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moorishflower · 2 years ago

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Re: Your Addams Family Post, I now have the mental image of Gomez pretty much adopting Hob as another brother/cousin/what have you. "Children! Met your new Uncle!"

It starts with the auction.

Hob doesn't think of himself as a collector, but he's also self-aware enough that his doing so is more of a defense mechanism than anything else. Because he does. He collects. He can't help himself -- so much of his life can only be traced backwards through the shapes he's left behind, his self, of a necessity, always needing to vanish into the background. He follows his own history through letters to Dear Robert Gadlyn, portraits painted with one of his hats in the background, an authentic Victorian jacket supposedly worn by Wilde himself, and which Hob vividly remembers shucking from Oscar's shoulders, leaving it to puddle forgotten on the floor while they'd kissed in sweet silence on the settee.

So when he gets an email from his friend Kev at Hansons, a "check this book out mate" sort of deal with an eyes emoji appended to it, Hob is already intrigued. Kev is good at finding him the more esoteric things for his not-collection, and hasn't steered him wrong before, and he's not disappointed when he opens the link to find a listing for a book. A book, specifically, from the 1600s. Being an Account of the Dread Pirate Sylvia, her Ancestors, her Descendants, and Her Pets, it says, though it's not the title that catches his eye so much as the provided scans of some of the pages. The handwriting is beautiful, flowing and elegant and heavy on the page, and it makes his heart ache for a time before keyboards and typewriters, when gorgeous penmanship could be counted as a virtue and not just a hobby. There are sketches of fantastical sea beasts, navigational maps, the most beautifully-rendered charcoal drawing of an orca he's ever seen, and.

And a drawing of him.

Not him as he was in 1699, when this was apparently written, but him in 1374. Him, younger, fresh-faced, just a slip of a beard still, his head tilted back, laughing. Great great etc grandmother's cousin, says a caption beneath it, in that same heavy and flowing hand. Late 1300s? Must track him down

Motherfucker, Hob thinks, and sends a few emails.

Twenty-four hours later, he's the proud owner of a fantastically well-preserved diary/travelogue/grimoire, having shelled out a significant amount of funds to even get the thing, on account of some American trying to outbid him at every turn. He's not surprised, then, when he gets an email shortly after his final bid has been locked in, from the rather posh-sounding [email protected]

The contents of the email, though. Are, to say the least, alarming.

I say my dear boy, it starts, I don't suppose we could come to an agreement as to a different price for Lady Penelope Addams' only surviving diary? If you're interested in antiques of rich and unusual history, I am certain I can provide. Only it contains one of very few references to a lost branch of our family, the Lady Penelope's great great etc grandmother and her kin, and I, being invested in genealogy, am eager to explore this hidden part of our family tree.

Absolutely not, Hob thinks, shutting his laptop with a click. Absolutely buggering bloody fuck not, he thinks, shoving a sweater into his suitcase, because it's winter, and it's Chicago, and he has no idea what sort of weather to expect. This is fucking insanity, he thinks, hands folded in his lap on the plane.

What are you doing? he asks himself, as the door to the grand gothic manor opens, and Hob, who has just trekked a portion of a mile through a swamp and had to kick an alligator to keep it from lunging at his suitcase, looks down at the man who had identified himself in emails as Gomez Addams, his. His relative. Somehow, far distant, but his.

"Robert Gadling," he says, with obvious relish, and Hob feels himself hooked by the crook of his elbow, hauled into the foyer with surprising force. "Come in! Come in! Children! Come meet your new uncle!"

#hob gadling family values #my fic #ask response #hob gadling #the sandman #addams family

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aspiringwarriorlibrarian · 2 years ago

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Small details make me wonder if the Grimm are really the kind of threat that Team RWBY and the huntsmen really think they are.

They're still DANGEROUS to be sure, but there seems to be a ton of little details that suggest they're less "abominable soulless and mindless creatures of destruction" and more akin to dangerously territorial wild animals that just happen to be created from Darkness.

The reason why we're inclined to believe that they're abominations is because of the expectations, and also because the only sources of information we have on them come from people who've spent their entire lives fighting against them.

If they were truly soulless, why did the Ursa show confusion at Yang's behavior? Why did those Sabyrs run away in terror when they saw the Hound? The Beringel that Ruby fought is clearly intelligent and roars in triumph when he seems to succeed at killing her. The Sphynx seemed confused and curious about what Yang and Blake were doing to it until it was too late. Even the Apathy were noted as being focused on finding their packmates after the farmer guy lured away their members in his harebrained scheme to calm his staff down.

More often than not, they seem to be reacting more often to BEING attacked, unless they were drawn in by strong negative emotions, are drawn in by a Relic, or being directed by someone else, with exceptions like the Nuckalavee being more due to the fact that that specific monster has a sadistic personality and clearly seems to enjoy hunting for humans and keeping trophies of its kills.

Plus, there's also the fact that towns, despite consistently being stated as being "defenseless and needing huntsmen"...kinda tend to be rather lax about their security, with them basically treating Grimm as being akin to a frustrating, but manageable nuisance. Even Oscar, who wasn't exactly trained as a fighter, treats killing a Grimm as something he can do just fine by himself. and Volume 4 was the one where it was made pretty clear that bandits (specifically, Raven's Tribe) were the ones who caused the damage to the towns like Shion, and the Grimm just popped up afterwards due to the negativity.

Also, being darkness made versions of wild animals with their own intelligence and personalities would still gel well with the details that we've seen. The Goliath in V2 are called cunning and waiting for their chance to strike, but elephants in real life are some of the most intelligent and complex animals with immense capacity for emotions and thought. If they're really just darkness made variations wild animals, why WOULDN'T they be resentful and pissed at being slaughtered?

And let's face it, real life flora and fauna are kinda terrifying. Fungus that can turn animals into zombies. Bees can kill a hornet by rapidly vibrating their bodies and cooking them to death. Many deep sea creatures look something out of a fantasy horror or Cthulu mythos story. Dolphins and Orcas are sadists who take great joy in tormenting their prey.

If the Grimm weren't made of darkness, they wouldn't be that different from wild animals that have their personalities and complex systems of behaviors.

We're told repeatedly that the God of Darkness' works were "vile imitations of life", but this is not only coming from people whose only source of information was unreliable narrator, but also one who was directly being influenced by the God of Light, who is pretty much a selfish tyrant who constantly did everything he could to maintain a relationship of dominance with his brother.

So frankly, it's possible that everything we know about Grimm is basically propaganda or pseudoscience perpetuated by a deeply flawed system. They're still a danger, but only if you're foolish enough to provoke them and/or only if someone else is deliberately setting them on you. But the Huntsmen Academies teach everyone that they're dangerous soulless creatures built on assumptions that in turn are built on a GoL-biased perspective, that the huntsmen academies are needed to exterminate the Grimm and that the world needs their protection... and no one is able or willing to consider repudiating this because the idea never occurred to them to do so.

It'd just be another layer to RWBY's theme of questioning and examining the narratives you've been told, even the ones that seem to be accurate.

EDIT: To be honest, that'd also put the Mountain Glenn situation in a different light too. That instead of Grimm being monsters who deliberately went out of their way to ravage the place, the people of Vale instead stupidly built the settlement ON TOP of a nest of Grimm in their territory, and accidentally provoked them.

EDIT2: I should note that this doesn't make Team Remnant bad guys or anything, but it's just showing that even when they're trying to do the right thing, it can be difficult to recognize the layers upon layers of propaganda and social conditioning set upon them by a flawed society. That even the things they take for granted as being true and correct are only seen as such because no one ever challenged the idea.

That's not "little details not adding up", that's reaching and deliberately misinterpreting or even outright ignoring the canon to support a conclusion you've already decided is true against a lack of evidence. RWBY has a lot of symbolism tied up in the Grimm, what they are and what they represent, and to throw that all away to "subvert expectations" would be a waste.

Also speaking as a biologist, Grimm do not act like wild animals except in a few behaviors like growling or snarling. They act like animal-shaped demons hellbent on eradicating human life.

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newmusickarl · 4 years ago

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Album of the Week: 91 Days In Isolation by The Slow Readers Club

When Mancunian indie rockers The Slow Readers Club released their fourth studio album The Joy of the Return in March this year, they probably weren’t expecting to drop their fifth studio album just a few months later. However 2020 has been a strange year, with COVID-19 causing non-stop disruption and hardship on both the music, and wider world. Summer festivals and album tours were off the agenda, with the Readers instead plunged into a UK-wide lockdown.

Not to be deterred, the time was spent productively with each member of the band working individually at home on different elements of songs. This eventually all came together and out of this bleak, secluded period comes 91 Days In Isolation – an immensely timely and politically-aware record, that also features some of the band’s finest moments to date.

The Starkie brothers, James Ryan and David Whitworth have never been ones to shy aware from the darker social and political issues, and whilst confined to COVID lockdown it’s come as no surprise they’ve dived headfirst into the changing times that the pandemic has caused. Across the album’s eight tracks, the Readers share their observations during an intense summer of fear and uncertainty, letting the listener into their most vulnerable thoughts and feelings. All of this is propelled wonderfully by their signature sonic backdrop of pulsating synths and atmospheric guitar riffs.

From the ominous swell of the mightily infectious Yet Again, the piano-driven outro of Like I Wanted To and the stinging guitars and heartfelt vocals on Everything I Own, the lockdown has really brought the very best out of the Readers. However it is arguably Two Minutes Hate that offers up the record’s crowning achievement, with the track’s arena-ready chorus of “And I start to crave chaos, unleash this rage in us” providing the perfect anthem for 2020.

All in all this is a fantastic record, not only one of the Reader’s best to date but also an album that couldn’t be more of-the-moment.

Best tracks: Two Minutes Hate, Everything I Own, Yet Again

Albums also recommended:

Letter To You by Bruce Springsteen

From a record that was forged over 91 days to one that was crafted in just five. On the Boss’ 20th (yes 20th) studio album, he looks back on his life and career in profound and poignant fashion, crafting some of his best work in years. Recorded live with the ever-present E Street Band, songs like the stripped-back, Dylan-esque strum of One Minute You’re Here and the roaring Born-To-Run vibes of Ghost, show Brucey still has plenty left in the tank.

Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz

Damon Albarn has revived the output of his cartoonish creation through Gorillaz’s new Song Machine project, which sees the band releasing a new song each month. Now Season One collates all the tracks released throughout the year so far, featuring some iconic guest artists including Elton John, Kano, Robert Smith, Peter Hook and St. Vincent, as well as current favourites like Slowthai, Georgia and Octavian. It all makes for a fun, fascinating listen, that potentially offers an insight into the next evolution of music releases beyond the traditional album format - roll on Season Two!

Tracks of the Week

Been In My Dream by Dave Jakes

The former Lonely The Brave frontman has returned, with a new self-titled EP arriving in December. Been In My Dream offers the first taste of Jakes’ solo material, and it shows undeniably that he still has his flair for beautiful, heartfelt songwriting, that hits you right in the gut. Stunning!

Artifice by Sundara Karma

Reading-based indie darlings Sundara Karma mix things up on their brilliant new single, with the guitars taking a backseat to xylophones, synths and frontman Oscar Pollock’s distorted auto-tuned vocals.

Straight To The Morning by Hot Chip featuring Jarvis Cocker

Enrolling the legendary Jarvis Cocker to join them, Hot Chip’s latest dancefloor-ready single is “a disco anthem about going out, for a time when people really can’t.”

Teardrops by Bring Me The Horizon

With an apocalypse-inspired new album dropping later this week, Sheffield rockers Bring Me The Horizon have dropped the final teaser in the form of Teardrops. Continuing their trajectory back towards their heavier tendencies following their recent pop-detour, the track draws heavy Linkin Park comparisons blending alternative metal with a mainstream pop hook.

First Aid by Gus Dapperton

And finally this week, indie-pop sensation Gus Dapperton has already assured himself of a spot on my Albums of the Year list thanks to his incredible sophomore effort Orca, and one of the main reasons for that being the case is his track First Aid. Now released as a single with a striking, self-directed video, First Aid sees Gus confront head on (literally in the video’s case) his mental health issues, in what is still one of the most heartbreaking, emotionally-stirring, but ultimately uplifting songs I have heard all year. Check out the video above and definitely give Orca a listen if you haven’t already.

#the slow readers club #91 days in isolation #gus dapperton #first aid #orca #bring me the horizon #hot chip #jarvis cocker #gorillaz #bruce springsteen #dave jakes #sundara karma #new music #best of 2020 #album of the week #album recommendation

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frasier-crane-style · 6 years ago

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Elseworlds

Well, Tumblr isn’t dead yet and the CW-DC just did a big crossover, so I think it’s time to make fun of the CW........ for the last time.

Did you know Tim Allen actually ended Home Improvement after season 8 because he knew the show couldn’t maintain its level of quality and was on the way downhill? Tim Allen has more creative integrity than anyone involved in the making of Supernatural. Think about that.

Anyhoo, lots to digest! Largely, this crossover felt to me weirdly lackluster and obligatory, like the whole thing was just a trailer for the oncoming Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. It just felt unambitious, which is the last thing an ‘event’ like this should feel like. In fact, it felt a little like I imagine the result would be of filming a bunch of people playing DC Universe Online. We visit Smallville and see Lois Lane! We go to Gotham and meet Batman...’s cousin, and fight a breakout at Arkham Asylum, complete with Mr. Freeze...’s gun and the Scarecrow...’s fear gas. Then, we wrap the whole thing up with an Evil Superman, because God knows, DC never gets bored of that.

-Petty nitpick department: Batwoman just standing around on rooftops looks weird. Not only does it give the odd impression that she’s spent the entire time between episodes just, uh, standing, but c’mon--you’re supposed to crouch. Or at least hunch. Everybody knows that!

-Weirdly missed opportunity to have Ollie do the Flash narration, considering all the other opening narrations are futzed with.

-The whole thing is pretty much a glorified body swap--Stephen Amell is playing Barry Allen and vice versa. I can see how TPTB would be too pressed for time to explain a whole ‘nother continuity where Barry Allen became Green Arrow and Oliver Queen became the Flash, but still, it’s not as much fun.

-They also wholeheartedly borrow the thing of Ollie having to be happy to use Barry’s powers and Barry having to be mad to use Ollie’s ‘powers’ from the episode of Teen Titans where Raven and Starfire switched bodies. So, I guess, congratulations on making the central plot point of your crossover the same as a half-hour episode of a children’s cartoon.

-Remember that time Barry was too happy and too confident in his abilities, so his dad died?

-They got a good actress to play the Lois Lane to this Clark Kent, considering they both just look kinda awkward? His chin looks like he had a face transplant done and her nose looks like someone is constantly Photoshopping it.

NHHHA, He-Man!!

-Don’t do a callback to Smallville, show. Oliver Queen has now spent more time in costume as the Flash than Tom Welling did as Superman.

-Direct fucking hit when Oliver said that Barry couldn’t take a crap without getting a peptalk from his team, but on the other hand, Oliver can’t take a crap without Felicity wondering what it means for their relationship. “Oliver didn’t tell me he needed to go to the bathroom! Why wouldn’t he trust me?”

-I’m just saying, last season on Agents of SHIELD, pretty much every character was in a relationship--there was not so much damn drama. It’s a fucking body-swap plotline, guys. You don’t need to treat it like it could lead to someone’s divorce! Really, at this point, if you’re in a relationship with a crazy superhero, you should be used to it.

-(Although I suppose I’m a little hard to please here, since over on Legends of Tomorrow they suddenly expect us to care about Constantine rescuing the love of his life when we’ve seen their relationship for all of four seconds. But hey, like I said, Agents of SHIELD manages a happy medium and finds time for Ghost Rider to show up.)

-For the post-apocalyptic hellscape they make Gotham out to be, the police respond awfully fast to disturbances.

-”We’re on the corner of Burton and Nolan!” Groooooan.

-Ruby Rose, everyone: the Less Convincing Michelle Rodriguez. It’d probably a bad sign for how compelling Kate Kane is as a character that everyone would rather talk about where Batman is and why Batman would leave. And, speaking as someone who both watched Birds of Prey and The Dark Knight Rises--Rocky, that ‘Batman Retires’ plot point never works!

-(Is Batwoman even that popular a character to get her own spin-off? I suppose she’s ‘TV show’ popular, but still--I think she’s one of those Batfamily members that is somewhere behind Alfred but ahead of Ace, right next to Azrael. And I do think it’s hilarious that TPTB were insistent on casting a real, authentic lesbian!!!--and then immediately got complaints that they didn’t cast a Jew. Oh, Ziggy, will you ever win?)

-I don’t want to be too hard on Ruby Rose here. Yes, she doesn’t showcase anything other than one mode: Snide And Slightly Pouty (Stephen Amell ain’t winning no Oscars, but he can differentiate between Ollie As A Civilian and Ollie In A Halloween Costume). But the writing does her no favors in making a case for this character as being deserving of any amount of screentime, besides the fact that she dresses like Batman, the guy we really care about. She’s a heroine, as are featured variously in every Arrowverse show. She’s queer, as is Alex Danvers, Sara Lance, John Constantine, et al. She’s rich to the point of having unlimited resources, as are (sometimes) Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, Kara through her billionaire friends. She lives in a crime-ridden hellhole, as Ollie has done for several seasons. What makes any of this compelling? The Gotham setting? Arrow has already turned itself into an effective facsimile of that, to the point of having Ra’s al Ghul show up to make Queen into his son-in-law. Arkham Asylum seems completely generic, as does Wayne Tower. It’s all just a different part of Vancouver; who cares?

-Likewise, Supergirl, speaking to you as a TV show--you really should either be adamant that Kara is heterosexual or give her a weirdly flirtatious scene with Batwoman, but not both. I know you need, need, need to let the audience know Batwoman is a lesbian...

Pictured: The CW subtly letting you know about a character’s minority status.

But c’mon. We’ve been over this.

-Speaking of minority status, maybe it’s not the best idea to let slip that John Diggle is an AU John Stewart. Yes, there’s ten brothas in the DC Universe, and four of them are actually the other six. There are so few Negros on Earth-1 that they had to make Barack Obama into a superhero. The Batfamily has two black folks and they’re both related to Lucius Fox. There’s so few black people in Metropolis that Black Lightning knows who his father is!

Folks, the DC Universe is so white, the Black Lanterns are all dead. The DC Universe is so white, they don’t even have black Kryptonite. The DC Universe is so white, even Black Condor is a honky. The DC Universe is so white, they don’t even need a Justice League of Africa, they just have a Batman of Africa! The DC Universe is so white, the blackest guy on the Justice League is a refrigerator with one-half of a brother’s face on top of it. The DC Universe is so white, they named the black woman on the Teen Titans after a bug that’s half yellow! Now Milestone, the Milestone Universe is black. It’s so black, Aquaman is the most powerful superhero there, because he’s the only one who can swim!

(-I’m planning on being chased off of Tumblr like Indiana Jones after he snags an ancient artifact.)

-Would it be that hard for them to go to Arkham and run into the Ventriloquist or Orca or someone memorable, so long as they have access to the Batman toy chest? We got, uhh, Lady Who Can Pick Up Gun and Psycho Pirate I Guess? Like I said, unambitious. Wouldn’t it be so much cooler if they got someone from Gotham to film just one little cameo?

-Also, considering the sex scandal these shows have had, maybe it’s not the best idea to joke about their EPs being depraved maniacs? (Was Guggenheim the one who actually got MeToo’d? Because if so, Dude--Not Funny)

-The show had to character-shill Batwoman so hard that Ollie and Barry stopped being fear-gassed just to reiterate that she is too an interesting character in her own right! (If the characters have all heard of Batman, wouldn’t they have heard of Batwoman too if she’s been an active vigilante more recently?)

-But who cares about four unstoppable superheroes teaming up when we can find out how Felicity feels about her relationship? Just a thought--if you fight with your SO all the time about nearly everything, maybe you shouldn’t be in a relationship.

-Long story short, Doctor Destiny rewrites reality again to make Barry, Oliver, and Kara into supervillains in a world where he’s the hero. He also makes the other characters into pointless cameos, and weirdly gets criticized by Kara for... not giving himself a sex-change operation by becoming Superman instead of Supergirl? He doesn’t have gender dysphoria, Supergirl. I thought she was all about trans issues this season?

-Like, I don’t know, if a woman used a magic lamp to wish herself President, would anyone criticize her making herself a lady President instead of a man President?

-I guess it wouldn’t be Supergirl unless they crowbarred in an extremely awkward girlpower message where Superman and Lois agree that Supergirl/women in general are more useful than men, despite the fact that all Supergirl did was the exact same thing as Barry, while Superman and Oliver fought Dr. Destiny, and all Lois did was call in a bunch of men as reinforcements and then need to be rescued.

-But like I said about being unambitious--wouldn’t it be fun to see our heroes be forced to team up with a few supervillains to save the day? Instead, we just have Cisco playing a villain (something he’s done numerous times before). They get his help, have a weirdly poor showing in a fight against Jimmy Olsen, get Superman’s help again, yadda yadda.

-We also get Superman proposing to Lois Lane. Yeah, considering they’ve been in a relationship at least since Supergirl Season 1, she’s carrying his child, and they’re planning to move to an alien world together, yeah, I should think so? I know Superman probably isn’t a Republican, but does anyone think he’d be so blase about putting a ring on it? Hell, if nothing else, he should want to tie the knot before Ma or Pa bite it. Couldn’t they have just made it that he wants to renew his vows with Lois in a Kryptonian ceremony or some such?

#dc comics #arrow #supergirl #the flash #elseworlds

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newshirtonlines-blog · 5 years ago

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zeroviraluniverse-blog · 7 years ago

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Real stories fuel a 'golden age' of documentaries

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Real stories fuel a 'golden age' of documentaries

You’re on the couch. It’s been a long day. The remote control is in your hand. What can you watch?

There’s that new CNN documentary series on the pope. Or maybe you’re more in the mood for some sinners in “Girls Incarcerated” on Netflix? There are cute critters on Hulu’s “March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step” or you could watch former slugger David Ortiz as he figures out his next career step on Fusion.

Keep scrolling? Sure. What about a new three-part documentary about Silicon Valley on Science? Or the series about gangsters on Reelz? How about the A&E series on adults returning to high school in “Undercover High”? What about some David Bowie or Elvis on HBO?

If you’re looking for documentaries these days, they’re hard to miss. Once considered more medicinal than entertaining and consigned to high-brow places like PBS and art house theaters, documentaries are scattered across the film and TV spectrum, as well as online portals like Facebook Watch or YouTube Red and on video streaming apps like go90. Even mighty NBC is getting in on the act with a documentary on Martin Luther King Jr. airing Saturday night.

“It feels like the golden age of documentary right now,” says Josh Koury, a professor at Pratt Institute and a documentary filmmaker. “It’s an amazing time to be making documentary stories.”

Starz, which last fall began offering new documentaries for the first time, has doubled down by adding four original docuseries to its summer schedule, exploring everything from the criminal justice system to the legacy of hip-hop.

Jeffrey Hirsch, chief operating officer for Starz, says the boom owes a large part to technology, which has allowed filmmakers access to relatively inexpensive high-quality cameras and editing equipment. What has emerged for content-hungry platforms is often a cheaper alternative to scripted films and series.

“The cost of creating these stories has come down, I think. The ability to travel and to actually be your own investigative journalist has become possible. And the world has gotten smaller through technology,” he said. “So I think the opportunity to relive or retell some of these stories has become a lot more accessible.”

Showtime also has increased its output of documentaries, said Vinnie Malhotra, head of documentary programming for the network. He marvels at how much the landscape has changed from 15 years ago when docs were independently financed and had limited releases.

“There are more outlets for documentary than there ever have been before,” he said. “There’s a lot of money being fueled into the documentary industry from newer platforms that have emerged with interest in the form of storytelling — places like Netflix, places like Amazon, other streaming and tech companies.”

No wonder recent documentaries have lately found themselves at the center of popular culture, including Ava DuVernay’s “13” on the American prison system, the Oscar-winning “O.J.: Made in America,” ”The Jinx” about Robert Durst, and “Blackfish,” for treatment of orcas. Netflix scored its first Oscar this year with the documentary “Icarus.”

Award-winning filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has been lured to the genre, executive producing National Geographic’s 10-episode “One Strange Rock” about planet Earth — and he’s brought Will Smith along to narrate.

The lure of documentary-making has also recently attracted Judd Apatow, known for scripted comedies like “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Said Apatow: “I’ve probably wanted to make one for a very long time but didn’t know how to approach it.”

In 2016, he teamed up with Michael Bonfiglio on “Doc & Darryl” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series and last year’s “May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers” on HBO. This month he’s on his own with a four-hour HBO documentary about Garry Shandling.

“I’m endlessly fascinated by how we all deal with this life. Sometimes it’s fun to write about it but lately I seem much more interested in trying to capture how different people have chosen to live,” Apatow said.

“We’re in an amazing environment where, as a result of all these streaming services and cable stations, they desperately want great documentaries,” he added. “Now we’re getting incredible documentaries. I couldn’t be happier about it.”

Many thank Sheila Nevins for bringing documentaries into mainstream popular culture during her 38-year tenure at HBO. It was Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films from 2004 until this year, who shook up the staid format — usually nature shows or archive footage explained by experts — with such lurid shows as “Taxicab Confessions” and “Real Sex.”

“When I arrived at HBO, docs were considered a high-brow thing. That never interested me. I didn’t care about the life of the university professor. I care about his doorman,” she says.

Under Nevins’ watch, HBO pumped out more than 1,200 documentaries, most recently with such films as the Scientology investigation “Going Clear” and the Oscar-winning “Citizenfour,” about Edward Snowden. HBO once tried to hide its offerings as “docutainment.” Now it proudly has a documentary tab on its home page.

Nevins credits the new interest to technology but also reality TV shows like “Big Brother” for championing the lives of non-celebrities. “It’s the democratization of documentaries, the spotlight is on regular people and the struggles everyone faces,” she says.

What’s clear is that documentaries have come a long way since their dusty, formulaic and educational ancestors. Malhotra of Showtime credits today’s documentary-makers with being bolder, innovative and more cinematic.

“As we’ve broadened our horizons in terms of what works in a documentary, I think that the filmmakers themselves have also evolved quite a bit. I think even they’re bored of the headshot-archive-headshot-archive type of style,” he said. “We want people shaking up the format.”

One of those is filmmaker Sabaah Folayan, whose debut film “Whose Streets?” exposes the gap between mainstream media coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and what was happening at the grassroots. It’s a documentary that’s urgent, angry, visceral — and timely, using cellphone video and tweets to tell its story.

“We’re having a kind of crisis of logic and a crisis of language where it feels like words don’t mean things anymore and nothing has to make sense,” she said. “People are more thirsty for this content. People are recognizing that they need to know about others and this is the way to do it.”

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

#age #documentaries #fuel #Golden #Real #stories #Entertainment #News

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mandibierly · 7 years ago

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'Blue Planet II' premiere: Bird-eating fish and 5 more sequences you'll be talking about

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Planet Earth: Blue Planet II, the eight-part follow-up to the Emmy-winning 2001 nature documentary series, was the top-rated show of 2017 in the U.K. This Saturday, the journey, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, finally begins on BBC America.

Most viewers are aware that oceans cover 70 percent of Earth. But over the course of four years in production, Blue Planet II teams filmed behaviors many of us never would have imagined. Here, executive producer James Honeyborne offers a preview of six of the sequences that will wow you in the Jan. 20 premiere, “One Ocean.”

1. A bird-eating fish

In the sneak peek above, you see how the giant trevally preys on terns in the Indian Ocean. Some fledgling flyers may not yet be aware of the danger that lurks beneath when they take an ill-fated rest on the surface of the water. Others are cautious and even drink on the move, which is why these fish have learned to propel themselves out of the water. “When we first heard of this, it was literally a fisherman’s tale — one fisherman in South Africa told us this might be happening somewhere in the Indian Ocean. There was no photographic evidence of it. It was quite a risk, I suppose, to dedicate a team to go and get it, but there was just enough anecdotal evidence for us to think, ‘Yeah, this really could be happening if we went at the right time of year,'” Honeyborne says.

Once the team was in place, they had to figure out where the behavior was happening — and how they could film it. “It’s very much edited highlights from over a long period of time,” Honeyborne says. “We actually went back a second year to get more detail of it all. The wonderful thing that you see at the end is that there are an awful lot of birds that have got by. But there’s this terrible moment when the first ones go out and they’re tired and they don’t realize there’s a threat. To me, that’s an iconic sequence, and it’s a highly impactful sequence, not just for the behavior, but also because it just reminds us of how much there must be out there that we don’t know.”

The music, composed by Hans Zimmer and the team at Bleeding Fingers, has to reflect that drama, Honeyborne adds. (Keep an ear out for a moment not in our clip, when the focus is on one young bird on shore gearing up for its first flight. We think we hear an inspired homage to Zimmer’s Man of Steel soundtrack.)

Surfing dolphins (Photo: BBC AMERICA/BBC NHU 2017)

2. Surfing bottlenose dolphins

The episode opens by taking viewers right into the monster waves of South Africa’s Wild Coast, where intelligent, playful, social dolphins surf for the thrill of it. “What I love about these big wildlife series is that there’s potential to engage the audience with a range of emotions,” Honeyborne says. “Sometimes some of these big series in the past have relied very heavily on getting a response of awe and wonder. But I loved the idea of starting with joy, because joy’s not a reaction that many people naturally think they’ll feel about the sea. There’s something so joyful about just watching these dolphins have fun.”

Each episode of Blue Planet II saves time at the end for a “making of” segment (those are also then combined to form the final installment of the series). The premiere closes with a glimpse at the lengths to which surf cameraman Chris Bryan went to get these shots. The footage of him being chased back to shore by a massive wave while on the back of a jet ski — and holding on with just one hand because his other arm is wrapped around his camera — is equally epic. (Ultimately, Bryan needed to shoot from aboard a Zodiac boat to have a steady shot and access to different angles.)

A walrus and her cub (Photo: BBC AMERICA/BBC NHU 2017)

3. A fierce mother walrus and her cub

We’ve all seen disturbing footage of hungry polar bears in the arctic, where, over the last 30 years, the amount of ice in the summer has been reduced by 40 percent due to climate change. But the premiere tells a different, heartbreaking story: the struggle of mother walruses to find their young cubs safe places to rest. On land, the cubs are easy prey for polar bears, so they’re forced back into the water, where they have the advantage. But with fewer pieces of ice to eventually rest upon, they face a different danger. “There’s a very specific problem with the reduced number of haul-outs for these mothers. It’s not impossible for a baby walrus to get hypothermia, so it’s very important that they get their babies out of the water,” Honeyborne says. “The overall narrative in the first episode is how the oceans are all connected and how together they do an amazing service to the planet, and yet they’re changing very fast. That data’s very clear, it’s from NASA and NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]. It’s a new situation for these creatures. It felt like an important story to tell.” (The challenges mother and cub face together create a bond so strong, the mother will stay in contact with the cub for as long as she lives.)

The view from a suction-cup camera that will automatically release from the orca (Screengrab: BBC America)

4. Orcas tumbling for herring

Episode 7 of Blue Planet II will focus more on the man-made damage being done to the oceans — and the people devoting their lives to reversing it. But this killer whale sequence in episode 1 proves there is hope, if we’re willing to make changes. Back in the late 1960s, herring had all but disappeared from the fjords of Norway, and orcas were being killed because they were viewed as fishermen’s rivals for the fish. But by regulating the fishery and protecting the whales, both populations are now thriving. So much so that a billion herring pour in during the winter, attracting 1,000 orcas. The killer whales hunt in pods, herding the herring into tighter and tighter shoals. An orca will then do a backflip to beat its tail into the bait ball, stunning a number of herring at one time — which it shares with the other killer whales.

“What was fascinating was when we got the sucker camera on an orca, and that didn’t happen until the third season we were filming that. We had tried, unsuccessfully, with scientists in the previous seasons. That orca [with the camera] took us straight into a hunt,” Honeyborne says. “It’s a fascinating and compelling moment when you see that for the first time. We’re riding on the back of an orca into a shoal of herring being hunted by a whole family of orca. What’s lovely about these cameras is that they’re recording sound as well, so we can hear the orca communicating to each other. We can see very clearly how when one goes in and does that tumble-turn tail slap, they all then seem to share the food, and we can see very clearly that up to 30 herring are stunned with each tail slap. There’s a lot of scientific data that’s useful to the top scientists as well, so they were thrilled to get that material.”

5. False killer whales and bottlenose dolphins

Another sequence that takes an unexpected turn: when false killer whales off New Zealand begin to chase a large pod of dolphins. Are they trying to catch up to them to attack them, you’ll wonder. But then the dolphins turn around and… greet them? “It’s extraordinary. I think there’s a theme running all the way through the first episode of intelligence in marine creatures, whether it’s mammals or fish,” Honeyborne says. “So I think there’s that sense of wonder at the intelligence and sophistication, that two different species can come together and seemingly try to communicate with each other, and certainly, they appear to be old friends, because the same individual false killer whale and the same individual bottlenose dolphin seem to team up year after year. So they seem to recognize each other. The scientists are doing the research into the vocalization at the moment. There was a limit to how much we could say for sure, and that’s one of the excitements of the series, actually, is that we’re still understanding a lot of this. It was just amazing to us that false killers, which could be deadly to dolphins, actually choose to collaboratively team up to make the most of what might be out there in the big blue.”

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6. Mobula rays in the Sea of Cortez

“That’s just a glorious sequence. There’s something magical about it,” Honeyborne says of large mobula rays rubbing up against bioluminescent plankton while feeding on shrimp in the dark of night — and creating a twinkling sea. (The accompanying score in the episode makes you imagine a dance in Cinderella.) “It’s there, hopefully, to remind us of the magic and wonders of the oceans. But of course, when we set out to film that, we didn’t have cameras that were light-sensitive enough to capture it back in 2013, ’14,” Honeyborne says. “We had to literally wait for the camera sensor technology to catch up. It was only about 2016 that we could go out there and film it with confidence.”

Planet Earth: Blue Planet II premieres Jan. 20 at 9 p.m. as an AMC Networks simulcast event across BBC America, AMC, IFC, WE tv and SundanceTV. Subsequent episodes will air on BBC America.