellscape but you don't HAVE to advertise to chidlren and their parents and to sad middle aged men like me. You can just.. make a movie. Let that be the "product" if your that cynical. All you did to the brands involved is remind people "Oh yeah they sold out in that one movie". Well with Olive Garden if your sonic you also make me go to it .. or this film... but Olive Garden is delicious.

So onto the third major problem had with the film

We've Been Here Before

The third is something I can agree with: the plot is stock as hell. While the film has good points i'll get to, the basic plot is one seen in dozens of other animated films. A hero is thrown out of a lot in life their either happy with or tell themselves they are, but are thrown into a CRAZY adventure by circumstance that they must go on to get that life back while learning something along the way. To prove HOW common this is I decided to go through my film list on Letterboxd and put all of the animated ones I found that adhere to this formula into one image. It wasn't nearly as many as I expected.. but I still found about 40 diffrent films with this formula in some way

And please note this formula in of itself.. isn't a bad one. A lot of great films are made on this premise. To prove this let me take out the films I don't like from this grid

Your still left with a ton of stone cold classics. You'll also notice the breakdown for the original is 1/8th garfield. The first three specials, the first bill murray film and the second dtv film really do all fall into this formula somehow.

The key is that the formula isn't inherently bad: All these films start with the protagonists comfortable or about ot be and whisked into danger but they all go in such diffrent directions. Heartwarming child bonding comedies, a meditation on jealousy and our own realities, betting a black man's freedom in a way that the producers had to know was fucked up, space dolphin played by matt berry, everyone has their own way.

This film... dosen't do anything NEW with it: The film just stacks other animation tropes and cliches on top: you have our hero whose spoiled by what he has, has issues with his parents, has to go on an adventure adressing those issues, deals with a theatrical yet intimidating main villian and their two dumb and sympathetic henchman, gets training from a mentor with a tragic backstory to do a heist, the heist goes bad, the relatoinship that got built up over th efilm is semeingly shattered but OH NO IT WAS A MISUNDERSTANDING and the climax happens cumulating in everyone being one big happy family.

I could do the grid thing with practically every trope in this movie and it just kinda plays the hits. It reminds me of the Super Mario Movie last year: I liked that one too, but it's mostly carried by the visual spectacle, seeing the creators meticuously turn mario's patchwork world into a living breathing place, to see a giant version of dk island, to see Bowser's Kingdom in all it's glory. It's still a decent film, but it uses a pretty stock framework to do it because either the execs wanted that or the creators didn't feel they had the room to really push it. I could see the same problem here as you have Sony, Viacom and various sponsors Sony wants shoved in all wanting a say. This dosen't feel like say Across the Spider-Verse (Same parent companY) or Nimona (Same production company) where they had more freedom, so they just went with a formula that worked for other movies and worked for garfield before. The question is does that formula ruin the movie? Is there enough to still make it enjoyable despite being stock as hell?

Yes

The film is still pretty damn fun and feels like a welcome return to the character after being gone in other media for almost a decade. As Quinton Reviews pointed out in his review of this film, the Garfield Show ended in 2016. It's been a WHILE since the orange tabby's been animated, with his only apperances otherwise being in video games, showing up in Lasanga Party, Garfield Kart and being a guest racer in Nicktoons Kart Racers 3 and a fighter in both all star brawl games, all welcome as it's just.. fun to play as garfield. Does he have any real connection to nickelodeon besides them owning the property now? Nope. Is it fun to have him anyways? hell yeah. Have him hit the avatar with a pie, either one!

The strip still exists but like many aging comic strips it's clamped to it's formula. I've been reading it daily for a few months now and while there are occasional gems

It's mostly the same stuff. You can find better jokes by buying the first few three in ones. It's not nearly as bad as some other legacy strips, seriously why is Blondie still around, but it sticks out in an age where more cartoons like Heart of the City or Nancy are allowing someone to flat out reboot the strip and try something different.

With a movie you have that blank slate to do whatever and while it does a standard animated movie TM with it to a point, the film does try some neat stuff I can't help but admire.

The biggest point is the animation. DNEG did the animation here and went above and beyond the call. I love their designs, combinging modern garfield with some of the classic garfield heft and proportions: his limbs are still super skinny, but they aren't as gangly as they are in the strip, feeling more in line with his body and the head resembles the one from the early 80's more. The eyes are also without a line, which seems like a small detail but ups the expressivness, something key to garfield as "funny facial expressions" are one of Garfield's best bits.

Slapstick is where this franchise thrives and the film mostly does this well. I wish there were more, but it has some fun visual gags: while it was trailered to hell and back, the fluffy fur gag is pretty funny. All the gags with Roland, big bad Jinx's muscle played by Roy Bloody Kent himself Brett Goldstein has a lot of fun gags: How this wall of folds and muscle just.. will show up any time Garfield tries to leave, disappearing behind a sign and pulling a cell phone out of his folds his boss refuses to touch. It's not a ton, but it's a lot of fun and while he must've been a nightmare to animate, so, many, FOLDS, it results in a character that's just inherently funny to see walk around and Goldstein's gruff voice just adds to it.

There's other great btis like Garfield and Vic stuck to a tree and using the vines to beat the hell out of each other, garfield getting smacked into a car windsheild and more.

The animation is just gorgeously expressive: the non garfield cast may be somewhat stock but damn are they fun to watch and the main trio (and Liz and Nermal in very brief cameos) are at their best. IT's fun to look at, visually gorgeous and easily the best part of the film: the film may not remotely stack up to some of the masterpieces we've gotten, nor does it try to, but it does look great while having a lot of fun doing it.

Since we're talking character let's look at our cast and starting at the top Billing we have Garfield himself. Like I said Chris Pratt does.. fine. Would've preferred Nick Offerman, gold star to whoever brought that up, but he dosen't ruin the character and is still dryly sarcastic enough.

Characterization wise he's a tad diffrent: He's not nearly as much of a dick to Jon and Odie, something CellSpex pointed out in their own review might be corprate not wanting Garfield to be as dickish and thus less markketable. While I do think that's the case, I also think they threaded the needle well: Garfield is still a massive douchey orange blob to them, but it's in less over the top ways: him pummeling john or punting Odie siimply dosen't play as well, so instead he maxes out John's credit cards and Odie is essentially his butler. The former isn't super funny, but is fitting enough, and it's telling Jon, pushover he's always been, dosen't really push back against it, while having Odie instead be his hyper compentetn sidekick works. It could've backfired, turning Odie into something like say the minons that say s"please merchandise me", but instead it gives Garfield a foil, someone to make passive agressive dog noises or leave him tied to his dad on a tree. Odie is still dumb, but having him be garfield's slightly more emotoinally sasvy and competient sidekick still works well and gives him more than just "ain't he dumb" as a joke for a 90 minute runtime.

Jon is done incredibly well here but I wish there was more of him. This seems to be the sentiment across most reviews, and I can't blame my fellow critics on this one: Nicholas Hoult equals Thom Huge at the part, and like Garfield it's not easy. But it works by doing it a diffrent way: Thom had a dry sarcasm to his john that contrasted nicely with his manic dorky side, while Nicholas Hoult just leans into John as a loveable mess and it works. His panic as he tries to reign in a kitten garfield from eating an entire itallian restraunt, resignment as he washes the cat, and general bafflement at his pet fits the character like a glove.

Sadly the plot.. really dose't leave much room for Jon. It's understandable: Even if his mouth now moves, Jon can't undrestand garfield and the film outlines this, with an app specifically to translate animals being needed and only being known to exist by an unhinged security guard. It still would've been fun to give him more of a b plot looking for his pets, maybe rope in liz or irma from the diner as side characters.

What B-Plot we do get though.. is easily the best joke of the film. Jon is left on hold by a lost pet hotline for SEVERAL DAYS growing more hilariously deshevleed along the way. There is nothing more jon arbuckle than the world pantsing him while he's down and his deranged rant to the guard at the pound when he picks up the boys that "I'm done waiting! The Jon who is waiting is dead!" is fucking great, as is his bafflement when the boys run out on him after getting home to go save Garfield's dad, and his wondering if he triggered garfield when Garfield runs out to bring his dad home at the end. Hoult plays a perfectly pathetic jon, the relatable doofus we all know and love and I hope any future projects both bring him on board and give him more to do. The man is brillaint

Likewise Harvey Gullien is great as Odie. He has to commuincate using barely intellgible dog sounds, and of course great visuals from DNEG, but does so well. The man's voice acting career is a slow burn but man should he do more. He was great in Puss in Boots, is aces here and should be in most animated films from here on out. If Sony needs an Alan Tudyk, they've got one.

Onto supporting we have Garfield's Father, Vic, played by Samuel L Jackson. Vic is a big kitty who left garfield behind as a kitten and whose past crimes force his son into a heist wtih him. Look like Keith David I could listen to Sam Jack all day, easy. He has a talent for being awesome no matter the movie and no matter how much he's just in it for a paycheck. He's playing a fairly stock "ex con dad" type character who wonders into his child's life and tries to reconcile, but he has so much fun with it it's hard to really notice and the design, a big giant muscly blob, works well as a contrast to garfield: both are big soft boys, but Vic clearly lifts.

The plot between the two is cliche, I won't lie.. son is bitter his father left but DADDY HAD A GOOD REASON FOR ABANDONING YOU and if done wrong can have some bad implications. If a parent left you and is a dick, you have no obligation to them. Even if their not you don't really.

The twist that Vic didn't MEAN to abandon garfield was obvious from a mile away: even seeing the trailer it was clear he probably wasn't the asshole Garfield thought he was. But to the film's credit they don't hide that it's more complicated: from the get go Vic TRIES to explain he left, but Garfield's both understandably pissed he said he'd "be right back" and never came back and that Vic's old partner Jinx is forcing garfield into the film's heist simply to fuck with vic. It's also the right push to get Garfield into the plot: i've seen complaints about how "oh this big heist film isn't garfield he just lies around the house".. .but a key element of most of the specials and the other movies is garfield kinda gets.. shoved into adventure. Here Come Garfield happens because the next door neighbor has the pound come and Odie's too stupid to run for it. He tries to ignore his friend being lost, and tries to tell Jon who naturally dosen't get his charades, but ultimately goes to save him. The key to getting garfield into an adventure is to push him into it: either he has an emotoinal investment or , like in this case, he really has no choice, like that time he fought a panther to protect Jon. You CAN get plenty of good slice of life nonsense out of the boy but i get that for a specail or movie you have to kick it up a notch and having Garfield forced into a life of crime fits well.

It's a bit fucking weird, but again so is garfield. It's something people tend to forget or don't really care to look up and that came up in a lot of reviews, but the specials could get werid. Garfield was on a talent show, went through 9 very diffrent very fucking weird lives, was a private eye, had a whole spy pastiche adventure in his daydreams, went to hawaii to stop a volcano with the help of Fonzie's ghost.. or was it james dean's ghost? it was someone's ghost, and of course met ghost pirates. Not every adventure was fucking insane, but it bears repeating sometimes the strip or specials or especially the show got weird, and that's alright. Frankly the films could go weirder and less stock, but this really isn't out of his wheelhouse. Like with Scooby Doo maybe research a franchise before you bitch about it. not saying everything's gold, lord no, but I am saying the franchise is way more experimental than it gets credit for.

The twist on WHY vic left though.. is heartbreaking. This ties back to the opening which you can see most of in a trailer: vic abandons his son, Jon finds baby garfield outside the window while he's having a sad single man meal at an itallian restraunt, Garfield eats everything in sight and Jon still adores his pet. The only part left out is Jon almost leaves Garfield behind, as his apparement dosen't allow pets.. but goes back. Why they added this.. I don't know.. but their origin is truly hearwarming and may be another reason why they toned down the asshole to Garfield being less of an abusive roomate and more Jon's spoiled teenage son.

Naturally though we didn't see VIC'S side: he went to steal some food for his son, had to wait for the worker's long as hell phone call becaues some dick won't feed a stray cat. I mean I get they come back but counter argument: who cares. As long as you don't invite a roving pack of cats, help the starving kitty you ass. At any rate by the time vic got back with half a fish, his son was gone and he watched the whole scene at the itallian restraunt.. and then watched Jon come back, realizing Jon gave his son a better life. He gave his son up so he could. As for why he never visted it's the painful but truthful worry of ruining his son's new life: vic's a career heist man, an alley cat and garfield was comfortable. The sad irony is garfield.. woudl've welcomed his dad in. Jon being Jon would've gladly adopted him. Garfield wanted both HIS dads. Vic instead watched from a nearbye tree, a revelation garfield only gets in the pound after Vic fakes a double cross... when really he knows Jinx will NEVER let garfield free of her grasp and thus returns the milk from the heist himself. Naturally garfield realizes this, gets a drone fleet to help him rescue his dad along with the bull they befriended earlier, and saves the day.. and Vic still plans to leave but ultiamtely garfield convinces him to stay. Is it a tad cliche? Sure. Did it still knock my fucking heart out? yes.

Outside of this emotoinal arc, Vic is a lot like his son, but more active, having more world skills... and it's not really played up. Vic's emotinal arc is well done but outside of it he dosen't have much charater. Only the fact he's played by sam Jack really lets him be a character. He's not BAD but I wish they'd fleshed him out more outside of his tragic backstory. It moves me.. but there's not much else to the guy.

Onto our bad guys, and Jinx, our main villian is a delight. She has a decent motive too: She was once a would be show cat, but choked on stage, genuinely found family with Vic.. and turned vengeful when he left her behind on a job, her hate twisting her into the operatic selfish tyrant we see today with her two henchman Roland, the foldy brett goldstein boy I mentioned before and Rupert, his twitchy partner played by SNL and Fire Island's Bowen Yang. Roland is great mostly due to the expressive animation and Goldstein's deadpan delivery. Youc an almost feel rupert about to threaten

Good times. yang.. gets less to do. Roland is just kinda there because they felt they HAD to have a pair of henchman and coudln't have just one big british foldy boy. It's also weird to me they didn't go with another ted lasso cast member. There's tons of options and if you already got the big bad and one of her henchman from there commit to the bit. The show's lined with talent.

Speaking of which Jinx is voiced by Hannah Waddingham, who like Goldstein was a dream on Ted Lasso. She also was recently in the fall guy which you should watch. Seriously .. go.. go do that. It's fucking incredible. At any rate she makes the most of the role hamming it up to all hell, giving Jinx a nice manical quality. Jinx isn't given a ton of layers outside of her backstory, but is hilarous enoguh with her big fluffy persian cat presensce, general evil dickery and awesome villian song that for some weird reason wasn't actually put in the film proper but makes the credits a joy to sit through, she's a LOT of fun and you can tell Waddingham is knawing on the scenery in the recording booth and loving it. I like her getting to flex her range post-ted lasso, already terrific as Rebecca but now getting to play a nice variety of parts. Jinx wouldn't be the same without Waddingham and the casting was perfect

Our penultimate major character is Otto. Otto is a bull and garfield's grumpy mentor with a tragic backstory because everyone has a tragic backstory in this movie except Odie and that's because they cut the scene of Lyman getting shot to death in the falkland's war. He's a bull who was part of the farm Garfield has to heist with is daddy guy, and was removed from it because the new owners are dicks, desperate to get back his one true love Ethel. He's played by Ving Rahmes, who does a great job and the character honestly isn't bad, it's just.. weridly sandwitched into this movie. A ways in and we suddenly get this guy who should be leading this whole other movie. The heist itself fits decently enough, but this whole tragic past, his history with the guard Margie, it feels like a whole other film that Garfield and Friends just wondered into.

Otto is fun to watch, his serious as hell tone contrasting with things like assinging Garfield roadkill or his deadpan assement that Garfield and Vic are going to die and are only ready because they'd need a month and have a day. He's not bad, he' sjust a bit undercooked> he does get his happy ending with Ethel back, so tha'ts nice, it just feels like another character in a cast that probably didn't need one more guy.

Finally we have Marge, the security guard played by Schmigadoon! star Cecily Strong. Strong fucking brings it to marge, who could easily just be this obstacle of a villian but instead is this super obessed guard who has a score to settle with vic, instantly recognizes that jinx calling to set vic up (And hilariously it just being Hannah Waddingham saying meow a lot), is a cat informing on someone, and has this unhinged energy the film needs and that fits garfield like a glove. Garfield is all about unhinged weirdos wondering into his life in other media. She provides a jolt of energy for the heist section and a nice way to payoff things later as she trades the truck for ethel and takes in Roland and Rupert while taking Jinx to the pound.. or to an unmarked grave. Marge.. is hard to read. I just love her though, having this werido who understand this elaborate animal plot somehow. Beauitful.

We also have a few smaller roll: Snoop Dogg plays a cat

Dev Joshi plays Liz for all of 5 seconds, and for some reason Jeff Foxworthy plays a bird for even less time.

The cast overall is decent, if a bit overstuffed, but iwth good enough performances to make you not care.

Before we move on a complaint i've seen here or there is that they don't really use garfield's supporting cast. I agree on Jon, Nicholas Hoult was too damn good to use that little, but for the rest of the cast.. I get it. None of them really fit into the narrative that well: Arlene, The Meanest Dog in the World, Nermal might of fit as members of the heist crew, it woudl've been intresting to see them gather one, but otherwise Jon's Parents, who I dearly love, don't quite fit (It'd be fucking werid to have garfield rob people he knows instead of a souless corperation0, Irma has no real place and Lyman got shot to death in the falkland islands. Other than their neighbors who used to show up, Garfield has no other recurring characters to use. it WOULD have been neat to use the US Acres cast for the heist, again could've gone full ocean's elven, but I get not adding even MORE characters to a crowded film, and possibly saving them for another movie down the line. Again Garfield dosen't have a big bench to pull from: if you have that full a cast that can stand on it's own and possibly anchor their own film, I can't blame the mfor saving them. Same for Arelen and Nermal Garfield falling in love or having to deal with his greatest enemy are both things that could anchor a sequel.

The Big Fat Hairy Conclusoin

So overall the Garfield Movie is.. fine. It's nothing exceptional, but it has a LOT of fun energy to it and out of the films i've seen i'ts easily the best.. and frankly I doubt Tale of Two Kitties or Pet Force is better. The film does have way too much advertising, a stock plot and way more characters than it needs.. but it compesates by mostly nailing the characters from the comic, having some of the guest characters be intresting, and when they aren't all parties involved are buffered by talented voice acting and gorgeous animation. This film is okay, and if you don't like Garfield, you probably won't like this film. If you like some goofy animation and some schmaltz though, you'll likely enjoy this one like I did. It's not perfect by a mile, but it adapts the strip's tone and style well, adds some florishes here and there, and leaves the door open for more. And frankly with it's success it gives me hope that other comic strips might get adaptations. After Paramount's treament of Phoebe and her Unicorn and Big Nate, we could use somre more comic strip movies with this level of animation, and maybe some more depth. I'd love to see films for more recent strips like Phoebe and her Unicorn, Wallace the Brave or Breaking Cat News that have both intresting casts to tap into and unique art styles that would look gorgeous on screen. I'd love to see some older strips get a new spin as well like Baldo or Zits, ones with a formula sure but a lot of visual flair. With this and the peanuts movie, we're hopefully seeing more comic strip adaptations and unlike last time this could be something good instead of CGI monsters from beyond the farthest star.

So I leave this film with an "I'ts alright you might like it" and the number two spot in my rankings of the specails i've covered

Next Time (Hopefully): It's Christmas in July so that Means it's time for us to get down on the farm with Jon's family for some musical numbers, home cooking and elaborate back scratcher b plots.

[burr-ell]

@meiloorun-notthefruit replied to your post “yeah, hot take, if you haven't watched the first...”:

Wait if anybody wants to respond to this i have never watched c1 and i am having the time of my life with this week's episode, what is an example of the group actually mad? im curious

​Sorry it took me a minute to respond to this! There's a pretty good writeup of the issue on r/HobbyDrama (though it does have one or two minor errors), but I'll give you the short(er) answer.

So originally, Vox Machina actually had eight members: Percy, Grog, Scanlan, Pike, Vax, Vex, Keyleth, and Tiberius Stormwind, a dragonborn sorcerer played by Orion Acaba, another voice actor who'd done work on video games and anime with the rest of the cast. For a variety of reasons, Orion rather quickly developed a nasty case of Main Character Syndrome, and frequently did things that genuinely angered the cast. A couple notable examples:

When the party fought and defeated K'Varn, a beholder, in 1x11, Orion had Tiberius exit the fight for a plan to rally a group of mindflayers to their cause (which failed), and eventually returned, landed the final killing blow on K'Varn, and generally acted like an ass about it, leading to Marisha demanding to know why he was being so rude and unpleasant.

In Vasselheim in 1x16, in order to escape from a trap, Vex had to fire a nearly-impossible shot and rolled a 35, meaning it was guaranteed to happen and was going to be an incredible moment for her, and Orion had Tiberius insert himself to "help" using Telekinesis. The entire cast yelled at him indiscriminately for it, and while Matt was able to thread the needle live on stream, the atmosphere was generally very tense.

The nadir of them all, 1x27. This one's a twofer:

I don't know if you've watched TLOVM, but the Briarwood arc had just begun at this point, and all the party really knew about the Briarwoods was that at least one of them was a vampire. (I can't remember if they knew Delilah was a human necromancer by this point.) So Tiberius goes on a HUGE shopping trip to buy—among other things—every mirror he can in Emon, and the conclusion most people have drawn, quite reasonably, is that he intended to use them to make a massive light array to just drench Whitestone in sunlight and fry all the vampires. He also tries to write his family in his hometown of Draconia to bring the Draconian army into Whitestone to take care of things for them. Both of those things are frustrating to watch in the moment, but especially so when you realize that they're attempts to essentially speedrun Percy's entire arc and make Tiberius the hero. This and the other things he was doing already took up a ton of solo time, and Travis (known hater of shopping) eventually snapped "how about you get nothing else, and we move on?"

Then, the grandaddy of them all: while the party was discussing what to do and Vex was formulating a plan, Orion announced out of bumfuck nowhere that "Tiberius is getting a half-chub". Every single person at the table was appalled, and you can feel the change in the air if you watch the scene. Travis and Taliesin are both visibly furious; Sam, Marisha, Liam, and Matt are completely taken aback; and Laura looks incredibly uncomfortable. Tiberius had never established this aspect of his character at all the way Scanlan did, and after everything else there was very little patience anyone was going to grant him.

These are just isolated moments; Orion had overall behaved rather unpleasantly on-air and did a lot of metagaming (the reason he left the K'Varn fight was that he knew what beholders were and thought Matt was out to get him), and Matt once explicitly said after Orion left that he used to cheat on his dice rolls. Going from episode 27 to 28 is such a palpable shift in tone and atmosphere, and it's unsurprising that two episodes later they would announce Orion's permanent departure.

So yeah—if you've watched those scenes, you have a much better metric for what the cast's genuine anger is actually like.

[bomberqueen17]

caught up

Ha so i managed to watch all the episodes of the new Witcher season this weekend, so now i can -- let's be real I wasn't avoiding spoilers before, but like, I've read the books right, it's like, there's only so much they can do to surprise me. (below discussion is not in-depth or spoilery, more general and I don't have a ton of time so not meant to be anything profound)

I see they've taken Cahir's character in a delicious other direction-- book!Cahir is a dutiful young fanatic whose youth and relative inexperience is kind of critical to his character (and kind of parallels Ciri's contemporary journey, as she goes from being an idealistic child through all the things she goes through, he also is humbled and shamed and loses his idealism and his fanaticism gets a layer of tarnished desperation and then he finds his humanity etc-- chefkiss), but the Netflix version is an older, more deeply-committed fanatic, more intimately and personally tied to the ruler he serves so faithfully. They've also done some worldbuilding for Emhyr's missing years that I think is very interesting. It's funny, Cahir's actor is too old (but a great actor), and Emhyr's is too young, they've tried to age him up but he's like. Well he's like thirty. It hits weird. But, television, that's how television is.

I was using my sister's television since i had the house to myself, and could not figure out how to get subtitles on, so any of the lines that were whisper-growled-- that is to say almost all of them-- were largely unintelligible to me. But many of the ones I could make out were also just-- word salad, pretty things strung together for the vibe, so I don't feel like I missed out. You just had to get the gist, and sometimes it was an incredibly impactful book line that they crammed in there kind of unearned, but if you recognized it you could imbue it with the correct meaning yourself. This is not really a criticism. The whole thing was so rushed because they had to cover like 20 episodes' worth of material in eight, so it was just cruising on vibes and did so I think admirably, conveying a lot of worldbuilding complexity without having really a moment to get into it, and shorthanding character development in snappy one-liners that were pretty effective if you just. Suspended disbelief about literally any kind of logistics.

I did like some of the details they did choose to give us. Cool themes with Ciri, which I think convey the entire message of the book extremely well. And like-- when she's exposed to a bunch of sunlight, they showed her suffering with sunburn. That's a great grounding little bit of detail, even if it went away by the next scene because there wasn't time-- such a good detail, really eloquently conveyed by the framing and the actress and the props.

It's like.... an incredibly abbreviated art form, where they're doing grand gestures of vibes to get the story across.

Absolutely perfect for fanfic, LOL. There's really no well thought out detail to contradict so you've got a largely blank canvas. I also have deep regret that I don't think I can retcon my fic Keira into the Keira from Netflix who was both hot and had like, the perfect earthy practical personality, fuck she's good. Relatedly I loved the detail of how in the books Margarita Laux-Antilles was described as the most beautiful women in the world, and they cast a fat Black woman to play her, an absolutely gorgeous fat Black woman, and there in every scene of the sorceresses being beautiful were several fat women being beautiful too. It's something, ok.

I kept being like "omg woman hot" as i was watching, which was funny. I was by myself though, so it was fine, no one was there to witness my incoherence except the discord channels i kept typing into the wrong ones of.

one tiny sort of spoilery bit: i loved the delicious scene with Ciri confronting Cahir, but it was so rushed it was awkward, instead of showing us much they just had to have Cahir say it, and it was-- well the vibes were fucking delicious, but the execution kind of clumsy. But as I don't plan to rewatch, have zero fear that in my head I will rebuild this myself into something absolutely fucking perfect and id-tastic. Alas that we lost the book vibe where she clearly hadn't really realized he was a person until she knocked his helmet off and saw his stupefyingly blue eyes etc., and his terror and such, but i'm just gonna go ahead and fold that back in there in my mental recreation of it, don't worry. LOL if it worked for you as shot I Do Not Blame You.

oh also i'm in love with Philippa and now i feel bad i was so careless with her in my fic. Maybe I need to give her a bit more depth. I used her game characterization, I admit it, and Netflix did so well by her I'm sort of ashamed I didn't think of her like that.

[kingbryancroidragon]

Darkness Rising Part 1 Commentary

I felt like I'd be using the account to comment on things, so why not? Now, I will be sharing my own little head canons, so if that's not your thing just a heads up.

Right off the bat we are introduced to our first Cybertronian and it is Cliffjumper. Now, I once considered writing up my own story to send to Hasbro, something that is doomed from the start because why would they ever accept it, but with all the spotlight Bumblebee has been getting, I'd switch things around and have Cliffjumper as a member of the main cast. Red is my favourite colour after all. As for Dwayne Johnson, I personally find him an average at best actor and I haven't seen a ton of his stuff, but I have seen a fair number of portrayals of Hercules and he isn't one of my favourites, but I don't hate him either. For the record, my favourite actors are Nigel Green ("Jason and the Argonauts") and Lawrence Bayne ("Mythic Warriors"). As for Cliffjumper, I don't know, you just can't beat Casey Kasem, but on the subject of Shaggy Rogers, another Kasem role, I find Matthew Lillard to be a superior Shaggy, something that is no doubt going to get me a lot of hate, and in general I consider him a superior actor to Johnson, so maybe I think he would have been a better Cliffjumper, but at the same time I think it would have been a disservice to have such a great actor be brought in only to die in the pilot episode.

Then we get introduced to our second Cybertronian and of course, it is Arcee. I say "of course" because I love the characters who were introduced in the 1986 film. She, Hot Rod/Rodimus, Springer and Ultra Magnus would so have been included in the story I would have submitted to Hasbro. As for her altmode, it has typically been either a car or a motorcycle, but with the Transmetal 2 Maximal version of her having been a spider, I kind of feel like there was another direction to go, especially since at that point her screen appearances had two points for a car and this series brought it to three for a motorcycle and it could have been a good mirror for Airachnid, but I don't know, that's just me.

The energon on earth is a nice return to "Beast Wars", my introduction to Transformers. I really like that. I also really like seeing the Vehicons return in some form since I loved "Beast Machines."

Peter Cullen returning as Optimus is a real treat. I know we had gotten him back in the live-action films, but seeing him return to Optimus on television is just fantastic. He was actually at FanExpo last year alongside Frank Welker and I wanted to get both of their autographs, but I was not regularly working yet, I was only a call-in for a rare bookstore, and I did not know you could bring something in to get autographed, so instead of paying one hundred dollars to get an autographed picture of Megatron from Frank I could have brought in the Ultimate Guide to Transformers and gotten them both to autograph it. Maybe one day I'll have Peter's too.

Now we are introduced to Starscream voiced by the great Steve Blum. If you haven't seen the English dub for "A Cat in Paris", I highly recommend it. Blum is just fantastic in it. As for Starscream's design, I remember watching this and have no idea what I was expecting. Until the Michael Bay films, Starscream had always been recognizably Starscream. He might not have always had the same altmode (Yes, he was always a jet, but never the same kind, especially strange in my mind since I've looked it up and the F-15 Eagle is still in service, meaning unlike some characters, his altmode isn't exactly dated), then the 2007 film came and he has this head which is just not Starscream and it is the same here. I don't have the same problem with characters like Megatron because he hasn't always had a consistent design. Thankfully, Starscream's character is in tact with some variation.

Four minutes in and we have our first named casualty. Oh, God, I love it. I remember watching the 1986 film during lunch in high school with some friends and me being the only one who could actually identify them because I was such a big fan I watched the G1 episodes, I was on Unicron.com quite often. There were questions of how I knew all their names and an exclamation of "The medic?!" when I went "No! Ratchet!!" To me it hit more because I knew the names of these characters, but to someone who didn't they were just nameless casualties.

I kind of feel the same way in regards to Soundwave's design here as I do with Starscream's. It takes someone referring to him by name to know its him. I know he hasn't had many screen appearances, but his design is still recognizably him while this isn't, but on the other hand it looks so alien that I actually kind of like it.

The establishment of there being only five Autobots on earth now really makes you wonder how many others were lost. Its a nice touch.

And we are introduced to one of our human protagonists: Jack Darby. For obvious reasons, I head canon him as having gone dressed as Spider-Man one Halloween when he was younger, but for another head canon, just because, I have it that he eats shrimp with the tails. It drives both his mom and Miko crazy, Raf is indifferent and Fowler also eats the tails, thinking it adds a nice crunch.

I wonder if Arcee is the only who named their hologram driver.

While I do ship Jack and Miko, I had this head canon since before I started shipping them. June was asking if Jack was going to the dance because she'd heard someone was hosting a foreign exchange student, a girl, and thought Jack would go, meet her and hit it off. Miko was actually briefly at the dance, only to realize she felt like she didn't belong there without any friends and left soon after.

In regards to the "This is Jasper" line when Jack is told to be careful, I have the head canon that Jasper's most notorious crime was when its bank was being held up by a man wielding a taxidermy stork in the 1950's. For people who have lived there all their lives like Jack, June and Raf it is just a funny little story, but for someone like Miko she just has "WTF" flying through her head in big red letters. Sure, it sounds weird, but when your most notorious crime is some lunatic wielding a stuffed bird trying to rob a bank, what do you think is the worst that could happen?

Jack is so a motorcycle afficionado.

Ah, yes, Sierra (No Last Name) and... What was her name again?

And now we get into the action. A nice motorcycle chase, Bumblee gets into the action (my dad loved Bumbleebee) we are introduced to Raf (I have a soft spot for the glasses-wearing characters as I require them myself), it is a really good climax.

I would say robots that turn into cars is more accurate.

I actually don't have a problem with Bumblebee's more Bay film-inspired design. That is probably because due to a lack of screen appearances, unlike some characters, he didn't really have a set look. With this and "Animated" making it two for two, I'd say he has two looks.

Bumblebee accidentally stepping on Raf's toy car never fails to make me laugh.

Love how the Vehicons just call it them moment Bulkheard shows up.

And Optimus creates the Autobot Witness Protection Program.

Jack doesn't know what is going on. For all he knows, he and Raf are getting kidnapped by robots disguised as vehicles.

And now we are properly introduced to Miko, admiring the same motorcycle Jack was the day before. Fellow motorcycle aficionado?

And then Miko volunteered for the Autobot Witness Protection Program.

I love how indignant Ratchet sounds at the concept of someone having made the Autobots.

Having Megatron return is just the perfect way to end the pilot, especially since it heralds the return of Frank Welker as the character to television.

And that is the episode, great start. Thank you for reading this if you did.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

I know it's been a hot sec since Only Friends ended, but I have love your analysis but have some thoughts about Boston's ending in the context of the show's themes. You said in your reflection that it reeks of branded pairing and interference. Could this be the point!

We know Boston is the photographer which has lots of implications for his character and sexuality, but photographers also have a unique interest for directors, and can even be stand-in characters for the director's perspective. Boston's non-monogamous approach to dating estranges him from the clear pairing off of his friends in traditional couple units, as if in a legal marriage, in the same way that a more radical director like jojo might feel in response to the contractual obligations of the branded pairs by studios.

Getting back to the brilliant title of "Only Friends," you could start to see it as a commentary on some of these issues. Only friends can refer to the limits of being excluded from the status of boyfriends, or, in a more official manner, being excluded from the status and benefits privileged through marriage. But we also know that the actors for Boston and Nick were the first chosen by jojo & co before the branded pairs. Only Friends can also refer to these two actors previous roles within the BL genre as supporting cast that lacked the narrative possibility and the contractual obligation to become a couple by the end of the series, to remain only friends to the romantic leads.

Perhaps the ending is supposed to feel empty. There is a veneer of campy happiness to the last scene, but most of the online audience reactions seem to understand that what we felt we saw was a tragedy. Jojo seems too perceptive of a director to have created that reaction by a failure to realize how the viewers would feel about Boston's fall and exclusion. It actually seems really impressive to have what is basically the foundational definition of a comedy (the couples get together in the end) feel so sad--Ton's absence replaced by a picture of what they used to be before the mandatory coupling. Then the guest comes in, played by Mixx, a member of yet another contracted pair. "I booked a single bedroom. I'm here alone." The malevolent theme of the series kicks in as the cast looks from him to one another and offers to be his 'friend,' as if that was allowed. Is it a coincidence that Mixx shared this summer that he'd be taking a break from acting, thus escaping his contractual coupling!

It seems to me like jojo used the guise of the BL genre in 'Only Friends' to critique the genre (and more traditional gay political ideals) and we all felt the pain and disappointment we were supposed to feel about what we're being robbed of.

You're more versed in the genre and jojo's previous works tho so what's your take

I am glad you are interested in my take, but I'm not sure that I have one. I think your read is a perfectly valid one, just as I also think saying this wasn't intentional commentary and GMMTV interfered is a valid one, just as I think saying Jojo and Ninew dropped the ball at the end and this was ultimately their responsibility is valid.

I think it would be based as hell if Jojo and Ninew did what they did at the end of Only Friends and obliterated some of their messaging as commentary against the current BL structures, but I don't think we have a way of knowing that. I think I am generally more forgiving to the narrative and to Jojo and Ninew than others might be, but that doesn't make me correct or other people wrong. I don't think we have any way of knowing what went on behind the scenes, in the writing room, with the directors, with the studio execs to get to where we got. But I have found other pieces of Jojo's more legible in their intent at the end.

Overall my hot take is that ultimately I am glad this show was made, regardless of overall fandom reaction, regardless of how the narrative was perceived, because I think it is important for GMMTV to get more comfortable mixing and matching their branded pairs, to get GMMTV more comfortable with higher heat in their BLs, to give Neo a really difficult role that he absolutely blew out of the water. And while international and tumblr reactions were on the displeased or angry side of the spectrum, I don't know that that was the case domestically, and it did well enough to have a few nominations in the most recent awards show. So regardless of what myself or anyone else thinks about Only Friends, I think it did enough to perhaps show GMMTV proof of concept for general fandom interest in more mature BLs from an intimacy and messy relationship perspective. And, depending on the reactions they saw, maybe it showed them that at the end sticking to the branded pairs ended up hurting the show.

[mermaidsirennikita]

I’m too afraid that a Wallflower adaptation would be absolutely butchered in an attempt to appeal to non romance fans/puritans pushing for sexless media…

I think several issues would corrupt that show, tbh. Those you mentioned, for sure. Imo, The Wallflowers does a superb job of balancing the standalone nature of a good romance and an ongoing plot. You can read them on their own, but (imo) they are MUCH better when read in sequence, especially Winter coming off of Autumn. But if you adapted them somewhat faithfully, they'd all work in a mini-like way.

But of course, I think people would feel the need to have these dumb subplots to make it less romantic. We'd get some bullshit about Westcliff and Simon doing a business thing, Lillian starting her own company, Daisy going out to be proto-Louisa May Alcott/Eloise Bridgerton. I'm sure we'd see Evie getting abused by her family/sexually harassed by her cousin onscreen, because we super need that.

And I think there would be this need to connect things more than necssary. The books do some of it, right? Like, Westcliff and Lillian do get foreshadowed a ton in Summer, and I do think you have this through-line of their life because Lisa LOVES Westcliff, and the series basically ends with their firstborn coming into the world... Until Christmas, which would theoretically be a great finale/special, where you do see more of Evie and Sebastian because Lisa realized by then where the money shot was for fans lol.

But like. I can just SEE them seeding Evie and Sebastian way more than is necessary to create a continuance, and part of what makes their romance so good is that it is so out of nowhere for both of them. I think Sebastian alludes to seeing her in passing at one point, but he was like "whatever" because she was SUCH a Wallflower.

And I do think they wouldn't do the sex justice. Frankly, I don't really think Hollywood is currently casting a lot of men with leading man potential...? Or like, sex appeal? A lot of them read very boyish. I think a Wallflowers show would ideally be diversely cast, I'm not married to like, a blond white guy playing St. Vincent, but I don't even see where anyone is really getting a lot of actors that could pull off the brusque masculinity of Westcliff or the ridiculous sex appeal of St. V.

I mean, it can be done. Before it went downhill and everyone started fucking with everyone's hair, Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe were super well cast for Outlander. (David Barry was toooo.) Interview with the Vampire has not one, but TWO super hot and talented men in the lead. It can be done. But then you've got Bton, where they lucked the FUCK out with casting Rege for the first season, they lucked out again because while Jonathan Bailey is ultimately "a random white guy" visually, he's charismatic, very talented, and had great chemistry with Simone Ashley... and benefited from a first season that for all its flaws was way more enjoyable to watch and set the second season up for success, I'm sorry. Every other leading man on that show is "another random white guy". Put the dudes they have lined up against a Sam Heughan, a Jacob Anderson, a Sam Reid--both in terms of having a Distinct Look and Vibe and talent, it just doesn't compare. Mainstream American casting directors currently are not tapping into the type of mindset that like... the people casting Kdramas are. Or, on a good day, the people casting telenovelas and daytime soaps. The well is DRY. Girls? They can still find talented, charismatic girls. But I feel like, in part because there's such a need to make everything wholesome and it's easier to sell a hot grown ass actress as wholesome and sexy versus a hot grown ass actor.

So. Yeah. I don't know. I just don't think it would be done super well, lol.

Also, they'd completely bastardize the St. V plot in Autumn. That just wouldn't be done today. No fucking way. He'd like, shove Lillian off her horse or something lmao. IF that. There would be no kidnapping. Certainly no threats.

And I'm sorry, but that kinda ruins the whooole thing.

[claireandacat]

Simping over middle aged actors who don’t know I exist. An essay.

Maybe it’s just a general lady thing, but I have a tendency to crush on actors 10+ years older than me. Am I a lonely 26 year old lady waiting for her happily ever after while my catholic match profile is crickets?

You got me there.

But like seriously it is a general human thing to find someone attractive and to feel feels. It’s in everything, life, movies, music, ballet, art, history. Don’t get me started on my favorite Corinthians verse about love.

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while now. I was basically inspired by Brittney Broski, who simps all the time and people relate to that and listen to her ramblings. I’m sure one other person out there is interested in hearing my simp interests. 😅😂

I have a top 5 of middle aged hot guys I absolutely love. All of these are crushes that started when I started getting crushes and I still find them attractive today as a 26 year old lady. In order of discovering and falling for them they are…

Ben Barnes

Robert Pattinson

Cillian Murphy

Sebastian Stan

Daniel Brühl

1. Ben Barnes

I was 11, snacks and dance class was life, the hormones were starting to kick in and the second Narnia movie had come out. I wasn’t much of a Narnia fan but I was forced to tag along with the after school program I was in to a showing of this movie as a last day of school celebration. Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian was FINE AF to my 11 year old eyes and heart. I fell for him like a ton of bricks and would get 11 year old girl fantasies of being Prince Caspian’s princess.

He is over 40 now and still fine as hell. His character in Shadow and Bone is amazing. He def plays dark personality characters very well. He has a singing career as well and his cover of River was in my top Spotify songs last year.

I love that he is in T-Mobile commercials now. He is perfect. He is THE ultimate hot British actor. I hope T-mobile paid him well because my man is talented and deserves to be more than just a face of T-Mobile. When I was stressed and on edge at my previous job at an urgent care, seeing his face on commercials always made my 12 hour shifts better.

I’m surprised he hasn’t been in some BBC new classic considering he is both British and adorable and would totally make a good heart throb protagonist?!

2. Robert Pattinson

I was in 6th grade and the Twilight books and craze was big at my middle school. Every other girl including myself was wearing team Edward or Team Jacob shirts. The Twilight movies also had come out. RPatz was the heartthrob of every girl. Move over Prince Caspian, Claire is grown and edgy and likes edgy hot guys that match 😂.

A couple years ago I watched his video on GQ where he takes a look into his career and decided to dive into some of these movies myself. His young self is cute as a button in the 4th Harry Potter movie even though his charming character has an unfortunate fate. He makes the perfect Batman, just add in the Chris Nolan plot and music and we got a perfect match. He totally captured the darkness and loneliness in Bruce Wayne/Batman.

Of course I HAD to see his Chris Nolan debut. If you read my other posts, you know I am a superfan for Christopher Nolan movies.

He is fine and cute in that movie. His performance is great. His performance in The King was also great. He def nailed that French accent.

He can be the American heart throb AND the British heart throb at the same time

3. Cillian Murphy

I’m 16. I’m into zombie movies and 28 days later is on BBC even though the plot and IMDb pictures are scary, I still ditch my chemistry homework to watch it. Totally fine with any nightmares I’ll probably get. Still my favorite zombie movie to this day and one of the few horror movies I’ll still watch since converting to Catholicism.

This is the first time I actually fell for an actor because of their performance and then I deep dived into other works he is casted in.

I love his intensity and dedication to roles as well as approach. Even during his small role in Dunkirk. I love the power and darkness he puts into Tommy Shelby. I mean have you seen the scenes where Tommy is in full blown rage? He goes from zero to rage effortlessly.

His performance in Oppenheimer deserves an Oscar and if he doesn’t get it I am rioting. He nailed the look. He nailed the sensory overload/overwhelmed looks. Just perfect.

I’d love to just have a Guinness with him and just discuss Irish culture and his career over.

4. Sebastian Stan

What is funny about this one is that for a bit I was a Steve Rogers stan. Like from ages 16-21 Steve was my man. That was until his friend Bucky stumbled upon in my dream one night. Originally that is how I knew Sebastian but then i stumbled upon The Devil All The Time where he has a small part as a corrupt small town sheriff and became curious.

Last summer I had a random dream about Sebastian whist I was simping on RPatz. Somehow my curiosity got me and I became a Bucky stan. Still to this day I simp over him, even though there’s another guy I’m simping over even stronger (see below).

He is just so fine and such a sweet human being. I read a buzz feed article about people who have met nice and cool celebrities and my Sebbys was on it. In that video he did for GQ of him reviewing his career, he is so humble, so genuine and always has something nice to say about everyone he works with.

And now the current middle aged actor I’m simping on…

5. Daniel Brühl

See my alienist blog post

Three words. Calm. Collected. German.

Well more like handsome, multilingual, and German 😂

Wes references aside, It all started with my curiosity with the movie Rush. I had only known Daniel as Zemo in the marvel movies so I thought let’s see his other filmography. I fell for Daniel like a pile of bricks. The eyes. The hair. The talent. It was really Dr. Laszlo Kreizler that did it for me. According to Niki Lauda himself (God Rest His Soul) Daniel is a “down to earth guy” like who doesn’t love that?! Plus being a wannabe #tradwife finds it so adorable that he has a wife and kids. I never want to cheat on those ever I’m not that lady. But there is something so cute to me about a man with a family. Then again that’s what all my fantasies are.

Like 🥹🥹🥹

He is a perf trad man vibes. Who doesn’t love that?! His character in Rush gives the same vibe too. I also love me a smart and sarcastic man like Dr. Kreizler. Then again I’ve been told Germans are just that way and being that I’m about 1/3 German I could just find that sexy in my blood 😂

In conclusion

I have one goal in common with these men. I want to see them each in a Chris Nolan movie AND a Wes Movie. Not one or the other. Both. Rpatz and Cillian are halfway there.

My top 5 of middle aged actors that I will forever simp on: honorable mentions

Matthew McConaughey - his performance in interstellar is so amazing I’m naming my son Joseph in honor of not only the OG St. Joseph himself but his character in Interstellar. Also is pro American and sometimes stars in comedies.

Adrian Brody- a Wes regular. And on Peaky Blinders. I love his variety. “I think it STINKS!!!”

Chris Evans- I was obsessed with him and Steve rogers during my late teens for a MINUTE. So he has to be included here.

Ryan Reynolds’s. He was pikachu and he is a family man and has a beautiful family with Blake Lively.

Honorable mentions but they’re actors I find hot but they’re my age (Oct 1996 or younger/older by 5 years)

Tom Holland. Fellow 1996 baby and I’m pretty sure he would’ve graduated in my class. Plus he is faithful, anti Hollywood actor, and a loveable dork. Also he does it all.

Timothee Chalamet- probs the Leo DiCaprio of my generation. Plus that jawline and hair. Hard to find a cutie with hair texture like mine.

Tony Ravilori. Also a fellow 1996 baby and Wes regular. Has a charming simplicity in his characters.

Freddie Highmore- I just love his performance in The Good Doctor.

If they’re my age I may have an expressed interest in their work because they’re my age. I’ll be seeing them in 40 years on tv looking as perfect as ever still and me with my greying hair will wonder where time went.

Harry Styles. I was a one Direction girl. Been following his solo work for a bit and he is a fellow 420 user 😂

Honorable mentions but they’re actors older than my parents

Wes Anderson. year older than my mom and he fine as hell on top of being my favorite director.

Jeff Goldblum -it’s Jeff Goldblum

I’m not too crazy about the honorable mentions but they’re still cool. I’d have a glass of wine or blunt with them. We all have our favorites on differentiating levels.

[si-cucumber]

Mazz's Top 5 Shows (as of 8/23)

So I’ve been debating on letting my inner theater geek out on here for a while, but I also realize that....this is my blog so I can talk about whatever the hell I want to talk about.

If somehow you didn’t know already, I am and always have been a theater kid. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen tons of live theater in my day, whether it’s community, national tours, or in New York. And now that my current touring season is over, and I continue to gush over the amazing shows I’ve seen the past few months, I think it’s time for me to officially update my Top 5 Show list. 

5.) Six (US Tour)

So fun fact, I just saw this for the first time yesterday. I've been a fan of Six since it opened in the West End and waited super patiently for it to tour. It was entirely electric, the crowd was beyond into it, and the vocal talent was so stunning that I instantly bought tickets to see it again. That has never happened to me before. I was incredibly blown away and look forward to seeing it again next weekend lmao

4.) Next To Normal (Broadway, 2010)

This was my very first Broadway show on my first trip to New York. This was baby's first online fandom. Back in the day, my friends and I ruled the n2n category on FFnet. It was my first experience with fanfiction and fandom and it was fantastic. This show was everything angsty, teenage Mazz needed at the time. Being able to see the original cast and it being my first real Broadway show, it will always hold a special place in my heart!

3.) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2023 Revival)

I saw this back in June when I went to New York last! Actually, the whole reason for my trip was just to see this, especially since I missed out on Josh Groban in Great Comet. The most star-studded cast I've ever seen, tons of heavy-hitters. Sweeney Todd was a favorite of teenage Mazz and his theater friends. We'd spend our weekends in my friend's basement performing "A Little Priest" to the best of our ability. Even though I know this show inside and out, I was still on the edge of my seat by the end. Annaleigh Ashford was the stand-out for me. She was robbed of that Tony.

2.) Beetlejuice (National Tour)

I saw this back in January with one of my best friends. I've loved this show since it debuted ages ago, and was probably the best show I saw this touring season! The absolute funniest show I've ever seen. Like, we were laughing so loud and hard I'm pretty sure we were annoying the people around us lmao. But nonetheless, it was an excellent production and I left dying to see it again (no...pun intended).

1.) Some Like It Hot (Broadway 2023)

I will never ever ever stop talking about this show. Hands down, best show I have ever seen. The amount of joy i felt for hours after seeing this was incredible. I was so lucky to see this during pride month, so I have a pride version of the playbill, which is so so special to me. It was so refreshing to see a classic, jazz musical again and the choreography? Insane. Like jaw dropping insane. The final chase sequence blew my mind.

But what struck me the most was seeing a queer actor onstage playing a canonically trans character. A character who was done so well and felt so organic. I saw this at the point in my transition where I really started presenting and dressing masculinely. I was the little awkward trans guy from Ohio, alone in the big city, sat at the front of the mezzanine hearing the crowd cheer for Daphne. After months of feeling dread about the state of this country and the fear of being outwardly trans, this was just...the perfect thing at the perfect time. The amount of gender euphoria I felt was incredible, it was so moving to me. It will always hold a special place in my heart and that is why it's my number one.

So that is my current list! Will it change? Probably at some point lmao. My next season starts in October, and I look forward to seeing what awaits me next.

[destinyc1020]

Agree with you on the impact of a press tour. I think most stans forget that most people just watch one or 2 interviews of actors promoting their projects and maybe see a post of a premiere if it looks cool with the costumes and general design. Few people have the time to follow a press tour and that's why so many interviews are repetitive because they get the same basic questions over and over again. So the success of a project has to do with that initial perception plus word of mouth because if your friends that have similar tastes to you tell you that a movie sucks, you are likely to believe them and not waste your money going to a theater to watch it, regardless of who's acting in it. But if your friends tell you "it's ok, not the best thing ever, but I had a good time" and it stars someone that you really like, you're more likely to watch it than if it starred unknown actors. So the actors still have an influence, regardless if people want to call them movie stars or not

And don't get me wrong! Press tours, premieres, etc, they all build up HYPE for the film...especially in the cities where they're held, and in the areas where some fans are able to see advance screenings and/or meet their faves in person on the red carpet. 🥰

This ALL helps to build excitement and word of mouth for the film, so that it can perform as well as possible at the box office! 😊

Why do you think WB fought tooth and nail to have the Dune cast be able to promote this film? 😅 They even pushed back the release dates several months so that the strikes would be over by the time the cast needed to promote this film.

WB spent a TON of money on this film, and they want their payback rofl 🤣

So yea, the cast and the press tour was definitely instrumental in helping this film sell well (Are you kidding me? WB wasn't going to waste that chance with these 4 hot stars).

My point though is that MOST avg movie-goers are not following a press tour so intently like we are, so they aren't seeing every single interview, every interaction, or everything being said on the red carpet lol. 😅

Most ppl over 30 have full time jobs, rent or bills to pay, and just don't have time for this intense scrutiny lol. The ET networks just take bits and pieces and other highlights and sound bites from the press tours and red carpet looks and put it all together in a neat little bow... and ppl may see it on Entertainment Tonight and whatnot, but they're just not following stuff as closely as we do.

They see a cool trailer and an awesome cast, and they're SAT. And if friends have good word of mouth about it too, then they're definitely going. 😊👍🏾

[0nlythrowharrybeaux]

would you be willing to write a blurb about harry and y/n fake dating ? like a pr relationship.

Sure:) here you are friend! Hope you like it!

Y/N was in some hot water, one of her very best friends, Ingrid, was engaged and her fiance, Carlo, was a new actor in Hollywood. His popularity had recently skyrocketed as he had been cast in a blockbuster film and his career and life were starting to gain more traction. Off of the screen he was a very shy guy and had a bit of trouble networking so as a favor to Ingrid, she started bringing him around to her events as her +1 so he could meet more people in the industry and hopefully land more roles. Ingrid was not in show business and had zero interest in being visible in that world or just in general, she didn't even use social media. Ingrid fully supported Carlo and his dreams, but when he landed his big role he immediately private-ed his social media accounts and created new ones for professional use; they were very private of their relationship and only the people in their friend group knew Ingrid, obviously fans knew Carlo was engaged, but they didn't know to who and that's exactly how he and Ingrid intended to keep things.

Unfortunately, some gossipmonger amidst the celebrity crowd told someone else that Y/N and Carlo were having an affair behind his fiance's back. This news made it to Deuxmoi and soon the entire internet was bashing Y/N for being a home wrecker - it was a PR nightmare. Despite her team and Carlo's team denying the allegations, the general public still believed that it was an attempt to cover things up. Ingrid knew these were all lies and her stance was that if she made a statement it would just be feeding into the gossip and she didn't want to do that. So as Y/N met up with her friend, Jeffrey, and her agent Martin, at FullStop she was completely at a loss for what more could be done.

"I just don't know what else I can do if Ingrid refuses to make a statement!" she sighed, "Martin's already receiving threats about me losing sponsorships and potential roles due to this rumor!"

"Well, I had an idea but you might not love it." Martin said as he glanced to Jeffrey and she looked between them.

"OK, what is it?"

"What if we put you in a PR relationship?" he said and Y/N rolled her eyes.

"Are we attempting to cancel lies with more lies? The people will see right through it." she reasoned with a disbelieving eye roll at this suggestion.

"Look it doesn't have to be all bad. We choose some who has gained a lot of favor in the public eye. Someone who you've spent time with and are well connected with... we can very slowly plant the ideas in the media and it could really work." Jeffrey said and Martin nodded in agreement.

"How long have you two been plotting this?" she asked with an unamused expression.

"We were talking about it a few days ago, OK?" Martin said, "We even tested the headlines on a small group and their opinion of you was a lot more favorable afterwards." he said and Y/N sighed. This was ridiculous, she swore she would never get dragged into something like this, but here she was about to consider the idea.

"OK... who were you thinking of shackling to me?" she asked the two men and they shared a look and Jeffrey smiled at her.

"Harry?" he said and Y/N frowned immediately.

She wasn’t upset because she disliked Harry, it was quite the opposite actually. Y/N and Harry ran in similar circles in Hollywood and while they weren't best friends, they did consider each other friends and they had tons of mutual friends and were often spending time in the same group of people and they got on well. He was a popular and well-liked person in general and as Martin and Jeffrey mentioned all of these things to her it seemed that Harry was the obvious and best choice to veer away the rumors that Y/N was a home wrecker.

"Jeffrey, no. You're his friend! And I'm his friend! We can't drag him into this." Y/N countered, "He doesn't deserve that."

"Look, he was there when we discussed it and as we brainstormed candidates and he volunteered to do it. I literally did not talk him into anything! He just wanted to help you out and not force you into an awkward situation with someone you might not be as comfortable with." Jeffrey said and she glanced to Martin who was nodding to confirm the story. "I'm gonna ask him." she said and they both nodded.

"Yeah, go right ahead!" Martin said and she narrowed her eyes at them for a moment.

"Also just a side note on this, but when I double checked with Harry if he was sure about this we discussed not tying this to any contractual obligations which I think is smart because if anyone were to go digging for this kind of thing there wouldn't be any proof about it. It would just be between us four that it's a PR thing, just a verbal contract." Jeffrey added in and she sighed.

"I don't love this idea, but I'm going to talk to Harry about it and feel it out, OK? I'll let you know tomorrow." she told the two men before her and they nodded in agreement and with that she headed home and mentally cursed Ingrid for not just doing her a solid and putting these rumors to an end, but whatever, she had a boundary to never get tangled up in any media circus and Y/N needed to just respect that and find another way to change the tide.

************

Y/N felt a bit nervous to call Harry about this because he was really, really nice and she didn't want him to feel obligated to help her just because they were friends - if they could even be considered friends! Their personal and private conversations had been few and mostly done through text. When they would go to an event or hang out with their mutual friends they did talk with each other and were cool enough with each other to joke around or tease each other, but their relationship was not all that deep. To her, it didn't matter that there was evidence of a past relationship with him, she was sure that people would not buy this. There was no way. She waited as the line rang a few times before it stopped.

"Hello?" she asked and heard some rustling before Harry responded.

"Hey, Y/N! I was expecting to hear form you one of these days." he said cheerfully and she giggled.

"Yeah, look I met with Martin and Jeff today and I really appreciate your offer to help, but I also am hesitant to involve you in this mess, you know?" she spoke sincerely and he sighed.

"And this is why I volunteered myself, because I know you'd tru to shoulder it alone and whatnot, but you don't have to do it alone." he explained and she sighed.

"It comes with the territory." she mumbled.

"Yeah, but it fucking sucks. And look, we don't even have to do things one on one, we can still go out with our friends like normal and just sprinkle in a little bit of stuff to arouse suspicions, we don't even need to address it!"

"No offense, H, but knowing your fandom it'll only get worse if we sprinkle things in and it never gets addressed." she giggled and he winced.

"OK, ouch!" he laughed and she giggled along.

"You know it's true..." she sang, "Probably say that I'm onto my next victim or something." she reasoned.

"Look, we don't have to do it, I just figured I'd be a good candidate because we're friends and we have been spotted together publicly on numerous occasions, you basically came to all of my LA shows and were seen there..." he said and she hummed, "And I may have been sent an article last year that had a bizarre theory about how we were secretly dating." he said and she chuckled.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah! Apparently nearly every time we've been photographed together there is one person between us and you can never see our hands in the photos. That was just one part of the evidence." he joked and she rolled her eyes.

"That's kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Imagine how many photos of us there are and for someone to go and look for that?" she said and he laughed.

"Yeah, I know! But apparently it was compelling evidence. Also they said that every time we hang out it's in a group and it's a ploy to make sure people don't catch on, but that we did let it slip once. Remember that one time we shared the jet to David's wedding, apparently that was also very compelling evidence of our tryst. "

"Oh yeah, I can see how that one is really feeding into the idea of it. I mean there could be no other logical explanation for why we traveled together, like scheduling or something." she said sarcastically and he smirked as she said this, "God, people are really reaching..."

"They are. And I didn't even know someone saw us, but apparently there was a fan at that tiny little private landing strip in Bora Bora who saw us getting out together. Apparently you were rubbing my back as we walked to the car."

"Oh yeah, I was! You had done some crazy workout routine and your back was still sore, remember?" she asked and he hummed as he recalled.

"Yeah... But anyway, I just wanted to help because you're really great and I don't think you deserve what's going on." he said simply, "And like we don't need to complicate it, we can just talk through what's OK and what's not and just go from there? I mean I trust you and I hope you can trust me too." he said and she bit her lip as she thought about it.

"Lets give it a test run. Lets see if we can get a few people to hang out this weekend and don't even tell me what you plan to do to add that little extra whatever it is and we'll feel it out. If it doesn't feel right we can just brainstorm something else. How does that sound?"

"Good. I'll see who's available this weekend, I'm going to send it in our group chat." he said and she giggled.

"Yeah, alright. We'll be in touch." she said before hanging up.

It wasn't even two minutes later when his text came in to their friend group chat asking who wanted to make plans for the weekend. It was a little odd to her why he was so invested in getting to do this with her. The hopeful part of her wanted to believe that maybe he had a secret crush on her, but the logical part of her was quick to remind her that Harry was just really nice and an incredibly loyal friend. He was also great at self-preservation and she knew that if he thought things wouldn't end well for him he wouldn't insert himself into the situation.

**********

It was now Saturday afternoon and Y/N was getting ready to leave her place and meet up with everyone for a late lunch. As was their tradition, she settled herself into her car and immediately sent her ETA in the group chat, they had a friend who was always late and this was everyone's way of gently pressuring her to be punctual and mindful of everyone's time. She started her car and just as she was about to pull out of the gate she got a notification on her phone for the intercom. She opened it up and saw Harry through the little camera, waving at her and she smiled and opened it up and after a few seconds he was driving up her driveway and parking his car before he came around to her window and she rolled it down down.

He looked so cute, as usual, she loved his street style. He pushed his sunglasses up to his head and rested against her window, peering in at her. The slight breeze of the day wafted his deliciously spiced scent into her car and she couldn't help as she inhaled it.

"Hi. You smell good." she complimented with a smile, also pushing her sunglasses up past her hairline.

"Thank you." he smiled.

"What're you doing here?"

"Picking you up! What else?" he asked with a grin and she bit her lip.

"Is this a good idea?" she asked and he smirked.

"I don't know... we'll see." he said and she giggled, "C'mon, get in." he insisted and she sighed.

"Fine." she agreed and he smiled before walking off. Y/N grabbed her back and her keys and headed to his car where he was waiting for her with the door open, "Thank you." she said quietly and he acknowledged her gratitude with a friendly smile before shutting the door and heading back to his side.

As they drove they made conversation and it wasn't awkward or anything bad. It was Harry's first time going to this restaurant so Y/N was reading him the menu the and helping him narrow down his options for his order. When they arrived he drove up to the valet stand and they quickly emerged from his car. There was a group of people waiting for their cars by the entrance and Harry also wanted to steer clear and not make things too obvious, so he placed a hand on Y/N's lower back as he came up behind her and gave her a little shove, silently making his urgency known.

"Hi Harry!" they both heard and he didn't even turn around when he raised his hand into a little peace sign for the fans that had called after him as they zoomed into the restaurant. When Y/N went up to the greeter he turned around to peer out of the glass doors and gave a small smile and a wave to the fans who had recognized him. He wanted to put in some distance because if they just jumped into this people would definitely find something between he and Y/N suspicious.

Finally they were sitting down with all of their friends, waiting on just one more person as they looked over the menu. The day was warm and sunny in LA and they were fortunate enough to be nestled into a large booth outside near the back of the garden area. This area was in a little gazebo, meaning they were slightly more elevated than the other tables outside and people could see them and since she and Harry had walked through to get to their friends she had not stopped feeling people's gazes on their group and even more so the weight of judgmental eyes when they would reach her. She and Harry were sitting beside each other and they were all talking and laughing along in the group, but whenever Harry wanted to say something to her he would make a point in leaning in closer towards her ear, even one of their friends gave her a questioning look and she just shrugged in response as Harry adjusted back into his personal space.

When they finally ordered Y/N could not choose between a salad that sounded phenomenal and an eggplant steak that also sounded to die for, and then the salad came out and her eyes widened.

"Oh god, I think I overestimated myself I should've asked for a side salad." she giggled to the server and to Harry who both giggled along with her.

"Yeah, the salads are huge." she responded with a friendly smile before starting to rear back.

"I'll can help you with finishing it off, love. Tha'looks really great." Harry said more quietly but still loud enough for the server to hear.

"Yes, please." she smiled at Harry and then turning around to get the servers attention before she headed off, "Excuse me, could I bug you for another plate, please?"

"It's OK, we can just set it between us." Harry said to Y/N as he scooted closer and looped his arm around the back of her chair and she gave him a look that said "tone it down, please!" and he bit on his bottom lip to stop from grinning and Y/N let out a harsh breath through her nose as she giggled softly and then looked back to the server.

"Sorry, never mind we can share it like this. Thank you." she said and the girl smiled, not missing how Y/N flicked Harry's arm resting on the back of her chair as she shook her head and leaned in to say something to him in a very low tone. In reality Y/N was just telling him how she was going to kill him for putting on such a big show.

"You two are acting weird." their friend Devin stated and the whole table agreed with her as she pointed this out.

"Excuse Harry, he had an edible and he's being extra." Y/N said and everyone laughed and Harry immediately denied it, making everyone laugh. He even went as far as going round the table showing everyone his eyes as proof before settling down back beside Y/N who was giggling at him.

"How dare you?" he challenged her with a big smile, his voice low to keep the interaction between them.

"Well you are behaving like you’re high." she teased and he shook his head.

"Well everyone's seen it, my eyes are fine."

"They're actually quite dilated right now." Y/N pointed out and his smile faltered a bit.

"Oh, they are?" he asked as he made a little more space between them. Y/N didn't miss the light flush on his face as she pointed this out.

"Yeah, they are." she smirked.

"OK, whatever....just eat your salad." he said stabbing his fork into some of the greens before pushing them towards her mouth and she opened up and accepted the bite he offered. This seemed to make him really pleased and she decided she would stop riding his ass about this. As nervous as she felt deep down, she knew that Harry was just trying to help and maybe he wouldn't change the general population's perception of Y/N, but he was certainly helping to make her feel better about it all.

When he was probed about this again he just pulled Y/N into his side and explained that he too had experience with being a hot topic in the rumor mill and it could suck and he didn't want her to feel alone and just wanted to give her some extra love. Then he proceeded to hug her into his side and she didn't fight him off. But even still, some of their friends were not buying what he said and believed that this was far more than him being nice.

************

After their lunch Harry dropped Y/N off at home and hung out for a little before he went home and she proceeded to take a long hot shower. She was feeling really relaxed and was ready for bed despite it being 8:30 at night. She decided she would put on a movie and just as she was settling in her phone started to ring and she glanced over to see it was Martin, he friend and manager. She rolled over and picked grabbed her phone and greeted him cheerfully when she answered.

"Hey Marty, what's up?"

"It's already working." he said and she sat up with a shocked look on her face.

"What?!"

"Yeah, it's all over TikTok, not even a tabloid. Though a few have reached out for comments I haven't responded to anything." he explained and she sighed.

"Yeah, he was really getting into his performance." she giggled and Martin did as well.

"Yeah, I saw that. And you left together? A nice touch."

"He literally showed up randomly and picked me up right as I was about to drive out."

"Awww H. Well, what do you say? Do you want to continue with this?"

"I'm still making up my mind." she said and he chuckled.

"Well, even if you don't, keep this up."

"Yeah OK, Marty." she mumbled and he said his goodnight before letting her go. As she settled back into bed the temptation to go looking for what people were saying grew too great and she was soon looking at all of the videos people were posting and theories people had and the general consensus seemed to be that this seemed to be going on for a lot longer than people thought. Then she stumbled on a video that was basically a two part run down of Y/N and Harry's ever evolving relationship and she was giggling as she watched on and started to see how people came to these conclusions.

"-like I know she's been getting a lot of hate, but she's never been problematic before and she doesn't seem to be bothered by the rumors at all. Maybe she was bringing Carlo along to everything because Harry was on tour and couldn't accompany her or maybe they knew we were catching on so they had to distract us?" The young girl theorized, "Harry has said he won't date people publicly so I don't think we'll ever get a confirmation or denial from either of them but I think there's definitely something going on and it has been for a while." the girl concluded and she giggled as she locked her phone.

It was true, Harry dated plenty and there'd been a few occasions in which even they had met the person he was seeing and or they'd even hang out publicly but he'd never acknowledge anything about it publicly because it truly wasn't anyone's business. To the outside world most of his relationships had been labeled PR stunts. And as they chatted earlier when he was hanging out with her expressed to Y/N that for a while it did upset him that people would think that of someone he truly cared for and was invested emotionally in. As if he didn't have that same emotional need for connection and partnership as everyone else, why did it always have to be some plot with ulterior motives? Why did people feel that they had a right to pick things apart and question and tear down the person he had chosen for himself? As if he couldn't make up his mind on his own, as if he hadn't analyzed their strengths and flaws carefully, as if he hadn't risked rejection and heartbreak in his own quest for love and all for what? For the public to wear him and his partner down so much that he felt it irresponsible to continue subjecting his partner to that kind of abuse and eventually end things. Y/N felt for him and she reassured him again that he didn't have to put himself through this again he assured her that he was committed to helping her out in this capacity if she decided so.

She gave it a few minutes of thoughts before texting him and telling him that she would accept playing this game with him and he seemed pleased with her response. If anything, she hoped that they could grow closer as friends in their fake dating scenario than they were before. They were so alike, he just seemed to be in a far better place than her and she hoped to get on his level, he was doing so well for himself and she wanted that too. She wanted her joy and peace to radiate outwards like his did.

**********

When Y/N texted Harry that she was in he was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. He had been wanted to get closer to her for a while, but he was more shy than people thought when he was interested in someone. Typically he would have a little liquid courage or an herbal enhancer to chill him out enough that he could get out of his head and make his move, but he didn't want to do that with her. He didn't want her to doubt it for a second when he told her he was into her. If they ever kissed he didn't want her to think that it was just a drunk and affectionate kiss like he had shared with many of his friends and she had been witness too. He didn't want her to think that it was drugs or just a flare of passionate in a moment. He wanted her to see the little things he would do if they were ever to date. If she would ever give him a real chance.

It had been nearly a month and their little stunt had been working like a charm. Obviously, there hadn't really been public one-on-ones, but they had been spending a lot more time together now and Harry's crush had developed into a full on like for her. He knew he wasn't obligated to, but he would bring her flowers and little treats because he knew she liked them and little things like that.

Today was going to be the first time they were going to go anywhere one-on-one and she had planned it because she wanted to thank him for putting himself in the line of fire for her. It had been her idea not to do one-on-ones because she didn't want to blatantly drag him into things, but she had been loving spending more time with Harry and she had started to like him. It was 7:30am and they were both in some casual wear and hoodies as they boarded a duffy boat with their steaming cups of coffee.

"I have never done this before." he said to the man asking who was going to drive and Y/N giggled before volunteering herself and listening to the man's directions and soon they were off.

"I hope you don't get sea sick!" she called over the pur of the engine.

"Nope, I don't!" he assured as he watched her steering for a moment before scooting towards her and wrapping his arm around her, "M'cold." he said lowly and she smiled up at him, "Did we have to do this at 7am?" he asked and she giggled.

"I did it for you, I just didn't want to risk people bothering you when you're not on duty or whatever." she explained and he hummed.

"Well thank you for thinking of me." he responded and she looked up into his eyes again and smiled.

"Of course." she said softly, taking in his smile and bright eyes. He was the literal form of sunshine and he never ceased to amaze her. Harry was great at eye contact, but he got a little nervous and his eyes flicked away for a moment and he gasped as they were heading straight for a bouy.

"Oh my god, you're going to crash!" he laughed and she turned to see and immediately jumped into action, steering as far as she could in the other direction before she crashed into the buoy but the tides were pushing them in that direction. They wouldn't sink or anything, but she didn't want to be charged for any major damages. They weren't going to make it so Harry scooted out of her side and hurried to the side of the boat where the buoy was and reached out to try and put some distance between it and the boat as they got closer to it. He was kneeling on the seat, body leaned over the edge and Y/N was more concerned with him falling out than the boat now, but he managed to keep a safe space between the boat and buoy until they had passed it safely. He then turned to her with an incredulous look on his face as she giggled.

"Thank you." she said with relief and he shook his head as he chuckled and just watched her for a moment from across the boat.

"Maybe I should drive." he said and she laughed before biting her lip.

"Maybe you can just help me drive." she suggested and signaled him back over with her head. Harry felt all nervous and tingly as he made his way back to where she was at behind the little steering area and she scooted over to the clear end and told him to scoot in behind the wheel and he did before looking to her, "May I?" she asked, feeling completely nervous and like throwing up as he looked at her with some confusion.

"What?" he asked.

"Ummm, sit with you." she said softly, "O-on your lap?" she asked and he felt his throat dry up and his heart pound wildly in his chest.

"Oh." he exclaimed, "Yeah, of course." he smiled timidly and she made her way over and planted herself onto his lap carefully and leaned her head against his.

Harry was smiling as he looped his free arm around her waist to hold her just a little closer. They were both buzzing internally at how close they were now and all Harry wanted to do was kiss her. He'd been dying to for the last two weeks. But for now they were just sat in silence, cozy with each other, basking in the moment.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked lowly and she nodded, "If I asked you on a date for real would you want to go?" Y/N pulled back at his question and he turned his head to her with a nervous smile on his lips.

"Ummm...yeah." she confirmed with a timid grin.

"Yeah?" he asked again to confirm and she nodded.

"Yeah." she whispered.

"OK. I'll plan something and ask you soon, OK?" he said and she giggled, "I don't have anything prepared! I don't know, but I wasn't expecting you to say yes!" he defended his unpreparedness and she continued giggling.

"Why wouldn't I say yes?" she asked and he shrugged.

"You were just so hesitant about just fake dating me that I... I don't know what I thought. I just get really in my head about things sometimes."

"It wasn't because of. you. Well, I mean it was, but I was more thinking of you and I didn't want to drag you into that if it blew up in my face." she said and he hummed.

"Well, we're apparently a pretty believable couple..."

"Yeah." she smiled and felt her tummy flip as he glanced down to her lips.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked quietly and she nodded.

Y/N was holding her breath as he leaned in until their cold, smooth lips met in a sweet and slow kiss. He glanced ahead to make sure they were in open water and when he confirmed this he helped her shift until she was straddling his lap and he was grabbing her face tenderly as their lips met over and over again. It wasn't long before they started nibbling and sucking lips and smoothing their tongues over each other until they heard a pathetic little honk over the sounds of their engine and they parted from each other to see another duffy boat full of a few older couples cheering them on and they laughed and felt all flushed with a little embarrassment at being caught even out in the middle of the ocean, well it was the bay, but still. After they waved goodbye to the other boat they turned back to each other with satisfied smiles.

"I've been dying to kiss you for weeks." he confessed with a grin and she smiled bashfully.

"Awww really?" she asked and he nodded.

"Yeah and ummm... if it wasn't clear before I-uh like you a lot and ummm...yeah." he trailed off and she cooed as she leaned in and kissed his lips quickly before pulling back.

"I like you too." she smiled, "And ummm, I love that you asked me out but this was actually our first date. There's been coffee and kissing so..." he smirked as she said this with a smug little grin.

"Yeah, OK. Fine." he confirmed and she giggled.

"And really, just thank you for helping me out and all of this. I've had a lot of fun getting to know you better." she said softly.

"Me too." he grinned.