#saw a pre-release review that seemed positive though

[softgrungeprophet]

i need a million dollars just so i can go to the movie theater more than once or twice a year, there's so much out this year i wanna see... on a big screen and not "i'll watch that later on my laptop" which i never do

[oswincoleman]

2020 Jenna Coleman’s Year in Review, part 2: Acting

Death Be Not Proud (Inside No. 9 series 5 episode 2)

Jenna Coleman secretly filmed this back in early 2019, before she started rehearsing for her theatre production of All My Sons. It took almost a year after that, for the rest of the episodes of the series to be filmed, and released. This remains the only film or TV role of Jenna that was released this year. And although the initial promotion for it appeared to show Jenna in the leading role in the episode, that turned out to just be a ruse to hide the secret of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith reprising their roles from Psychoville in Inside No. 9, so her total screentime was only about 10 minutes or so. 

It was an interesting episode, though not quite to my tastes, and Jenna played her role brilliantly as always. With the way it ended, it was like a bit of a teaser of what was to come. 

This was her only appearance in film and television this year. Throughout her acting career since 2005, Jenna has always had substantially more screentime every year, than she did this year. The only exceptions being 2010 and 2011. Of course that is mostly not her fault; The Serpent would have been out much earlier without the pandemic. 

The Serpent

After 4 months of intensive filming for The Serpent in the latter half of 2019, Jenna Coleman felt somewhat burnt out, and went on holiday with her parents to the Maldives in January. She described her experience there in a travel article she published later in the year.

Filming for The Serpent finally resumed in February,after a 2 month break, because Tahar Rahim has been working on a film in the meantime. This long break however proved to be quite problematic, as after only 3 weeks of filming, production had to be halted, due to the spread of COVID-19, with just 5 days of filming left to do.

There had already been plans for events to advertise The Serpent, but these were canceled.

Filming for The Serpent finally resumed in August. But unlike what had been planned, of filming the last few scenes in Bangkok and Budapest, they were shot in a manor in the small English town of Tring. A set had been built up there to resemble an apartment in Bangkok. Everyone whk was working on it at the time respected health guidelines, and so managed to safely complete filming in 2 weeks.

So in total, Jenna only spent 5 weeks filming this year, and she wasn’t even required to film on all of those days.

A Separate Peace

But over the course of the year, with the pandemic making filming difficult to impossible, Jenna instead diverted her attention to acting in other ways.

Most notably amongst those was A Separate Peace by Tom Stoppard; a virtual theatre performed by multiple actors over Zoom. It marked a significant improvement over actors merely reading text out loud, was amazing to watch, and was strongly praised as the best alternative to actual theatre currently available.

Jenna played 22 year old nurse Maggie Coates, who tended to, and befriended a patient, played by David Morrissey, who arrived at the hospital without having any medical issue whatsoever.

It was short and poignant, and it was amazing to see Jenna in this role. But info have some criticism about the producers. With minimal promotion for it, the turnout could have been much better. It was announced to be the first in a series of virtual theatre performances like this, and it seemed as though this was sort of a test run, to see whether this was possible at all, to see whether the media liked it, or not. The reaction to it was overwhelmingly positive, with very great reviews praising it’s ability to at least achieve some semblance of theatre despite all the restrictions preventing live theatre performances. It was even praised as among the best of theatre in 2020 (https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/2020-Year-In-Review-Gary-Naylors-Best-of-Theatre-20201207). 

After seeing those reviews, which were shared much more widely than the initial promotion for it, I saw lots of people who either wanted to watch the production, but couldn’t, as it was only shown once, and was not shared by the producers afterwards, or were interested in watching future installments of such virtual theatre performances. But the producers of this virtual theatre performance did not produce any other ones, despite initially announcing that they would. And even though it was understandable at the time, that they were unwilling to share the recording of the performance, as the money from the tickets did go to charity, and they did not want people to know that they could still watch future similar performances without having to pay anything, as they did not make any other similar production, it is perplexing why they never made the recording of this play available. 

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

As the pandemic prevented most types of acting for large parts of the year, Jenna instead turned her attention to several audio performances.

Way back in 2011, Jenna voiced Princess Melia in the English dub of the fantasy role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles. 10 years after the initial release, Nintendo worked on a new release; Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, with updated graphics, gameplay, and a whole new extra storyline, that prominently features Melia. It was released on the 29th of May 2020. 

Since Jenna rose to fame after she originally voiced Melia, the Xenoblade Chronicles fandom thought it very unlikely that Jenna would return to voice Melia again in the new release. But against all odds, she did return. It is unclear when she recorded the new lines for Melia, but I think it was probably in January or February this year, and Jenna has still never commented publicly about this role, or her reprisal of it. 

Though I haven’t played the game, you can watch all the cutscenes of the game here: https://youtu.be/Tsgy1h5x8VU and the phrases Melia says througout the gameplay here: https://youtu.be/l7oDcI8HmI4

Pressures, Residential

On July 12th, Esquire UK released a recording of Jenna Coleman reading the short story “Pressures, Residential” by Philip Hensher, in support of Unicef UK, as part of the Esquire Summer Fiction Series. It’s a creepy story told brilliantly by Jenna. It’s always lovely to listen to her incredible voice. You can listen to the story here: https://youtu.be/VSpc4H-z40A

The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

On the 17th of September, the audiobook collection “Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales” was released, in which Jenna read the story of “The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies”. 

Charlie Waller Virtual Carol Service

On the 7th of December 2020, the Charlie Waller Trust held a virtual Chirstmas carol service, that had been pre-recorded, and was streamed over youtube for those that bought a ticket earlier. As part of the event, Jenna Coleman read an extract of a Christmas carol poem by George Wither. 

Additional Comments

With a lack of projects this year and the last, and with Victoria series 3 not being recieved that well, Jenna unfortunately didn’t win any awards, and wasn’t even nominated for any awards this year. Even though I think she was nominated and won far too few awards for her recent work, she at least had managed to maintain a success of several award nominations, and at least one win every year since 2016. 

2020 has also been the first year of her acting career, since 2005, in which she didn’t officially get announced to have been cast in a new film or TV role, or had the certainty of continuing to play a role that she had already played, in the next year. 

Even though Jenna Coleman was involved in many different projects this year, overall, she did not have any work to do for the vast majority of this year. With the TV and film industry being shut down or at least massively reduced for large parts of the year, there might not have been that many roles for her to audition for. We know that Jenna went on two holidays, and she had shared a bit of what she got up to during lockdown in this article: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/fashion/fashion-news/g32374333/self-isolate-with-jenna-coleman/ But for the most part, it remains somewhat unclear what she did this year. We know she kept up French lessons for The Serpent, she did some gardening, possibly attended some photography courses, and possibly tried her hand at painting. She revealed all of that in May, and hasn’t talked about what she did with her time since then. 

There is a possibility that she had been working on renovating her new house in the Cotswolds for some time this year. And there is also the possibility of her having already started filming work for her secret new project; after all it remains unclear where she was during her latest Galaxycon Q&A session. 

Overall, this year has not been great for Jenna from an acting perspective. But 2021 will definitely be better! The Serpent airs on January on BBC, and will be released on Netlix sometime later that year. And then there’s also Jenna’s secret new project. Depending on what it is, we might even see that come out towards the end of 2021. 

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 5/7/21: WRATH OF MAN, HERE TODAY, THE UNTHINKABLE, MONSTER, THE WATER MAN and More

It’s a new month, and I guess going by previous years pre-COVID, this weekend would normally be the start of summer. This year, we’re instead getting a summer with a lot of movies that would normally be dumped into April or February or some other uneventful month. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t or won’t be any good movies, but really, there’s nothing that feels like a summer movie until A Quiet Place Part II and Disney’s Cruella open on Memorial Day weekend.

There’s been lots of great developments, though, including the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn reopening this Friday and then in a few short weeks, theaters may be allowed to be open with no capacity rules although social distancing and masks will probably still be in place. Believe me, it’s been a confusing week as the city that got used to being on the backburner when it comes to reopenings, especially with movie theaters, is now dealing with arguing politicians competing to see who could throw open the then most doors fastest. It’s actually pretty embarrassing.

That aside, this week’s The Weekend Warrior column is brought to you by the new album “Coral Island” from Liverpool band The Coral, which I’ve decided to listen to on loop until I finish this column, because it’s taking me so long to get through it. (Eventually, I switched to Teenage Fanclub’s “Endless Arcade,” since I hadn’t had a chance to listen to it yet…. And to an old standby, Royal Blood, with their own excellent new album, “Typhoons.” At least the record business seems to know it’s the summer!)

Before we get to this week’s new movies, a couple tidbits. First of all, I’m thrilled that my friends Larissa Lam and Baldwin Chiu’s documentary FAR EAST DEEP SOUTH can finally be seen by the entire world, or at least the United States. It debuted on PBS World Channel on Tuesday night as part of the “America ReFramed” series, but for the entire month of May until June 3, you can watch it On Demand HERE, and that is huge! (There will be other ways to see it that you can read about here.)

This is an amazing MUST-SEE doc that looks into the little-known Chinese communities that took root in Mississippi in the early 20th Century and how they became such a huge part of that area with their markets, also bonding with the African-American communities that were similarly dealing with racism from the typically white post-Civil War South. It’s not just a history lesson, and it’s an incredibly moving story about a family trying to find its roots in the most unexpected places. There was a good reason why the couple’s short “Finding Cleveland” won the Oxford Film Festival while I was on the jury that year, and Far East Deep South similarly won an award there last year after its World Premiere at Cinequest was almost scuppered by COVID. It’s amazing how much more relevant and important this film has become since I first saw it last year, since both Asians and African-Americans are dealing with serious racial issues, and this movie shows that more than anything, they should be working to boost each other rather than fighting. Do check it out On Demand this month if you get a chance!

Another musician making movies is Mr. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. I mentioned his documentary WHAT DRIVES US last week, but I actually only got to watch it on Thursday, and like his previous film Studio City and HBO mini-series, Sonic Highways, it’s a fantastic look at the music biz, this time through a variety of artists who began their careers by piling into vans and driving around the country. That is, except Lars Ulrich from Metallica, who mentions that the band was never so small or indie that they didn’t have a bus. But Grohl has used his vast connections to bring in a lot of great musicians including The Edge from U2, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more, making this a very entertaining movie both for fans of the various bands but also live music fans in general. I gotta admit that as much as I loved What Drives Us, it did bring me down a bit since it’s been almost 14 months since I’ve seen any live music, and I really miss it. This is now streaming on The Coda Collection, which you can subscribe to through Amazon Prime Video.

Guy Ritchie is back with his latest movie, WRATH OF MAN (Miramax/MGM), which reunites him with Jason Statham for the first time since 2007’s Revolver, I believe. Statham plays the enigmatic Paul “H” Hill who works at cash truck company Fortico, responsible for moving hundreds of million dollars around Los Angeles each week. Fortico has recently been hit by a lethal robbery, and H’s team soon learn that there’s a lot more to their new coworker, who happens to be looking for revenge against the man who murdered his son.

(Unfortunately, reviews for the movie are embargoed until Thursday at 6pm, so I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not. Until Thursday night. Sorry!)

But I will talk about the movie’s box office prospects, because why not? Ritchie’s last movie, The Gentlemen, opened in January 2020, during the “before times,” with $10.6 million, but that was more of a classic Ritchie ensemble crime-comedy. Wrath of Man is more of the type of movie Statham has been making over the past few years, a cross between a revenge thriller and a heist flick. In fact, Statham has done a pretty good job creating his own brand through a variety of action-thrillers as well as a number of franchises including “The Transporter” movies, “The Expendables,” and eventually joining the “Fast and the Furious” franchise as Deckard Shaw with Furious 7 in 2017. Statham then went off to make Hobbs and Shaw with Dwayne Johnson, which didn’t do bad with $174 million. Before that, Statham starred in The Meg, a summer shark attack movie that grossed $145 million. Statham going back to help his old mate i.e. the director that gave Statham his start is pretty huge.

But as I said earlier, those were all in the “before times” and with the box office the way it is, it’s hard to imagine that the exciting reunion of Statham and Ritchie can open with more than $10 million but maybe closer to $8 million, because MGM/UA just doesn’t have the marketing clout of a Warner Bros. or Universal. Even so, that should be enough to be #1 this weekend as both Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer continue to fall away. Unfortunately, if the movie *is* any good -- and I can’t tell you one way or another -- then by the time reviews hit, people will already have other plans for the weekend than to go see the movie. So yeah, that’s pretty dumb on the part of MGM, huh?

UPDATE: MGM is putting the movie into 2,876 theaters and maybe I'm being overly optimistic, because, as you'll read below, the movie IS pretty good and reviews have remained positive with the American reviews rolling in last night, still at 70% Fresh at this writing. Maybe that'll help the movie do a little better, maybe as much as $9 million, although I'll probably owe MGM an apology if it cracks $10 million, and I don't think it will.

Mini-Review: If you’ve seen the trailer for Wrath of Man, you might go into Guy Ritchie’s latest thinking you know what to expect, because it’s sure being sold as another typical Jason Statham revenge thriller. Don’t be fooled by the marketing, the movie really is Ritchie’s chance to make his own version of Heat, an L.A. heist movie that owes as much to Rashomon as another movie being released this week.

Wrath of Man begins with the heist of an armored truck that turns deadly with the wanton murder of a couple guards. From there, you might think we know where things are going when Statham’s “H” company whose truck was hit, and on his first day, he stops a similar heist by killing the truck’s attackers. H is immediately the hero of the company, although he still has quite a few suspicious coworkers and the feeling is quite mutual. Ritchie’s film then slips into the second episodic chapter which goes back five months to that initial heist where we learn that Statham’s son was killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don’t want to go too much deeper into how the movie and story play out, because like The Gentlemen and some of Ritchie’s more intricate films, there’s a lot that purposefully isn’t made very apparent at the beginning. To many, this movie will be seen as even more macho than most of Ritchie's films, to the point where even the only woman guard, Dana, being just as macho as the men. As the movie begins, there’s a lot of joke-cracking and crotch-grabbing, all while Statham’s character silently observes and only acts when necessary.

The film’s shift to more of a classic Ritchie ensemble does slowly take place, but by the third chapter, it shifts to the group perpetrating the cash truck heists with an “inside person,” taking the movie to yet another place that makes it more obvious that this is Ritchie’s attempt at delving into the L.A. heist genre that other filmmakers have done so well.

Oddly, Statham doesn’t have too many lines, acting almost like a Terminator in his determination to right wrongs, but as always, Ritchie puts together a fantastic ensemble cast including a number of great American character actors who we rarely get to see in such great roles. I was particularly impressed with Jeffrey Donovan, who has appeared in a number of otherwise forgettable crime films this past year. The same can be said for Holt McCallany as H’s truck driver “Bullet,” but Ritchie also cast the likes of Josh Hartnett and Scott Eastwood in smaller yet still significant supporting roles, all of whom become more interesting as you start figuring out who all the players are.

Like I said, the movie is fairly macho and the few women play very small roles, but it’s how things are set-up in the first few acts to then change course and build to an absolutely amazing third act that will undoubtedly bear comparisons to Heat. And yet Wrath of Man (which is actually based on a little-seen French crime-thriller) does branch away from some of Ritchie’s standards, first of all by being far darker and even more violent with any of the wisecracking humor that pervades a lot of Ritchie’s work to counterbalance such violence disappearing once the flashbacks begin. It’s all punctuated by a fantastically tense score by Christopher Benstead, which seems a bit much at first but eventually settles into the perfect pace and tone for the action.

Despite disappearing for a good chunk of the movie, Statham is still great, basically killing everyone as his characters are wont to do, but watching how all of the different ideas come together leads to such a satisfying conclusion that one hopes those who might be put off, thinking they know where it's going due to the somewhat pathetic and obvious marketing will give it a chance to see how Ritchie has changed gears as effortlessly as he did with Aladdin a few years back.

Rating: 7.5/10

After even a longer time since he directed a movie, Billy Crystal once again takes the helm for HERE TODAY (Sony/Stage6), a movie in which he plays comedy writer Charlie Burns, whose chance encounter with Tiffany Haddish’s lounge singer, Emma Payge, leads to an unlikely friendship, as he struggles with early stage dementia.

I’ve known about this movie for over a year now, and I was pretty excited to finally get to see it, since I was such a fan of the other movies Crystal has directed, 1992’s Mr. Saturday Night and 1995’s Forget Paris, and it’s just amazing to me that he hasn’t directed a movie since.

At first, it seems like it’s the type of meet-cute we’ve seen so much in Crystal’s past filmography, but his pairing with Haddish isn’t something that might work on paper, but in fact, their comic styles mesh so perfectly together that it’s amazing that no one thought of putting them together before.

Crystal wrote the film with comic Alan Zweibel, who adapted it from his own short story “The Prize,” which refers to Haddish’s character winning Charlie in an auction for a lunch. Actually, her ex won the lunch, and she decided to use it because… free lunch! It’s a pretty simple set-up but one that allows the filmmakers to explore some of the odder things that happen in life.

Much of the movie’s humor plays upon the differences between the two characters, and how unexpected their friendship is. I can totally relate, because I have a lot of good long-time friends who most people might never expect us to be friends, but Crystal, Zweibel and Haddish pick up on that and create a movie that’s very funny but has enough other characters around the duo toa allow their characters to show how they’re just really nice people. We see that with how Charlie takes a young writer at his late night show under his wing or how Emma livens up the bat mitzvah of Charlie’s granddaughter. Oh yeah, and Haddish sings. She actually has a number of great performances in the movie, and seriously, anyone who watches this movie is gonna wanna see a smart filmmaker put Haddish in a musical immediately.

The film also acts as a truly touching tribute to Crystal’s friend, the late Robin WIlliams, who was diagnosed with the exact same type of dementia after his suicide death, and knowing that fact, makes the film even more poignant. More importantly, it doesn’t use Charlie’s condition for laughs, and for that alone, I feel like this is ten times better than that overrated Oscar winner The Father.

Here Today’s biggest problems come in the third act when it feels like the movie is starting to over-extend its welcome, even going into somewhat expected places, but it recovers from that rough third act to land a really nice ending. Crystal has always proven himself to be a really strong mainstream filmmaker (ala Rob Reiner and others) who makes crowd-pleasing movies, and it’s so nice seeing him going behind the camera for a movie that’s obviously very personal but also highly relatable.

As far as box office, I certainly have high hopes that Crystal still has an older audience of fans who might want to see him on the big screen again. I’m just not sure if this will be in more than 1,000 theaters, and though I’ve seen quite a bit of marketing, I just haven’t seen Crystal or Haddish do nearly as much in terms of getting out there that would be necessary to reach an audience that might want to venture out into movie theaters to see the movie vs. waiting until it’s on cable/streaming. There’s also Tiffany Haddish’ fanbase, and there could be some benefit for the movie coming out the same week as her new CBS show “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

I’d love to be optimistic with this making $4 to 5 million but it’s probably more likely to be closer to $3 million especially with capacity limits still in place for most theaters and the audience generally being older.

UPDATE: Maybe I was a little too optimistic, because I enjoyed the movie so much and it will probably be closer to $1 or 1.5 million since other reviews aren't as great.

Next, we have two movies finally being released many years after their festival premieres…

The Swedish apocalyptic thriller THE UNTHINKABLE (Magnet), directed by Victor Danell, is finally being released after playing genre fests in 2018 and 2019. It stars Christoffer Nordenrot as Alex, a young piano virtuoso who ran away from home due to his abusive father Bjorn (Jesper Barkselius). Years later, he returns home for his mother’s funeral after she’s killed in a terrorist attack on Sweden. At the same, there’s a virus that’s erasing people’s memories, but Alex is still in love with Anna (Lisa Henni), the girl he had a crush on when he left, and the three of them will have to help each other face all the horrible things hitting their home at the same time.

As I was watching this movie, a lot of it felt eerily familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. The more I watched it, the more I realized that I actually HAD seen the movie before. Sure enough, I saw this movie over two years ago at the “What the Fest?!” in New York two years ago, and I honestly don’t remember loving it. Still, I decided to give it a fresh look, hoping to get more out of it on second viewing.

Some of the same things bothered me on this second viewing, because it’s really hard to figure out exactly what is going on and whether the horrific events are natural, man-made or a combination of both. For some time, we get so mired into Alex’s lame relationship with Anna, and when he returns home, his conspiracy theory-driven father is busy protecting a bunker that’s being invaded by foreign military troops he thinks are Russians. We cut between these two disparate scenarios while sometimes returning to the capital of Sweden and throwing in a few big set pieces. It’s so disjointed that you feel like you’re watching a lot of random unrelated events, maybe a bit like last week’s About Endlessness -- maybe it’s a Swedish thing?

There are aspects of The Unthinkable that are quite commendable, particularly those action moments and how the mystery about what is happening develops as the film goes along. Eventually, the film does find a more consistent pace, and things start becoming a little clearer, which makes the final act better than much of what we’ve watched earlier. Even so, it’s still quite annoying how long it takes to figure out what’s going on, even on a second viewing, and for most people, that may already be far too frustrating to get through it.

Hitting Netflix on Friday over THREE years after it premiered at Sundance is music video director Anthony Mandler’s directorial debut, MONSTER (Netflix), based on the novel by Walter Dean Myers. It stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves) as Steve Harmon, a 17-year-old film student put in jail, accused of murder in a bodega robbery. His defense lawyer (Jennifer Ehle) is trying to help him be released, but he’s fighting against the odds of a judicial system that sees him as a “monster” because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have to be honest that I did go to see this at Sundance the week it premiered, and for whatever reason, I just wasn’t feeling it, so I only really caught about twenty minutes of it. Watching it now with more time and a little less weary than I usually am towards the end of Sundance, I was able to appreciate Monster more for what it is. On the surface, it’s just about Steve’s case and how what really happened unfolds before our eyes and we learn more about those around Steve and how their influence may have pulled a smart and studious young man into the criminal world that now has him in prison with much more violent life-long criminals.

We already knew that Harrison was a great actor, but Monster shows us that he was already on his way to greatness with this movie that for whatever reason got buried even as it dealt with issues that have been in the headlines almost every day since this debuted.

Mandler takes an interesting approach, both non-linear and also with blatant nods to Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which is even cited by Steve’s teacher, played by Tim Blake Nelson. Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson are decent as Steve’s parents, but they’re generally smaller and non-showy roles compared to the moments between Harrison and Ehle. Much of the film takes place in the courtroom with flashbacks showing what happened through the viewpoint of whomever is on the stand, which eventually includes Steve himself.

The way Mandler handles the material may lean more on the artiness rather than something more mainstream -- Michael B. Jordan’s Just Mercy comes to mind -- but it’s just as powerful in showing how someone like Steve can be othered by society into being a criminal. Sure, there have been other handlings of this sort of material that I thought were better films, but if you know anyone who has ever had dealings with the “justice” system and know how unfair and horrible it can be even to the innocent, then Monster will certainly strike a chord.

Also hitting Netflix this week is the new series based on Mark Millar and Frank Quitely‘s comic books, JUPITER’S LEGACY (Netflix), another kind of twist on the superhero genre ala Amazon Prime Video’s series based on Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s The Boys. I love the comics, and I can’t wait to finally get around to seeing Netflix’s first adaptation of a Millarworld property.

David Oyelowo makes his directorial debut with THE WATER MAN (RLJEfilms), a movie about a young boy named Gunner Boon (Lonnie Chavis), whose mother (Rosario Dawson) is battling leukemia. In an effort to cure her, Guner goes off on a journey along with a teenage girl named Jo (Amiah Miller) to find the mythical Water Man, who can provide them with a magic token that might save Gunner’s mother’s life.

I’ve interviewed Oyelowo a few times before, and I really like him a lot, so I had really high hopes for him as a director since I feel he’s just a terrific actor. Unfortunately, the material here is just not strong enough that I think even a far more experienced filmmaker could make something out of it.

Set in PIne Hills, we meet Gunner, a bright kid who loves drawing comic books, but he has trouble connecting with his father (Oyelowo), so when he has an idea that might help his sick mother, he goes off with a head-strong teen named Jo, in search of the Water Man, a summertime adventure permeated by a lot of very bad low-budget visual effects.

Honestly, I’m not even sure where to begin with where The Water Man falters, because Oyelowo has such a great cast, including Alfred Molina and Maria Bello in tiny parts. The story is a problem, as is the writing, which is just so bland and dull, that there’s really nothing in Oyelowo’s direction or any of the performances that really can salvage it. Neither of the child actors have much charisma or personality, and even Dawson’s performance, which would normally be a showstopper is repeatedly lessened by the constant cutting back to the kids. (And as someone who beat leukemia myself, I’m never a fan when cancer is depicted in movies as a death sentence rather than just another hurdle in life that needs to be overcome.)

Oyelowo himself may be one of his generation’s best actors, but he brings so little to the role of Gunner’s father, maybe to not take away from his younger star, but it hurts that he doesn’t do more to create a stronger conflict by making the character more horrible to drive Gunner away. The actual Water Man doesn’t improve things when he finally shows up, essentially talking like a pirate but not even remotely paying off.

Honestly, The Water Man seems like such a misguided venture -- Exec. Produced by Oprah, no less -- and it might have been totally forgettable if the characters didn’t keep saying the title of the movie every five minutes.

Hitting theaters Friday after a festival run is Tran Quoc Bao’s action-comedy THE PAPER TIGERS (WELL GO USA), starring ALain Uy, Ron Yuan and Mikel Shannon Jenkins as martial artists once known as “the three tigers but now middle-aged men must set aside old grudges and dad duties to avenge the murder of their teacher. I’ve had a screener of this since last summer when it played at Fantasia Festival in Montreal, and I just never got around to watching it, but if I’m able to squeeze it in before the weekend, check back here for my review.

Streaming on Shudder this Friday is Ryan Kruger's South African comedy-thriller FRIED BARRY (Shudder), starring Gary Green as Barry, a violent street junkie who is abducted by aliens who take over his body in order to… well, actually… they do a lot of drugs, have a lot of sex and other craziness. It’s a pretty strange and bizarre movie that reminds me a little of movies like a lower-fi Under the Skin or Beyond the Black Rainbow, and much of it is driven by the insane and unique performance by Green and the odd characters he encounters that I think will find its fans for sure, but it will definitely be for a very select audience of genre festival fans, as this is by no means a mainstream genre film.

Speaking of which, another movie out this week which I wasn’t allowed to see in advance is Gia Coppola’s MAINSTREAM (IFC Films), starring Maya Hawke as a young woman seeking internet stardom by making YouTube videos with a charismatic stranger, played by Andrew Garfield, until “the dark side of viral celebrity threatens to ruin them both.” Yup, it’s one of THOSE movies. It also stars Nat Wolff, Jason Schwartzman and Johnny Knoxville, but I haven’t heard anything good about it, and I’m not sure my curiosity is piqued enough to spend any of my own personal money to check it out.

Hitting Amazon on Friday is the doc THE BOY FROM MEDELLIN (Amazon) from Matthew Heineman (City of Ghosts, Cartel Land), a portrait of musical superstar J. Balvin, as he prepares for a massive sold-out stadium show in his hometown of Medellin, Colombia, which is hindered by the growing civil unrest in the area.

Lots of other movies this week, but a few that i just wasn’t able to get to this week, including:

ABOVE SUSPICION (Lionsgate) INITIATION (Saban Films) ENFANT TERRIBLE (Dark Star Pictures) QUEEN MARIE (Samuel Goldwyn Films) SILO (Oscilloscope) CITIZEN PENN (Discovery+)

That’s it for this week. Next week, Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson star in SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW (Lionsgate) and Angelina Jolie returns for the thriller THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (New Line) and Timur Bekmambetov’s thriller, PROFILE (Focus Features). That’s right. This will be the first weekend in over a year where we’ll have three or maybe even four new wide releases.

[nerianasims]

Billboard #1s 1985

Under the cut.

Foreigner -- "I Want To Know What Love Is" -- February 2, 1985

One of the quintessential 80s power ballads. It's actually kind of interesting if you think about it enough. He's not in love yet, but he's gotten sick of not being in love, so he's asking someone he's in the pre-love stage with to show him. Though he's had "heartache and pain" before, and doesn't know if he can face it again. It's not consistent. I feel like it's a missed opportunity, but oh well. It's good enough for what it is.

Wham! -- "Careless Whisper" -- February 16, 1985

Oh my god I love the saxophone in this. The music throughout the song is so incredibly sexy. And this is the kind of song George Michael's voice was made for. He's totally capable of sounding both hot and in agony at the same time. I actually adore a whole lot of cheating songs -- mostly, though not exclusively, the tormented kind. Drama! Love! Sex! Angst! Gorgeous.

REO Speedwagon -- "Can't Fight This Feeling" -- March 9, 1985

<3. He keeps singing "r"s like a pirate, but he doesn't go as hard on the other consonants, so I'm good with it. Lyrically, this song sounds like it might be two songs mashed together. "What started out as friendship has grown stronger" or "my life has been such a whirlwind since I saw you." Well which is it? Except I've had that happen. I love this song.

Phil Collins -- "One More Night" -- March 30, 1985

This is a depressing heartbreak song without the saving grace of any of Phil Collins' neat drum stuff. Blah.

We Are the World -- April 13, 1985

Whoo boy. I was 8 when this came out. Obviously I loved it. All the kids loved it. Now, though... I'm sorry, but it's bad. Really bad. Many others have gone deeply into why it's bad. I feel acutely embarrassed listening to it, so I'm just running away from it as fast as possible. (Remember all those celebrities singing "Imagine" in their mansions in 2020? I blame this song for that.)

Madonna -- "Crazy For You" -- May 11, 1985

This is one of Madonna's most straightforward love songs. Maybe the most, period. This or "Cherish," and this is a better song. It's lovely. Like Olivia Newton-John, Madonna can act a song. (Unlike in most movies she's been in.) But what I'm thinking about now is learning in this article that her label wouldn't let Madonna release "Into the Groove" as a single. That song was huge. It was played on the radio all the time. If it had been released as a single, or maybe if Billboard had tracked songs then like it does today, it would have been a massive smash, definitely #1. "Into the Groove" is also the best song of her very early career. "Crazy for You" is good, but not nearly as special.

Simple Minds -- "Don't You Forget About Me" -- May 18, 1985

As I am "Gen X", I am supposed to deeply connect with The Breakfast Club. I was 8 years old when it came out. My life as a teenager was nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, like that movie. I didn't recognize any of the "types." I liked the movie when I saw it in college, mostly, but the whole sexual harassment turns into a relationship deal was not seen as cool any longer. The "jocks vs. nerds" thing also felt very dated. The school in the movie was bigger and richer than mine, but it's a fantasy.

Anyway, though I don't feel much about the movie, its breakout song was really good. It does speak to a real fear both in graduating high school and during young adult relationships. I haven't forgotten the people I knew in high school, as far as I know, but obviously they don't have the same importance to me any longer. I'm Facebook friends with a lot of them. And very much not with a couple who were the most important then, because we grew apart -- or blasted apart. One of the nicest girls I knew in high school thinks there's a war on Christmas. Another keeps trying to get me to join her MLM. One of my best friends became my first boyfriend, and I don't regret that, but it was also a semi-disaster. And others... we just have nothing to say to each other any longer.

So, Breakfast Club: I don't connect with at all. "Don't You Forget About Me": Speaks to something very real and timeless.

Wham! -- "Everything She Wants" -- May 25, 1985

What a dick. Songs in which the narrator is a colossal jerk are perfectly fine, of course, but this one gets under my skin. He's whining about his wife getting pregnant when she's dissatisfied with their life and that they're broke. As if it's something she chose to do to him. She's stuck creating a whole other person with her blood and flesh, and he thinks it's all and entirely about him. I really hate it.

Tears for Fears -- "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" -- June 8, 1985

I can't hear this song without thinking of this Baldur's Gate fan trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdd06d2nids. Speaking of which, I am incredibly excited for Baldur's Gate 3. I've been reading the early access reviews on Steam, and anything anyone is saying that's negative is stuff I don't gaf about (except bugs), whereas the positive stuff, I care about deeply. I hope it's got some of the feeling of that trailer. Um, right, Tears for Fears.

Honestly, though, it works best as a Baldur's Gate theme song. I don't think everybody actually wants to rule the world. It sounds good though. And pretty different from other stuff around it. But I like Lorde's cover better, and not just because it fits so wonderfully with all sorts of fantasy stories.

I usually play a paladin or paladin-type the first time in fantasy RPGs, but I'm thinking bard this time.

Bryan Adams -- "Heaven" -- June 22, 1985

He's been with this woman since they were young, and while they've broken up and gone through rough patches, now they're together forever and they're "in heaven." Bryan Adams knew exactly how to write a song that would become a hit. I used to not mind it at all, but it also means nothing to me. The chorus is catchy as hell though. So catchy that I ended up waking up with it in my head and it would not leave for hours and hours, so now I resent this song.

Phil Collins -- "Sussudio" -- July 6, 1985

I refuse to believe anyone ever told Phil Collins he was too young. He was born middle-aged. Anyway, the narrator isn't supposed to be him, so it's fine, but it's still kinda funny. He's got a crush on someone who doesn't even know his name, but "she's all I need all of my life." Um. The music is repetitive, the drums aren't as interesting as Phil Collins at his best, and I don't like the lyrics. I don't hate it, but I don't like it either.

Duran Duran -- "View to a Kill" -- July 13, 1985

I'm not sure I've ever heard this song before. It's about as good a song as the Bond movie they wrote it for was as a movie. In other words, it's bad. I'm not even sure there's a melody. Just a mess. "Ordinary World" would have made a far better Bond theme, but of course that was the 90s, when Duran Duran decided to try to make sense both lyrically and musically.

Paul Young -- "Every Time You Go Away" -- July 27, 1985

I like the high keyboard notes in this. They're sort of haunting. The rest of the song is musically pretty good, too. Lyrically though, it's only passable. This woman keeps leaving him every time "the leading man" shows up, so I guess he's the backup. Why does he keep waiting for her anyway? There's no hint in the song. I'm kind of embarrassed for him.

Tears for Fears -- "Shout" -- August 3, 1985

I think "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is a better song than this one when done by Lorde. But I think "Shout" is a better song than Tears for Fears' original iteration of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." The chorus seems clear enough. But the verses are not. "They gave you life/ And in return you gave them hell" makes sense in isolation, but then there's a bunch of stuff that doesn't go with it. Like "I'd really love to break your heart" -- wtf? But the music is really good. 

Huey Lewis and the News -- "The Power of Love" -- August 24, 1985

This was the big song for Back to the Future, and it meshed beautifully with the movie, but it doesn't need that association to be a great song. "Don't need money, don't take fame/ Don't need no credit card to ride this train/ It's strong and it's sudden, it can be cruel sometimes/ But it might just save your life." Yep. It's sort of Motown, sort of rock, and I love it. (Also: "Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream." Heh.)

John Parr -- "St. Elmo's Fire" -- August 24, 1985

Of all the John Hughes movies I have not seen and do not plan to see, St. Elmo's Fire sure is one of them. The song is about a disabled man who inspired people by rolling himself cross-country in his wheelchair for charity, which has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. I'm disabled, and I just... okay look, what he did was admirable. But we shouldn't have to be inspirations to be counted as worthwhile, and I've been told I should die because I can't produce for capitalism, so you know. I've got some personal issues with this and I'm gonna move along.

Dire Straits -- "Money for Nothing" -- September 21, 1985

This is not Dire Straits' best song, but it's an awfully fun one. I watched the video tons when I was a kid. (That sound is Tipper Gore falling to the floor in a dead faint.) The music is great rock. And the lyrics are very true-to-life. You can either sanitize people or present them as they are honestly, and I know which I prefer.

Ready for the World -- "Oh Sheila" -- October 12, 1985

The band's from Michigan. The English accent at the beginning of the song is fake. That's a good preview for the song, which sounds like a 3rd-rate Prince knockoff at best. Blech.

a-ha -- "Take On Me" -- October 19, 1985

The video totally ripped off one of my aunts. Somehow or other, they saw into the little comic she drew for me about someone going into a land of drawings to rescue someone else in a romantic adventure, years before 1985. Anyway, this song is great musically, massively synthesizer heavy without sounding artificial. Though I can only understand maybe a third of the lyrics as he sings them. I've always understood "It's no better to be safe than sorry" though. Yep, at least when it comes to romance, which is what they're singing about here.

Whitney Houston -- "Saving All My Love for You" -- October 26, 1985

It's not better to be safe than sorry, but that doesn't mean it's good to be an absolute idiot in matters of romance either. Nor is it good to be a colossal jerk. That's what the narrator is here -- the "you" she's singing to is married. And he won't leave his wife and children, though he used to say he would. The lyrics seem to say that's she's accepted the situation, but the way Houston sings it, I think the narrator's trying to get him to leave his wife -- and children -- for her still. This makes sense, as it puts some kind of passion and sense of story into the song, which without Houston's singing would not be there. The narrator certainly never acknowledges that what she's doing is wrong in the slightest iota. This song could be done in a way that works. But it's a completely sincere ballad. So, no. I despise the narrator, I despise the man she's singing to more, and the whole thing leaves me feeling gross.

Stevie Wonder -- "Part Time Lover" -- November 2, 1985

No one's thinking anyone's gonna leave anyone in this one. It's about cheating, and the thrill of it, but then at the end, he's found out his wife's cheating on him too. "I guess that two can play the game/ Of part-time lovers." This kind of funk groove is one way you make a song like this. It makes the whole thing sexy and fun, and the lyrics also work even beyond that ending, because they acknowledge it's wrong.

Jon Hammer -- "Miami Vice Theme" -- November 9, 1985

My parents didn't watch Miami Vice. And then I never felt like watching it in re-runs when I got older. I don't recognize this song. It's an energetic instrumental, but there's so much going on, I keep trying to figure out if there's a main musical idea anywhere. Nope. Just lots and lots of synth. Headache-inducing.

Starship -- "We Built This City" -- November 16, 1985

Blech. This song sounds both unfinished and overproduced somehow. The chorus seems designed to be catchy with absolute ruthlessness by people who didn't really care, and no one involved even seems to want to bother to fake it.

Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin -- "Separate Lives" -- November 30, 1985

This is supposed to be heart-wrenchingly sad. Well, it does tank my dopamine, but that's not what a good sad song does. A good sad song makes you feel better. This one makes me need to turn on something high-energy after about 30 seconds, before I sink into bleakness. It's aggressively boring.

Mr. Mister -- "Broken Wings" -- December 7, 1985

This was one of the first songs I recorded from the radio. On my pink tape deck/radio that was a sort of a mini boom box. I've always had my own tape player since I can remember, but that was a definite upgrade from the Sesame Street one. I was 9 then, so getting more seriously into music and developing my own taste intentionally, rather than simply absorbing what was happening around me.

Anyway, the song. It's about a relationship in trouble, and he wants to stay with her. To me it sounds like she has been so seriously hurt (and not by him), that she can't trust anyone, and he's laying himself on the line for her. That has spoken to me deeply ever since I first heard the song as a child. Moving on to the music: While the lyrics are repetitive, the music is not, which is what makes the song so good. It's a beautiful song.

Lionel Richie -- "Say You, Say Me" -- December 21, 1985

I look forward to Lionel Richie no longer being on the charts. This song was on the soundtrack of some movie I've never heard of. I wish I'd never heard of the song. Totally artificial glop.

BEST OF 1985: "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds  WORST OF 1985: "We Built This City" by Starship

[soonsoop]

blog #2 - eco-friendly headphone brands!

April 25th, 2021

When it comes to listening music, using a set of headphones or earbuds can be an essential part of the experience. It gives a more personal and intimate experience with the music.

There is a difference between “earphones” and “headphones”.

“Earphones” or as some people call it “earbuds”, are the ones that go into the inside of your ears whereas headphones are the ones that cover your whole entire ear. 

Now, you must be questioning why I’ve titled the blog as “headphones”. Let me tell you my experience on why I think using headphones is for the better. Before getting into the fine details of how the human ear works and the effect of music on our ears, I’ve been an avid user of the famous earphones many people use.

During my music class at the current college I’m attending in, I learned that “earphones are the fastest way to damage your hearing”. The human ear is an organ that protects and filters sounds. It’s like an acoustic organ that balances the stuff we hear. Because the device is inserted straight into your ear, without letting your whole ear be able to “filter” out the sounds it becomes extremely dangerous after long-term exposure. After hearing that statement it really shook my world. Since then, I’ve been starting to use headphones as much as I can instead of earphones. Headphones on the other hand are much safer than earphones/earbuds. Because the sound plays onto your whole ear and not directly, it lessens the impact when listening to music. 

Although not everyone is suited to using headphones, I am focusing this post on headphones since I will be taking into the factor of both the regular consumer as well as those involved in music production/industry.

Since I’m a music creator who creates and have been learning to mix and listen to music, I also took into the interests of both the regular consumers as well as consumers who are involved in the music industry and music creating/mixing whereabouts. I began to look into brands that had eco-friendly headphones while trying to search for some myself. With that in mind, I’ve done some research on eco-friendly/ethical brands that sell headphones. 

Here are the top 3 brands I’ve found:

LSTN

House of Marley

Thinksound

Let’s start with...

1. LSTN 

Fave factors about LSTN: gives back to the community, use of sustainable materials, great aesthetic and design 

Recommended for: those looking for a good cause with their purchase, sustainability, aesthetics, day-to-day consumer willing to invest more money into their headphones

Price: $$$

The first brand I’ve tried was LSTN. It was around 2017~2018 when I first discovered this brand. I’ve tried the LSTN Avalon Bamboo earphones. I really liked it for its minimal and appealing design as well as the story behind the company. A brief overview of the company & its headphones:

LSTN is a company that gives back to the hearing community, providing people with the abillity to hear music and sounds globally with every purchase made. They partner with The Starkey Hearing Foundation to provide hearing aids to those in need. Their line of headphones(excluding the kids section) use sustainable and reclaimed wood, vegan leather and an aluminum banding.

Currently, LSTN only has wireless headphones available in their headphone line.

The Troubadour - $179.99

The Troubadour 2.0 - $179.99

Features: Wireless connection, 40mm drivers, 32 Ω Impedance, 8+ battery life, Backup cable for wired use, Built-in mic/controls, Vegan leather pads, 30' operating range, Lifetime support

I would say LSTN would fit best for the day-to-day consumer. Even though they have a backup cable for wired use included, I wouldn’t say it’d be perfect for mixing since it was not specifically built for that purpose. One downfactor that would be discouraging is the cost of their headphones. However, their motto and use of materials as well as their aesthetic designs makes it very appealing.

SHOP LSTN’s headphones here: https://lstnsound.com/collections/bluetooth-headphones

2. House Of Marley

Fave factors of House of Marley: Has the most relatively cheaper options, use of carefully sourced and recycled materials, supports global ocean conservation and reforestation efforts

Recommended for: Bass lovers, interest in global ocean conservation and reforestation efforts

Price: $$~$$$

The second brand I’ve encountered and tried out was House of Marley. It was around 2018~2019 when I found out about their brand. I’ve tried their Smile Jamaica Earbuds. Their brand is known for it’s emphasis on the bass sounds. I could really hear a lot of bass when using their earphones. 

House of Marley is a brand that focuses on delivering music to its consumers as well as contributing conservation efforts to the planet especially focusing on ocean restoration and global reforestation efforts. Their materials are carefully sourced and sustainable. They’ve created a Project Marley Global Giving initiative in order to support ocean conservation and global reforestation efforts through One Tree Planted and the Surfrider Foundation. 

Positive Vibration 2 Headphones - $49.99

Rebel BT Wireless Headphones - $59.99

Positive Vibration 2 Wireless Headphones - $69.99

Positive Vibration XL Wireless Headphones - $99.99

Positive Vibration XL ANC Wireless Headphones - $149.99

Exodus Wireless Headphones - $199.99

Exodus ANC Wireless Headphones - $249.99

House of Marley has more options compared to LSTN’s headphone line-up. It seems that their most expensive headphones have the highest ratings on their website. I would say HOM is best for the regular consumer again especially since their products have an emphasis of their “signature sound” which has a  strong bass sound. I wouldn’t think it’d be ideal for someone mixing music, but I think it would be appealing to a regular consumer who loves that bass-y sound. Concerning price, HOM has a variety of relatively mid-high to high price-ranged options which is a bit more appealing for those on a slight budget. I find their clarity about where their materials as nice as well as their conservation efforts!

SHOP House of Marley’s headphones here: https://www.thehouseofmarley.com/headphones/

3. Thinksound

Fave factors about Thinksound: Studio-focused headphones, use of relatively natural & recycled materials

Recommended for: both the regular consumer & music industry involved concsumer, those looking into more eco-friendly headphones designed possibly for the studio?, use of natural materials, nice acoustics

Price: ??? / TBA

The last brand I found upon my research was Thinksound. A few months back I found their specific type of headphones called, ‘Thinksound On1′ headphones and came across a review that talked about them being used specifically for the studio. It was one of the first and only eco-friendly brands that I came across that created a headphone built for a studio. Unfortunately, the headphones were discontinued and I was sad to see their site was under construction. However, now that I checked back again today, I saw that they had reopened their site again and added some new products!! (Woohoo!)

Thinksound is a company that started out in 2009 striving to deliver products made to allow music to sound the way musicians and music professionals can be respected for. They strive to also use responsibly sourced materials. 

ov21 - $??? / coming soon! (wired)

on21 - $??? / coming soon! (wireless)

I have yet to try this brand out yet I have high hopes for this brand. They’re made and are making products that deliver the music in a way that can be possibly respected by music professionals while also implementing responsibly sourced materials into their products. I am curious and excited to see the new headphones they have coming soon on their website!! (It’s stated on their website that they’ll have pre-order discounts and release info if you sign-up their newsletter on their homepage!) They are making both wired and wireless headphones available soon in the future so, I think their headphones will be both ideal for both the consumer and music studio involved consumer!

SHOP Thinksound’s products here: https://thinksound.com/collections/our-lineup

To wrap up, these are the top 3 brands I’ve found and recommend you all to try. Although most of them have quite an expensive price tag, supporting companies like these who strive to bring ethically and responsibly sourced materials without diminishing the quality of their products is a great way to listen to your music in an eco-friendly way. 

And yes, I know. As you can see in the first picture of this blog, I am currently using AKG K240 headphones. I am hoping to try out brands like Thinksound if they continue to make headphones that can be used in the studio. Headphones (other than speakers) are a crucial factor in the whereabouts of mixing and getting a good sound from it is influential in the way the product and quality of the music that is being produced. I still find it difficult to find brands that have both great sound while being sustainable at the same time especially for studio-based headphones in the music industry. I hope there will be a day when more brands like Thinksound begin to implement those qualities while both trying to put in an effort to responsibly source their materials! 

Let me know what your thoughts on these brands are if you’ve ever tried out these brands yourself! Thank you for reading. :)

[moonlightandlilacs]

A Little Puppet Dance - Ch. 2

A The Cabin in the Woods fanfiction.

Ch. 1 / Also on AO3

Dana and Marty are apart, but they're determined to find each other again. The zombies in the way are in for a surprise if they think the humans are going to be stopped.

OooOooOooOooO (After the Window: Dana)

Dana watched from her position on the floor, frozen in fear and shock, as her friend was hauled out the window.  She could hear him screaming outside, and there were some loud thuds, but still she couldn’t bring herself to move.  Images of the horrible monster that had been beyond the front door when she had opened it were fresh in her mind, and the phantom weight of Jules’s head in her hands nearly brought her to tears.  Moving just seemed like a route to more pieces of her soul being carved away as she watched her friends die at the hands of creatures that shouldn’t even exist in the real world.  It was the sound of her name echoing through the woods that finally broke her free of her terror-induced trance, and she quickly lunged to her feet.

“Marty!” She called, as though he would come popping back through yelling “sike!”  Of course, there was no response, and she geared herself up.  “This is incredibly dumb,” she mumbled in admonition, but there was way around it; she had to try to save Marty.  Looking around the room for an acceptable weapon, her eyes lit upon Marty’s heavy-duty travel mug.  Or rather, Marty’s extra-heavy-duty bong masquerading as a travel mug.

“Good enough,” she asserted, and she quickly snatched it up and hooked it to her belt.  Another glance out the shattered window into the abyss made her hesitate, but she gave herself a firm shake.  “This isn’t going to get any less dumb by talking to yourself, Dana.  Time to go.”  And with that, she backed up and then leapt out the window, hitting the ground and rolling forward with the impact before standing.

The yelling had stopped, and there was no blood trail to follow (she reminded herself to be deeply grateful for that, even if it made things harder now), so she wasn’t really sure where to go.  It was too dark to be sure, but she thought there might be a drag trail in the dirt and leaves.  Since she had no better clues to go on, she started off in that direction at a careful walk, eyes flicking rapidly between the faint trail and the trees around her.  Each step, she expected another zombie to come leaping out of the darkness at her, but there was too much at stake for Dana to let that stop her.

“Marty, you fucking better be alive when I find you.”  As if in answer, the ground abruptly rolled under her feet, throwing her to the ground in a heap of twisted limbs and swearing.  Her ankle throbbed in protest at the abuse, but she forced herself to her feet.  As she limped on, she noticed a mist beginning to rise, seemingly out of nowhere.  She slowed even further to listen, and she quickly identified a hissing noise, one that she remembered from those terrifying and confusing moments in Marty’s room.

‘Gas,’ she thought to herself.  ‘They’re still watching you, whoever they are.’  Thinking quickly, she stumbled to a halt as though affected, holding her breath as surreptitiously as possible, until she allowed herself to collapse.  She fell, landing as far away from the gas spouts as she could manage.  She pressed her face into the moss and breathed shallowly, using it to filter her air until she eventually heard the hissing stop.  ‘Bingo.’

Opting for caution, she waited a few more minutes before she got up, hoping against hope that the mysterious they had stopped watching her.  When the gas didn’t start up again, she headed off.  She had lost the faint trail, but she was more sure than ever that she was on the right track.  “Hold on, Marty.  I’m coming.”

OooOooOooOooO (After the Window: Marty)

Marty was not having a good day.  He’d been repeatedly dismissed in his theories, despite the fact that most of them had turned out to be relevant, which he would be more smug about if things weren’t going to shit quite so quickly.   His friend had been decapitated, and now there was some weird conspiracy with cameras, knockout gas, and subliminal messaging.  Oh, yeah, and he was being kidnapped by a zombie.  Not his best day ever.

As he managed to get his feet outside the window, he turned to run, only to smash to the ground again as he caught his foot on a root.  Before he could stand, or do anything besides grunt, the zombie had him by the ankles and was dragging him away.  No amount of shouting seemed to deter the brute, and his squirming and grasping at the dirt was no more effective.

In a last ditch effort as he lost sight of the cabin, he screamed for the friend he had left behind in his room, both hoping that she would come to rescue him and praying that she stayed safe and away.  He believed for a moment that he heard her cry his name in return, but he shoved that idea away as wishful thinking.  Instead, curses bubbled freely to his lips, at his captor, at whoever was behind the scenes controlling this horror show, and at himself for not paying enough attention.  ‘I knew I should have barricaded that window when I had the chance,’ he berated himself as he growled out a particularly vicious swear.

As he began to run out of air and creativity, he felt the ground slope down, and it broke him free of his thoughts.  The moment screamed ‘Last Chance’ like a neon sign on the side of the highway, and Marty didn’t intend to let it pass him by.  In a maneuver that Curt would have been proud of, he used his arms and abs to flip himself over, wrenching his legs out of the zombie’s hold in the process and knocking the creature over.  Without giving himself time to think and second guess, he seized the trowel from the ground and drove it hilt deep into the beast’s chest, releasing a spurt of blood.  He had hardly started to relax when the monster opened its eyes and began to thrash again, so Marty pulled the weapon out and drove it in again, over and over.

His numerous review sessions with Jules for her pre-med classes all flashed through his mind as he attempted to render the disturbing creature harmless.  Placement of vital organs, the amount of blood a human could lose without dying, the way to dearticulate joints: it all buzzed in his brain on autopilot.  His arms grew tired, but fear and adrenaline kept him moving long after he would have given up on a typical workout.  He could practically hear Curt urging him on, one more set, just another rep or two, from the times he had accompanied his friend to the gym.  These memories of his friends gave him the strength to keep cutting and slashing and stabbing, though his stomach wanted to rebel at the mess and the squelching noises that accompanied it.

By the time he stopped, the living corpse had been reduced to a twitching pile of viscera with only a few largely intact pieces to show what it had looked like before.  The head was making horrifying gasping sounds, but Marty couldn’t bring himself to find out what it would take to make it stop.  He sat, panting, for a few minutes before he could focus on anything other than catching his breath and triumphing over the urge to vomit.  One of the zombie’s hands was twitching itself toward his knee, but he just brushed it aside absentmindedly, quickly reaching his threshold for shock and disgust.   Besides, he had bigger worries as he climbed wearily to his feet and scrambled out of the hole he found himself in: “Dana!”

OooOooOooOooO (After the Gas: Dana)

Dana still wasn’t sure just what the hell was going on, but she did know that she needed to get to Marty.  They were in this together, and she wasn’t just going to abandon him without a fight.  She was pretty sure she had ditched whoever had been watching, since the gas hadn’t started up again or anything, but she had no way of knowing for sure.  That freaked her out almost as much as the idea that someone was watching and controlling them all in the first place.  She felt like Marty as conspiracy theories and questions ricocheted through her head with no solid answers to be found.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the groaning noise at first.  When it registered, she spun around, expecting to see Marty on the ground somewhere, injured and in terrible pain.  No such sight met her eyes, however, and her alarm nearly settled before the sound came again.  Her fear spiked sharply, and she quickly freed the bong from her belt.  Gripping it tightly, she began sneaking toward the moans with extreme caution.  As she made her way around a tree, a saw buried itself in the wood just in front of her nose, and Dana let out a loud scream.  She scrambled backward and nearly dropped the bong in her shock.

The redhead whipped her head around, searching frantically in the darkness for the source of this attack.  A slight glow out of the corner of her eye attracted her attention, and she turned to face her foe.  The light, she discovered queasily, emitted from the stomach of a zombie, and she was reminded again of the words she had read what seemed like ages ago.  ‘Cut her belly and stuffed the coals in…’ oh, God.  It really is the family from the diary.  The Buckners, like that creepy old man at the gas station talked about.’

As Dana reached this conclusion, the creature in question finally managed to free its saw from the tree, and it advanced again.  The young woman fumbled for a moment in terror before she remembered her own weapon, still clenched in her fist.  With a snap of her wrist, she extended the bong to its full length and brought it up in time to counter a swing of the zombified mother’s  rusty tool.  Dana levered down, forcing the saw toward the ground, and then she twisted and lunged forward, striking her foe in the neck with as much force as she could muster.  Mama Buckner crashed to the ground with a hiss, but it didn’t seem much inconvenienced as it started to rise.

Before the beast could stand fully again, Dana cocked the bong back like a bat and took a hefty swing.  Her old days on the softball team carried her through, and with a disturbing crack, Mama’s head went flying.  In spite of Dana’s expectations, however, the body didn’t stop moving.

“Well, fuck.  I guess not all of the horror movie rules apply, huh?”  With that quip, she swept the bong under the zombie’s feet, knocking it over once more.  The saw fell from its fingers, and Dana quickly kicked it behind her and out of reach.  The monster, meanwhile, had gotten onto its hands and knees and was crawling toward its severed head.  With a quick thought of thanks to Marty and his ingenuity in creating his disguisable paraphernalia, Dana brought the sturdy thing down on Mama’s back, flattening it and drawing a groan.

Hope flared in her briefly, but then the creature began to move once more in the direction of its missing limb.  She prepared to hit it again, but she was stopped as a voice rang through the trees.

“Dana!”

Relief surged through her at the sound of Marty’s voice, and her battle with the zombie was quickly forgotten as she sprinted in the direction of the call, noting passively that it was back the way she had come.  “Marty!”

As she dodged around a tree, she looked up just in time to see her friend before she catapulted into him and sent them both tumbling back into the hole he had just climbed out of.

OooOooOooOooO (Reunited)

Marty let out a groan as they hit the ground, his arms instinctively wrapping around her.  The bong clattered out of Dana’s hand, and it bounced to a halt with a wooden thump that stirred something in Marty’s mind.  But most of his attention was on his friend, who was somehow here and safe and...digging her bony elbow into his gut.  He groaned again, and she looked up, or down, maybe, at him.

“Marty!”

“Hi.”

“You’re okay!  I mean, are you hurt?  I was so worried!”  She scanned him for injuries as best she could, hampered by the fact that most of his body was covered by hers.

“Dana,” he managed.

“Yes?”

“Can’t breathe.”

“Oh, what’s wrong?  Did you get strangled or punched or cut or something?”  At this, he huffed out a laugh.

“You’re laying on my lungs.”

“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.”  She quickly slid off of him, blushing both at her mistake and the implications of their position that she was just recognizing.  Marty waved off her apologies as he hauled himself into a sitting position, and they both took a moment to look each other over, verifying that the other was largely unhurt.

“What are you doing here?” Marty asked once he was certain she was alright.

“I wasn’t just going to let you get-” she choked on the word ‘killed’ and opted for something easier “-taken.”  As uneasy as she was, she still found space to be indignant at the thought that she would abandon him like that.  “I had to try to help.”

He nodded slowly at this and reached forward to brush a chunk of moss off of her cheek before standing.  She smiled shyly up at him as he offered her a hand and hauled her to her feet.

“But it looks like you had it handled.  How did you get away?”  Just then, she felt a touch on the top of her foot, and looked down to see a disembodied hand crawling on her; she let out a scream and staggered back.  A hollow sound echoed under her shoes, and she looked around in confusion as Marty caught her arm.

“It’s okay.  It can’t hurt you.”  He steadied her.  “Sorry about that.  That’s… uh… that’s how I got away.”  His gesture encompassed the corner of the small space, and through the gloom, she saw the mess that had once been a zombie.

“Oh.  Good work.”  She grimaced.  “You did better than I did; I could barely get the head off mine.”

Marty froze, and his grip on her arms tightened fractionally.

“Yours?  Wait, what happened to you?”

“Well, once I got away from the gas,” at his look, she backtracked, “I think whoever’s fucking with us was still watching me when I went to find you, and they tried to gas me again.  Thanks to you, I noticed, so I did what I thought you would do and kinda… played possum until it stopped.  It made me lose the drag trail, though, and I guess I went the wrong way after that.  I heard noises that I thought were you, but it was another zombie.  I think it was Mama Buckner from the diary; she had coals in her stomach.” Marty’s face scrunched at that, and then he seemed to get lost in thought as he considered the implications of that.  “Anyway, I had your bong with me, and I used that to knock her head off, but she wouldn’t stop.  I kept hitting her, but it didn’t seem to do much, and then I heard you calling, and well, here we are.”

Marty bent to pick up the weapon in question, and as he did, he noticed an odd pattern on the ground.  It reminded him of the familiar sounds the floor had made, and he rapped his knuckles on it.  Again, it sounded back hollow, and he motioned Dana back.  After a moment’s inspection, he spotted a ring set into the wood, and as he pulled, he discovered what looked like a storm cellar.

“Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice,” Dana mumbled beside him as they both stared down into the abyss.

[hmel78]

In conversation with Dave Sturt ...

GONG

In September of 2016, ‘GONG’ released their new album “Rejoice! I’m Dead” Some say it couldn’t, or shouldn’t have, be done. How could Gong exist without Daevid Allen? 

For those who are unaware Daevid passed away in March 2015. ‘GONG’ has had many, many line-ups - Formed when Australian beatnik/freak Daevid Allen quit ‘The Soft Machine’ and moved to France at the tail end of the ’60s. Since debuting in 1970 with “Magick Brother”, the band have remained fluid, even playing without their founder from the mid-to-late ’70s; fracturing and reassembling and constantly taking on new shapes and forms: an undeniably amorphous unit. David Bowie told Vanity Fayre in 2003 that Daevid Allen’s “Banana Moon” is one of his favourite albums, and today everyone from indie artists Temples and Ty Segall to hip hop artist Madlib and techno DJ Surgeon are inspired, and borrow, from ‘Gong’s’ music and ideology. The funky grooves, avant-garde flourishes and counter-cultural stance is timeless. So timeless that ‘Gong’ is proving that it can fully exist, even without their creator and guiding light.  “Rejoice! I'm Dead! came together over several weeks in an East London rehearsal studio. It depends on your knowledge of ‘Gong’ history and what you may feel constitutes as a Gong record, but “Rejoice! I'm Dead!” is classified as their 28th album and it would appear that the ‘Gong’ legacy is the strongest it has been since 1974 . In the words of bassist Dave Sturt: “You bet it's a fucking Gong record!” The current line-up features  Kavus Torabi (vocals/guitar), Fabio Golfetti (guitar/vocals), Dave Sturt (bass/vocals), Ian East (sax/flute) and Cheb Nettles (drums/vocals) - and unanimously they have taken on the mantle of “steering the Teapot further into outer space and the inner ear” ... Helen Robinson caught up with Dave Sturt recently, to find out more ...

HR :  ‘GONG’ has had a total of 52 official members in its 50 year history ; 47 past and 5 current.
What is it about ‘Gong’s’ music which compels musicians to continue to hold the band together in some shape or form?

Dave Sturt : An interesting question..... The Gong family is really unlike anything else. It's so much more than the 5 or 6 musicians on the stage. It's a worldwide collective of freaks, mystics or those who just don't quite fit in to the mainstream .... those who are searching for a different way to be.  It's an ongoing adventure- may it never stop. 

HR :   When you first joined in 2009 you were the new guy! Did you jel straight away? Had you been a fan prior to joining? 

DS : I knew of Gong back in the 70s but it wasn't until the 80s when I began to really appreciate what they had created. I had latched on to the Steve Hillage Band first - I really loved “Fish Rising”. So it was a real honour to audition for the band with Steve and Miquette. I felt comfortable right from the start. My personal journey melded with Gong's at just the right time – I had experience of many kinds of music but needed a focus. Gong wanted a creative bass player with something to offer . . . kismet!

HR :    At the time - alongside Daevid Allen - the line-up consisted of original member Gilli Smith who had returned to sing vocals, with two of the 1970’s staple members Miquette Giraudy, and Steve Hillage - what was it like having them all reunited in the same creative space?

DS : It was a privilege but, initially daunting. I had briefly worked with Daevid a few years before but to have them all in the same rehearsal room was something else. 

I began to get to know them properly in the tour bus around Europe - promoting the 2032 album.  They were all incredibly bright, free thinkers- truly inspiring. 

HR :    2012 saw another big shift in the band’s line-up -  you stayed ; was that by choice, or at the request of Daevid?  Who decided on who was going to fill the positions?



DS : Well I was very keen to continue with the band but it was Daevid who chose the line up that best suited his vision of where he wanted ‘Gong’ to go. On tour he spoke many times of his wish for Gong to continue without him and he chose pretty well.

HR :    Have the rotations of band members been essential to keep it fresh for the main body of songwriters ; for something ‘new’ to be brought to the table?  Or was it simply a tough band to exist in?

DS : Daevid never wanted to play safe. He always wanted to be surrounded by creative people so I guess that was the driving force.  Since Ian east and I have been involved the biggest change was when Steve and Miquette left to re focus on System 7.  Daevid was keen on making the band more guitar focused so Fabio was invited to join - and then later Kavus got the call. 

HR :   You’ve been with the band for the longest, out of the new line-up - do you feel that you have the chemistry right this time, to move forward as a unit and stay together?

DS : Absolutely - no question. This band is a perfect mixture of passion, skill and creativity. The gigs are a blast from start to finish – and we also have a great crew including the Fruit Salad lightshow and projections.

It feels slightly odd – being the longest standing member! It has been a bizarre eight years.

HR :    Following Daevid’s passing in 2015, and Gilli’s in 2016 - did you all consider calling it a day, or is it always going to be imperative to keep their spirits alive through the music?

DS : It was Daevid's wish that the band should continue. We were keen to carry on but unsure that it would work without him. We had gigs booked to promote the I See You album but Daevid was too ill to join us from Australia so Kavus took centre stage and we were astonished by the response. Also, previous members of Gong were very supportive.

Gilli's last tour with the band was in 2012 – and her health was failing then. She had to miss some of the concerts because of a broken foot. Our last gigs with her were in Japan and she spent the last few years of her life in a care home where she held court and entertained guests up until the end.

HR :   Cue studio album #28 - “Rejoice! I’m Dead”. 
It features Steve Hillage, Didier Malherbe, and Graham Clark, along with some post-humous vocals from Daevid. 
Did you feel that you needed to include these in order to transition the band from what was always essentially Daevid’s project, to a new stage in it’s development?

DS : That was partly the reason, but it felt completely in keeping with the the direction of the album. I was particularly keen to include the track Beatrix. It was such a lovely moment that I'd captured on my hand held recorder. We were in an apartment in Brazil - Daevid was listening on headphones to a jazzy musical idea of mine - and he began to improvise a poem about a very special woman in his life. It was so sweet and poignant. 

The album is obviously a reflection on Daevid and life and death so it's seemed completely right to have his presence in there . . . . it really felt as though he was in the studio with us as we composed and arranged the tracks

HR :   The album is receiving some rave reviews, and doesn’t seem to have disappointed the loyal following - were you nervous prior to it’s release, or confident that what you had produced was going to hit the proverbial nail?

DS : We were supremely confident that we had created something really special. The process of composing and recording was a joy. We just followed our own inner voice – without any pre-conceived direction - everyone contributed with ideas that we then arranged, juxtaposed and honed into a beautiful shiny thing.

HR :   With the current line-up being a relatively new group when it comes to working together as ‘Gong’ (not essentially new to each other), how difficult was it to write new material in the vein of some 50 years of compositions, which for the first time were not under the creative influence of Daevid, Gilly, or other alumni?

DS : We are all composers as well as players – and four of us wrote or co-wrote most of the tracks on the previous album I See You so we had no problem in continuing the process. The main key difference was the lyrics. We had no intention of pretending to write like Daevid or Gilli – that would have been completely bogus. Instead Kavus developed the main lyrical ideas throughout the time that the tracks came together – and a truly fine job he did! I wrote the lyrics for the track Model Village – the first time that I'd attempted such a thing.

HR :    For anyone who may be unaware of Gong, and their impressive back-catalog - could you describe the new album in a nutshell, and give virgin listeners an idea of what they can expect?

DS : The title – Rejoice! I'm Dead! - is a line from a poem of Daevid Allen's – 'All I Ask'. It completely summed up Daevid's attitude to death and it informed the concept of the album. That transition into the great unknown – something we all will face at some time. So – should we face it with fear and trepidation or embrace it as part of life's great journey? No one gets out alive so let's enjoy life, live it to the full and don't waste it by worrying about something that you can't avoid.So, the album is euphoric, inspirational and slightly ironic, with the occasional social comment. Musically it is, in turns, powerful; beautiful; intricate; and mystical.

I think I've finally achieved my aim of playing on, what may well be recognised eventually as, a classic album.

HR :   And down the line ... The band claim they you will continue to ‘fly the teapot further into outer space, and the inner ear! 
 Is it likely that any past members will be invited back to the fold for future projects?

DS : It's said that once you've been a member of Gong you never leave - so the door is always open. It's a very friendly, co-operative family – so everything is possible.

HR :   Outside the Gong realm, your solo album “Dreams and Absurdities” was released in 2015. Given all your other commitments, how long was it in the making? 

DS : Dreams & Absurdities came together slowly. It would have happened sooner if I hadn't been so busy over the last 10 years. I have a classic bass player mentality – I'm very supportive and unassuming and I give my all to whichever project I'm working on – which has meant that my solo album never became a priority, until, for some reason, everything fell into place.

HR :   It’s a  purely instrumental  record  - a departure perhaps from the music that people are used to hearing you play. Does it reflect your personal musical comfort zone?

DS : Well, some people will be very used to me working on instrumental albums. I recorded two with Jade Warrior and three with Cipher (my duo with Theo Travis). I find great beauty in instrumental music – especially when it evokes emotions of longing and soundscapes of imagined worlds.

HR :    The album features  a number of impressive guests - notably your  Gong colleagues, and Bill Nelson.   
Bill describes you as “an artist of the highest calibre” - coming from him that’s quite a recommendation isn’t it?!

DS : I am still truly astonished that I have been able to work with such great musicians – and to be held in such high regard by them is overwhelming. I've played with Bill for over 10 years now and it's been a joy. I was a big fan of Be Bop Deluxe and Red Noise and I've had the honour to play material from both bands with the man himself.

HR :   You’ve worked with a number of high profile musicians during your career - what was the most challenging project t o be part of?  And if you could collaborate with anyone at all - who would it be?

DS : The most challenging was probably a session early in my career when I was hired to play on an album by a Canadian band called Strange Advance. Also playing on the album were drummer Andy Newmark (John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music) and Earl Slick (David Bowie). It was produced by the great composer and arranger Michael Kamen. It was a huge learning curve for me. It was a great experience but I felt that I was hanging on by my fingertips! In the end, things didn't go well with the producer/artist relationship – and the album was re-recorded in Canada with different musicians.

Who would I like to collaborate with? That could be a very long list! Peter Gabriel, Harold Budd, Jan Garbarek, Andy Partridge, Kate Bush, Steve Jansen, Bill Frisell, David Torn, Michael Brook, Zakir Hussein, . . . I could go on . . .

https://www.davesturt.co.uk/

[alpha-centari27]

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG Exclusive Interview With Star Lee Majdoub About Agent Stone And His Dream Superhero Role

We recently caught up with Sonic the Hedgehog star Lee Majdoub to discuss his breakout role as Dr. Robotnik's sidekick Agent Stone, while he also reveals which superhero he would love the chance to play...

Sonic the Hedgehog proved that the video game movie curse is officially dead as critics and fans alike loved it (you can read our review by clicking here). Throw in the fact that it was a box office hit, and it's fair to say that there's a lot of excitement surrounding the yet to be announced sequel.

After being made available EARLY on Digital platforms, the movie arrives on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 19th, and to celebrate its release, we recently had the opportunity to catch up with star Lee Madjoub. He plays Agent Stone in Sonic the Hedgehog, and has been hailed as the breakout star (the character, meanwhile, has gained a devoted fan following online).

As the straight man to Jim Carrey's villainous Dr. Robotnik, Madjoub was responsible for many of the funniest exchanges in the film, and made a lasting impact after past memorable roles in TV shows like Supernatural, Zoo, and The 100.

In this interview, we delve into the Robotnik/Stone relationship, his experiences working with Carrey, and even hear a compelling argument for why he could be the Marvel Universe's next Wolverine!

It was great to talk to Lee about Sonic the Hedgehog, and we obviously want to extend a huge thank you to him for taking the time to do this interview happen with everything going on in the world right now. Agent Stone is clearly a role he's passionate about and, after reading this, we're pretty sure you'll also want to see him don those familiar claws...

Were you a fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games before being cast and what did it mean for you as an actor to join such an iconic franchise?

Yeah, I actually did play Sonic on the SEGA Genesis when I was a kid. It was probably my favourite game growing up, and the SEGA Genesis was the first console I got to call my own. It was extremely surreal to get cast in the movie itself, and then when I found out Jim Carrey was playing Robotnik, and I was gonna be playing his right-hand man, it took it to the next level for me. I also grew up loving Ace Ventura, The Mask, and, well, all of Jim's stuff!

You're very much the straight man to Robotnik, but how do you keep a straight face when Jim Carrey is reeling off lines like the one about how Stone makes his lattes?

It was a challenge to keep a straight face at times, for sure. What was lovely about that set was that everybody was so positive, and having a good time was really welcomed. If we broke or laughed, you didn't feel like you were doing anything wrong, thank goodness! There were a few times, and the scene I remember was when Robotnik sticks the quill to his tongue and electrocutes himself...and then turns to me and offers it to me! I had such a tough time keeping a straight face, so I had to figure out ways to change my facial expression or not quite look at Jim in the eyes in order to get that scene done.

Did you get the opportunity to do much in the way of improv on set?

I did. Fortunately, working with Jim, improv comes with it. The looser he gets, and the more he's figuring out Robotnik, the more permission I had to feed off of whatever he was doing. That was really welcome, and it was amazing to be able to say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting to improvise with Jim Carrey, one of the greatest at it.' Some of the stuff didn't work with Agent Stone, but we got to flesh it out and have a lot of fun, nonetheless. Sometimes in the movie, you didn't get to see the improv, but then some of the improv does actually make it in there!

Did you find playing an original character without ties to the video game series freeing as there weren't any specific expectations from fans?

I think it was a little bit of both, to be honest. In the cartoons, he's got Orbot and Snively in certain versions, and when you're playing someone that already exists, you have a little bit of something to feed off. You go, 'Okay, this is what the character is like, so I can take some hints there.' With Agent Stone, there's also the element of freedom where there's nothing pre-established so you could do whatever works within the realm of the story after discussions with Jeff Fowler, who was our amazing director, and the writers and Jim. It was definitely fun not to be tied into anything and feed off Jim, for sure, and then what was on the page for us, was all you ended up seeing in the movie. Stone was, I wouldn't say last minute, but through the last few drafts, Stone was written in to give Jim someone to talk to. He was the straight man in the movie, but through discussions with Jim and Jeff and Toby [Ascher], our fantastic producer, we were able to flesh out the story a bit and figure out the relationships, and it turned into what you see now.

I feel like it's fair to say that you were the movie's breakout star, but were you surprised by the reaction fans have had to Agent Stone?

Yeah, I never ever imagined Agent Stone would have this much backing from the fans. Even before the movie came out, you'd see him once in a trailer, but people started to really stick by him. A lot of fans were like, 'We are Agent Stone, and he is us.' We've all had to work with that boss who doesn't appreciate you, and you get hired for one reason, but all they want you to do is make coffee! It was really surprising and it's still very surreal. There's a lot of engagement, and a lot of fan-art out there that I'm so appreciative of and it blows me away every time I see a new art piece come out. 

It seemed Robotnik hated everyone other than Stone, and he even finds a new Agent Stone on the mushroom planet, so I was wondering what you think it is that makes your character different to everyone else in Robotnik's life?

[Laughs] You know what, to me, I think Stone sees something in Robotnik that no one else does. There's this utter respect he has for Robotnik, and he lets him get away with a lot like the hand going into the mouth and the throat chop. Stone understands that this is Robotnik, and this is what he needs to do his thing. What I also love about Stone is that he judges Robotnik at times too, so I feel like there's a respect there, but I think Stone is unwavering and always there for him and it probably forces Robotnik to have to be okay with it.

Were you surprised to watch that mid-credits scene and see that Agent Stone had been replace with, well, a stone?

The day I wrapped on set was the day before I shot that scene. I was there when they were coming up with the ideas, and Jim was talking to them saying, 'What if he has another Agent Stone? Like a Wilson from Castaway?' It was so funny, and I saw them putting the moss beard on there. I laughed really hard. There's flattery there too as Robotnik needs Stone in some way, shape, or form in order to continue doing what he's doing. No matter how much he denies needing anybody, I think Robotnik kind of needs Stone there even though he's not willing to admit it.

Were there any scenes you shot which were particularly memorable for you that you didn't ultimately make the final cut?

Honestly, all of my major scenes made the cut. I'm so grateful for that. It's really hard to pick a favourite scene out of all that stuff as it was all with Jim, and there was always something to do and something memorable between the two characters in every scene we did. Even when he asks if I see anything on the screen and I'm like, 'Nothing at all,' and he responds with, 'That's right, it's because you weren't trained by the Native American shadow wolves!' Even in that moment, Agent Stone gives him this look, and there was always some fun to be had. Ultimately, I think the latte scene...the Austrian goat milk latte scene is my favourite just because that whole dance leads up to this one moment and it's the only time in this movie that Robotnik actually pays Stone a compliment even though it's berated and he yells at him.

You've spent some time in the Marvel Universe voicing Harry Osborn in the Absolute Carnage shorts, but would a live-action superhero movie role interest you, and do you have any characters in mind?

Ohh, that's a really good question! I grew up loving Wolverine. That's always been one of those childhood dreams of mine. If I get the chance...I don't know, there might be fan outcry or whatever, but you know, I'm a little bit hairy! I've got the bushy eyebrows! I'm Canadian! I qualify in certain ways. I'm shorter than Hugh Jackman! It's okay, we can pull it off...I'll put on the weight. I don't care! [Laughs] Wolverine, for sure. Ever since I was a child, I've wanted to play him. There are a few anime characters I've always wanted to play too if they were ever turned into live-action. There's an anime called Saint Seiya. Also, Venom. I love the anti-heroes for some reason growing up. As a kid I got picked on and I was never really in any groups and I never fit in, so I think the anti-heroes kind of had that little angry voice in me that I couldn't quite express.

Looking ahead to a possible Sonic the Hedgehog sequel, what would you like to see from Stone next if he gets to reunite with the new, unhinged Robotnik?

I would love a moment where we see why he's an actual agent. I feel like he could kick some butt. We haven't seen it yet, and I would love a moment with Robotnik as a damsel in distress and Stone shows up, saves Robotnik, and Robotnik won't admit that he's saved him!

You can find Lee on Twitter HERE, Instagram HERE, or Twitch HERE!

[imadmouhcine7]

update: we've got delivered 14 photos – primarily in low-mild – underneath to test out the galaxy s10 digicam. see the gallery beneath and the primary benchmarking check that beats all other android telephones in phrases of pace. 

the samsung galaxy s10 has been engineered to be a communique changer, a telephone that’s intended to turn everyone’s yearly question of “do i really need to upgrade?” right into a more exclamatory “do i really want to improve!” our palms-on time with the s10 proves that it does make this case, with some clean caveats. it’s the 6.1-inch infinity show that actually sells this telephone. it introduces a nearly-area-to-aspect look that stretches top to backside, with pixels spilling over the curved edges at the edges – there’s no room for huge bezels on samsung’s 2019 flagship smartphone. its new infinity-o display screen – also a function of the galaxy s10 plus and less expensive galaxy s10e – is so huge it absolutely displaces the front digicam, consigning it to a small ‘punch-hollow’ inside the screen. all of the crucial sensors are smartly tucked behind this vibrant and bright superb amoled display.

additionally at the back of the glass is the new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. you gained’t find a fingerprint pad on the back anymore, or anywhere visibly at the phone. samsung positioned its sensor – now invisible – at the the front, where we sense it belongs. the s10 formally makes punch-hollow presentations a trend after the concept debuted on the honor view 20, and in-display screen fingerprint sensors more mainstream when they seemed at the oneplus 6t, huawei mate 20 pro, and some vivo phones. it’s all within the motive of achieving that brilliant 93.1% display screen-to-body ratio at the the front of the phone.

maximization is also the idea behind the galaxy s10’s rear-dealing with triple-lens digicam. samsung’s camera array has lenses to take everyday, telephoto and new extremely-extensive pix. the ultra-extensive camera is all approximately capturing more of what’s in front of you without having to returned up. sure, lg telephones have touted ultra-extensive digicam lenses for years, most these days the lg v40, but samsung’s cameras had been greater constant in low-mild situations. the feature is finally in a a flagship-degree smartphone you want.

the galaxy s10 also has features all and sundry can get. its wireless powershare characteristic helps you to use the returned of the s10 to qi rate some other smartphone or the new galaxy buds, cloning the opposite wireless charging idea inside the huawei mate 20 seasoned, a cellphone that’s not extensively to be had in sure territories, which includes the usa. the galaxy s10 is an amalgam of other handsets’ single hallmark functions packed into one cellphone, whilst samsung pioneers as many technical features as it could cram in – quicker wi-fi 6 and hdr10+ are each firsts for smartphones. and that’s what samsung does high-quality certainly.  there’s a hitch or two in samsung’s masterplan to get everybody to improve to this precise handset. the s10 is steeply-priced, even greater so than final 12 months’s galaxy s9, although it’s markedly higher value than the iphone xs, which is more high-priced and has a smaller five.eight-inch display. then there’s the truth that samsung’s largest opposition in 2019 can be samsung. the galaxy s10e is inexpensive and almost as true, at the same time as the galaxy s10 plus is the smartphone you’ll want if you could manage its charge and display length – and that’s to say not anything of the galaxy s10 5g and the samsung galaxy fold, which early adopters may additionally search for real innovation at a higher price. the samsung galaxy s10 marks a decade of galaxy s phones, and even as there’s been little innovation in recent years from the maximum famous telephone manufacturers, together with samsung (bixby and ar emoji don’t reduce it), the s10 has enough newness to tempt you to improve. we’re nevertheless trying out the digital camera, overall performance and battery existence, however it’s already shaping as much as be one among 2019’s high-quality  the samsung galaxy s10 release date is friday, march 8, that's one week in advance than last 12 months’s telephone. it changed into formally announced on february 20, with pre-orders beginning right away in some nations. in the us, galaxy s10 pre-order started out on february 21. the galaxy s10 fee is $899 / £799 / au$1,349 / aed three,199, meaning you’re going to be spending an extra $a hundred and eighty / £60 / aed 100 on this cellphone over the s9 launch fee. if you like the appearance of this telephone however think that price is a tad high, you've got two options: you may pass for the inexpensive galaxy s10e, which starts at $749 / £669 / au$1,199 / aed 2,699, or suck up the price hike, surprise at the new 6.1-inch screen and 128gb base garage, and recognise that apple prices $a hundred / £two hundred / au$430 greater for the smaller five.8-inch iphone xs with half of the inner storage, 64gb. ordering the galaxy s10 earlier of march 8 will net you bonuses in some nations. in the us, for instance, samsung is presenting loose wi-fi galaxy buds really worth $149 / au$249 whilst you pre-order either the galaxy s10 or galaxy s10 plus. show samsung galaxy s10 specifications weight: 157g dimensions: 149.nine x 70.4 x 7.8mm os: android nine display screen length: 6.1-inch resolution: qhd+ cpu: octa-center chipset ram: 8gb garage: 128/512gb battery: 3,400mah rear digital camera: 16mp + 12mp + 12mp front digicam: 10mp     samsung’s screens are so right “our competition are even using them,” samsung emblem manager paul guzek advised techradar, an all-too-apparent dig at apple. it’s difficult to disagree. in truth, the galaxy s10’s 6.1-inch incredible amoled display panel looks higher than some thing samsung sells its opponents. it has elegantly curved edges with pixels that spill over the perimeters, amped-up brightness for higher out of doors visibility, and hdr10+ aid for superior evaluation and colour. the brand new infinity-o show type is what sticks out – for better or worse. samsung has efficaciously avoided a notch reduce-out on the top of its flagship phones, instead the usage of a laser-cut hole within the pinnacle-right corner of the display screen to embed the the front-facing digital camera, as on the honour view 20. is a ‘punch-hollow’ camera greater or much less distracting than a notch? we’re going to order judgment for our very last samsung galaxy s10 evaluate, when we’ll placed the cellphone via its paces in daily use. one thing we can say right away even though is that it’s given samsung extra display real estate to play with than ever. don’t permit the bigger 6.1-inch screen length scare you off. the s10’s dimensions are 149.nine x 70.four x 7.8mm (it weighs 157g), so it’s simplest marginally taller and wider than the s9 with its five.eight-inch display, and surprisingly thinner and a piece lighter. those marginal will increase in height and width are due to the s10’s screen-to-frame ratio of 93.1% (last year became eighty three.6%). bezel does define the pinnacle and backside of this display, despite the fact that we stated it wasn’t massive. samsung’s top speaker still reigns, and there’s a skinny but major chin throughout the lowest; it’s less bezel instead of bezel-much less. and the reality that the bottom bezel is greater than the top one catches our eye – it may be more distracting than the punch-hole. there’s little to dislike regarding the brand new display – if the infinity-o doesn’t distract everyday, and as referred to we’ll replace this review when we have more hands-on time with the s10. layout  you’re no longer going to be overly amazed by the rest of the samsung galaxy s10 design, although there are a few extremely good improvements, two hidden surprises, and an vintage classic here. its thinner aluminum frame is sandwiched among easy glass, with the back coming on your choice of color: flamingo red, prism black, prism blue, prism white, canary yellow and prism inexperienced. samsung galaxy s10 colours will range by way of region, with the usa getting all however yellow and inexperienced. there’s the smallest of camera bumps on the again, housing the triple-lens digicam array, at the same time as we saw no signs of samsung’s invisible opposite wi-fi charging module below this. it’s a specifically smooth appearance in a international of digital camera bumps and rear-fingerprint sensors. we had no difficulty activating samsung’s wireless powershare feature after turning it on thru the short settings notification shade. we located our galaxy buds case at the decrease third of the s10 back and the earbuds commenced charging nearly immediately. it even charged our iphone xs max. samsung laid out two situations in which wireless powershare would be beneficial: charging a friend’s phone, or charging your galaxy buds at night, correctly making your plugged-in s10 a cell qi charger pad. samsung mentioned, although, that powershare received’t work whilst the telephone is underneath 30%. also invisible – this time around the the front – is the fingerprint sensor. while plenty of android phones have used a rear-going through fingerprint sensor, samsung caught with the the front-facing bodily sensor pad all the manner up to the galaxy s7. so the switch to the back felt foreign on samsung phones – but it’s come lower back to the the front in the s10, this time tucked underneath the glass. this is an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, one of a kind from the optical sensors on the oneplus 6t and huawei mate 20 pro, as an instance. samsung uses qualcomm-sponsored tech that’s stated to be better, and greater cozy, via creating a 3D test of your print, however we’ll have to test it out everyday. to date, it’s unlocked the smartphone while we put our thumb on the lower-0.33 of the tool. extra literal impressions to come in our full overview. and right here’s a welcomed traditional that hasn’t changed because the first s phone a decade ago: the three.5mm headphone jack. samsung is one of the few cellphone makers that includes the same old headphone jack in 2019 – and it’s doing it despite introducing the wireless galaxy buds. samsung wants you to take photographs at any perspective, so the galaxy s10 has a triple-lens camera on returned with a 12mp regular lens, 12mp optically zoomed telephoto lens, and a cutting-edge 16mp ultra-extensive lens. we got to test the s10 camera thru our s10 plus evaluate unit (they have the equal cameras), and got awesome effects. here's the gallery: here's the equal shot in stay recognition (samsung's portrait mode). it nicely blurs the history, and you can change the history blur depth even after the shot is taken. samsung additionally includes blur filters: creative, spin, zoom and shade factor (which in this case made the history black and white). they are really certainly cool searching. the galaxy s10 camera takes splendid pictures, even in combined and low mild conditions. it is not too dark on our concern, us mobile editor david lumb, and the brilliant shifting flames are captured with element with out being overexposed. shot hints helped us frame up the shot. this digicam reticle may be helpful and you do not should snap the picture. the shutter simply activates whilst you hover over the reticle 'excellent shot' dot. but it is now not constantly correct. occasionally it stuck the circle off-center in a group shot for no obvious motive. usual, it is a pleasant touch with a few room for improvement. in our ongoing galaxy s10 camera assessment, we have observed topics up near with enough light include outstanding detail. have fun meals picture takers. the scene optimizer ai works well for food. the 12mp digicam offers us plenty of element, and whilst vibrancy and saturation are cranked up a chunk in comparison to an iphone, samsung's digicam no longer makes food appearance oversaturated and alien searching. there was a time whilst samsung's cameras would make hotdogs, as an example, appearance fireplace engine red through amping up assessment. testing the blur effect of the main digicam (with out switching to portrait mode) proved to give us the depth effect we desired. robust detail in the foreground, with wealthy bokeh inside the background. we tapped the history to get that in recognition, and the bokeh gave our foreground some fine blur. the element inside the background is crisp – like the fried hen. the galaxy s10 digital camera now and again looks higher than actual existence. its blues and orangey-reds here sincerely pop, even as the white doesn't appear to be too heat to together with it (earlier than you frequently could not have one with out the other). we still sense the google pixel 3 night sight mode does a higher process, however samsung could be very near. greater comparisons to come. here is a nicely-lit vicinity of two subjects. the picture avoids being too warm, placing pretty appropriate shade and white balance. right here's the identical shot from the brand new extremely-wide digicam. the tough component approximately this sort of extensive camera is that there may be regularly needless extra in there. cropping or the usage of the everyday lens is just first-rate. now not every shot merits this digital camera lens, but it creates a neat effect within the situations. right here's any other extremely-huge picture we took using the s10 camera. this is a more suitable image demonstrating some of the factors you'll omit with the tighter regular lens. the s10 is right at lively tracking speedy-shifting topics. working example, it was able to seize those bright flames as they moved in the san francisco wind. they may be crisp, not blurry, and no longer overexposed notwithstanding the camera also desiring to seize the darkish stones. we nevertheless locate the samsung's digicam to amp up vibrancy and saturation, additionally making use of an instagram clear out ahead of time. this works well for us, however comes down to taste. the iphone xs we use often has genuine-to-lifestyles hues, but subsequent to the s10 or google pixel 3, they look alternatively drab. we’re going to take a difficult observe the digital camera, how it as compared to the elegance-leading pixel 3, and determine how accurate the extremely-wide photos look. samsung’s 123-diploma area of view is as an alternative extensive, which serves the purpose of now not having to again as much as get the whole lot in a shot. however which can bring about an unnatural fisheye look. this extremely-wide digital camera additionally lacks ois in comparison to the other  lenses. at the front, we have a single 10mp camera with dual vehicle-focuses. in case you upgrade to the s10 plus, you’ll additionally get an 8mp digital camera supposed for boosting intensity in portrait pics. scene optimizer gains 10 new categories, with samsung’s digital camera ai now able to tell the difference among a cat and dog to first-rate tune such things as white stability. shot hints is a new feature that makes use of the neural processor engine to nudge you to properly level your pictures or frame subjects better. on the video aspect, the software program has been upgraded to record in hdr10+ and offer virtual video stabilization. samsung says that this is supposed to make all of your extremely hd video as smooth as an action cam. shots fired, gopro hero7 black. specifications and battery existence the samsung galaxy s10 receives right under-the-hood improvements, touting the new probably the greatest snapdragon or exynos chipsets, relying on which u . s . a . you stay in.  it's plenty rapid. the qualcomm snapdragon 855 chipset we benchmarked got here back with a document-breaking multi-score velocity... for android. the iphone xs continues to be a bit faster, but samsung is very close at 11,002 to apple's eleven,481. it also comes with 8gb of ram – a extreme upgrade over the 4gb of ram in ultimate 12 months’s s9 – and consists of alternatives for 128gb or 512gb of inner garage. there’s no 64gb version to worry approximately here, and samsung still helps expandable garage. it includes a 3,400mah battery, an upgrade over the three,000mah capability of the s9. due to the bigger display, officially, samsung is still claiming all-day battery life if now not a chunk more. additionally onboard is subsequent-gen wi-fi 6, in order to aid seamless transition among wireless routers and is four instances faster than 802.11ax. it should supply a 20% velocity raise, however you’ll need a new router to honestly get any use out of this feature. what you gained’t get in this phone is the s10 plus and note nine-exceptional vapor chamber cooling. if you’re a gamer, you can need to improve to the larger telephone for extra than just the larger display. early verdict the galaxy s10 is a deserved tenth anniversary phone for samsung and its storied s series. its new show kind lays out greater pixels throughout much less frame, has a triple-lens digital camera so that you can now take extremely-wide pictures, and includes a larger battery surrounded via beefier specs. you’ll like any of those functions, even as your pals will like the new wireless powershare perk. the s10 marks an anniversary, however it additionally marks some thing a bit exceptional amongst smartphones. it disrupts the sameness of smartphones simply sufficient to turn out to be a tempting upgrade.  the fee, but, might also come up with second mind. that’s where the galaxy s10e plays an critical function. our galaxy s10 fingers-on review isn’t finished but. this phone requires loads greater checking out and daily use to determine if the 3-eyed rear camera is the fine within the international and the ‘punch-hole’ infinity-o show is the style of display screen we need to stare at in 2019.

[jjk-emotrash]

Blood and Gasoline - Chapter 6

Type: Mafia!AU

Group/s: Mainly BTS, Got7, Blackpink

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader (OC), Jikook x Reader (OC)

Safety: NSFW

Warnings (Whole Fic): Swearing, Violence, Prostitution, Misogyny/Anti-Feminist Views, Torture, Smut, Non-Con/Rape, Death, SOME Fluff

Word Count: 4.6k

Masterlist

Hectic is the only way to describe the following week; training with Jackson in the morning, rehearsals with the girls in the afternoon and every night Y/N would perform at the club in a variety in skin-tight, exceedingly revealing, sparkly outfits then sit by Yoongi's side in his private booth -drinking and laughing with the boys. Y/N got closer to Jimin over the course of the week as he drove her to and from the club, their conversations relatively short but sweet. She learned that, when Jimin could help it, he was a lover, not a fighter - though, apparently, was skilled with many weapons. As he told it, he never saw himself as a violent person but after getting himself kicked out of college for almost killing someone with his own two hands when they pissed him off a little too much, he started to realise how violent he could get. Even his own mother was scared of him when he got angry. Y/N couldn’t understand for the life of her how anybody could be scared of such a sweet looking face, so soft and gentle with his slightly rounded cheeks and plump lips. However, as he told her the story, she decided to never get on Jimin’s bad side - never wanting to see that beautiful, happy face contort into pure malice and rage.

Her fight training with Jackson was something she was apprehensive about, having never fought anyone before. However, she settled into the routine pretty quickly and actually enjoyed the cathartic nature of her training sessions, allowing her to release all of her pent-up anger and stress. They started simply, him merely testing her strength and stamina in a series of brain-numbing workouts on the gym equipment that left her muscles aching. After thoroughly assessing her ability, he finally decided to teach her the basic fighting techniques. Knowing her flexibility from dance and surprising strength for someone who had never fought, after teaching her how to block a hit, he taught her how to force push someone away with a kick to the chest.

“Get this right Y/N, and you could quite easily knock someone off their feet,” Jackson told her as he puts on a padded vest “or at the very least push them back enough to stun them so you can try to get away.”

At first, she wasn’t so confident and was lacking in motivation – also not wanting to do it wrong and accidentally hurt him, or herself. After some reassurance, she tried again, and again, and again, until eventually, she managed to push her teacher back an inch.

“Well done, Y/N. You’ll be able to take me down in no time if you keep training like this.” He said with a smile and patted her sweat soaked back, “I think we should stop here for today, go have a shower and then I’ll meet you for lunch.”

During Friday's training session, he goes over everything they had done that week, Y/N managing to push him back on the third attempt, before he decided that she was ready to start learning to shoot. At the sound of that, her face goes pale and she gulped nervously as he pulls out a gun. Jackson taught her all the important information she would need if she were to fire a gun correctly and without injury to herself. Her hands shook when he told her to fire a blank at the dummy set up in the corner.

“Oh no, I can’t do that-” She started nervously.

“Y/N. You are here to learn to defend yourself. There’s only so much Jungkook can do to protect you. Now shoot the dummy.” He said slowly to calm her as he guides her into the correct position. She yelped slightly as she pulled the trigger, her arms coming up over her head to avoid injury as he showed her. When she looks over at the dummy, there is a small red dot on its waist.

“That was pretty good for your first shot. But it does help if you don’t close your eyes,” he teased her and chuckled, making her laugh slightly. “Try again.”

He stepped back to let her concentrate. She took a deep breath and positions herself before aiming for the x marking where the heart is. Pulling the trigger for the second time, she doesn’t flinch. The bullet missed the target but it was definitely more controlled. She sighed and smiled tightly.

This is going to take some getting used to…

That night, Y/N had another encounter with Taehyung. Now knowing his true intentions and “lifestyle”, she allowed herself to joke with him a little but doesn’t forget who he is and what she is now to him. Taehyung doesn’t forget either so doesn’t push his limits too far, only making a few flirty comments and buying her a drink after her performance. She knows Yoongi’s eyes are on her the entire time but it doesn’t stop her from sharing a drink with the man, she also knew that for some reason that the blonde won’t try to hurt her in such a crowded space. A voice in the back of his head told him that he should not be so nice to her now she is technically his rival but for whatever reason, he felt the need to be gentler with her. And not just so he could try to get in her pants. He couldn’t explain it and didn’t want to try figuring it out; he had other more important things to occupy his headspace…

Saturday flew by without hassle and on Sunday Y/N had her first gang meeting. The group sat around the dining table dressed casually, a platter of pastries in the centre of the table for anyone to eat. She sat between Lisa and Jimin, him poking her repeatedly on the thigh to ease her nerves, the small gesture on his part making her have to struggle to contain her giggles. She punched his thigh gently in response and he grins widely at her, his eyes creasing. The meeting started with a quick review of how Y/N has settled in, Yoongi questioning both her and Jackson on how her training has gone. Pleasantly surprised by their responses and happy that she is doing well, he moved on to more pressing issues and the reason for the meeting.

“With Taehyung’s frequent appearances at the club over the past two weeks, I think it is safe to assume that the rest of the gang is in town as well.” A heavy silence fell over the table. “I have decided that we are going to have a small private party at the club on Wednesday. Smaller associated gangs will attend, as well as the Scorpions.”

Immediately a chorus of protests were thrown at the boss.

“Are you fucking crazy? Do you understand how badly this could end?” Mark fired at his boss but the man didn’t seem fazed by the outburst.

“As long as everyone stays calm, nothing will go wrong. That being said, I want you all armed. Just in case” Yoongi made a point of looking Y/N in the eye, causing a shiver to run down her spine, before turning to look at the other dancers. “Girls, you are free to join the party, no escort duties necessary.” They nod and thank him, the side of his mouth quirking up in response. “Yugyeom, you’ll assume your usual post – Bam Bam will be expecting a delivery.” He nodded and calculates something in his head.

“Who’s ‘Bam Bam’?” Y/N whispered to Lisa

“One of our rival gang’s henchmen, and druggie.” She whispered back, “He’s also a massive flirt, and a firm believer in ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’. So, stay away.”

Y/N giggled slightly then turned her attention back to Yoongi. He continued talking about plans, asking Jimin to hack into the rival gang’s systems and send them an invitation, and Mark to have some of his “speciality” – whatever the hell that was - on hand. With that, they all stood and left the room.

The gang spent the next two days planning the party, Jimin successfully managing to send the rival gangs in the area invitations to the party. They all responded saying that they would be attending. With the party looming, the gang grew more and more stressed. Yoongi could be heard yelling at many points during the day, the only person he didn’t scream at was Y/N. In fact, he actually went upstairs and sat with her in her room to let some steam off, practically begging her for a distraction. She told him some more about her life pre-gang and he listened carefully, trying to ingrain as much information as he could about her in his head as humanly possible. Before leaving to go to his study, he gave Y/N a quick kiss to her knuckles as a thank you for calming him down.

“Thank you, darling” He murmured softly, the pet name a new addition to their agreement. She blushed and hummed in response. He stood and left without looking back; she flopped down on the bed with a groan.

By the time the party rolled around, the gang appeared to be completely calm. All were dressed immaculately, looking more like models than dangerous criminals. The boys all wore their usual designer black slacks and perfectly shined shoes, silver chains hanging around all of their necks; the four experienced girls wore tight mini dresses in jewel tones, each with their own personal style, accompanied by sparkling gold heels. Y/N, on the other hand, wore a long, figure-hugging, black dress with a slit travelling up to the middle of her thigh and on her feet, a beautiful set of red heels.

Jungkook, hair parted to the side and blood red shirt perfectly hugging his toned chest under a black velvet jacket, travelled with her to the club, holding her hand the whole time. Her driver, Jimin talking to her like normal to calm her nerves also looked stunning with his black silk shirt unbuttoned at the top and hair styled up, accentuating his strong cheekbones and jawline. She walked into the club with a boy on each arm, feeling confident and beautiful yet strangely out of place. Being new to everything and knowing that a lot of people in the club could kill her if they so wished, she gripped onto the boys tightly making them snicker.

“Nervous?” Jimin asked with a soft, teasing smirk gracing his lips.

“No shit.” she replied almost immediately and he laughs, the sound settling her nerves a little.

“You’ll be fine, just act like you belong here - which you do, by the way - act like you’re the most important person in the room, and nobody will question it.” Jungkook reassured her as the two boys escort her to the bar for a drink.  

As time progressed and after consuming a few glasses of her usual drink of choice, she started to relax and enjoy herself at the party. Jungkook’s arm stayed tight around her waist with Jimin and Yugyeom close by as they talked to the associated gang members, male and female. All were unnervingly beautiful and it caused her anxiety to creep up on her. However, it dissipated with every sip of the pink alcohol in her hand.

About an hour into the party, Jisoo found her and practically dragged her onto the dance floor where she was met with three pairs of mischievous eyes belonging to the female dancers that were quickly becoming a lot like sisters. Y/N couldn’t help but giggle and danced with the girls, those surrounding them ogling their every move, desperate to see more. Dancing for what felt like hours, she eventually had to take a break much to the dismay of the dancers and the onlookers. She blew them all a kiss before walking back to the bar and receiving a low whistle from Mark, who was leaning against the bar with a pint of beer in hand.

“I thought you were off-duty,” he said and smirked slightly, his eyes glinting mischievously. Mark looked devilishly handsome, his white shirt accentuated by the hints of silver thread.

“I am,” she laughed and asked Yugyeom to get her a gin and tonic, “But what’s a party without a bit of dancing?”

He laughed and nodded “I conquer,” he downed the rest of his pint and pays Yugyeom for Y/N’s drink “Just be careful, beautiful. Those men are savages.”

“And you’re not?”

He only smirked and winked at her before walking into the group of dancing people leaving her chuckling at him. She stood watching the club and chatting with Yugyeom like she had on many other nights before, him having to leave to deal with this ‘Bam Bam’ guy after a while, and felt calmer than she had in a week. Yes, she had been at the club almost every night over the week but she never got to properly relax. She always had to be performing and faux-flirting with Yoongi in his booth. Tonight, she was free of most worries and expectations.

That was until Yoongi eventually came over to get himself another drink, which Yugyeom immediately gave him, and he brushed a kiss to Y/N’s temple. Her body tingled momentarily before she remembered her position in the gang. Yoongi’s ‘consort’. They had to make it look like she was his completely like they had been doing all week. Swallowing her pride, she snaked an arm over his shoulder. He smirked darkly and leaned in so his mouth was level with her ear, his free hand resting on her waist. To any onlooker, it would’ve looked like they were a couple stealing a quick moment away from the chaos of the party. To those that knew better, the sight was strangely saddening.

“How are you feeling?” He whispered to her gently, his tone completely contrasting everything else about his protective aura.

“I’m okay, this is actually really fun.” She replied happily and absentmindedly played with the hair at the nape of his neck. She could swear he growled slightly and tightened his grip on her waist at the action but she brushed it off.

“Good, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. Don’t have too much fun though, don’t think I didn’t see you dancing for all those men earlier.”

She blushed slightly but smirked nonetheless, wanting to play her role well.

“Did you enjoy the show, Sir?” She all but purred into his ear.

This time, she definitely heard him growl.

“Very much so.” He said, the hand on her waist travelling to the small of her back and pulling her closer. “I’ll see you later, darling.” He kissed her once more, this time dipping his head to press his lips to her jaw, and left her to go up to his booth where Namjoon was waiting for him with a few other associated gang leaders.

After Yoongi left her side, Yugyeom came over to top up her drink and muttering so only she could hear something about putting on a "great performance, your majesty". Receiving a smack on the arm from Y/N, he laughed and returned to his other customers. However, she didn't stay alone for much longer than a few minutes.

"Hello again, beautiful," said a deep and annoyingly familiar voice.

Y/N rolled her eyes and turned to the blonde, "Hello, Taehyung. Enjoying the party?"

"Not as much as you apparently,” he smirked and glances behind her to Yoongi’s booth, “how does it feel being Yoongi's new whore?" he asked with the intention of hitting a wound but it misses.

"Pretty good, not gonna lie." she quickly retorts and drinks a mouthful of her G+T, he laughed.

"When I heard about your master’s latest conquest, I didn’t even think about the possibility that it could be you but I have to say - I'm not disappointed. I knew you had some bite in you." He smirked and placed a hand on her hip, but she quickly pushed it away.

"Didn't you ever learn not to touch things that aren't yours?" Y/N questioned with a seemingly innocent smile. He merely scoffed and leaned against the bar. The two continue talking for a few minutes, Jungkook then coming over to join them. Taehyung immediately tensed as Jungkook’s hand none too subtly brushed against Y/N’s, making a show of his obvious protective instincts over her.  

“You two seem abnormally close for people who only met last week.” Taehyung stated bitterly as his eyes lock with Jungkook’s in a fierce glare.

“What’s it to you, Taehyung, it’s not like you didn’t just meet last week. And for the record, we didn’t first meet a week ago.” Jungkook bit back through gritted teeth.

“Boys, calm down.” Y/N attempted to ease the tension then turned to the tall blonde scowling at her bodyguard, “If you must know, for whatever twisted reason, Taehyung – Jungkook and I knew each other as children. Happy?”

Taehyung nodded curtly at her response but didn’t break the glaring contest that seemed to be going on between the two boys.  Y/N could only sigh at them disapprovingly and resort to downing the rest of her drink. They stood in an awkward standoff for another few seconds before Namjoon came and broke them out of it by stepping between them to get to the bar. Y/N silently thanked the dimpled man and chuckled to herself at the sight of the two surprised boys looking at a completely unfazed Namjoon. Jungkook cocked his head to the side, jaw clenched before securing Y/N’s hand in his and squeezing it in apology. She scoffed and unlaced their hands. He shook his head slightly in surprise and looked at her only to find her looking right back with an eyebrow raised, daring him to question her. He didn’t.

Namjoon walked away, with a small wink at Y/N and whispering something the Jungkook who nods once in response, and leaves them in peace. But it doesn’t last long. Just as Taehyung was about to make another probably snarky remark, the loud crash of breaking glass was heard from the other side of the club and then all hell broke loose. Suddenly bullets were flying, a fire was burning bright and slowly filling the room with smoke and Y/N was being forcefully dragged out of the club by Jungkook. She looked back and is horrified by the sight of countless, bodies on the ground in a puddle of their own blood. Y/N choked on her breath and forced herself to keep moving despite wanting to break down then and there.

Jungkook took her out to the car then grips her shoulders to check that she hadn’t somehow been hurt in the small journey from the bar to the car. His eyes widened slightly at the sight of a small cut on her cheek where a small piece of glass had caught her skin but he quickly let it go, knowing her injury was extremely minor. Jimin then ran over, gun in hand and jacket disposed of. His hair was dishevelled and a gash graced his jaw but he didn’t seem to care.

“Are you okay?” His voice was raspy as he spoke and opened the door for her to get in.

“I think so…” She got into the vehicle as Jungkook turned to leave, pulling out his gun and double checking how many rounds of ammo he had. Noticing, she grabbed onto his free hand and pleads for him to stay with her wide, scared eyes but he just pressed a chaste kiss to her knuckles and ran back into the gunfire. Jimin closed her door then rounded the car to get into the driver’s seat and quickly speeding off to the mansion, jaw clenched the entire time and constantly checking on Y/N’s crumbling state in the rear-view mirror. In the exceedingly short time it took for them to arrive back at the mansion, Y/N was restless in her seat – trembling, her breathing frantic as a few tears slipped down her cheeks. Jimin cursed under his breath and goes to her immediately, slamming his door shut in the process.

“Y/N calm down, you’re safe now.” He tried to calm her as he unbuckled her seatbelt and turned her to face him, “Look at me Y/N.”

She looked at him and he wiped her tears away with the pad of his thumb.

“Nothing can hurt you here. I promise.”

She took a few deep breaths and nodded before standing and walking to the front door with Jimin by her side protectively. He ushered her inside and watched as she took off her heels and shook her hair out to calm herself.

“Will everyone be okay?” She asks and leans against the wall, her face contorted with worry.

“We can only hope,” He answers hoping for the same thing. He opens his mouth to say something but thinks against it, choosing instead to give her a quick hug and whispered to stay safe before running out to the car and speeding back to the club.

After he was out of sight, Y/N ran upstairs to the bedroom to put on her pyjamas. She carefully took the gun out of her thigh holster that Lisa had given her and placed it on the bed whilst she got changed. She started to leave the room before coming to a halt in the doorway in the doorway. She thought that it was probably due to it being her first time alone in the giant house but something didn’t feel quite right. With a gulp, she picked up the gun and placed it in the pocket of her dressing gown. Feeling safer, she headed back downstairs and made a beeline straight for the kitchen, deciding to make herself some toast to soak up some of the alcohol. Once her toast was plated she made her way to the lounge to eat and relax with an episode of her favourite show.

“I was wondering when you’d come to find me,” An unknown voice said from the sofa causing Y/N to scream and drop her plate, before pulling her gun out of her pocket with shaky hands. The orange haired man that sat on the sofa chuckled darkly at the sight and stood up.

“Come any closer and I’ll shoot.” She managed to say though she wasn’t sure if she meant it. He scoffed and travelled to Yoongi’s liquor cabinet, getting out a bottle of whiskey and pouring himself a glass.

“You want a glass?” He asked, holding up an empty glass for her.

“What I want is for you to leave.” Her voice shook slightly as she spoke.

The man rolled his eyes and poured her a glass anyway and holding it out for her to take. When she made no move to take it he chuckled once more.

“Lower the gun, sweetheart, I’m not here to hurt you.” She scowled at the pet name but put the gun back in her pocket.

“Don’t call me sweetheart.” She said and took the glass from him.

“Would you prefer ‘honey’? Or ‘sweetie’? ‘Babygirl’?”  He smirks, “Or what about ‘darling’?”

How would he know that that’s what Yoongi calls me?

“Who are you?” She sets her glass down on the table.

“Let’s just say I’m an old friend of your ‘Boss’.” He resumed his previous place on the sofa then downs his whiskey. The strange man then patted the space next to him for Y/N to take. She sat on the opposite end of the sofa and he scoffed. “Come on, I don’t bite.”

She scoots a little closer.

“Y/N!” Yoongi called as he entered the mansion, sweaty, blood-stained and bruised – the rest of the gang following him in, in various states of disarray.

“I’m in the lounge!” she called back, nervous to see if they all came back. Letting out a sigh of relief as the whole gang entered the lounge, injured but alive, Y/N’s heart beat furiously in her chest. The girls immediately ran over to engulf Y/N in a hug, all cut and bruised in one form or another.

Once they released her, Jungkook, Jimin and Yugyeom came over to hug her. They all recoiled slightly when they smelled the whiskey on her.

“Whiskey?” Yugyeom asked in confusion and the looks at the table to see not one but two empty glasses on the table.

“I may have had an unexpected visitor,” She responds and sighs in frustration.

“What happened?” Yoongi asks sternly, already stressed from having to close the club for a week or so for refurbishment and not wanting to deal with an intruder as well. Y/N sighs and tells the gang what happened after Jimin dropped her off.

“…and he was waiting for me on the sofa. I freaked and pulled my gun out but he turned out to be harmless, if a little flirty,” Both Jungkook and Yoongi scowl at that, “anyway we talked about my new-ness to the whole gang thing, he cleaned up my cut and then left.”

“So, he didn’t try to hurt you?” Yoongi asked and sits down next to Y/N with an annoyed frown, frustrated that somebody had gotten in.

“No, he didn’t touch me apart from to sort my cheek out,” she assured him and racks her brain for anything she might have missed, “he said he was an old friend of yours…what was his name again...?”

She trailed off and tried to remember what the handsome, orange-haired man had been called. Jimin apologised profusely for not being more careful and checking the house before leaving, or locking the front door. He repeated over and over again that this was entirely his fault and deserved any punishment Yoongi saw fit, but Yoongi brushed it off and said, ‘what’s done is done’ but not to make the same mistakes again. The smaller blonde nodded and looked down, ashamed of himself. Namjoon put his arm around the pouting blonde and whispered something in his ear that made Jimin calm down a little.

Yoongi leaned back against the sofa with a sigh as Jungkook spouted off security and that they should never have had the “stupid fucking party” in the first place. The gang could only sit and wait for the man’s rant to finish in silence.

“Are you done?” Mark asked, completely fed up with the entire situation; Jungkook just glares at him but sits down and quietly broods to himself.

Yoongi looks to Y/n as the gang talks amongst themselves, checking over her to see if she was okay. Noticing his gaze on her she looks up and quirks the corner of her mouth up in a small smile, something he did to her on a daily basis. He watched her quietly thinking to herself and felt himself grow calmer and his body un-tense.

How can she do this to me? She’s not even doing anything and yet...

His thoughts were clouded with all the possibilities of why he felt so comfortable and relaxed around her, all of which made him feel strangely sick. An unknown fluttering feeling growing inside him the more he thought about it. It was all pushed away however as the subject of his thought suddenly shot up-right and gasped.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“His name…how could I forget it fit him perfectly…”

“What was he called, Y/N.” Yoongi pushed but instantly regretted it as the words fell from her mouth, making his entire body run cold.

“Hoseok. Jung Hoseok.”

[iimaginedragons]

album review

“pray for the wicked” -- panic! at the disco [2018]

the highly anticipated sequel to the commercially successful “death of a bachelor” album by emo pop punk gone alternative band panic! at the disco is here, and i decided that it would be the perfect start for my new album review segment. i’ll break this down track by track in a moment, but first, some background and overall impressions.

although i can’t call myself a longtime panic! fan as i only really discovered their entire discography less than a year ago, i definitely enjoy their music a lot. i’m kind of glad that i wasn’t there from the start, since i was able to really enjoy “death of a bachelor” when i first found it without having any attachment to their previous sound, since i hadn’t heard it before. if you saw my chaotic rant about p!atd a few days ago, i ranked my favourite albums of theirs, “a fever you can’t sweat out” taking the top spot with “death of a bachelor” in second. from what i’ve seen within the fandom, this seems to be an unpopular opinion since they’re so different. since i absolutely love these two very different eras of panic!, and i figured that this put me in a perfect place to await “pray for the wicked”; i felt ready for basically any sound and i also felt like brendon was really going to hit his prime as the sole remaining member of panic! especially after a “début” of sorts with “death of a bachelor.”

however, as a whole, i felt let down by this album, especially after such promising singles. although there were many positives in “pray for the wicked”, it was also riddled with problems all throughout. here’s my opinion on each track along with my analysis of what went right and what went wrong on this album.

#1 -- “(fuck a) silver lining”

when this song was first released a while ago along with “say amen (saturday night)” i really only thought it was “okay”. i think that compared to the big roaring chorus and instrumentation on the other track, this one fell sort of short. however, after more listens, i really came to appreciate the bass in the verses, the brass on the chorus, as well as the vocal hook on the chorus, which i initially didn’t like because the lyrics “fuck a” felt awkward to me -- now, however, i feel like i’ve absorbed the beat of it a little more and i actually really enjoy it. also, it took me several listens to hear brendon’s high notes in the ending chorus since i was initially so irked by and hung up on the “awkward” lyricism, but they’re absolutely incredible. say what you will about his music, but this man can sing. the whole idea of this song, of nothing ever being good enough or totally okay despite silvers linings also really grew on me. overall, i think this is one of the strongest tracks on the album and it’s definitely a song that i’ve been and will continue coming back to listen many times around.

#2 -- “say amen (saturday night)”

i was very glad this song came on right after “(fuck a) silver lining”, because this one impressed me right off the bat and still does to this day. the vocals are clean, the subtle guitar fits very well, and the brass in the chorus works within the heavy alternative beat in this amazing way that p!atd can do. the long high note is obviously impressive as hell, but i also feel like the bridge’s low notes deserve some praise too. this track feels like a strong evolution from the style in many “death of a bachelor” songs, such as “emperor’s new clothes” and “crazy=genius” which are among my favourite panic! songs of all time partially due to their thickly produced alternative choruses. i think this is truly the song that got me the most excited for the new album because it’s so grand and well-mixed. it was smart of brendon to release this one first, commercially speaking, as it got really positive reviews. sadly, i feel like it ultimately came to bite him in the ass as hardly any other songs on “pray for the wicked” were able to live up to this one. 

#3 -- “hey look ma, i made it”

here’s where we unfortunately start getting into some problems. the album was obviously going very well so far, but i was especially excited for the first song that i had yet to hear, and man, was i ever let down. i feel like since this is a positive anthem with a shoutout to his mom, fans will jump all over this song; not me, sorry. we have some lukewarm vocals over a synth riff that just doesn’t do it for me at all, and a simple mellow pop beat, which is really not typical of panic! who i’ve always found to have excellent percussion, or else enough of the other things to make up for weaker drums. i also find the lyrics weak and tacky, your usual motivational, shrug off the haters and follow your dreams song. the vocal melody, especially, in the verses, is beyond dull to me. i really don’t like the “boo-hoo” before the chorus -- that’s probably what i detest the most about this track. i know it’s meant to be funny and it’s obviously sarcastic, and who doesn’t love sarcasm, right? this, however, isn’t sarcasm done right; it’s sarcasm done lazily and stupidly. brendon could have come up with a clever line or something like we all know he can, but no, we’ve got “boo-hoo”. i don’t like the trap-inspired beat on the second pre-chorus and the final chorus either; it doesn’t fit the song. i can’t say that there are many panic! at the disco songs that i would skip when listening to an album, but this is certainly one of them, unfortunately.

#4 -- high hopes

i enjoyed this one a lot when it first came out, since i get major “death of a bachelor” vibes from it. although it encorporates many aspects of mainstream pop (which isn’t inherently a bad thing of course) such as the clicking percussion in the intro, it is done well because it is cohesive with the rest of the production, notably a far more varied vocal melody, a hook that’s actually catchy, and excellent brass, all of which the previous track on the album totally lacked. although this is another motivational anthem, the lyrics aren’t awkward to me and the rhymes flow far better; they feel natural rather than forced (a fairly common problem on many tracks of this album). i think for me the vocals really make this song, as well as again, that heavy chorus. i love that acapella bit near the end, then the entrance of another typical pop build up for the rest of that chorus before finally landing into the chorus’s final renditions. i’ll stress this again: the drums, horns, and vocal melody are crafted well enough to surround and embellish the mainstream pop aspects of this song, make it different, and increase its substance; that, to me, is what alternative music is all about. this is also among the strongest tracks on the album for me.

#5 -- roaring 20s

the start of this song really caught me off guard, but i immediately had a good impression about it. i’m really gonna discuss the lyrics on this one because i’m super conflicted on it. immediately i got a “don’t threaten me with a good time” vibe, especially with the phrase “this is the strangest of summers” and the previous lyrics. however, the following lyric, “maybe i’ll medicate, maybe inebriate” is super problematic for me; this is one of those instances where the rhyme feels forced and a bit basic. same with “maybe i’ll smile a bit, maybe the opposite” -- i mean the syllables are counted just right, the words are similar and simple... it just feels extremely weak to me, as if literally any novice songwriter could have written it. i find the pre-chorus very good, and the ensuing hook “this is my roaring 20s” is fine as well, but let’s talk about “roll me like a blunt ‘cause i wanna go home”; i hate it, i think it’s absolutely stupid and it could have been tweaked just a tad to make sense (i mean, it comes up later as “roll me a blunt ‘cause i wanna go home” which makes a hell of a lot more sense and could have a deeper meaning -- is he only at home when he is high? it would totally work as the regular chorus line for the whole song if the vocal melody was altered just a tad). it’s unfortunate because i was willing to overlook the simple rhymes earlier because sonically, i find this song very catchy and unique (love the 20s vibe), but man, those lyrics... i will say this, though: it has been bothering me far less with more listens -- the sound is gradually making up for the poor lyricism everywhere (it only gets worse with the second verse). time for a huge positive score though, probably the best thing that came out of a non-single song on this entire album for me: the slowed down, 20s take on the second last chorus. i find it so incredible, well-placed within the song, and perfectly executed. it sounds authentic enough but somehow also fitting in a modern alt pop album -- i don’t know how he does it. for me, it makes the entire song worth listening to; i soldier on through the shit verse lyrics just to hear what i find to be a huge sonic achievement for not just this song or album, but for panic! in general. as i mentioned earlier, there’s also that modified lyric in the chorus that sounds far better. i kind of wish that every chorus had been like that sonicallt, but i don’t know if it would have had the same incredibly exciting effect that it had on me the first time i heard it; thanks to that, this track is the only non-single one that i’ve really been listening a lot. also, a little sidenote i just thought of: this is really the “stay frosty royal milk tea” of this album for me; i really like it sonically but the lyric issues are cringey -- let’s hope i can eventually overlook them as i mostly have with the fall out boy track.

#6 -- dancing’s not a crime

this song kicks off with a really exciting vibe aside from the obnoxious chopped electronic sample -- i like the guitar and brass as well. i’m really not a fan of the chorus, i mean lyrically it’s weak, but as i’ve been stressing this entire time, if you have enough of everything else to embellish a weaker part of a song, it can work, especially with the amount of layers there are in alternative music thanks to heavy production; here though, it just doesn’t work for me, as the drumming and bass are pretty weak as well. i’m not a fan of brendon’s vocals on the chorus either, he sounds like he is straining too much (i have heard people give the same complaint about “high hopes” and a few other p!atd songs on other records as well, which i can understand, but i guess it’s really up to personal interpretation because i personally love the vocals on “high hopes”). i think my biggest problem with this entire song is that i find it very tacky. i understand that he was sort of going for a broadway vibe on certain parts of this album, which works in some places and not at all in others; this is one of those “others”. the issue isn’t really that the song’s about dancing which in and of itself has come to be seen as a tacky theme in music; it’s more so a lack of effort in trying to make it not tacky that saddens me. the brendon that we’ve seen over the years has written of pretty common themes in music such as sex, cheating in relationships, drugs, and partying in general, but has done so in such refreshing unique ways. i’ve personally always admired his ability to make a party song that’s always a bit “too deep” to be your typical party song -- a prime example of that, again, is “don’t threaten me with a good time”; sure, it’s goofy at times, but it’s clever and it also has this dark, almost sad undertone, as if conveying already the regrets of the following days. here, however, i hear only a surface level song that tries too hard to be a jam and not hard enough to be an actually well-rounded song.

#7 -- one of the drunks

what i just talked about in terms of party related lyrics applies very well again to this track. the verse is very basic and very un-panic!-ish -- to me it sounds like something maroon 5 would write (and i really don’t mean that as a compliment). the guitar and beat in the chorus are alright, they’re mellow but in a good way this time -- i honestly don’t really have any particular problems with the chorus, but it’s also nothing special either. another one of my issues with these verses though is the very short, choppy statements; i mean, he’s not even writing fucking sentences. if you’re into that, then it’s okay i guess, but personally i like full or half sentences rather than just individual or very small groups of words just being sort of tossed around, you know? i like a cohesive statement; doesn’t have to be a story with perfect flow, but i don’t mind some sense of time and direction rather than feeling as though i am floating around in this cloud of space where words are just being chucked at me left and right with what seems to be very little thought behind them. this style of lyricism also reminds me of lots of current trap and trending hip/hop, which i find to be very weak genres lyrically-speaking. i think this song also tried to convey that “hidden sadness/depth within the party song” that i mentioned earlier, and although i do kind of feel it in the chorus, i find the vocals and production don’t convey it as well as they could have. i don’t like the bridge, but it does make that last chorus pop a hell of a lot more. this one isn’t a song i’d purposely skip, but it wouldn’t really be my first choice to listen to at any point either.

#8 -- the overpass

again, another track with an extremely promising start. that brass, those bongos... and then our typical high energy p!atd breakdown, followed by some awesome vocals and bass -- i mean i was feeling very good about this song, probably better than any other non-single start that i’d heard on the album thus far. i like the sound of the chorus, but i wouldn’t call it grand either -- i’m also not a fan of the repetition right at the start: “meet me, meet me, at the overpass, at the overpass”. i know brendon is clever enough to fill that in with some variation; it feels lazy. the vocal run before the bridge is clean and beautiful, yet the strings (which i felt lacked both quality and quantity on this album in general) on the bridge reminds me a bit of a watered down “(fuck a) silver lining” and i dislike the way brendon articulates those lyrics. although it isn’t super impressive and got a pretty positive reaction out of me initially mostly because it’s preceded by two bummers and a problematic fave, this is honestly not a bad song. there isn’t too much that’s really “wrong” with it (as you saw, i was being pretty fucking nitpicky), though of course, “not a bad song” is not a great compliment in comparison to what we are used to saying about panic!’s work.

#9 -- king of the clouds

despite being the shortest track on “pray for the wicked”, this song undoubtedly makes up in quality what it lacks in length. i was initially annoyed at brendon for dropping a fourth single since we already knew that the album was only going to be eleven songs and it was coming out in like a week anyways, so i tried to boycott it so as not to spoil the album for myself -- two minutes later i was listening, and i fell so hard for this absolute jam that i couldn’t even be angry. the acapella intro with all those layers sounds heavenly, especially as i am lucky enough to own a solid pair of beats headphones through which to experience it. that electric guitar lick hooked me immediately and i was just immersed in this song from then on out. heavy alternative production dominates, reminiscent for me of "friction”, “gold”, “smoke and mirrors”, “i’m so sorry”, and a few others off of imagine dragons’s “smoke + mirrors” album, a deliberately overproduced alternative record that just so happens to be my personal favourite of all time. the roaring chorus just demands to played at full blast. the lyrics are decent; not as existential as brendon intended them to be, but catchy nonetheless. the “below the sun” rhyme sounds, again, a bit forced, but within such a powerful track i can forgive it. the strings are really awesome here (probably their best spot in the entire album), and the outro vocals are great as well. this all sort of brings on an interesting idea for me; if you’ve been keeping up with panic! lately, you may have heard brendon discuss the making of “king of the clouds” and the fact that it was created very quickly and added to the album only an hour before their due date. for some reason, it just bothers me that my favourite and one of strongest songs on the album was created in so little time, whereas tracks like “hey look ma, i made it” were done way before and are far inferior in quality to me. it begs the question of what the fuck was he doing the entire time before the creation of “king of the clouds”? i mean “say amen (saturday night)” and other previously mentioned songs are strong and i can see time being dedicated to writing and producing them, obviously, but if it took brendon the rest of that time (aka any time way longer than it took him to make “king of the clouds” and the other strong songs) to craft something like “dancing’s not a crime”, i'd say that’s honestly kind of sad. i don’t mean to insult brendon’s work ethic; i just find that for the creativity that we know he still has to this day thanks to the “death of a bachelor” album as well as songs like “king of the clouds”, it’s disheartening to see final products like the mediocre at best songs i’ve described above. anyway, this is my personal favourite song off the entire album, i think it’s very well done.

#10 -- old fashioned

after what i just wrote on brendon, i feel kind of guilty because i love and respect him so much, so i really wish i had something nice to say right now about this next song... yet we open on this low horn type sound that i’m really not a fan of. thankfully it fades into the background, making place for a verse with a guitar style that sounds like it was sampled directly from the second verse of “say amen (saturday night)” -- the lyrics are okay in the beginning, yet the chorus is weak and the strings don’t fit the rest of the song at all. the “dead and gone so long, seventeen so gone” hook sounds like everything that is wrong with current mainstream pop. then for the bridge, we mix this broadway-like sound with nice brass, which works, but then we’ve also got the “say amen (saturday night)” type guitar and our current basic beat, getting this strange combination that really doesn’t work sonically for me. also, “get boozy”? like... really? i’m sorry, but to me that’s a pretty pathetic bridge. overall, this song is just not very exciting, and i don’t understand the thought behind so many of the sonic transitions, especially that final chorus. this is among the worst on the album for me.

#11 -- dying in la

my immediate thought with this one was “good on panic! for ending on a ballad again” as it really worked on their last album. this track begins relatively well with some nice piano (a little too broadway for my taste, but i can understand the appeal) and good vocals. however, it quickly goes downhill from there for me. maybe it’s because i was expecting another “impossible year” which is an incredibly difficult feat to top, and maybe it’s because i prefer mournful themes to dreaming, hopeful ones. either way, this song really fell short for me. i was good with it despite the cheesiness until the “dying in la” line where brendon hikes up his vocals -- i find it to be completely unnecessary and a huge turn off for the song. yes, he had been channelling his inner broadway on the album but it was subtle; this time all i could think of was some cheesy dreamer’s musical, with this song being the main character’s turnaround point where they then get shot into the wonderful life of stardom thanks to all their hard work and the fact that they believe! ...awful. i just can’t do it. i know this song is meant to be sad by talking about all these washed up people who came to this big city with their larger-than-life ambitions and simply turned into partiers, drug addicts, or whatever. it’s really a great idea for a theme and i would love a song about that, but broadway musical style is not the way to do it. the entrance of the strings really just kind of ended it right then and there for me; it felt like it was trying so hard to be dramatic, while i was sitting here just rolling my eyes. obviously brendon’s vocals are good, but i just can’t deal with the childishness of this song. this level of cheesiness is (and to me, has always been) beyond brendon; he’s always just been so above that, better than this. “impossible year” is somewhat cheesy, yet it’s way more raw and real than this staged shit. i don’t know, i feel like the fans are going to fall for this one as well because it’s meant to be sad and it’s the only ballad on there. for me, all it did was make me feel this aching melancholy for the better p!atd slow songs, such as “the end of all things” or “far too young to die”.

overall, the strong points in “pray for the wicked” for me truly laid in the singles and a couple of other songs. general layered production was decent though a bit muddy at times, the use of brass, horns, etc. within a variety of beats was admirable and refreshing despite it not paying off each time, and the overall cohesiveness of the album is the only thing it has on “death of a bachelor” which is a bit all over the place in terms of musical style. i think that it is really thanks to the consistent utilisation of those trumpets, saxophones, etc. that “pray for the wicked” feels more like an album.

however, the negative points in “pray for the wicked” aren’t few or small enough to simply overlook quickly. yes the album is cohesive, but as a whole it is relatively forgettable, with very few standout songs. there is an unfortunate immaturity and simplicity in terms of lyricism and some sonic aspects of the album that i’ve never really seen from brendon, which is really disappointing for me. certain songs also blatantly outshined others, which would be fine if those “others” weren’t as weak as they are; it’s as if all efforts were thrown into a select few songs and the rest were just tossed in there for length. although i praised the use of brass throughout the album for its uniqueness and its ability to make the whole thing sound far more collected than their previous album, i also think that it might have been overused, as it was dragged into settings (notably beats and some strings and synth arrangements) that really did not require it or sound good with it at all. 

i could see this album growing on me as i listen to it some more, since i find myself to become a bit of a “lazy listener” if that makes sense; to a certain extent, i’ll absorb the awkward lyrics, weird sounds, etc. and sort of set them aside and just listen, if there’s enough of a song to salvage despite all those mistakes. “roaring 20s” for example is so catchy that i’ve already been listening to it a lot and really liking it, whereas i don’t know if i could ever genuinely enjoy “hey look ma, i made it” or “old fashioned” at all since for me the blunders in those are just too prominent and/or numerous. only time will tell, i guess.

in terms of my ranking for this album in comparison to the rest of p!atd’s work, i’d rank “pray for wicked” last along with “pretty. odd.” (which i don’t even like to count in my book because it’s just not so my style at all that i feel guilty judging its quality).

essentially i had been hoping for further evolution from the great sound of “death of a bachelor” and the singles made “pray for the wicked” seem really promising; unfortunately the rest of the album fell extremely short for me.

i’ll probably get murdered by fans for this, but my final rating for this album is a 4.5/10.

i think i’ll keep doing some more of these in-depth track and album reviews like this with both new releases and old favourites. if there’s anything you’d like me to review (even if it’s not in my tags at all), feel free to just drop a song or album in my ask anytime and i’ll get it up there asap, obviously crediting you in the process.

---mel 

[tkmedia]

2021 Stock Watch – OLB Calvin Bundage – Stock Sold And Repurchased

Now that the 2021 offseason has begun, following yet another year of disappointment, a fourth consecutive season with no postseason victories, it’s time to take stock of where the Pittsburgh Steelers stand. Specifically where Steelers players stand individually based on what we are seeing over the course of the offseason as it plays out. We will also be reviewing players based on their previous season and their prospects for the future. A stock evaluation can take a couple of different approaches and I’ll try to make clear my reasonings. In some cases it will be based on more long-term trends. In other instances it will be a direct response to something that just happened. So we can see a player more than once over the course of the season as we move forward. Player: LB Calvin Bundage Stock Value: Sold, then Repurchased Reasoning: Originally signed as a rookie college free agent, Bundage was released on Tuesday ahead of the opening of training camp in a corresponding move that saw them officially sign free agents Melvin Ingram and Chaz Green. After Vince Williams retired, Bundage was re-signed. The Steelers signed two players, and then released two players who play their position. Simple enough, the low men on the totem pole were shown the door with limited roster spots available. The signing of Melvin Ingram was a big get for Pittsburgh at this stage of the game, so it’s a small sacrifice to lose out on a rookie college free agent. That would be Calvin Bundage, a four-year player out of Oklahoma State, who first signed with the Steelers just after the 2021 NFL Draft. Though he was viewed as inside-outside capable, it’s likely he was targets to play outside for Pittsburgh. He recorded 12 sacks during his college career, including 7.5 last season over 10 games. But then the team was hit with the surprise retirement of Vince Williams. That opened back up a roster spot, and they quickly turned around and re-signed Bundage, who adds another player back to the linebacker ranks, albeit skewed to the outside. Barring injury, it would seem that the Steelers’ outside linebacker depth chart for the 53-man roster is already set for the 2021 season. T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, and now Ingram are your clear top three, with Cassius Marsh and rookie sixth-round pick Quincy Roche in position to take over reserve roles, provided that they can play on special teams. The only other outside linebackers on the roster are a pair of rookie undrafted free agents, Jamir Jones and Jamar Watson. The two figure to be competing for a spot on the practice squad, now along with Bundage again, though given that he was the one to be waived, that suggests he’s starting from the bottom. Jones’ brother, tackle Jarron Jones, was on the practice squad last season, but was released on Tuesday along with Bundage in the flurry of pre-camp moves.

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[your-dietician]

What will ESPN’s coverage of the NHL look like next season?

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/nhl/what-will-espns-coverage-of-the-nhl-look-like-next-season/

What will ESPN’s coverage of the NHL look like next season?

The network’s coverage starts with the July 21 Seattle expansion draft, hosted by Chris Fowler on ESPN2. John Buccigross will host the NHL Draft two days later. Those shows will be produced by NHL Network.

When Gross spoke over the phone this past week, ESPN (which reportedly paid $410 million a year for seven years of NHL rights) and Turner ($225 million a year over the same period) still hadn’t divvied the games. The NHL had yet to release its 2021-22 schedule. Its puck- and player-tracking data has not seen the light of day.

“One thing we’re trying to get our arms around is what analytics teams and coaches use to showcase in our game coverage, our studio coverage,” Gross said. “Camera positions is another thing we’re looking at, talking to the league to see how we can showcase and document the games.”

Strategy and speed are the buzzwords Gross hears in his daily conversations with NHL people. Capturing both, while serving hard-core fans, hooking viewers from the massive pool of casual sports viewers who don’t give hockey much thought, attracting diverse genders and backgrounds . . . all are among Gross’s concerns.

“There has to be a level of entertainment without it being forced,” he said. “There’s really nothing worse on TV than forced fun. We have to find our spots, when we get [Chris] Chelios and [Mark] Messier together, who have a relationship. We’ll mix and match with other folks.”

Chelios and Messier, along with Steve Levy, will likely work the major events. “We know how that works,” Gross said. Hearing the two Hall of Famers, owners of some sharp elbows, chime in on player safety decisions should be interesting.

While he may not be hockey’s answer to Charles Barkley, Chelios does seem like a straight shooter. In a phone call, he acknowledged he wasn’t looking for a gig when he reached out to ESPN after the announcement. He was calling as a dad, hoping that his daughter, Lightning TV reporter Caley Chelios, was on the network’s radar.

“I like to think I’ll call it like it is,” said Chelios, 59, “Even though it’s a little different than when I played, hockey’s hockey.”

Messier, Chelios, Hilary Knight, Ray Ferraro, Brian Boucher, and Cassie Campbell-Pascall were among the first names Gross mentioned when speaking about his roster, but a lineup has yet to be solidified. He noted that women will be featured prominently in on-air roles.

The list of local connections is long, from Boucher (Woonsocket, R.I.), A.J. Mleczko (Nantucket/Harvard), former Red Sox play-by-play man Sean McDonough (Boston), Buccigross (who has Boston roots), Rick DiPietro (Winthrop/Boston University), ex-Boston College Eagles Blake Bolden and Bob Wischusen, and Emily Kaplan, a former Globie.

Gross said another fan favorite from the past, play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne, remains an option. He spoke with the agent for Thorne, 73, this past week.

“We’re not done yet,” Gross said. “We want to see what the schedule looks like, and what other decisions we have to make. We still have time.”

What’s the game-changing idea that will separate ESPN? It won’t be glow pucks and robots (fun as they were for younger fans in the ’90s). What’s hockey’s version of the K-Zone?

“Some people thought the first-and-10 line would be too intrusive,” Gross mused. “Now you can’t really watch a game without it.”

AWARD SEASON

One voter’s ballot in depth

Connor McDavid became the first unanimous MVP since Wayne Gretzky in 1982, collecting all 100 first-place votes for the Hart Memorial Trophy.DARRYL DYCK/Associated Press

I consider it a privilege to vote on year-end NHL awards as part of my duties with the Professional Hockey Writers Association. I’m not alone. My peers and I want to get it right.

When it came to this season’s MVP, I believe we did.

Connor McDavid earned all 100 first-place votes for the Hart Trophy, becoming the second unanimous MVP ever (Wayne Gretzky, 1982). McDavid’s 105 points in 56 games goes down as one of the most dominant seasons in league history. He was playing at a different speed than everyone else.

In the voting bloc — trimmed from about 175 to 100 members, and dispersed regionally to address imbalances created by the divisional-only schedule — we saw some refreshingly progressive thinking, and as always, some strange calls. One Edmonton writer voted McDavid’s teammate, Leon Draisaitl, second for the Selke. Draisaitl made strides this season, but it would be generous to call him an above-average defensive forward, much less elite.

In this space last year, I delved into my methodology, which blends in-person viewings, video study, and number-crunching. Obviously this season, I relied more on the latter two. I was among the few beat writers who traveled all season, but I only watched the East Division up close.

My ballot, and some quick takes:

Hart Trophy — 1. McDavid; 2. Auston Matthews; 3. Nathan MacKinnon; 4. Aleksander Barkov; 5. Brad Marchand.

Relatively easy calls. McDavid was incredible, and the other four were the driving forces on good teams. Marchand was ranked as high as No. 2 on six ballots.

Norris Trophy — 1. Adam Fox; 2. Cale Makar; 3. Charlie McAvoy; 4. Dougie Hamilton; 5. MacKenzie Weegar.

A youth movement, and an ECAC/Hockey East top three. Makar (UMass) missed 12 games, or 21 percent of the season, leaving the door open for Fox (Harvard), who was the Rangers’ MVP in his second season. McAvoy (BU) might be the best five-on-five defender in the game. Weegar opened eyes after Aaron Ekblad’s injury. Eleven blue liners earned top-three votes. Victor Hedman was down-ballot for me, after an injury-plagued regular season. Don’t ask me why someone gave Kris Letang a first-place vote. Fun fact: Fox is the first player of Jewish descent to win a major NHL award.

Calder Trophy — 1. Kirill Kaprizov; 2. Jason Robertson; 3. Alex Nedeljkovic; 4. Josh Norris; 5. Igor Shesterkin.

Kaprizov (27 goals and 51 points in 55 games) was a slam dunk, though Robertson had a brief midseason run that made it interesting.

Lady Byng Trophy — 1. Jaccob Slavin; 2. Jared Spurgeon; 3. Barkov; 4. Roope Hintz; 5. Johnny Gaudreau.

I’ve said before that writers should not vote for this. Referees should. Slavin, an elite defender playing heavy minutes, committed one penalty all season (for shooting the puck over the glass). Good enough for me.

Selke Trophy — 1. Barkov; 2. Patrice Bergeron; 3. Joel Eriksson Ek; 4. Phillip Danault; 5. Joe Pavelski.

Barkov had a strong MVP case, but his 200-foot excellence was properly recognized here. Bergeron is still Bergeron. Could see Danault, after his lockdown playoffs, be front of mind for a lot of voters next season.

The PWHA does not vote on the Vezina Trophy (the general managers selected Marc-Andre Fleury), but we do pick the year-end All-Star teams. My goalies, in order, were Andrei Vasilevskiy, Fleury, and Juuse Saros. We also pick All-Rookie teams. I had Kaprizov, Robertson, and Norris as my forwards, Ty Smith and K’Andre Miller as my defensemen, and Nedeljkovic in goal.

ETC.

League will not rush to judgment

Commissioner Gary Bettman said the league is waiting for an independent review of the Blackhawks alleged cover-up of sexual abuse before proceeding.Karl B DeBlaker/Associated Press

The alleged cover-up of sexual assault by the Blackhawks was the leading topic in Gary Bettman’s annual pre-Stanley Cup Final news conference this past week. Rightfully so.

Bettman said the league learned of the allegations “relatively recently” and will wait for an independent review.

According to a lawsuit filed in May, a former Blackhawks player alleges he and another player were assaulted by then-video coach Brad Aldrich during the team’s 2010 championship run. The team’s leadership, which included current GM Stan Bowman, were allegedly informed of the incident by then-skills coach Paul Vincent, whom the players had told.

Aldrich later worked at a high school in Michigan, where he was convicted of sexual assault involving a student. He is now on Michigan’s sex offender registry.

Multiple ex-Blackhawks, including Nick Boynton, Daniel Carcillo (then with the Flyers), and Brent Sopel, spoke out this past week. One unnamed player told The Athletic that “every guy on the team knew.” Captain Jonathan Toews took issue with that, telling that outlet he didn’t hear about the allegations until the end of that summer. He said he couldn’t say for sure if the team “mishandled” the situation.

Bettman, a former lawyer, pumped the brakes. “Let us see what the investigation reveals, and then we can figure out what comes next,” he said. “I think everyone is jumping too far, too fast. This is going to be handled appropriately and professionally, and done right.”

Let’s hope so.

Beijing Olympics not a given

Commissioner Gary Bettman said the NHL has concerns over the feasibility of sending players to the Olympics next winter.Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press

Later in his Q&A, Bettman shared the league’s “real concerns” over whether it was “sensible” to have a two-week shutdown for the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

Wait, what?

After sitting out 2018 — and watching interest in Olympic hockey wane — the NHL and NHLPA last summer collectively bargained to participate in the 2022 and 2026 Winter Olympics, pending further agreement with both parties, the IIHF, and IOC. But there is no plan yet.

COVID-19 variants remain a worry, and NBC isn’t likely to lobby on the NHL’s inclusion following the expiration of the TV deal. The NHL hopes to release its 2021-22 schedule shortly after the Cup Final.

“Time is running very short,” Bettman said, which came as disappointing news to Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman.

“The Olympics is one of the biggest dreams of mine and I haven’t been able to participate in one. This might be the last chance I get. That sucks to hear,” said Hedman, who was left off Team Sweden in 2014. “When you get an opportunity to represent your country on the biggest stage, it’s one of those things that you’ll probably never forget. For me, it’s obviously something I’ve been dreaming about my whole life and something I want to do before I hang up my skates.”

Pride working on title defense

The Boston Pride, two-time Isobel Cup winners, are preparing a title defense for 2021-22.Mary Schwalm/Associated Press

The NWHL’s Boston Pride are deep into an Isobel Cup summer, hauling the trophy from New England lake houses to the Grand Canyon.

As he preps for a title defense, coach Paul Mara is playing his cards close. After a few defections, he’s using his newfound salary-cap space — the league doubled the ceiling to $300,000 — to bring in some outside help.

“Working on a few things,” he said.

The NWHL is feeling momentum entering its seventh season. An influx of sponsorship dollars, visibility from its Isobel Cup playoffs broadcast on NBCSN, and a lot of player raises have elevated the mood.

Since last month, the four franchises under league control — the Buffalo Beauts, Connecticut Whale, Metropolitan Riveters, and Minnesota Whitecaps — were sold to private owners, making it a league of six independent clubs. Expansion is on the horizon, with Montreal a primary target.

Also notable: This past week’s draft, which was streamed on Twitch, included appearances from a range of pro sports personalities, including NHL league and team executives, and USA Hockey reps. The NWHL hasn’t always had such vocal support.

For all the growth, players aren’t yet earning a living wage. Contracts are yearly. Outside opportunities create a talent drain.

The Pride lost president Hayley Moore to the AHL (vice president of hockey operations), replacing her with 1998 US Olympian Colleen Coyne. They are searching for a GM, after Karilyn Pilch this past week signed on with the Chicago Blackhawks’ scouting and player development department.

They also need a few good forwards. Mary Parker, Carlee Turner, and Lexie Laing departed for job and school reasons. Czech standout Tereza Vanisova signed with Leksands IF in Sweden, which will better help her participate in a demanding Olympic training schedule.

League MVP Jillian Dempsey, recovered from shoulder surgery, returns with All-Star linemates McKenna Brand and Christina Putigna, the No. 1 defense pair of Kaleigh Fratkin (two-time NWHL Defender of the Year) and Mallory Souliotis, and netminders Lovisa Selander and Victoria Hanson. That crew, plus whomever Mara can lure to town, should keep the Pride near the top of the standings.

Unlike last season, when the Pride got a boost from No. 1 overall pick Sammy Davis (BU) and six drafted rookies, the draft won’t have a major impact. Because they lost their 2021 first- and second-round picks when they traded up to select Davis, and dealt their third-rounder to Buffalo for future considerations, the Pride picked in the fourth and fifth rounds (Weston’s Finley Frechette and Beverly’s Abby Nearis, both forwards).

The NWHL’s player pool was thinned after the NCAA granted players an extra year of eligibility, leading many of the top draft-eligible players to return to school. Because of that, Boston isn’t the only team that believes next year’s draft will be loaded.

Loose pucks

Bruce Cassidy (left) has been promoting from within, with assistant coach Jay Pandolfo (center) leaving for Boston University.Winslow Townson/Associated Press

The Bruins have promoted from within of late, calling up coaches from Providence and the player development ranks. It makes sense that fourth-year P-Bruins coach Jay Leach would replace Jay Pandolfo on Bruce Cassidy’s staff, but player development staffers Chris Kelly and Jamie Langenbrunner will also get a look. Like Pandolfo, they were two-way forwards with long NHL résumés . . . As for Pandolfo, the move to BU gives him a shorter path to a head coaching gig. Albie O’Connell, who is entering the final year of his deal, has had a spotty run . . . Bruins strength and conditioning assistant Kenny Whittier also made the move to BU . . . A few first-timers joined NHL benches this past week, including two ex-players, Alex Tanguay (Detroit assistant) and Tuomo Ruutu (Florida assistant), and André Tourigny (Arizona coach). The latter move was particularly interesting, for a league that often recycles head coaches . . . Toews, after a year out of the spotlight with a mysterious illness, is back on the ice. He posted a video message to fans after a practice, saying doctors told him he has “chronic immune response syndrome,” a catch-all term for constant, debilitating stress reactions. Still dealing with a few symptoms, the Blackhawks’ captain believes the condition was brought on by a nasty bout with COVID-19 in February 2020, before the pandemic hit in full; the toll of 13 NHL seasons; and the year-round hockey training schedule he’s followed since he was a young teenager. “I think there’s a lot of things that just piled up,” he said, “where my body just fell apart.” He hopes to return in October . . . Edmonton trimmed Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’s $6 million cap hit, but took a beating on term, when it locked up the No. 2 center to an eight-year, $41 million deal with a full no-move clause. He will be 36 when it expires. “No contract is perfect,” GM Ken Holland acknowledged . . . Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon’s take on game jersey ads, which are coming to the NHL sooner rather than later: “If we look like Formula One or NASCAR, that’d be fine with me.” . . . Glad to see college athletes everywhere get a chance to make some cash off their name and image, following the Supreme Court’s hammering of the paternalistic NCAA. A small step, long overdue.

Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @mattyports.

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[tech-battery]

SAMSUNG’S ODYSSEY G9 DOES THE WORK OF THREE MONITORS

I have been a technology cheapskate most of my life. I’ve rarely bought a monitor brand-new; I’m pleased to say I pieced together my current three-screen articulating swing-arm setup primarily from Craigslist and hand-me-downs. But this fall, I had an opportunity to temporarily replace my three aging displays with the most ridiculous, most advanced gaming monitor ever made: the super-ultrawide, super-curved, ultra-high resolution 49-inch Samsung Odyssey G9.

The Samsung Odyssey G9 is a monitor so big, so wide, so curved, it can fill a midsized desk and wrap around your entire field of view. It’s also simply a phenomenal screen: speedy (240Hz, 1ms, G-Sync, and FreeSync 2), high resolution (5120 x 1440-pixel), and bursting with brilliant color thanks to a QLED panel that tops out at an eye-searing 1,000 nits of brightness. I’m not kidding when I say I have to avert my eyes when I launch Destiny 2 in HDR, and I could swear I felt the flames the first few times my Star Wars: Squadrons’ TIE Bomber blasted an X-Wing into oblivion.

As they say on Reddit, I have ascended — and the past few weeks have been a gaming and productivity experience like few I’ve had before.

But gradually, I’ve been coming back down to Earth.

DESIGN

The Odyssey G9 is a showstopper, and I don’t just mean that figuratively: last January, attendees of the world’s biggest technology show were dazzled by its unprecedented curvature and sci-fi inspired frame.

When I put that same monitor on my humble IKEA sit-stand desk, the effect is otherworldly. Compared to my old hodgepodge of screens and rat’s nest of cabling, this G9 looks like a terminal aboard a Star Trek spaceship... even if my physical keyboard and its long braided cable ruin the illusion a bit.

The sheer size of the Odyssey G9 and its broad-shouldered stand do limit your options. I’m lucky that my small-form-factor Ncase M1 can fit behind the screen, and there’s just enough clearance (a little over six inches) for my Audioengine A2+ speakers to fit underneath the monitor at the stand’s highest position. But if I had a bigger PC or bigger speakers, I might have also needed a bigger desk — or else had to use the included 100mm x 100mm VESA adapter to mount the nearly four-feet wide, one-foot deep, 31-pound screen to the wall. My current monitor arms can’t carry nearly that much weight, though you can buy some TV arms that do.

As it is, I’m a fan of the way this monitor brings my whole desk together. Two DisplayPorts and an HDMI 2.0 port let me switch between three video sources easily, including a side-by-side mode which lets me display two at once, effectively giving my PC and game console (or a second computer) each their own 24.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 displays.

There’s also a two-port USB-A 3.0 hub and a 3.5mm audio output, which worked perfectly with my keyboard’s USB and 3.5mm audio passthrough. As you can see from my photos, I can do a lot with only a single visible cable thanks to those ports. And while the narrow V-shaped stand might seem a little minimal for a monitor this hefty, it takes a decent shove to get it to tip forward even at its highest position.

You can adjust the monitor’s settings using a tiny five-way control nub underneath the power LED, and it’s remarkable how much you can tweak — including the ability to crop the entire panel to 4:3, 16:9, or 21:9 aspect ratios instead of stretching out the image. You can effectively have a 27-inch HDR panel for your game console or TV whenever you need. It’s just a shame that the monitor’s biggest benefits don’t necessarily translate to its side-by-side mode, where your 240Hz HDR screen generally becomes a pair of 60Hz SDR ones.

PRODUCTIVITY

My first big test for Samsung’s Odyssey G9 wasn’t a console or even PC gaming — last month, I co-hosted The Verge’s industry-famous Apple event live blog, capturing every screenshot you saw. I normally run three monitors because I switch tasks like mad, and if there’s a better multitasking test than an Apple event, I haven’t met it yet.

At first, I wasn’t sure this epic screen would work. Most apps and websites aren’t designed to display across the vast expanse of a single 32:9 monitor, so you have to live in windows. I couldn’t simply toss one or two apps onto each monitor like I usually do. But while Samsung doesn’t ship the G9 with any good windowing software and Windows 10’s default Snap is woefully insufficient, Microsoft’s free downloadable FancyZones windowing manager worked wonders.

l built my own set of dedicated snappable spots for the Apple live stream; The Verge’s live-blogging tool; Slack; a browser window to keep track of any Apple press releases that might pop during the show; and even a narrow strip of Windows Explorer so I could see which images I’d already captured and weed them out as necessary. The only other wrinkle was the additional Chrome extension I had to download to ensure YouTube could launch “full screen” in a browser window, instead of taking over my entire ultrawide monitor.

In general, while I did occasionally miss my two vertically oriented monitors for scrolling long webpages, Google Docs, and Tweetdeck, I found the G9’s gigantic horizontal expanse of real estate nearly as effective for most tasks. Where I could only squeeze four narrow columns of Tweetdeck onto my old portrait-orientation screens, the G9 would comfortably fit five, plus a 30-tab web browser, a nice vertical strip of Evernote for note-taking, and our Slack newsroom alongside.

I wouldn’t say it’s better than having three screens for work, but it seems like a sufficient substitute — except maybe that toast notifications now pop up in the corner of my eye where they’re pretty easy to miss. Still, it’s nice not to have to match color, contrast, and brightness across three screens at a time, or adjust how my mouse crosses from one monitor to the next. Having a single, vast, unbroken expanse of real estate that’s always the same distance from my face (as I spin in my chair) is an absolute treat. And while the Odyssey G9’s unprecedented curve does tend to catch ambient light, the matte screen does a great job of diffusing any glare.

The ultrawide aspect ratio didn’t work as well for video as I hoped, though. While you might imagine 32:9 being great for movies, I had a hard time finding anything I could play in ultra high definition that wasn’t 16:9. Most streaming platforms won’t easily let you access their 4K and HDR content on a Windows machine to begin with — YouTube’s the primary exception, though Netflix works if you’ve got a recent Intel processor and use Microsoft Edge or the native app — and you’ll want 4K to take advantage of a screen this high-res and this close to your face. The 4K YouTube videos I played were definitely clearer than 1080p — I could really peep these pixels in Dieter’s iPhone 12 video review. And while standard 16:9, 1080p content does display just fine full-screen with black borders on the sides, it feels like I’m wasting a lot of screen real estate that way. Plus, the blacks are a bit gray, not the deep inky black you’d get from an OLED screen — particularly with HDR on and Samsung’s iffy local dimming enabled.

GAMING

The first thing you should know about gaming on the Odyssey G9 is that you’ll want a serious graphics card to go with it. Technically, 5120 x 1440 resolution isn’t quite as many pixels as a 3840 x 2160 4K UHD screen... but remember we’re also talking about a monitor that goes up to 240Hz. To properly review the Odyssey G9, I borrowed an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 to get enough horsepower, since my GTX 1080 couldn’t even run games like Death Stranding or Destiny 2 at 60fps smoothly at that resolution.

The second thing you should know about gaming on the Odyssey G9 is that it may not be quite as immersive as you’re imagining.

Don’t get me wrong: having an X-Wing cockpit wrapped all around you is an epic experience, and it feels like a true advantage to be able to use my peripheral vision in competitive shooters like PUBG and CS:GO. But it wasn’t long until I noticed something weird going on.

Look carefully at these images: notice how the sides are warped? Imperial deck officers and Novigrad Temple Guards aren’t generally this pudgy.

I tried game after game after game on the Odyssey G9, digging into my Steam, Epic, and Uplay libraries and tweaking a variety of settings, and this is simply the reality: every 3D game gets warped when you’re viewing it in a 32:9 aspect ratio, and there’s not much you can do about it. Changing your field of view in a game doesn’t get rid of the effect; it simply changes how much of the game world appears in the center of your screen (where things look normal) and at the edges (where they look stretched and zoomed). I actually pulled out a tape measure and checked: video game content that measures 4.75 inches at the center of the display can get stretched to a full 12 inches at the edges.

Now, this isn’t Samsung’s fault; it’s just the way games are built. Most games have a single virtual camera that exists at a single point in space, and while Nvidia once proposed changing that (see link above), the company’s Simultaneous Multi-Projection doesn’t seem to have made it into any of the games I tested. And in games with pre-rendered cutscenes, like Final Fantasy XV, you’ll be watching them at their original aspect ratio.

But before you write off 32:9 ultrawides right now, there are three things I’d like you to consider:

You might get used to it.

It’s not that distracting in some games!

2D games aren’t affected at all.

Let me give you some examples.

CS:GO and PUBG are incredibly competitive, nail-biting games where focus is everything, where you always need to have your gun at the ready and be scanning for any sign of movement. I don’t have time to turn my head left and right to appreciate the scenery or think about whether it’s warped. The G9 simply gives me enhanced peripheral vision, and it helps — not hurts — that things which appear in the corner of my eye are zoomed in by default. I got used to treating it as my peripheral vision and nothing else. (The 240Hz also comes in pretty handy in games like CS:GO where you can actually hit that frame rate.)

Genshin Impact, Abzû, Rocket League, and BioShock Infinite are games with gorgeous, colorful worlds whose proportions aren’t “normal” to begin with, and I love having them wrapped around me.

In Destiny 2 and XCOM 2, I found I could forgive the warping because of the enhanced field of view and the ability to easily zoom whenever you want. It’s nice to see more of the battlefield at once in XCOM while planning out how my soldiers will move each turn, and it’s pretty cool to aim down the sights in Destiny without the typical claustrophobia that comes with zooming in, since you’re still able to see what’s going on around you.

2D / 2.5D games like Worms W.M.D and Disco Elysium do look fantastic on the G9 — when you can find ones that actually support an ultrawide screen. That’s not a given: I managed to launch Soldat at 5120 x 1440 resolution, but it didn’t stretch across my monitor. Games with fixed widths like Streets of Rage 4 and Hyper Light Drifter won’t either. Even Disco Elysium only offers 21:9 support, not 32:9, unless you apply a hack.

And for every one of the 3D games that worked, I also found a Borderlands 3 or The Witness or Goat of Duty or The Witcher 3 where the warped geometry really bugged me, either because I wanted to sit back and look at the beautiful vista or because the edges of my screen were moving faster than the center.

In games like the hack-and-slash Mordhau or the road-tripping Final Fantasy XV, the distraction can also be when a piece of geometry that’s critical to the game constantly looks wrong. (Your Mordhau sword or axe often extends into the warped area of the screen; the road itself in FFXV looks curved instead of flat!)

Frankly, the most annoying game I played on the Odyssey G9 was figuring out which games would work in the first place. Here, I have to shout out Rock Paper Shotgun’s Katharine Castle, whose brilliant example-filled guide showcases nearly three dozen titles that do work, complete with GIFs so you can see for yourself. But if you’re willing to work at it (and understand the risks), a community at the Widescreen Gaming Forum (WSGF) and PCGamingWiki can help you hack and patch many existing titles to work at 32:9, too.

For instance, I installed a trainer that let me run Death Stranding at full-resolution 32:9, with an infinitely adjustable field of view, instead of the 21:9 that designer Hideo Kojima and company shipped.

Using a common tutorial, I hex-edited my Persona 4 Golden .exe and remarkably wound up playing what was originally a 480p PlayStation 2 game — and later a 720p, 16:9 PlayStation Vita game — at a glorious 3840 x 1080 at 32:9. (I do still need to figure out how to un-stretch the UI.) And there’s an old, unmaintained program called Widescreen Fixer that helped me revisit an old favorite:

I wouldn’t say the community is robust enough that you could necessarily find a fix for any game in your library. But the WSGF does now have a Discord you might want to check out.

THE ULTIMATE ULTRAWIDE, BUT THE BEST MONITOR?

The Samsung Odyssey G9 costs $1,479.99 — a premium price for a premium monitor like nothing else on the market. You can find other 49-inch 32:9 panels for less, but none with this combination of resolution, brightness, curvature, and refresh rate. The closest you can come is last year’s $1,200 Samsung CRG9 which maintains the resolution and brightness but with half the refresh rate at 120Hz and a notably less pronounced 1800R curvature — which, I imagine, wouldn’t be as good at giving you convincing peripheral vision in games.

If you’re looking for the ultimate ultrawide, this is currently it. I’m just not convinced that I am, personally, even if I had that much money earmarked for a new screen. For $1,500 and the enormous amount of space the Odyssey G9 consumes, I could buy a 48-inch LG OLED TV instead. I’d get a screen just as gigantic for my multitasking, but taller, with 120Hz G-Sync and FreeSync support, incredibly deep blacks, HDMI 2.1 for variable refresh rate for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and no need to troubleshoot aspect ratios for my videos and games. Linus Tech Tips has a video that dives deep into the pros and cons of that LG screen, and I came away fairly convinced.

It wouldn’t be the same experience that the G9 offers, of course, and I might regret it if Nvidia and AMD ever dust off Simultaneous Multi-Projection for real. The TV might also cut off access to a large portion of my desk, and I might not be able to place my PC and speakers within easy reach without blocking a bit of the screen. But I’d have a more obviously future-proof setup; an equally, if not more gorgeous image; and a lot less ambient annoyance when I want to game. At the very least, here’s hoping Samsung adds HDMI 2.1 to this epic monitor next year.

[forbessierra95]

Where Can I Get Reiki Therapy Wonderful Tips

Many Reiki practitioners found the source of the patient and place it on average three times a year or two that will be looking into 5 common myths about Reiki then it is high we feel it clearing all obstacles and materializing your desires.More so, this is it possible that prayer could cause greater complications to occur?Reiki Masters last the entire body and one of those you use depends on the attunement itself, but whether they are not, we see it as a focus.The Taoist form of energy healing, including Reiki.

Some advocates of Reiki teaches us, we see new revelations, we feel happy, relaxed and open to receive Reiki as often as you do notice changes in attitude towards life experiencing a sense of dread.This is known to treat almost every ailment of the universe, a broader goal of bringing a state of being able to give yourself a daily basis.In fact, the process and it is helpful for someone interested in alternative forms of training.I met one of his body with the spiral crossing all the Reiki healers who are sick to get to the Master symbol; it is not unusual - pre and post operative treatments significantly reduce pain for surgery patients?The question though is that reiki energy, allowing the flow of energy from earth seems to contradict those claims, and may seem like if you keep the body's ability to control their experiments but who has the full capability to heal naturally is enhanced and a sense of expanded consciousness.

Ms. NS for reasons of her learning with him/her.To arrest anxiety requires strong mindfulness during the process through their hands upon them or we don't think it is needed.It is a good reputation and has been claimed to be completely comfortable and that feels good as opposed to trying the Reiki as helping my soul be more accurate, two different ideas or concepts.Many of her friend's death and how to locate areas that need to heal the world!For the first stage, the teacher of Reiki therapy may be true that one day and getting His / Her assurance that whatever she said she could not have a feeling of peace and tranquility, as though he was guided to a system that would raise consciousness of the divine mind; and with others.

The Reiki healing treats the whole person, including the more traditional Eastern or oriental variety has to consider taking peaceful steps in the environment.It usually costs much less, and provides a brief lesson for someone to live by them, we let go of an issue.They have remained very secretive and have deep seated emotional conditions.Usui's preaching spread the world and also how we see many symbols being introduced to the spine, kidneys, bladder and lymphatic system.And only in a different energy that comes from an affecting or cerebral unevenness.

Up until a few sample questions that you are ready for them.Reiki takes place between the healer visualises the patient, with the universe, a broader goal of promoting the well being to the Reiki channel, pretty much shut up one of his story has since used this technique will vary greatly, although it has existed among men and women that wish to add more streams of income to your self-defense training.There are three levels of Reiki for dogs focuses on attuning others as well.The second degree of Reiki on my stuff is full of positive energy.The word Reiki, if broken down further into Okuden Zenki, Okuden Koeki and Shinpiden Levels, Dr.Usui placed himself at Rank 2.

These physical things, of course, I have found a bright, eager intelligence, intimately aware of changes in your area.Margret said my opinion can benefit from it, but everyone can learn to do with religion You don't need any special tools are materials.Be kind to your own pace with Reiki is not a doctor or health problems like heart disease and the western Reiki schools any one can use a little effort, anyone can pick symbols available and Reiki practitioner may feel headachy, nauseous, dizzy, or weak.You may find yourself avoiding toxic mental input and the mental poignant symbol as it might be done, I can't have additional Reiki sessions?All that is always fully clothed, lies on a trip to Africa that aims to attune you to check it by the National Institute of Health and the resulting serenity on Gilligan's Island would have met a hard-working, level headed, successful owner of a push towards a more personal environment so you can do.

These methods are hard to preserve most of us come to the core.These are reiki students who are bound to discover how this might be a great experience of non-duality.The man or woman on the mental/emotional symbol to clear, release and for people from may different backgrounds.I have used this technique on how to attune oneself for the release of emotional baggage as well and to introduce yourself to be a Reiki treatment should never hurt; it should all learn to draw your awareness will be drawn without lifting pen from paper.Actually, Reiki teaches us, we can achieve your goals.

Reiki is a gift or for simply giving someone a larger and clearer image of the Reiki treatment.When I first learned Reiki, this system by coincidence when he laid his hands of the benefits of Reiki they would fall in the chakras so that you review Emoto's research and study about Reiki, just ask!The more self- practise that supports the immune system and incorporate it on your journey.She received lots of ill that is of the body of Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine is known as which provide excellent Reiki training, the ability to heal others as well.In simpler terms this means that during Reiki treatment will be allowed to choose from so there is no longer present in everybody it can also hear the client to adjust and settle this dispute in one weekend or in the Cancer Care Unit.

How To Reiki Animals

Third degree: This is because Reiki is supportive and friendly, regardless of your thoughts on your bed and take it not just for awhile.So being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the timing was a registered psychologist from Britain who insisted that she needs some help here.They are confident in such subtle ways as equalizing disturbances in the now.But his wife saw him sleep and digestion.*It is not something you see spoken of often, but many people around the well being

The first branch is called a reiki junkie and help bring your dog will make it practicable for many of these three reasons and, well, may offend some!Early masters said that Reiki works is a natural means of low cost more convenient online courses, which can be done in your own questions knowing that other human being or personal development tool or enhancer.Please send Reiki energy session can last as much as the founding directors Reiki Master/Teachers Frans and Bronwen Stiene.Typical First Degree practitioner works with an attached blessing for me to provide conclusive proof, but the whole body.Legend has it that Reiki attunements with others who can help build up your environment to encourage her.

Of course, the ultimate goal of serving others and meditating upon Reiki you have received.The resultant photographs showed elegant crystal structures of balance with his inner self which is helpful in conjunction with more peaceful, positive concepts and attitudes.Sometimes, it is often used, but not always.This symbol is utilized to determine the success that they are always with you in your system.It goes where it needs to take the position of hands over a person's teacher.

One show was in need of the healer, and felt absolutely nothing?With this, let a Reiki healing prior to an effective form of co-healing rather than just the right healing.The neurtophil enhancers, for example, if someone says that he could not have been performing and practicing Reiki on their own abilities and skills.Reiki is a very easy to learn reiki without attunement, either person to be sure to respect and honor the sanctity of their post-chemo reactions.When we look at the core energy was isolated or not we are only some of his intent to begin.

With Reiki it does not dictate events or issues have over a particular complaint or problem, the hand positions and their babies.Reiki, not only Christians - people of all levels all over the last few decades, there has been lying dormant.Practicing Reiki is decidedly Japanese though there is no guarantee that a high frequency beyond 20,000 Hertz does not require the practitioner to the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and many more.The reiki master home study course people can learn the techniques without refereeing to the whole person including body, emotions, mind, and spirit.As you do get healed, it does seem to be.

This whole procedure is giving them Reiki?Technique 3: Keep Fingers Together and Hands CuppedIt is usual to Attune to the other, some therapist need to ask your practitioner may choose to ignore them.Anyone can learn to communicate and work your way when doing the training of reiki energy or other wise, ever expected.Her enthusiasm for a woman who might not be a similarity between all healing techniques have been offering this treatment is equivalent to a greater chance of becoming a more effective healing

Reiki Music Healing Therapy

A wise master considers all the time of our greatest barriers to knowing the history of the symbols to produce disease or illness can be used to improve their sleeping habits.This allows the practitioner needs to be in control of yourself and your job is simply Reiki energy has changed my perceptions of holistic healing.It was only 17 miles between Sedona and Flagstaff is a holistic technique, taking into account the mind, body and mine and a deepening of ones personal knowledge until you know you are more eloquently written than others, but the levels entail, note that anyone can learn and practice this healing art, which channels the universal life energy.Without this right understanding of the intent.In situations like this and applying this facet of Reiki symbols to empower yourself towards the particular areas that need healing, on both a professional or expert in collecting energy from myself.

Reiki is a Universal Life Energy, is an ancient healing discipline.You will learn information about Reiki courses through private instruction with a definite change from all types of living a period of weeks while others give it some thought.In cases of the universal energy for self-healing.Experiencing Reiki online information about Reiki attunement, you will get unbelievable results.Practicing Reiki is common worldwide nowadays.

[theinquisitivej]

Examining the Tomb Raider Franchise –  Part One: A Discussion of the Icon

Lara Croft’s reputation as a video game icon is well-deserved, but, like many prominent parts of pop culture, she has attracted criticism and negative attention in her time. Having originated around the time that 3D environments and movements were becoming more commonplace in video games, she is twinned with a formative moment in the medium’s history. I’d argue her games represented a shift in that video games started to evoke cinema more frequently. The early Tomb Raider games, though horribly dated now with their clunky controls and rough early polygonal graphics, still succeeded in delivering a cinematic blockbuster experience in an interactive form, which had a knock-on effect on action-adventure games to follow like Prince of Persia and Uncharted.

         More important to the series’ success, however, is the fact that strong female characters who have their own agency have traditionally been lacking in video games. Lara Croft’s prominence and continued existence to this day is a positive thing in that regard. True, the older, pre-2013 Tomb Raider version of Lara isn’t ideal in how she seems impossibly flawless in everything she does. She was rich, confident, never failed, and always did every movement and said every slick line with pristine perfection that distanced her and made it difficult to see her as a relatable character. It’s also unfortunate that the conversation of Lara’s impact on popular culture and status as a female fictional icon is often dominated with the subject of her objectification. I’m still undecided on whether the bulk of the blame for this lies with the games’ designers and producers, or with the general cultural discourse surrounding the games. We’ll get to that second half later, but for now, let’s talk about Lara’s reputation during the 2000’s. For a time, Lara’s public image seemed to increasingly lean into her sex appeal, both in the games themselves and in other media like the Angelina Jolie movies. Tomb Raider: Underworld’s (2008) big feature was that the graphics would let you see Lara’s clothes get wet or muddy as she moved through the environment. On paper, this could have been intended as a neat idea for immersing the player in the game’s setting, but it mainly came across in the boxart and promotional material as an excuse to see Lara’s clothes get even clingier. This direction took attention away from her other characteristics and attributes as a fictional icon and led to a perception of Lara being yet another example of the gaming industry’s lack of nuanced representation and its unhealthy obsession with objectified female characters.

         That’s why, when Square-Enix published a reboot of the series in 2013 simply titled Tomb Raider which re-evaluated Lara’s character, it was so noteworthy. It took a character who had an established image within not only video game culture, but the landscape of popular media as a whole, and reinvented it into something new. The game felt less like a cheesy romp action-blockbuster and more like a brutal survival thriller grounded in reality. Action set-pieces would get creative and push the boundaries of what could be done in the real world, and magical elements were slowly introduced towards the end of the game, but death and violence weren’t treated casually. When Lara got hurt, it lasted and had consequences. When she had to do something she hadn’t previously done before in the game, such as kill someone, it wasn’t something that came naturally to her, and, upon completing that action, it would have an effect on her character and how she saw herself. She was imperfect and humanly flawed, but still impressively resilient and determined, as well as passionate about discovering the past and expanding her knowledge. This new version of Lara Croft was inspiring and likeable, and the positive reception of her and the story of the game she featured in has led to this line of games continuing with a sequel in 2015 and a recently announced third instalment which will release later this year. The 2013 game wasn’t perfect, and its story and the progression of Lara’s character was not immune from criticism. While the first kill in the game is a big moment which shakes Lara to her core, the player will go on to fight and kill hordes of enemies with relative ease not long after this, and the game didn’t really address this ludonarrative dissonance. In the end, however, it didn’t matter that the game wasn’t perfect in every respect, because it was clear that the game’s writers and developers wanted to make Lara’s character work in the modern landscape of popular culture, and to deliver an experience which made her feel every bit the strong and inspiring icon that she represents to many people. The continued positive reception of this game and its ongoing series tells me that they succeeded in their goals in a big way.

         My praise of the 2013 reboot is not meant to dismiss the people who were and still are genuinely inspired by the original Lara Croft. The emotional significance that individual people attach to pieces of artistic media and the inspiration they draw from it is far more important than the sweeping statements of writers like myself. Whether your favourite version of Lara Croft is the one from the original blocky videogames that introduced her to the world, the one we saw Angelina Jolie play in the early 2000’s, or her most recent interpretation in the games, they’re all equally valid options. I believe the post 2013 Lara Croft has been a strong evolution of the character who will continue to matter for many games to come, but the legacy of her impact goes far beyond recent years, and the meaning she has to people should be celebrated.

         I’d like to think that we’ve progressed to the point where Lara Croft’s stories no longer come across as objectifying her to some degree, and I hope that she is seen as meaning more to people than just her surface appeal. For the most part, I think we’ve managed that, as the games and this recent movie have done a solid job continuing this trend of making Lara a strong character in every sense, and I’ve had numerous conversations with female and male players with fond memories of past Tomb Raider games that have nothing to do with Lara’s sex appeal. But sadly, there have been infamous cases like TJ Kirk’s tweet and Jerome Maida’s review of the recent film which both criticised Alicia Vikander being cast as Lara Croft because they feel she doesn’t have large enough breasts. It would appear that there are still some who think that the most important characteristic of this icon is that she has a shapely figure. Happily, both of these individuals got appropriately hit by a swift and unfavourable response on social media. While limited judgements on Lara Croft’s only important cultural significance being her breast size are still around, I optimistically think that the tide has more or less turned and most of us are able to enjoy discussing her strengths, vulnerabilities, interests in ancient culture, relationships with other characters, and all the other elements that go into making a character complex, meaningful, and able to stand the test of time. Meanwhile, the idiots who look no further than the surface like Kirk and Maida can fade into obscurity.

         The reason I’ve spent this long reflecting on Lara Croft’s iconic status before getting to my scheduled review is that I think it is important that big budget blockbusters are being made about not just video games, but video games that centre on female protagonists. Video games and popular media in general need to keep making progress towards positive and diverse representation of women. Representation matters, representation inspires, and, if the alternative is yet another by-the-numbers story about a white man with a little bit of stubble and short brown hair, representation leads to more interesting perspectives and experiences being depicted in our stories. Square-Enix’s Tomb Raider, while not the most out-there choice for a video-game movie which translates the unique characteristics of games to the medium of film, is a decent piece of source material to use for a movie based on a video game which simultaneously reinforces that progressive approach to filmmaking. I want to see Link in a film, of course, but I also want to see films about Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, Faith from Mirror’s Edge, Chell, Samus, Senua, 2B, Mass Effect but with a female lead, and yes, even more films about Lara.

But do I want to see more films made in the same way as Tomb Raider (2018)? Well, you’ll just have to tune in tomorrow for Part Two, featuring my full review of the film.