#steven supposedly also filmed for it so i wonder where he is

[monsteraficionado]

Shane Madej in the trailer for the upcoming Phoning it In season

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Andy on Asian Animation or SYAC: The Master Review 2

Let’s talk a bit about anime and Dobson’s work relation with it.

I think we can all agree, that starting from the late 90s and early 2000s on, anime and manga became extremely popular in the western world. Sure, Japanese animation was nothing completely new to us (Speed Racer, Nadia-Secret of Blue Water, Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, Kimba and Akira e.g. come to my mind as properties already known in the west before 1995) but it really was around this time that thanks to “mainstream” stuff like Dragon Ball and Pokemon people became aware of how different Japanese animation was from western. Eventually resulting in the really good shit (like Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, Kenshin and Heat Guy J) coming over and enriching nerd culture for more than just a few people who knew of it as an obscurity at that point. Now, if you know anything about Dobson, you likely know that his relationship with anime is rather… complicated to say the least. Or, to let him explain it with his own words…

Dobson essentially likes silly and wacky 90s anime. But later on he hated anime in general, because it got too popular and a bad experience with an anime club in college soured his enjoyment of it. Furthermore, he put the blame on his lackluster art style and storytelling capabilities as seen in the likes of Formera, Patty and Alex ze Pirate, on anime in general, while also claiming that Disney pulling the plug on 2D animation is the result of the “anime inspired” Treasure Planet, meaning anime in a sense deprived him of his chance at working at his dream job and “ruining” western animation.

Which to me has always been ignorant as fuck. For starters, I can understand not liking certain stories or genres, either for objective or subjective reasons. But to hate on an entire nation’s form of entertainment (not just individual shows or genres), depriving yourself of the chance of potentially watching a lot of good stuff while also being rather insulting to these other works and people enjoying them? Especially when the stuff you can supposedly “stomach” has been rather simplistic compared to other things?

 Second, blaming Japan for “poisoning” your art style? What, did the ghost of Osamu Tezuka possess you and FORCE you to put sweatdrops on your characters forehead while also going for the rather simplistic character style of Rumiko Takahashi, as well as emulating the slapstick of the likes as Slayers and Ranma ½?

 Next, if he had emulated them successfully, I say he would have actually managed to tell decent enough stories worth to read online. Not create Uncle Peggy aka “Discount Happosai” or the bland proto-Isekai known as Formera.

I mean, let’s give some context here: There have been people who successfully managed to emulate certain anime and manga aesthetics into western animation and make it work. Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the likes of Avatar-The last Airbender, Samurai Jack, the Animatrix, Thundercats 2011, Super Robot Monkey Hyperforce Go, Kim Possible, W.I.T.C.H, Megas XLR and Wakfu. You know, shows that are actually awesome as hell.

Heck, Dobson’s favorite animated show of the last decade, Steven Universe, is heavily inspired by anime aesthetics to the point of being embarrassing.

 But Dobson… well, he emulated anime aesthetics in his work the same way as these crimes against animation did.

Combined with his general shortcomings as a storyteller it is no wonder his initial comics did not do well.

 Lastly, and sorry for digressing here a bit, but if the Wikipedia entry on Treasure Planet is something to go by, there was no real inspiration by anime involved in making this movie.

Supposedly the idea of making an animated Treasure Planet in outer space movie was already pitched by Ron Clements WAY BACK in 1985 but only came to be after Michael Eisner greenlighted stuff in the late 90s. Design wise the movie was supposed to look 70% traditional and 30% sci-fi inspired and people took inspiration for the art style by illustrators associated with the Brandywine School of Illustration. A western style of illustration established in the 19th century, that had a big impact on the illustration styles for many 19th and early 20th century adventure novels and short stories.

What, is anime supposed to be the only form of animation allowed to have sci fi elements or steampunk in it? Fucks sake, The Lion King and Atlantis, which came out one year earlier to Treasure Planet, were likely more inspired by anime. Don’t believe me? Watch Atlantis and then a certain anime by Studio Gainax called “Nadia-Secret of Blue Water”. Or read up on the controversy surrounding the two.

The truth is, it is not entirely clear what caused Disney to shut down 2D feature film animation in the early 2000s. In fact, if anything, most people put the blame on Michael Eisner and a certain change in the publics taste in movies in general, combined with Disney trying to turn almost every movie they had into a franchise via cheap follow up movies on video and DVD.

And even if Disney did not shut down, are we really supposed to believe that a certain guy with fedora would have made it big at Disney to the point Alex ze Pirate would have been made into a feature film?

But Dobson could never quite understand this and instead of “reinventing” himself properly, he would rant about anime and its fans in one form or another…

 And on the peak of his hissy fit create this little art piece he baptized Anime Sux. Alternatively “West vs East”. Or as I like to call it, slap a jap.

Now, the pic was done in 2008 and Dobson claimed sometimes in the last decade, that he no longer holds his old opinions. Unfortunately, by that point he would also more or less use the chance to vent in his webcomic about anime (or rather its fans), which brings us finally back to SYAC.

 While Dobson never outright thematized in more detail WHY he hates anime and manga in SYAC (likely cause if his comic reasoning was even slightly like his reasoning in his blogs, people would have torn him apart like a bag of paper) he did use the format to punch down on anime fans and their preferences.

 For example, for someone who has a 4chan story going around of having been rather arrogant towards others in college for not liking Ranma ½, Dobson has THIS little college related comic to show off, where he portrays an aspiring manga artist as a delusional jackass.

Then in this strip titled manga, his manga fan is essentially portrayed as a young woman dressing up like a very stereotypical high school anime girl, who is in the wrong for even just DARING to draw her comics in the direction manga are read.

On one hand, I get Dobson’s point. She could be at risk of alienating a market of readers as she is obviously drawing for a western audience. Then again, if she doesn’t draw a traditional western comic but a manga, why shouldn’t she? I mean, as long as she enjoys it, which I assume she does as she seems genuinely just happy when stating that she likes manga, why not let her? Plus, this comic was drawn in the late 2000s. I think by then most people kinda knew how to read from right to left, so Dobson’s claim she would alienate or confuse people is kinda redundant. If anything I find a) Dobson getting angry at her just very petty (just let her have fun) and b) portraying a western manga fan as someone who would be confused by the sheer idea of reading stuff from right to left is also in itself just really dumb and insulting. What is Dobson trying to imply? That anime fans are so stuck in the way they consume certain media, they can’t act according to “western standards” again?

Then there is this strip where yet another female anime fan is essentially portrayed as the embodiment of how “ignorant” manga fans are of the idea of different art styles...

Which becomes rather laughable once Dobson describes his style as a mixture of European, American and  Japanese. Why? Because he is the one oversimplifying things, rather than the anime fan.

You see while anime and manga of all sorts do share certain aesthetics (like the black and white art style, emphasize on the eyes of characters, the way hair is drawn, recurring tropes within certain genres and so on) style wise (both in art and storytelling) there can be severe differences, depending on the artist alone. Akira Toriyama’s style differentiates significantly from the likes of Eichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi, Kentaro Miura, Tezuka, Kaori Yuki and so forth.

The same also goes for many western artists. Herge had a significantly different style from Uderzo and Goscinny. Don Rosa has a different style in which he drew Scrooge McDuck than Carl Barks did. Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee draw mainstream superheroes differently compared to how Jack Kirby, George Perez and others did. Heck, Ethan Van Sciver and Jim Lee were closely associated with Green Lantern in the 2000s and look how they differentiate.

 Which btw is the kind of skill level Dobson would have needed to have, to make it in the mainstream industry

So when Dobson says “I draw in a combination of American, Western and Japanese” all I can think is the following: THAT DOESN’T NARROW IT DOWN! WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU LEARNT IN COLLEGE ABOUT COMICS? WHICH ARTISTS, WORKS AND STORYTELLERS DO YOU TRY TO EITHER EMULATE OR HAVE BEEN INSPIRED BY?

Then there is this little thing…

Where do I even begin? How about the fact that Dobson’s hand in the last panel looks like he has lost a thumb? The fact that the little boy, anime fan or not, is aware of Sae Sawanoguchi, a character from a short lived OVA and anime series from the 90s, which considering his age, I kinda doubt he would be aware off. Unlike Dobson, who got into anime in the 90s and admits in fact within the posts I loaded up earlier, that he had watched the anime in particular, known in the west as Magic User Club.

Then there is the implication by Dobson, that anime is so “corruptive” as a medium, little kids don’t even know the most basic characters in western animation because of it. I expect in a next panel, that all of sudden some 50s PSA guy comes along and lectures me that if I want this kind of thing not to happen at MY convention, I need to teach little kids more about the GOOD western animation, instead of the BAD eastern one. Then there is this rather unflattering portrayal of a shonen ai/shojou ai fangirl…

 Which makes me laugh cause honestly, even some of the worst shonen ai and shojou ai can do better in portraying a “realistic” gay relationship than Patty if you ask me.

Also, as much as I think fangirls can be extremely thirsty (I have read my fair share of extremely stupid yaoi and yuri fanfics) I think that in hindsight Dobson is really not anyone to complain about shipping obsession and sex when he himself has KorraSami, the Ladybug fandom and a certain rat pirate under his floppy belt.

As you can imagine, Dobson would get heat for those comics, considering how he himself has been greatly inspired by anime and manga for his major comics. And while I don’t have any explicit deviantart posts of him reacting to criticism in that regard, I do have this comic which addresses it directly.

 And yeah, if I were schoolgirl number 4, I would just sigh and walk away after telling Dobson that his mistakes and shortcomings are not related to having consumed anime, but rather by what sort of anime (and other stories) he had consumed and the amount of effort he had put in creating his stories instead of emulating just something more popular. Plus, if you really want people to draw more from life, how about drawing more from life yourself down the line? And no, tracing Star Wars movie frames does not count.

Finally, Dobson, considering how very little most people think of your work, I say mission accomplished: People have learnt from your mistakes and know not to be a Dobson.

And at last, there is this comic, which kinda wraps up Dobson’s “vendetta” with anime and manga fans within the pages of SYAC.

By trying to mock anime fans and make them look just as shallow as he is. I at least suppose. Honestly, the message of this comic is rather muddled. On one hand, I would say the strawman accusing Dobson hates anime just because it is popular is very simplified. After all, Dobson has made his reasons for not liking anime clear in a few more details. It’s just that the details in and on themselves in real life are still rather shallow and boil down to a lot of personal bias rather than an objective criticism of actual flaws. Which I think is worth pointing out.

But frankly, what is Dobson trying to say or point out here? That the strawman is not so different or even dumber than him, because he hates Justin Bieber for “shallow” and superficial reasons too?

Okay, this doesn’t quite work as well as Dobson wants. First, the argument Dobson’s strawman makes is in huge parts based on some verified statements Dobson made for not liking anime. Second, he just says a name and that triggers the guy to express his hatred for Bieber. We don’t know why the guy hates Bieber and you could make in fact the case, that he hates him not because he is popular, but because he has a genuine issue with the artist, his work or his behavior as a human being. Third, if you want to make yourself look like the better person Dobson, try to argue with the guy and make solid arguments why you don’t like anime. Instead you just deflect the criticism by changing the subject and then try to make yourself look like the “smarter” person in the room by mocking your critic in the most condescending manner.

Which as I think about it, sounds like your modus operandi on twitter and tumblr.

Weirdly enough, that more or less marks the “end” of Dobson tackling anime fans and the beef he has with them within the pages of SYAC. Despite how much Dobson’s negative reputation especially in early years was build around him hating on anime and belittling its fans, he didn’t really do more afterwards in the Dobson focused pages of SYAC. And mind you, those strips were also separated by other strips in-between, focused on Dobson just being at conventions.

Unfortunately for him, the strips didn’t really help in any way to diminish that negative reputation and instead just confirmed for many, that Dobson can’t handle criticism about his flawed opinion on anime. If anything, it just made people think even less of Dobson, as the strips just painted him as someone who would rather portray his critics as strawman he can be “rightfully” annoyed at, instead of fellow humans with slightly different tastes in entertainment, who are still worth listening to.

So, now that we have the anime fan related “annoyances” out of the way, what other sort of silly problems in making webcomics would Dobson cover in his strips and are “relatable” to everyone?

Lets see some of these examples in the next part.

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 51.07 - Durham vs Trinity, Cam

I am mildly obsessed with Audibooks. I listen to them on the way to and from work, and when I’m shopping, or doing the dishes, or if I’m going on a nice long bike ride. An average of an hour a day, which might not seem like all that much, and there will be people who listen far more than I do, but if a day is missed then you have to do two the next to catch up (because that’s how averages work, if I wasn’t already being facetious enough). Anyway, the other day I checked my listening statistics (if there’s something I love more than audiobooks its statistics) and saw that last Wednesday I supposedly listened to 36 hours of Stephen King’s Wolves of the Calla.

Now, setting aside the fact that the book itself isn’t that long, there is something wrong with that number isn’t there? It’d be good if there were 36 hours in a day, because sometimes it feels like I get home from work and only have to blink before its bedtime. There are so many things I want to be doing with that time and it disappears while I’m trying to choose one of them, and then if I do manage to get around to doing something, I feel annoyed that I haven’t been able to do all of the other things.

Its likely that if there were 36 hours in a day then I’d feel the same way. Procrastination, like the tasks it avoids, grows to fill the time available. So what can we do? There’s never going to be enough time to do everything, no matter how few (or many) episodes of the Americans we binge upon getting back from work. I guess you just have to prioritise, and make a grand plan which hopefully gets you to a place where you have the freedom to be able to do as many of the things you want to do as is possible, but of course that is a lot more difficult than it sounds, and it sounds pretty damn difficult.

This blog is one of the things I choose to prioritise, even if I did have a massive nap on Monday (and have waited until Sunday to actually post it) and watched four episodes of The Americans back to back yesterday, because if I want to be a writer, of any sort, and I do, then I have to write, and this is one of the things I have to write. So here we are.

Durham and Trinity, Cambridge are two of the few teams to have won a University Challenge trophy both sides of the Bamber Gascoigne/Jeremy Paxman ITV/BBC divide, with Durham the victors in 1977 and 2000, and Trinity the champions in 1974 and 1995, as well as 2014. In recent years the pair were defeated semi-finalists in 2020, losing out to Corpus Christi and eventual winners Imperial.

The first starter went to Trinity, with Neogi quickest to identify a series of words which shared the middle letter V. They get three out of three on the bonuses, before Kim chips in with his first (of many) ten pointer as well. He looks delighted to have got it, and Trinity miss their first question on the third bonus, guessing Pride and Prejudice as a Steven Spielberg film on the basis that the Keira Knightley film was released in 2005, which, as someone who has a bizarre memory for movie release years, was a tactic I respected immensely, even if it turned out to be wrong.

Durham get off the mark with the next starter, and also claim a hat-trick of five pointers, which prompts some more childlike glee from their captain Mitchell. One of the most wholesome things on television is quiz contestants' nervous pleasure when they get a question they didn’t think they knew right.

Unfortunately for Durham there would be no innocent wonder on their part for quite some time. A couple more from Kim, with a few from Brekke thrown in as well, allowed Trinity to open up a handsome lead before their Northern rivals could get going again. When they did get a foot in the door, through Hetherington, it must have been a fairly small shoe size (maybe a two or a three), because Trinity were able to slam the door shut again pretty easily.

The door-slamming answer, from Kim again, was probably the most impressive buzz of the evening, with his confident 1780s coming very soon after the first of what would surely have been many clues pertaining to that decade. Paxman says to Durham that there’s plenty of time to catch up. There is, but they don’t.

The Cambridge quartet extend their lead even further with the next two starters. Neogi admits to tuning out of one of the bonuses, but this doesn’t matter. They’ve got it in the bag anyway. Durham manage to give themselves an air of respectability, but don’t come anywhere close to a high-scoring loser total.

Final Score: Durham 90 - 190 Trinity, Cam

Paxman says that Trinity’s score is really quite good, and its not like, bad, but its not exactly incredible. Anything less than 190, especially when their opponents are kept to double digits. Anyway, Paxo seems to be much more easily impressed than he was a few years ago, so this is hardly all that surprising.

As always, thanks for reading, and if you’d like any more UC content, I’ve done exclusive reviews of the 2015/16 series over on Patreon. I’ll be publishing the review of the final over there later this week. See you next week.

[the-archxr]

Can You Feel the Love Tonight? || S.H.

steve harrington x henderson!reader

Summary: Dustin, Steve and Robin have a good dynamic. It’s been that way for a while now. But now that you’re involved, well, let’s just say Dustin doesn’t quite know how to deal with that.

A/N: Okay so I know that the Lion King didn’t come out until ‘94, meaning the song Elton John released didn’t come out until then, however I was heavily inspired by rewatching the original Lion King and just recently watching the new Lion King (which I absolutely loved and cried majorly, by the way). This fic is based off of the version in the (1994 + 2019) movie and that whole dynamic because I’m Stranger Things and Disney trash. I highly recommend listening to either version of the song while reading this or prior cause idk it kind of put me in the romantic, wistful mood. Be prepared (hehe) cause this is some fluffy shit. Also I busted this out in a day, so here you are, babes x

Warnings: flustered Steve?? Jealous Dustin?? That’s pretty much it though

Song Inspo: Can You Feel the Love Tonight (The Lion King Soundtrack and Elton John)

•••••

“Unbelievable.” Dustin scoffs. “Un-fucking-believable!”

“Hey language, shitbird!” Robin scorns him from the driver’s seat.

“Sorry—I’m sorry, just...” The boy adjusts himself as best as possible to peer even more over the dash of Robin’s car. “Can you believe this?”

Dustin’s voice goes up a few octaves as he turns a crazed eye to his friend. Robin simply stares back at him with a rather disinterested expression.

It isn’t until Dustin let’s out another scoff and overly dramatic roll of his eyes that they stop staring at each other. But then again, Robin knew he wouldn’t be able to resist staring at their two friends in the restaurant for long.

Robin takes note of Dustin’s face, and she can’t help but shake her head in amusement. It was a nice evening, families and couples were walking around or into the diner that they were parked only a stones throw away from. Outside of her car, the atmosphere was gentle and calm, but inside the car, it was intense, humourous (on her side) and frustrating.

The stark difference in environments only added to Dustin’s annoyance and tension that she was sure would boil over soon like heated milk.

Dustin yanks the binoculars off of his neck and raises them in front of his eyes as he fiddles around with the eye pieces. “I mean...she literally just got back!” She literally just got back and now her and Steve are having fun. Without him.

She doesn’t even know him that well.

“Yeah, like a week ago.” Robin intervenes.

“Still!”

Robin looks over at her friend and rolls her eyes, beginning to play with the stereo in an attempt to relieve herself of boredom. “Why can’t we just go home, kid? I mean, they’re not hurting anyone.”

“Yes, they are!” Dustin had enunciated every syllable in pursuit of communicating to his friend that this whole situation, ultimately, was a mistake. “Robin, she’s literally ruining our entire dynamic!”

Robin leans back into the squeaky old seat even more, turning her gaze to the tacky carpeted roof of her tacky car. “She’s your sister, dude. Take a chill pill... I mean, aren’t you happy she’s back?” Robin finally turns to her comrade, still lying back however to broadcast to the kid that she was tired and didn’t care about the date occurring before them.

Dustin sighs and places his two fingers on the bridge of his nose. “Of course I am, Robin but like—seriously?!”

Robin notes that the almost-teenagers attention span runs shorter than that of a goldfish. But she humours him anyway and turns to what Dustin continues to be spastic about.

Dustin makes the scene before them out to be like a traumatic, vomit-inducing nightmare. If anything, however, the scene before the pair is actually kind of nice. Romantic, even.

And even with Robin pointing that out to him, Dustin continues to determine the display of affections as traumatic and vomit-inducing.

When Y/N came home from New York last week, the first thing Dustin did was take her to the video store where he wanted to join up his three favourite people in friendship. Because that’s as far as it was supposed to go.

He wanted Y/N to be friends with Robin and Steve, but not to be super close. Afterall, they were his friends. The three of them were a trio long before Y/N even mentioned coming home. The state of elite hierarchy among their group of friends was supposed to always be there with them. Not her.

It was Steve, Robin and himself that hung out on Friday nights and watched cheesy horror films. It was the three of them that went out for milkshakes. It was the three of them that went to the arcade.

But ever since he excitedly introduced his sister to Steve it was all of a sudden Y/N this and Steve that. Steve would always ask about Y/N, and Y/N would always ask about Steve. And, to top it all off, they even used the same tactic of hiding their rampant questions with the idea of it being meaningless curiosity.

They’re both idiots. But they’re idiots that should’ve always stayed fifty feet apart. 

At first, the consistent inquiries were found to be harmless by Dustin. Yes, they were a little annoying. But harmless.

Everything was perfectly fine.

Until yesterday, when Steve Harrington (Dustin’s supposedly loyal mentor, advisor and comrade) asked his sister—Y/N Henderson out to dinner right in front of Dustin’s face.

To say Dustin was furious would be an understatement.

So, Dustin Henderson felt he had to do what he does best. Investigate. (With the intent of destroying.)

Thus, the situation Robin and Dustin are currently in.

Robin ultimately tried to decide against being there. Afterall, the dingus had actually gotten a point on the “you rule” side; and even though Steve’s flirting hasn’t improved, Y/N and him do seem to really like each other. For once, Steve “the Hair” Harrington wasn’t being an idiot. And (even though she’d never admit it) she was actually excited for both of them.

But Dustin wasn’t.

Dustin wasn’t at all.

Although Robin had desperately tried to convince her child friend not to do anything to compromise Steve and Y/N’s situation and to let the two have their space, Dustin still showed up on her doorstep with binoculars and a backpack muttering something along the lines of spycraft.

After mauling through her thoughts for a few moments Robin perked up. “Dustin,” she began.

The boy let the binoculars he had been gripping so tightly fall aimlessly against his chest. And although Dustin’s head was turned to Robin’s in complete annoyance, he was still listening.

For the first time that evening Dustin was actually paying attention to her, so Robin knew she had to make this quick. Thankfully though, Robin decided to actually refer to the boy by his name and not some random thing she came up with on the spot that may or may not have been mildly insulting. Rarely did she use his actual name, so when she did he knew he had to listen because she was being serious.

“I want to know, and you have to be completely honest with me...” He doesn’t nod, but he raises his eyebrows, which is enough of a response for her. Robin readjusts herself in the seat (although there isn’t much room to do that). “Why are you so against...that?” Robin waves her hand in front of her, signaling to the two smiling people tucked away in a corner booth.

Dustin pauses, and, for a moment feels as though he’s about to break. As he takes a glimpse at the setting sun and the soft glow exuding from the diners large windows—the windows that delicately outline the countless people who are smiling and genuinely having fun—Dustin does feel the slightest inkling of guilt about his position. But more importantly, he feels out of place. He feels a bit embarrassed and he knows that—

No!

That’s not why he’s here.

He’s here because they shouldn’t be here.

With a quick moment of rememberance for his previous intentions and the point of this operation Dustin ignores Robin’s statement and picks up the binoculars, zooming in on his target.

However his mind can’t help but register what Robin had said, and oddly he feels offended. Disasters in the air and Dustin wonders as to how Robin can’t possibly comprehend that.

She’s supposed to be on his side. Not theirs.

The binoculars he had picked up only a moment ago were once again let go of so he could start making wild gestures at Robin. “How can you not be against it?!”

“It’s sweet—“

“It’s bullshit.” Dustin’s body is now slightly leaning over the centre console as he stares Robin dead in her eyes. “Can’t you see what’s happening, Robin?”

Robin (being the literal smartass she is) responds. “Yeah, it’s two people who are attracted to each other enjoying a nice dinner.”

Dustin groans and roughly drags his hand down his face. He then slaps his hand on the dashboard. “Yeah, but guess what?! One date leads to two dates. Two dates leads to three. And eventually the more dates they have the more official they will become. Then they’ll start calling each honey and sweetie, and then they’ll move in together and then they’re gonna’ get married and have a shit ton of babies and I’ll be alone.”

Robin’s eyes widen at the knowledge of the boys confession. However, she isn’t sure he fully realizes what he confessed to because Dustin continues with his animated rant.

He feels the tone of his voice go down respectively, but not so much so that it disregards his conclusion. “The bottom line, Robin, is that they’ll fall in love, and our trio is down to two. Dos, Robin. Dos people. You. And me.” He jabs at the air between them. “And all of this bullshit will happen while Steven over there swaps spit with my sister.”

Robin laughs heartily at the words that leave Dustin’s mouth.

He turns to her in shock, mouth slightly open, and eyes squinted. He feels his baseball cap ever so slightly shifting lower on his head but quite frankly he doesn’t care about that at the moment.

“You think this is funny.” It’s more of a statement than a question, but it is just as aggressive with the same amount of frustration laced within the inflection of his voice.

Robin cackles and leans backward in her seat. Her seat squeaks again, therefore making Robin laugh even harder. The whole situation—she finds—is just too trippy and she knows it probably looks absolutely ridiculous.

Dustin shakes his head and crosses his arms in exasperation. He doesn’t understand why Robin is dying of laughter when there is a very prevalent and extreme issue at hand.

He snaps his head forward, his jaw and arms tightening in unison. His gaze travels up to the rear view mirror and he pauses...

Only for a moment though because he’s take a proper look at himself and he even admits he looks kind of funny. What with the huge pout gracing his mouth, his curly hair falling in his face and his arms crossed over his body so tight he just might cut off circulation.

But he won’t let anything distract him now. Not when—

“Shit!” He hurls up out of his seat and bangs his head on the roof of the car. His hand goes to the top of his head quickly, but it immediately retreats because oh my god, that cannot he happening!

“Hey, hey, watch the car!” Robin yells jokingly. She’s stopped giggling but she can feel the tight pressure in her cheeks and stomach from laughing. Robin lolls her head back, attempting to alleviate her giggly nature and get back on track.

Except she’s so focused on calming herself down that she doesn’t even notice that Dustin has opened the car door and has started walking towards the restaurant.

But when she does see him stomping in front of her car, his fists clenched, with the image of Y/N and Steve laughing, splitting a milkshake like the two cliche idiots they are, she lunges out of her seat, slams the door shut and runs after the fourteen year old.

He certainly walks fast, but she’s faster and thank god she is, because Dustin’s fingers are already wrapped around the silver handle.

Robin yanks Dustin by the collar of his vest and pulls him to the side, away from Steve and Y/N’s line of sight.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dustin whispers angrily.

“Saving your ass!” She whispers back. She inhales deeply and smiles awkwardly at an older man that walked by them, eyeing the two strangely. She turned her attention back to Dustin, a softer look on her face. “Leave them be, Henderson.”

“No! I can’t let them—they can’t...” He runs out of breath and stops short when he sees himself in the glass window.

His reflection obstructs his perception of himself for a moment. And soon he’s actually studying himself. But...more importantly, he can see Steve and Y/N more clearly now. The two of them are in the furthest corner—the quietest and most reclusive part of the diner. He watches them sadly.

And then Steve’s arms are flailing everywhere. He’s telling Y/N a story; a funny one at that because she’s laughing hysterically. Dustin recognizes the way his sister tries to hide her loud cackles. She looks...happy. Genuinely happy. And so does Steve. And Dustin can’t help but see how good they look together.

His smile is faint until he looks at his reflection once again.

He looks like shit. There’s bags under his eyes; and as light as they were, they’re still there. He notices how tense and restrictive his body looks, provoking him to try and loosen up.

It’s hard.

But it isn’t even his fault.

It’s Steve Harrington and Y/N Henderson’s fault.

“It’s their fault!” He yells out loud suddenly. He feels defensive. He’s upset. Not even mad, just simply...upset. And he’s taking it out on Robin. Wow. What kind of friend is he? “It’s their fault because they just had to...you know...they just had to!”

“Had to what, Henderson?” Robin asks calmly.

She frowns slightly because her friend is clearly troubled by the notion of being left alone by not only his best friend and mentor, but by his sister too. She’s moved a little closer to him by now; her hand only gracing his forearm. She’s not used to showing sympathy (she’s never really been in a situation where she had to) so she hopes that this is enough.

“They had to go and—and...give in to that—that dumb sexual electricity bullshit.”

Robin sighs and tucks a few strands of hair behind her ears. The two of them are standing there completely still. The initial anger and frustration has died down and Robin can no longer feel the tension radiate off of her child friend. With a shaky huff he shies away from her hand and slumps against the side of the brick building, jaggedly sliding down to the ground.

“It’s just...everything’s...changing. Everything’s changing and this is just the universe trying to prove it to me.” Dustin wipes at the sudden wet streaks that line his cheeks. He didn’t even notice that he began crying, but it’s too late to hide it from Robin because she’s already sitting beside him, giving him her most sympathetic look manageable.

“Hey...” She nudges his foot with hers. “It sucks...I know. I felt the same way when I was your age, you know? Everything just changes around you, and it sucks ‘cause you can’t control it at all. You can’t slow it down or speed it up. It just...happens.”

She places her hand on Dustin’s and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “But it gets better in the end.” He nods slowly and softly. “Look dingus, Steve, Y/N, you and I are still gonna’ be the best of friends. We just...won’t be the three musketeers.” She looks at Dustin and the stains on his cheeks.

“Hey, you know what? We’ll be something even cooler! You can decide what our group name is, yeah?” She punches him softly in the arm.

Dustin sniffles but attempts a smile. “We’re still a team, Dustin... There just happens to be a new person. The groups larger now and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even if you don’t like it now, train yourself to, because Harrington, he’s—he’s a good guy you know, and he really likes your sister. A lot. And I hate to be the one to break it to you kid, and I know it’s hard for you to understand, but...whatever’s goin’ on in there...” Robin tilts her head towards the door. “That’s not our decision. That’s theirs.”

Dustin smiles weakly. The two sit in silence for a few seconds. Then Dustin wipes at his nose, and sniffs. He takes a deep breath. “At least...it’s not...the worst decision.” Robin smiles with a slight shake of her head.

“See? Just look on the bright side of things.”

“She likes him a lot, too, you know. I read it in her diary. She thinks he has a cute butt and nice hair.” Robin laughs and wraps an arm around his shoulders.

The pair stand up and Robin guides them back to her car. “What do you say we go for ice cream, yeah? Kinda’ cool down. Relax a little.”

“Yeah, that—that sounds like a good idea.”

•••••

It was a beautiful night. The breeze that carried itself through Hawkins wasn’t too warm but wasn’t too cold either. The sun was in the midst of setting; the sky in transition between indigo and pale pink.

The sounds of crickets were melodic and delicate, and for once in your life they didn’t seem annoying. The lightning bugs that usually stay pretty dormant along in the bushes on the backroads were out in full force tonight; shining in all of their tiny glory.

The music from Steve’s stereo was soft. Loud enough to hear, but quiet enough to set a mood.

You felt like a child; giddy and weightless.

For some odd, inexplicable reason, the world tonight just seemed to work. You couldn’t tell if it was just sheer dumb luck, or if it was because what was happening between you and the boy next to you was meant to happen. Regardless of whatever higher power was working tonight, something out there seemed to understand. The universe around you seemed to understand.

The evening was peaceful, the atmosphere in Steve’s car was romantic and you’re positive that with all of this serenity, the world, and all of its living things couldn’t help but be in perfect harmony.

Bryan Adams voice gently moved in the space of Steve’s car. You could hear Steve begin to sing along and you felt your heart gently convulse with the butterflies in your stomach.

You look at him through the corner of your eye and you swear he isn’t real.

Honestly, how could someone who looks like that and is like that exist?

His soft brown eyes are focused on the road and you’re reminded of the fact that those eyes were staring at you all night. Steve is just so...beautiful. It’s simply unreal.

Your smiling like an idiot as you study him. You can feel it. You feel just as light and soft as the way his hair looks as it sways in the wind.

“Someone’s smiley.” Steve commented. You’re eyes widen as you snap back to reality. Your face grows hot. Your heartrate increases. Steve just caught you staring at him like a creep and you realize you couldn’t be anymore pathetic. But the second you see the curl of his lips and his eyes begin to smile at you, every negative thought you’ve had about whether or not you looked good enough tonight dissipated.

He’s an ethereal creature. And he’s looking at you the same way. He’s looking at you like you hung the stars and moon in the sky and you can’t think of anything else other than just kissing him. The only thing your body seems to know what to do though is smile.

But thats fine because Steve opens his mouth to speak, and you can feel yourself get lost in the tender tone of his words. “It’s okay, you know. I—I don’t mind.”

You laugh softly and make a measly attempt to cover your deepening blush with the sleeve of your sweater.

You somehow force yourself to look away and try to compose what little resolve you have left. But you’re still smiling.

And Steve from across the car is still smiling as well.

As you watch the brush fly past you, an unfamiliar warmth graces your fingertips that rest on the console.

Your head turns rather quickly to see what has just touched you and you come face-to-face with Steve’s red cheeks as his hand rests millimeters away from yours. “Can I—um...am—am I...allowed to, uh, h—hold your hand? Maybe?” Steve’s looking at you softly. You can’t function, so you don’t automatically respond. He turns to look at the dark road before him. The only place his eyes can be truly safe without giving all of his secrets away. “If you don’t want to that’s fine. That’s—that’s completely...fine. I—I don’t want to pressu—”

“Steve...” you whisper. You’re shocked that you can even speak because it honestly feels like you’re permanently breathless. You look directly in his eyes and relax your hand as your fingertips glide gently over his knuckles.

You feel his hand begin to shake slightly which calms down your nerves because he’s just as scared as you are.

There’s a reassuring feeling that sets itself within the cavity in your chest as your fingers intertwine with his. It’s a slow act; one that you both don’t want to jump into directly in fear of screwing it up. But in the end it works and it just feels so right and so magical.

You swear you have never felt this way in your entire life.

Steve’s hand feels exactly how you had imagined it countless times in the past couple of days.

Soft; pure; and breathtaking.

He feels the same way.

•••••

Steve pulls up in your driveway slowly. He doesn’t have to, but the closer to your house he gets, the closer you are to leaving and he’s not sure he’s prepared for that all.

The porch light is on and so is the living room light; confirming that Dustin has not yet went to bed.

Shit.

You frown as you suddenly try to figure out how you’re going to talk to him and what you’ll say. You knew he wasn’t too happy with the prospect of the date between you and Steve—he made that evidently clear. And you’d never admit it to him but it really hurt you a lot to know that you were hurting him. You thought he’d be overjoyed with the news but instead he became distant and moody.

But Steve had assured you that he’d talk to Dustin and the three of you would work it out. And from what you’ve seen of the close friendship between Dustin and Steve you knew if anyone could get through to your little brother, it was your date.

Steve opened the door for you and closed it once you got out.

You smoothed out your sweater (although there was nothing wrong with it) and you let your arms hang awkwardly at your sides. Whereas Steve shoved his one hand into the pocket of his jacket, and with the other one he hesitantly reached towards your hand that dangled outside of the sleeve of the thin white fabric. 

He was nervous... Really fucking nervous.

But the way you easily accepted the embrace of his fingers made Steve feel as though he might pass out.

His heart felt like it was going to explode, and the fact that he damned himself by looking over to you smiling in the faint light emanating from the window...

God. He was an idiot. But...the thought that you might want him just as bad as he wants you; and that maybe one day, he gets to be your idiot made him weak in the knees.

Something he never thought could happen.

You looked even softer and prettier than you did earlier in the evening; which pained Steve because first of all, how could someone become increasingly more beautiful the more he looked at them; and how could he restrain himself from just holding your face and kissing you until the both of you could no longer breath?

“Well, this is me.” You say out loud, and curse yourself afterward because god, you sound so stupid.

“This is you.” Steve replies, sounding equally as stupid.

But, regardless of whether or not the both of you can talk doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’re smiling at him with a sense of warmth and what he hopes is adoration. The realization that yes, for once he isn’t a screw up and he is finally going to get the girl causes him to shuffle closer to you.

The tips of your shoes are touching his and the butterflies begin erupting again because the act itself is small, yet whole-heartedly adorable.

Steve then takes his other hand and links it with yours. You try to hide the way your body is reacting to Steve holding both of your hands so intimately; but it’s proving itself to become increasingly more difficult when suddenly the two of you are inches away from each other. His warm breath fans over your face and you notice that all you have to do is just move your head forward a little more before you’re actually kissing him.

“I had a really good time tonight, Stevie.” He chuckles lightly at the use of his new nickname.

Coming from anyone else it would’ve sounded stupid, but since it’s coming from you, Steve feels as though he’s floating.

It isn’t a special nickname, but it feels similar to one because now it rests within him as a placeholder. You said it, and only you can say it from this moment on.

The feeling that he gets when you say, “Stevie” ignites a livid presence of emotion deep in his psyche.

“Me too.”

He’s falling. Hard.

And it’s becoming really fucking challenging because you are looking very beautiful. And you’re smiling at him. All wistful and delicate.

The lip gloss you had on refracts the light beside you lightly, enough to make your lips (the part of you that he’d been staring at for pretty much the entire night now) shine and stand out to him.

Oh, yeah.

He’s definitely falling.

“Are you two just going to stand there, or are you gonna’ get in the house already?” Dustin is standing in the open doorway, one hand on the door handle and the other on his hip.

He seems annoyed, which brings down your spirits a little.

Steve is attentive and picks up on your sadness. He frowns slightly, but tries to disguise it because he doesn’t want to make you anymore upset. Although the boy really, really wants to kiss you goodnight, he respects you and Dustin. He decides against it. For now, at least.

You let go of Steve’s hands, still smiling softly at him as you slowly step through the threshold of your house. “Goodnight, Steve.”

“‘Night, Y/N.” He replies with a soft grin.

You walk out of his line of sight, but you don’t leave. Instead, you quickly bound over to your couch, claw your way to the window and peel the edge of the white lace curtain away from the glass that you’re choosing to peek through. You stare at the boy who looks so gorgeous in the soft early moonlight that you swoon three times over.

The door closes, and you see Dustin (surprisingly) walking Steve to his car.

You watch the situation closely. It is as unintentionally comedic to you as it is nerve-wracking.

“Did you have fun?” Dustin asks Steve. Dustin is admittedly shocked when Steve looks him directly in the eye. Before the date, when Steve picked Y/N up, the poor boy wasn’t even able to meet Dustin’s gaze.

The date however went better than expected, and now that Steve knows he wants you (and he’s positive you want him back), he’s got all the confidence in the world prompting him to be willing to do anything. Steve smiles at his younger friend gently.

“Yeah. Yeah, I really did, Henderson.” Steve nods.

Dustin leans against the hood of the familiar BMW beside his best friend. He looks up at the older boy, the boy he had been looking up to for a good year now and he can see that Steve’s smiling more than he’s smiled in awhile.

A fragile breeze rolls by the two of them. The sun has officially gone down, making the ambient light around the two friends a pale gray and blue. Dustin can hear the recognizable cicadas humming all around. The empty night makes their sound even louder and more prominent, slightly knocking off the awkward edge between him and Steve.

Steve stirs making Dustin turn to him. He runs a hand quickly through his hair (a habit Dustin has noticed occurs a lot). Somehow, Steve’s dark hair bounces back in its original place without any effort at all.

“My sisters one hell of a girl, Harrington.” Dustin speaks up. Steve slightly moves his head to the side; enough so that he can see the knowing stare that his younger friend has painted on his face.

Steve nods shyly. “She definitely is.” Just mentioning you forces a smile on Steve’s features. He truly cannot control himself when around you.

And Dustin picks up on this. Steve’s really trying. You’re really trying. And maybe (Dustin figures) he can be a bit more lenient with the two of you.

The nights really doing something to him.

There are a few quiet moments that stretch by between the two boys. It isn’t awkward anymore, but it is filled with Dustin’s excessive pondering thoughts. His heads so full of them he feels like screaming in defeat into the quiet, dark night.

“Do you like her?”

Steve looks down at him. He’s not sure if Dustin stopped eyeing him up and down at one point; but this time around his friends face is softer. There’s something there, something hopeful. Something Steve hopes is forgiveness and acceptance.

“I really do.” Steve admits shyly.

He already knew that. Of course he knew Steve liked you. He made it blatantly obvious since day one.

Dustin sits comfortably in his own silence for a moment. Steve sits uncomfortably on the edge of anticipation and worry. There’s nothing silent about Steve’s thoughts at all.

“Well then...” Dustin begins. “The next time you see each other you better kiss her, alright?”

Dustin watches Steve cough and his eyes widen comically. He knows Steve is in complete shock, but Dustin soon grins, evoking a smile from his older friend.

“Just not in front of me though, alright? Or else I’ll kick your ass, Harrington.”

For once Steve’s mind is silent...

Until he mutters one word that carries itself with the wind. “Okay.”

Dustin nods once and reaches his hand out.

Steve smiles widely. He knows exactly what that means; it’s a sign of peace and a sign of approval.

Steve wraps his hand around Dustin’s and he quickly lets go signaling for the young boy to follow through with their infamous handshake. The two boys finish with partially silent lightsaber sounds that quickly escalate into booming, hearty laughter. Laughter so loud, even the night before them wasn’t ready for it.

“I still want you to pick me up tomorrow so we can go to the arcade.” Dustin jabs a finger at Steve teasingly. He pokes Steve in the centre of his chest causing the fluffy haired boy to swat away his finger. “Ten o’clock. Sharp. Better be on time, loverboy.”

“Yeah, yeah; I will... Thank you.” Steve finishes sincerely.

Dustin nods stoically, then turns to the window and sees your silhouette. You’re smiling at the two of them through the glass; the orange light behind forging a halo around your head. He suddenly grins and laughs gently.

Out of nowhere, Dustin’s arms wrap around Steve’s middle, and the older teen can’t help but hug him back with as much force.

He’s so goddamn happy.

As you watched the headlights of the familiar BMW drift off into the road, slowly bleeding and disappearing into the blue and gray hues of the forest and streets around your house, Dustin enters the house with a smile.

You turn to him expectantly. Your eyebrows are quirked up and your soft pink lip is tucked slightly beneath your teeth.

Dustin shakes his head with a soft sigh. “You two are gonna’ be the death of me, you know that right?”

Watching your face turn up into the biggest grin makes him smile equally as wide. He walks over to you quickly as you stand up and you tuck his head beneath yours.

You embrace your little brother tightly and earnestly. You place a delicate kiss to the top of the mess of curls on his head and he hugs you with even more strength.

Even with all of the nights uncertainties, somehow the world and all its living things, for once, truly did come together in perfect harmony.

[mst3kproject]

Iron Warrior

 Why yes, there is a fourth Ator movie!  Technically, this is the third Ator movie.  Whereas Ator, the Fighting Eagle, The Blade Master (aka Cave Dwellers) and Quest for the Mighty Sword were all made by Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato), Iron Warrior was made by Alfonso Brescia (aka Al Bradley).  Massaccessi supposedly hated it because it wasn’t true to his vision for Ator or something.  Myself, I was kind of intrigued.  What would a different take on Ator be like?

Well, I don’t know how he managed, but Alfonso Brescia pulled it off.  He made an Ator movie that makes even less sense than the other Ator movies.

The evil sorceress Phaedra used to rule this land, but then some fellow witches (I’m gonna call them Bellerians) banished her into darkness and installed a puppet king. Eighteen years later, however, Phaedra’s sentence is up and she has returned, with a legion of skull-faced minions and an indestructible cyborg named Drogar.  They kill the king and kidnap his heir, Princess Gianna.  The Bellerians therefore call upon Ator to rescue her, which he does, and then the Bellerian Leader tells them they must go on a quest to retrieve the only thing that can defeat Phaedra and free Drogar, who is also Ator’s brother, from her clutches – the Golden Chest of the Ages!  With that in hand, they head back to be crowned King and Queen of wherever this is, only to learn too late that Phaedra replaced the real Golden Chest with a fake!

According to the end credits, ‘script continuity’ was the job of somebody named Mirella Gamacchio.  I can only assume she was drunk as shit the entire time, because this movie is nothing but a series of “wait… what just happened?” moments.

There’s a bit where Phaedra decides to kill Ator before he can rescue Gianna.  She can’t just Thanos-snap him out of existence because the Bellerians have taken that power away from her, so she takes the form of a beautiful woman, lets him rescue her from random thugs, sleeps with him, locks him in a cabin, and burns the cabin down.  That seems like an over-complicated plan, somehow.  Also, Ator escapes by hiding under a wet bear rug.

To kill the king, Drogar telekinetically makes all the decorative weapons mounted on a wall fly into him and run him through.  Then Phaedra replaces the dead king and the kidnapped princess with imposters who look nothing like them and nobody at court seems to notice.  Later, Ator fights Drogar in the same weapons-adorned room and I kept waiting for the psychic stabbing thing to happen again, but it doesn’t.  Instead, Ator and Drogar throw spears at each other and keep catching them.  Finally Drogar throws two spears at once, and Ator catches one while Gianna pops up out of absolutely nowhere to catch the other, despite never having the slightest hint she was able to do something like that!

Later later, Gianna gets kidnapped by the skull-faced minions and thrown into a dungeon where her father is hanging in a doorway, with the spears still through him but apparently still alive.  He begs her for help, and then she suddenly reappears in Ator’s arms wearing a green dress instead of the red one she’s had on so far. This is one of several occasions on which I was absolutely sure that the ‘Gianna’ we were seeing was going to turn out to be Phaedra in disguise, and in this instance I was especially certain about it because green is Phaedra’s colour.  I was wrong. Even at the climax, when I was absolutely convinced the whole thing had to be a trick, the woman who looks like Gianna was always the real Gianna.  I think.

After Phaedra gets the chest, Ator and Gianna are halfway through their coronation ceremony when suddenly Ator’s in the middle of nowhere surrounded by Sand Nazis, and Gianna’s dangling off a cliff with Phaedra sitting there mocking her.  How did that happen?  Phaedra tells her that life is an illusion, which for a moment left me wondering if anything in this movie really happened?  Perhaps the whole bit when Gianna was in the green dress was just some kind of dream?  I have no idea.  Anyway, Ator beats up the Sand Nazis and then goes and shoves a torch down Phaedra’s throat, which turns out to be her weakness for some reason.  Where did that come from?  I dunno.  Then he has just concluded that Gianna must have fallen and died when he hears her calling him, and goes to untie her from where she’s sitting on a rock.  They embrace and Gianna smiles in an evil kind of way, but as far as I can tell it’s still the real Gianna because we next see Phaedra captured by the Bellerians again!  They sentence her to something else and then giggle in delight because Ator and Gianna have fallen in love.

I don’t know why Ator was worried about Gianna falling to her death anyway, because there are several points in this movie in which one or both of the couple plummet into a bottomless abyss only to wake up completely unharmed.  This is slightly plausible when they leap off a cliff into the water, but what about when they fall from a rope bridge into a deep canyon and wake up lying on rocks in a cave?  Are they indestructible?

Drogar is supposedly indestructible, which means the moment when Ator is forced to run him through is one I expected to be another trick. After all, the same thing happened earlier and Drogar just collapsed into a pile of clothes like Obi-Wan Kenobi. No, this time he’s actually dead, and Ator takes his helmet off and finds another Miles O’Keefe underneath. I think we’re supposed to assume that Phaedra discarded Drogar because she no longer needed him?  I’m sure it’s supposed to be a tragic moment when Ator has to kill his brother, but Ator didn’t seem particularly reluctant to do so.  I also think the helmet removal is supposed to remind us of Luke Skywalker’s little vision quest moment in Empire Strikes Back when he found his own face under Darth Vader’s mask, but I cannot suggest a reason why other than ‘the writer thought that was neat’.

What is even with the Ator-has-a-brother thing?  Wasn’t Ator raised by stick merchants in Solachek along with a sister he eventually married?  Fuck it, I’m gonna assume Ator is like Maciste, and his backstory resets with every movie.  The way the movie works out, the ‘brothers’ thing is never important anyway.  It’s treated as if it’s going to be – we know the revelation is coming from the opening scene and we’re teased with it a few times along the way, but when it actually arrives it has no effect on the plot whatsoever!

So yes, Iron Warrior tries to make you feel many things, but the only one you actually feel at the end of the movie is intense confusion.  The characters never have any personality so you can’t get invested in them or their relationships.  Elisabeth Kaza as Phaedra is having a fabulous time hamming up the evil, but everybody else has their Very Serious Movie faces on and mostly just looks bored. The special effects are basic at best, and the music sounds like an early 2000’s PC game loading.

Costumes and hair are bizarre.  Ator has traded his mile-high meringue hairdo for a tight braid that makes him look weirdly like Alicia Vikander on the Tomb Raider poster. Gianna has a hairdo that looks like a centurion’s helmet and wanders around the wilderness in a filmy red dress with her nipples visible right through it.  The leader of the Bellerians dresses like a budget Queen Amidala. Like previous Ator films (or Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell), there is no sense of any attempt to build a consistent world.  They just threw together a bunch of stuff that looked cool.

The movie was shot on the Maltese island of Gozo, and makes the place look like it’s made entirely of barren rocks.  There are lots of neat formations and forbidding cliffs, and it’s all very spectacular.  Unfortunately, it’s also very obvious that we’re seeing the same neat rock formations and forbidding cliffs over and over again.

As far as analyzing the movie… I don’t think I can do that. There’s not really enough substance there to analyze.  The closest Iron Warrior comes to doing anything meaningful is when it tries to use a furry toy ball as a symbol of the bond between brothers.  When we meet Ator and Drogar as children, they’re chucking this tribble at each other through some ruins, and it reappears a couple of times in attempts at foreshadowing.  The problem is that there is no bond between Ator and Drogar, and the fact that they’re brothers is, as I said, ultimately unimportant.

The impression I get from this movie is that it was written by somebody who had no idea how to tell a story.  The writers, Steven Luotto and Alfonso Brescia, have clearly seen movies (they’ve definitely seen the original Star Wars trilogy) and know that they have things like attractive stars, special effects, stunning revelations, and dream sequences, but they don’t know how to put those together into a plot, or what purposes they should serve within one.  The result is completely incoherent.  To my own astonishment I totally understand why Massaccesi hates this movie.  Ator, the Fighting Eagle and The Blade Master might have been made up on the fly, but they still made more sense than this!

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (29.41% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twelve.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

No matter how many times I watch this, I’m always surprised by how excellent it is. If any other future Marvel film wants to be ‘the best’, this is the movie it has to beat for the title. 

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha asks about the ballistics on the weapon used against Fury, and Maria responds. I’ve heard people argue that Natasha was not asking Maria specifically and therefore this does not count, but since Natasha clarifies a detail of Maria’s response (to which Maria responds again in order to confirm), I definitely think it qualifies. I have allowed a pass for far, far less in the past. 

Female characters:

Natasha Romanov.

Peggy Carter.

Maria Hill.

Sharon Carter.

Renata.

Male characters:

Steven Rogers.

Sam Wilson.

Brock Rumlow.

Georges Batroc.

Jerome.

Jasper Sitwell.

Nick Fury.

Alexander Pierce.

Aaron.

Arnim Zola.

Senator Stern.

Bucky Barnes.

OTHER NOTES:

They start this movie by having Steve go for a jog and make a new friend, with a conversation ensuing that is by touches casual, light, humorous, insightful, serious, and sobering. It’s a pretty weird way to launch a much-anticipated superhero comic-adaptation action movie sequel, to be honest, but it’s also rock-solid character establishment - for the never-before-seen Sam Wilson, and for Steve Rogers whose mental state and coping skills in the modern era are kinda an open question at this point - and by getting us on level with Steve’s day-to-day (rather than Captain America’s, which comes after) they’ve immediately prepped us for a story in which this character confronts and reassesses who he is and what he stands for at a core level, and not just in a symbolic/legacy kind of fashion (a la Tony Stark). It may say ‘Captain America’ on the tin, but this is Steven Rogers’ story. This is a fantastic and well-condensed first three minutes of this film, before they fly off to deliver the action sequence we may well have expected to have received up-front. 

Oh yeah, also this opening scene involves jogging around the Washington Monument, which is not a subtle detail, but I can dig it. If they’d had Steve draw attention to some Major American Landmark at some point in the movie and make a patriotic declaration of some kind, then I’d cry foul, but as-is the use of Washington DC as a setting is the hardest they bother to hammer the AMERICA button. The absence of self-fellating patriotism which I appreciated so much in the first film continues to be a virtue in this one. I do dig.

Remember how I really love it when people get hit and fly off the screen? Steve just kicked a dude off a boat and I made the dorkiest ‘hee hee!’ noise ever. Sure am glad the only reason anyone knows about that is that I just told y’all, and not because anyone actually heard me.

One day, we’ll stop getting these kinds of gratuitous butt shots of female characters in tight clothes. But it sure ain’t this day.

In a world of equal-opportunity sexualisation, this Cap-butt would be forgiveness enough for the aforementioned offense. But it still sure ain’t that day, friends.

Other reasons to love that opening scene: they low-balled Sam’s counseling skills to us by having him quickly identify the best way to speak to Steve and to engage with him (as Steve, again, not as Captain America; that’s the key), and that’s what allows Steve to bond with him enough that, put in a tight spot and not sure who to trust, he shows up on Sam’s doorstep later in the film. Really tight characterisation and dynamic-building.

ALSO, Steve’s adventure to the Captain America museum exhibit reminds us all of what he’s lost - specifically, Bucky Barnes - and contextualises his encounters with Sam Wilson within the emotional landscape of Steve’s desire for close male companionship, highlighting the need which compels the formation of that bond while also accentuating the sense of Steve’s present isolation and uncertainty, robbed of any understanding confidante (the bittersweet reality of having Peggy Carter still alive, but losing herself to Alzheimer's, really hits that one home). Again, Steve’s emotional landscape is actually a vital part of the story of the film on both character and plot levels, so there’s a LOT of great show-don’t-tell demonstration in the interconnections of all these scenes, PLUS they’re doing the good work for all the other characters involved AND reminding the audience of the score so that the film can continue to draw from the past as the movie continues, without losing any viewers for whom this might be the first foray into the Captain America story. This movie is just...really well put together, guys. It’s a little shocking, how good it is.

Winter Soldier intro is too cool. Not a pun.

Steve takes a chance and asks his neighbour out for coffee; she declines with a soft no; he accepts even-tempered and assures her he won’t trouble her any further, and she lets him know that he’s no trouble and there’s no hard feelings. It’s all a very painless and respectful navigation of boundaries, and taken on face value (ignoring the part where she turns out to be an undercover SHIELD agent, and everything which unfolds from there), it’s a welcome example of how easy it is to take rejection graciously. Guys, be the Steve Rogers that women want to see in the world.

I want a metal arm. I don’t want to not have my current arms, they’re fine, but in an abstract version of the world where you have things purely for cool points, I want a metal arm.

The fight choreography in this film is great. It’s good watchin’. 

Also the soundtrack is top-end. 

“...Specimen.”

The movie didn’t need a hetero kiss thrown in there, though. I sure wish there wasn’t a random kiss in there.

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it.” 

Urgh, why Senator Stern gotta show up, be a pig about women, make his little Nazi declaration, and leave? The answer is, he really doesn’t gotta. You know what’s good shit? Not using misogyny and objectification of women to demonstrate that a bad guy is a bad guy, unless it’s actually a relevant part of the story. One day...

I can’t deal with how cool the Winter Soldier is. I’m almost embarrassed by how much the whole Silent Sauntering Assassin thing works for me.

Sam Wilson brings a tiny knife to a gunfight and still gets the upper hand because he’s perfect.

THE FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHYYYYY

The Winter Soldier is barely in the film in the first hour, and Bucky is referenced in the museum but not discussed by any of the characters, so there’s no lantern hanging on either the mystery of the Winter Soldier’s identity or the conspicuous reminder of a supposedly dead character (another reason why tying the memory of Bucky in so tightly with Steve’s present state of comfortless seclusion is important and clever). If you somehow managed not to be spoiled for it already, the Bucky reveal is a real kicker of a twist.

The degree to which I adore Sebastian Stan’s attention to detail in his performance has increased tenfold since The First Avenger. Dude has got nuances on his nuances.

The part of me that is emotionally susceptible to heroism is very moved by all the nameless SHIELD agents who stand up to HYDRA and die for it. 

I join the rest of the world in being really disappointed that what appeared to be Jenny Agutter’s councilwoman kicking Strike Team ass was actually just Black Widow. Sorry Natasha.

The Winter Soldier shows up and murderises a heap of pilots, and the part of me that is susceptible to heroism finds itself in conflict with the part that is susceptible to the Winter Soldier’s ineffable coolness (which is itself at odds with the part of me that wants Bucky Barnes to be safe and happy). This movie got me good.

Rumlow talkin’ some shit about pain and Sam’s just like “Man, shut the Hell up,” and it’s perfect. I love him.

I love this film. I mean I really, really love it. Like, I mean this is one of my favourite movies in the world. Like, if we were playing that ol’ game of ‘if you had to pick ten movies, and those were the only movies you were allowed to watch for the rest of your life’, this would be one of my ten movies. That’s how much I love this film. There’s so much to get into here, so much to enjoy: it’s light and easily-digestible enough for when you just want to be entertained by something that doesn’t demand too much from you, but it also has serious depths for when you’re in the mood to dig in. It has well-crafted action scenes, but also a strong plot with powerful emotional currents. It has wonderful, charismatic actors playing intriguing characters, and most of them are good eye candy, but none of them are just eye candy - there’s a lot of complexity to unravel in the motivations and personal narratives of the leads. It’s a superhero movie, sure, but it’s also a political spy thriller. And, to top it off, it’s not only an excellent stand-alone film, it’s also a fantastic example of how to do a sequel right.

Sequel-making can be a fraught business; you’ve got sequels that are basically just pointless retreads of the original, sequels that are so different they hardly count as sequels at all, sequels that are so busy trying to be ‘bigger and better’ than the original they become ridiculous, sequels so busy attempting to capitalise on the spectacle of the original that they forget to have any of the same heart that gave the original meaningful impact, sequels that ignore that the original had a plot and themes and that maybe that stuff was relevant to its success, etc, etc...there are lots of great sequels in the world, certainly, but as Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World already attested for the MCU, it is very, very easy for sequels to go wrong. For this film, I think it goes without saying that I feel they passed all of the above sequel-killing quality tests with flying (low-key red-white-and-blue) colours, hence my adoration. But, just for kicks, lets talk about how they did it.

For starters, you can pretty much guarantee that this isn’t gonna be a pointless retread of Captain America: The First Avenger, since this movie takes place seventy years later and there are certain essential world elements that have fundamentally changed, such as technology, characters, and the fact that WWII ended a good while previous. But, that’s exactly how they make this story work as a sequel: they use the nature of change to give the film its shape, thematically, politically, emotionally, and in doing so they assure that everything which is different in the present builds directly from the past. Steve Rogers has not fundamentally changed, and that’s a critical anchor, considering he’s the titular character and all, but he is in a state of flux due to everything else that has changed, and his doubts inform the narrative landscape. This is not the world he remembers, and yet, as the plot unfolds and he digs into the conspiracy at his feet, there’s plenty there that is hauntingly familiar, because this is a story about how the past is still alive and kicking in the present, it has just updated to keep with the times.

It’s worth noting that despite Captain America making the jump from the forties to the modern age without any stop-offs in between, the film doesn’t linger on or wallow in the differences in his world in any strict sense - even Steve himself (in that EXTREMELY well-crafted opening scene with Sam) is somewhat dismissive of the specifics, because he’s not dwelling on the oh-woe-things-have-changed, he’s just trying to get his head around it, adapt, and move forward (and the practical realities are easy enough, but the emotional facets? Yeah). The thing is of course, no one else shares this problem with Steve; they’ve all been around, variously, for the parts in between, and the story is still concerned with the context of the world which made all of its characters what they are, and particularly with the war that came after WWII, the war within which HYDRA reseeded and began to grow anew: the Cold War. In particular, it’s the ‘70s/’80s era Cold War, built into the political-thriller superstructure of the film itself and driven home most overtly by the Winter Soldier, heavily Russian-coded and steeped in the potent psychological horror of brainwashing, but there are other signifiers littered across the story as well. There’s former-KGB agent Black Widow, and the reference she makes to WarGames, and there’s Arnim Zola frozen in time by the ancient computer system which now acts as his ‘brain’, and then there’s the stroke of subversive genius in the casting of Robert Redford - the positively Captain America-esque blue-eyed-blond hero of many a seventies Cold War political thriller - as our primary villain, working within the United States government for the benefit of his secret European-originating agenda in true foreign-infiltration style. Of course, we can adapt all of this to fit the radicalised terrorism and technological paranoia of modern times (and those elements are alive and well in the text with the surveillance-state fears represented by the helicarriers), but the historical timestamping is important to the trajectory of the film; times change and things grow increasingly subtle and complicated, but the core dilemmas that call people out to fight are instantly familiar. In that sense, Steve Rogers hasn’t missed much at all.

The war that calls Cap to arms this time around may be more subtle than the openly-fought battlefields of WWII, but it is no less global or insidious; the new ‘improved’ HYDRA may not be led by a literal Nazi who peels off his own face, but the cold political calculations of Alexander Pierce are much more frightening for their realism (an aspect of the film which has become increasingly prescient for the modern era since the movie was released), and the fascist supremacist dogma that compels these villains to attempt to reshape the world with the blood of millions is drawn from the same poisoned well; this is an escalation of the same enemy that Captain America faced before, only much closer to home. And while the passage of time has benefited the old evils in allowing them to entrench and fester and craft re-branded, more socially-accepted versions of themselves, it has not been so favourable to the positive familiar things from Steve’s past: it has claimed Peggy’s memory, and rotted SHIELD beyond recovery. And then, there’s what it’s done to Bucky Barnes.

Fake-out character deaths are a major staple of the superhero/comic genre, and not one I love, since it tends to take the power out of apparent-death scenes and leaves the drama feeling contrived, and while the Bucky reveal is not entirely free from that cynicism, it sells itself well on delivery. For starters, it packs a wallop in additional drama instead of just neatly undoing that which already existed (Nick Fury’s ‘death’ and reveal, on the other hand, is more in the classic line of cheap and inconsequential), and it ups the personal stakes for Steve in exactly the same way as Bucky’s ‘death’ did in The First Avenger. Crucially, the fact that Bucky is the Winter Soldier doesn’t alter the wider narrative in any convenient way, such as providing Captain America with the key to stopping him or resolving the other conflicts of the plot through his connection; the Bucky reveal reconnects the story to Steve’s emotional journey, which is exactly where it started before Shit Got Crazy - there’s a good reason they spent the first half hour of the movie on charting Steve’s mental state. There’s a sharp division between Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier, despite them both inhabiting the same form, and it’s a mirror of the division between Steve Rogers and Captain America: regardless of all assumptions to the contrary, the two are mutually exclusive entities. ‘Captain America’ is not a person, he’s a symbol, and he’s manipulable in that way, he can be propagandised, his image and actions are a tool turned to the purposes of others at the expense of the human underneath; Steve recognises this (and has since the first film), and he holds this secondary persona at a remove and does not define himself through it. This is what Sam’s keen social instincts pick up so quickly in the beginning: treating Steve as Captain America is the wrong approach, it fails to connect, because Steve is not the uniform, Steve has doubts, Steve could give up the shield; Steve is a person. Bucky doesn’t have the same luxuries, in opportunities, in company, or in the cognizant ability to define his own identity, but even without the personal attachment of their history, Steve is uniquely positioned to understand the difference between the Winter Soldier and the person buried beneath the title. If it was not Bucky, specifically, the visceral emotion of the mirrored experience wouldn’t land quite as strong, but either way the Winter Soldier is the realisation of Steve’s deep-seated fear of being made a puppet, an unthinking enforcer too heavily indoctrinated into patriotic subservience to recognise the despotism that has replaced his idealism. 

I said at the top that this is, ultimately, a Steven Rogers story to which ‘Captain America’ is an accessory, and not the other way around, and that’s a fact at the heart of what makes this film work - on its own, and as a sequel. The fore-fronting of Steve as a character in his own right and not just ‘Captain America’s real name’ was key to avoiding any cloying patriotism overriding the narrative of the first film, and it’s doubly important now as both Steve and the Captain America brand re-situate outside of their original context. It’s easy to strip back the specific trappings of Captain America and still have this movie function just right, because for all the action and intrigue, it is essentially a character piece about Steve Rogers figuring out his place in the world and reclaiming the moral compunctions which have been presumptuously attributed to the lofty symbol of his alter ego, and not the struggling reality of everyday life. Captain America is what he is and how he is not because it sounds good or because it makes for positive PR or because it’s nice to have legends from the good ol’ days; Captain America is the embodiment of scrappy little Steve Rogers’ grit and determination to live up to what he believes in, come Hell or high water or the gravest of consequences. Steve begins the film at odds with himself, unsure if there’s a place for his shameless idealism within the mess of modern life; he��s going through the motions of being Captain America, but he’s uncertain of what it means to him at this point, or where it’s headed. He finishes the film having gained something vital: a mission, but it’s not a professional job for Captain America, it’s a personal mission for Steve Rogers, and that’s much more important. Captain America is just an idea; Steve Rogers is the reason it matters, no matter what war, what time, what place, or what flag.

[potterheads23]

35 Things You Might Not Know About Harry Potter

1. ROWLING AND HARRY SHARE A BIRTHDAY.

They both blow out candles on July 31 (happy birthday, JKR!). And that’s not the only influence Rowling had on her characters: She’s said that Hermione is a bit like her when she was younger, and her favorite animal is an otter—which is, of course, Hermione’s patronus. Plus, both Dumbledore and Rowling like sherbet lemons (Rowling said that the wizard’s “got good taste”).  

2. SHE INVENTED THE NAMES OF THE HOGWARTS HOUSES ON THE BACK OF A BARF BAG.

In 2000, Scholastic gave schoolchildren across the U.S. the opportunity to ask Rowling questions about Harry Potter. When one student asked her, “What made you think of the people's names and dormitories at Hogwarts?” Rowling responded, “I invented the names of the Houses on the back of an airplane sick bag! This is true. I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.”

3. EARLY ON, ROWLING WROTE A SKETCH OF THE FINAL CHAPTER OF THE FINAL BOOK.

Rowling calls the idea that she had the first chapter of Deathly Hallowswritten and locked away in the safe “rubbish.” But there was a small element of truth to it: “I had, very early on—but not the first day or anything, probably within the first year of writing—I wrote a sketch for what I thought the final chapter would be,” she told Harry Potter's big screen portrayer, Daniel Radcliffe, in an interview for the Deathly Hallows Part 2 DVD extra features. “I always knew—and this was from really early on—that I was working toward the point where Hagrid carried Harry, alive but supposedly dead, out of the forest, always. I knew we were always working towards a final battle at Hogwarts, I knew that Harry would walk to his death, I planned the ghosts—for want of a better word—coming back, that they would walk with him into the forest,  we would all believe he was walking to his death, and he would emerge in Hagrid’s arms.”

And that mental image is what kept Hagrid alive, despite the fact that he “would have been a natural to kill in some ways,” Rowling said. “But because I always cleaved to this mental image of Hagrid being the one carrying Harry out … That was so perfect for me, because it was Hagrid who and took him into the world, and Hagrid who would bring him back … That’s where we were always going. Hagrid was never in danger.”

4. THE DEMENTORS ARE BASED ON ROWLING’S STRUGGLE WITH DEPRESSION AFTER HER MOTHER’S DEATH.

Rowling’s mother, who had multiple sclerosis, died in 1990, after which Rowling suffered a period of depression. She would use the experience to characterize the Harry Potter’s dementors, creepy creatures that feed on human emotion. “It's so difficult to describe [depression] to someone who's never been there, because it's not sadness," Rowling told Oprah Winfrey. “I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it's that cold absence of feeling—that really hollowed-out feeling. That's what Dementors are.”

5. SHE CREATED QUIDDITCH AFTER A FIGHT WITH HER BOYFRIEND.

“If you want to create a game like Quidditch, what you have to do is have an enormous argument with your then-boyfriend,” Rowling said in 2003. “You walk out of the house, you sit down in a pub, and you invent Quidditch. And I don't really know what the connection is between the row and Quidditch except that Quidditch is quite a violent game and maybe in my deepest, darkest soul I would quite like to see him hit by a bludger.”

6. THE WIZARDING WORLD’S PLANTS COME FROM A REAL BOOK.

“I used to collect names of plants that sounded witchy,” she told 60 Minutes, “and then I found this, Culpeper's Complete Herbal, and it was the answer to my every prayer: flax weed, toadflax, fleawort, Gout-wort, grommel, knotgrass, Mugwort." The book was penned in the 17th century by English botanist and herbalist Nicholas Culpeper; you can read it here.

7. A PROPOSED TITLE FOR THE AMERICAN VERSION OF PHILOSOPHER’S STONE WAS HARRY POTTER AND THE SCHOOL OF MAGIC.

Rowling turned that down, saying, according to American publisher Arthur Levine, “No—that doesn’t feel right to me … What if we called it the Sorcerer’s Stone?” (The French edition, Levine points out in J.K. Rowling: A Bibliography, is called Harry Potter a L'ecole Des Sorciers.)

8. ROWLING MADE COMPLICATED OUTLINES FOR THE BOOKS.

You can see a partial outline for Order of the Phoenix above. The outline has chapter titles, a general outline of the plot, and then more specific plot points for certain characters. (Based on this outline, it looks like Rowling thought about calling Dolores Umbridge Elvira Umbridge instead!)

9. ARTHUR WEASLEY WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE.

In a battle between good and evil this epic, not everyone would make it through alive—that would have led to “very fluffy, cozy books,” she told Meredith Vieira. “You know, suddenly I [would be] halfway through Goblet of Fire and suddenly everyone would just have a really great life and … the plot would go AWOL.”

Which is not to say that Rowling knew exactly who was on the chopping block. She thought about killing Arthur Weasley after he’s attacked by Nagini in Order of the Phoenix, but instead opted to save him, partly because “there were very few good fathers in the book. In fact, you could make a very good case for Arthur Weasley being the only good father in the whole series.” (She also “seriously considered” killing Ron, then thought better of it.)

Instead, Lupin—a character she had no intention of killing when she began the books—and Tonks died during the final Battle of Hogwarts. “I wanted there to be an echo of what happened to Harry just to show the absolute evil of what Voldemort's doing,” she said. “I think one of the most devastating things about war is the children left behind. As happened in the first war when Harry's left behind, I wanted us to see another child left behind. And it made it very poignant that it was [Lupin and Tonks's] newborn son.”

10. TO KEEP DEATHLY HALLOWS FROM LEAKING EARLY, BLOOMSBURY GAVE IT CODENAMES.

You probably wouldn’t have been so interested in reading Edinburgh Potmakers or The Life and Times of Clara Rose Lovett: An Epic Novel Covering Many Generations.

11. HALEY JOEL OSMENT COULD HAVE PLAYED HARRY.

When Steven Spielberg was attached to direct the film adaptation, he wanted Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osment to play Harry. But the director eventually left over a creative clash with Rowling, and new director Chris Columbus had to find his star. Some 300 kids tested for Harry Potter over a period of seven months; Jonathan Lipnicki (Jerry McGuire) even expressed interest. “There were times when we felt we would never find an individual who embodied the complex spirit and depth of Harry,” Columbus said.

Then, one night, Heyman went to the theater with screenwriter SteveKloves (who ended up penning all but one of the Potter scripts). “There sitting behind me was this boy with these big blue eyes. It was Dan Radcliffe,” he told HeroComplex in 2009. “I remember my first impressions: He was curious and funny and so energetic. There was real generosity too, and sweetness. But at the same time he was really voracious and with hunger for knowledge of whatever kind.” He persuaded Radcliffe’s parents to let their son audition, and the rest is history.

12. RUPERT GRINT’S AUDITION WAS UNUSUAL.

Nine-year-old Emma Watson’s first audition for the role of Hermione took place in her school gym; she auditioned a total of eight times. Grint, then 10, sent in a video audition, and went in a rather unusual direction: “I found out that you could audition by sending a picture of yourself and some information to Newsround,” he said in 2002. “I did my own video with me, first of all, pretending to be my drama teacher who unfortunately was a girl and then I did a rap of how I wanted to be Ron and then I made my own script thing up and sent it off.”

He had some competition, though: Tom Felton auditioned for both Ron and Harry before ultimately being cast as Draco Malfoy.

13. THERE’S A VERY GOOD REASON HARRY’S EYES AREN’T GREEN IN THE MOVIES.

In the books, Harry’s eyes are described as “bright green”—but Radcliffe’s are blue. When Sorcerer’s Stone was in pre-production, Heyman called Rowling and told her their options: They’d tried green contacts; they could also trying making Radcliffe’s eyes green in post-production. How important was it, he wondered, for Harry’s eyes to be green?

Rowling said that the only thing that was really important was that Harry's eyes looked like his mother’s eyes, so whoever played Lily Potter would need to have some resemblance to Radcliffe. This was a relief for Radcliffe, who had an an extremely adverse reaction to the contacts. (He was also allergic to the glasses, which made him break out in acne.)

14. THE BROOMS USED IN THE SERIES AREN’T REGULAR BROOMS.

They were made by modeler Pierre Bohanna using aircraft-grade titanium. “People think of them as a prop the kids are carrying around, but in reality, they have to sit on them,” Eddie Newquist, chief creative officer of the firm Global Entertainment Services, which puts on Harry Potter: The Exhibition, told Popular Mechanics. “They have to be mounted onto motion-control bases for green-screen shots and special-effects shots, so they have to be very thin and incredibly durable. Most of these kids weighed 80 pounds, 90 pounds [at the beginning]. Now they're all adults, so they're up over 120, 130 pounds, and you have to really make sure your brooms can withstand that.”

15. THE ROLE OF PEEVES WAS CAST AND FILMED—THEN CUT.

British comedian Rik Mayall was cast as Hogwarts’s prank-happy poltergeist in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He showed up and shot the scenes, which were later cut when director Chris Columbus decided he didn’t like the look of the ghost. Mayall described the experience in a 2011 interview:

I got sent off the set because every time I tried to do a bit of acting, all the lads who were playing the school kids kept getting the giggles, they kept corpsing, so they threw me off.

Well, they asked me to do it with my back to them and they still laughed. So they asked me to do it around the other side of the cathedral and shout my lines, but they still laughed so they said they’d do my lines with someone else. So then I did a little bit of filming, then I went home and I got the money. That’s significant. Then a month later, they said: ‘Er, Rik, we’re sorry about this, but you’re not in the film. We’ve cut you out of the film.’ … But I still got the money. So that is the most exciting film I’ve ever been in, because I got the oodle and I wasn’t in it. Fantastic.

He didn’t tell his kids his part had been cut, though, and when they went to see it, “they came back and they said: ‘Bloody good make up. You didn’t look like yourself at all dad,’” Mayall said. “They thought I was playing Hagrid, Robbie Coltrane’s part.”

16. THE ACTRESS WHO PLAYED MOANING MYRTLE WAS MUCH OLDER THAN A STUDENT.

Shirley Henderson was 36 when she played the bathroom-haunting ghost of a 14-year-old student who was killed by a basilisk’s stare in Chamber of Secrets. Playing a ghost was tougher than playing a real person, she told the BBC, “because of all the technical stuff it involved. I had to be strapped up to this harness so it looked as if I was flying and so I could be pushed through the air and twisted and turned over and over again. It's physically very tiring on your body. It also requires a lot of concentration, because there's all kinds of people shouting stuff like 'Turn, do this, look at this' so they can do all their stuff with the computer effects while I'm trying to act it out. But once you block all that out, it's great fun. Really good fun.”

17. PRISONER OF AZKABAN DIRECTOR ALFONSO Cuarón ASKED THE TRIO TO WRITE ESSAYS ABOUT THEIR CHARACTERS.

Alfonso Cuarón wanted Watson, Radcliffe, and Grint to write essays about their characters from a first person point of view. According to Heyman, “they all responded very much in character … Dan wrote a page, Emma wrote 10 and Rupert didn't deliver anything.” Grint told Entertainment Weekly, “I didn't do mine, because I didn't think Ron would. Or that was my excuse. At the time, I was actually quite busy with the real schoolwork involved with my exams, and I just didn't do it. But in the end, it felt right because that's what Ron would have done.”

18. ROWLING SHOT DOWN ONE OF Cuarón’S IDEAS.

Rowling wasn’t precious about all of the details of her books (see: Harry’s eye color). “Inevitably, you have to depart from the strict storyline of the books,” she told Radcliffe. “The books are simply too long to make into very faithful films.” But that didn’t mean she’d let everything slide: “Sometimes I would dig my heels in on the funniest things,” she said. “I’d say yeah, change the costume, that’s not a problem … And then all of a sudden I’d say, ‘Why would they do that spell? They wouldn’t do that there.’”

Take, for example, one shot that Cuarón wrote into Prisoner of Azkaban, which Rowling called “rather bizarre.” “I think Flitwick was conducting, and there were miniature people in an orchestra inside something,” she told Radcliffe. “I said to him, but why? I know it’s visually exciting, but part of what I think fans really enjoyed about the literary world is that there was a logic that underpinned it. There was always a logic to the magic, however strange it became. And I know it’s intriguing to go through the mouth of whatever it was and see these little people, but why have they done it? For you to film it, that’s just what it feels like. Normally, with the magic, there’s a point. So we had a bit of discussion.”

19. ROWLING TIPPED ALAN RICKMAN OFF TO SNAPE’S MOTIVATIONS.

“I told him really early on that Snape had been in love with Lily, that’s why he hated James, that’s why he projected this amount of dislike onto Harry,” Rowling told Radcliffe. “So he knew that. Then you told me that he’d been saying … ‘I just don’t think Snape would do that, given what I know.’” She laughed, continuing, “And I thought, ‘Alan, are you really milking this now?’”

She also tipped Radcliffe off to Harry’s (partial) fate after seeing him in Equus. Radcliffe asked her, point blank: “Do I die?”

“You get a death scene,” Rowling told him.

“I saw you double-take,” Rowling said. “Neal, my husband, afterward, said, ‘What did Dan ask you?’ And I said ‘He wanted to know if he’s going to die.’” When he asked what she’d said, Rowling told him, “I’m not telling you!” Though her husband was tipped off to Dumbledore's fate ahead of time, Rowling kept Harry’s ultimate fate a secret till the end.

20. THE ACTORS COULDN’T PLAY CONTACT SPORTS.

Instead, they played golf. ''[At Leavesden Studios], Rupert Grint and my brother [James] and I would hang out at the driving range downstairs quite a bit,” Oliver Phelps, who played George Weasley, told EW. “I mean, I say driving range, but it was a mat and a 150-yard cone at the other end. Golf was one of the only sports we were allowed to do in our contract because it was relatively quite safe. We couldn't do any contact sports.”

21. THE MOVIES FEATURED SOME HIGH TECH VISUAL EFFECTS …

Visual effects artists were tasked with bringing many of the fantastic magical elements of Harry Potter to life, including everything from fire-breathing dragons and club-swinging giants to zombie-like Inferi and Voldemort’s snake-like face (which was created by using practical makeup and digitally removing Ralph Fiennes’s nose). One of their most challenging sequences came early in Deathly Hallows, when members of the Order of the Phoenix arrive at Privet Drive to whisk Harry away to a safe spot. Multiple Harrys, Mad-Eye Moody says, will confuse the Death Eaters on their trail—so some of the wizards chug Polyjuice Potion and transform into Harry.

The transformation was tough for visual effects artists to pull off. "We needed to have a little bit of the attributes of Harry, and a little bit of the attributes of whoever we started with—George, Fred, Ron, Hermione," Nicolas Aithadi, VFX supervisor at Moving Picture Company, told Popular Mechanics. "The tricky part is you have to be able to read the Harry part and the George part. What we keep from each of these characters has to be perfect." They accomplished it by coating the actors’ faces in UV paint, then having them make faces in the Mova Contour Reality Capture system, which has 29 cameras and can capture 50,000 points of information, creating a 3D mesh cloud they could use as a basis for the transforming faces.

According to Phelps, it was completely different than anything they’d ever done before. “There are probably 30 different facial expressions they tried to get you to do,” he told Popular Mechanics. “I never realized how wide I could open my mouth until we did that scene, so that was quite cool.” Because of the UV paint, the VFX artists had one piece of advice, Phelps said: “They were quite keen to say, ‘Just don't go to any nightclubs tonight, because you'll look like a floating head.’”

22. … BUT NOT ALL THE EFFECTS WERE COMPUTER GENERATED.

Animatronics were made for the actors to interact with on set, including baby mandrakes, Hedwig, the Monster Book of Monsters, and Buckbeak, which was used on-set for close ups. “He could stare at you, his eyes could follow you, he could bow, and every one of his feathers was dyed and put in by hand,” Newquist told PopMech. “There are tens of thousands of them, and they look absolutely gorgeous.”Other creatures were built to give the animators reference for lighting, like the giant Jack-in-the-Box from Prisoner of Azkaban and house elf Kreacher.

23. THE FILM’S MAKEUP ARTISTS APPLIED THE LIGHTNING BOLT SCAR MANY, MANY TIMES OVER THE COURSE OF EIGHT FILMS.

Five thousand eight hundred times, to be exact. In our 2014 interview with Radcliffe, he told us, “The lightning scar, on the first two films, we essentially painted it on, and after that we used Pros-Aide, which was like a glue [to put it on]. It was very simple.” The scar was applied to his face 2,000 times; the rest went on film and stunt doubles. Radcliffe also went through 160 pairs of Harry’s round-frame glasses.

24. HELENA BONHAM CARTER KEPT HER BELLATRIX TEETH.

“I loved my [fake] teeth!” the actress told EW. “I kept them because they're not going to fit anybody else. I keep them in a blue plastic thing in the bathroom and bring them out when I miss [Bellatrix].’”

25. THERE COULD HAVE BEEN AN OFFICIAL HARRY POTTER MUSICAL.

Rowling has turned down a lot of proposed Harry Potter ideas—including, she told Winfrey, a musical that Michael Jackson wanted to do. Earlier this year, Rowling announced that she’s working with a team to bring a new Harry Potter story to the stage; Harry Potter and the Cursed Childwill hit the West End in 2016.

26. DUMBLEDORE WAS GAY.

In 2007, when asked by a fan whether or not Hogwarts’s favorite headmaster had ever been in love, Rowling responded, “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” She revealed that he had fallen in love with Grindelwald, “and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was.”

Rowling said she found the reaction to the news very interesting. “To me it was not a big deal,” she told Radcliffe. “This is a very old man who has a very terrible job to do. And his gayness is not really relevant. Very relevant to him as a character, because I always saw him as a very lonely character. And I think that there is in fact a hint of it in [Deathly Hallows] because of the relationship he has with Grindelwald. He fell very hard for this boy ...  And don’t you think it was perfect that Dumbledore, who is always the great champion of love … his one great experience of love was utterly tragic.”

This led to one very necessary tweak to the Half-Blood Prince script. “In an early draft of that script, Dumbledore said to Harry … ‘I remember a young woman with eyes of flashing whatever, raven-haired…’ and I read this and I scribbled on my copy of the script, ‘Steve, Dumbledore is gay,’ shoved it up the table,” she said. “And Steve [said,] ‘Oh.’ So that’s why that line didn’t make the film.”

27. ROWLING ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A HARRY/HERMIONE PAIRING MIGHT HAVE WORKED.

In an interview with Emma Watson for Wonderland magazine in 2014, Rowling said that “I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” saying that they ended up together “for reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it … The attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it … I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility.”

She noted that “in some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit,” and that she felt that “quite strongly” when she wrote a particular scene in Deathly Hallows, where Harry and Hermione are in the tent. “I hadn’t told [Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point,” she said.

28. BACK IN THE DAY, THE MALFOYS HUNG OUT WITH RICH MUGGLES.

“Until the imposition of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692, the Malfoy family was active within high-born Muggle circles, and it is said that their fervent opposition to the imposition of the Statute was due, in part, to the fact that they would have to withdraw from this enjoyable sphere of social life,” Rowling wrote on Pottermore. In fact, one Malfoy might have had designs on the British Throne: “There is ample evidence to suggest that the first Lucius Malfoy was an unsuccessful aspirant to the hand of Elizabeth I, and some wizarding historians allege that the Queen's subsequent opposition to marriage was due to a jinx placed upon her by the thwarted Malfoy,” Rowling writes. The Malfoys gave up their Muggle fraternizing when the Ministry of Magic, “the new heart of power,” was founded.

29. MOANING MYRTLE HAS AN INTERESTING INSPIRATION.

Rowling wrote on Pottermore that the whiny, bathroom-dwelling ghost was inspired by “the frequent presence of a crying girl in communal bathrooms, especially at the parties and discos of my youth. This does not seem to happen in male bathrooms, so I enjoyed placing Harry and Ron in such uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

30. MUGGLES CAN’T MAKE POTIONS.

And that’s because you can’t make potions without wands. “Merely adding dead flies and asphodel to a pot hanging over a fire will give you nothing but nasty-tasting, not to mention poisonous, soup,” Rowling wrote on Pottermore. Though her least favorite subject in school was Chemistry, she admitted that “I always enjoyed creating potions in the books, and researching ingredients for them. Many of the components of the various draughts and libations that Harry creates for Snape exist (or were once believed to exist) and have (or were believed to have) the properties I gave them.”

31. ROWLING’S EDUCATION CAME IN HANDY.

At university, she minored in Classics, and she put that education to good use, peppering the books with Latin. “It just amused me, the idea that wizards would still be using Latin as a living language, although it is, as scholars of Latin will know,” she said in 2000. “I take great liberties with the language for spells. I see it as a kind of mutation that the wizards are using.” Expelliarmus, for example, combines expellere, meaning “drive out” or “expel,” with arma, meaning “weapon,” and knocks weapons from an enemy’s hands. Incendio, which lights a fire, comes from incendiarius, or “fire-raising.” And Hogwarts’s motto is Draco Dormiens Numquam Titillandus—“Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon.”

32. THERE WAS ONE HARRY POTTER QUESTION ROWLING FEARED THE MOST.

It was “What was Dumbledore's wand made of?”

“That would have been quite a telling question,” Rowling told Time. “Because I had this elder thing in my mind, cause elder has this association in folklore, it's the death tree. I thought, ‘What am I going to say?’” Thankfully, no one ever asked.

33. STEPHEN KING THOUGHT DOLORES UMBRIDGE WAS A GREAT VILLAIN.

In his review of Order of the Phoenix for Entertainment Weekly, King said, “The gently smiling Dolores Umbridge, with her girlish voice, toadlike face, and clutching, stubby fingers, is the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter” [PDF].

34. YOU CAN SPOT A CRUMPLE-HORNED SNORKACK IN THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER ...

It’s on the second story of the Magical Menagerie. Luna’s father, Xenophilius Lovegood, claimed it was a real creature, but it was never found. Rowling said that Luna, who became a naturalist, had to eventually “accept that her father might have made that one up.”

35. … AS WELL AS ARTHUR WEASLEY’S FLYING CAR.

The flying Ford Anglia—which Harry and Ron flew into the Whomping Willow and later saved them from Acromantulas in the books—can be found in line for the Dragon Challenge roller coaster, just over the bridge and before entering the castle.

[nelioe]

I have returned! And this isn’t going to be coherent, so bear that in mind if you proceed.

It was a good weekend, but I really missed Mark Ferguson. 

But at least instead we all got to meet Steve O’Gorman (no, you didn’t read that wrong or was it Steven? It kinda changed over the days of the weekend) and Babs.

The Comedy Hour was hilarious and I won’t ever forget watching Dean trying to say “Eichhörnchen” and Craig having to step in to correct him every time or how everyone lost it, when they did that dubbing movie scene and Dean first dubbed Lori’s long whatever-gibberish into a simple “yes” and afterwards turned a supposedly short phrase into an intense monologue. xD

Also I loved that story about that one time they had to film on location and Dean and Aidan went missing, because they were chatting and laughing so much that they didn’t pay attention to where they were going and ended up driving for an hour into the wrong direction, while everyone else wondered where they were.  As a side note, apparently Aidan and Martin were always the last to read the scripts (Stephen Hunter joked that they had a little game going on who would read it last and Aidan won.)

In his panel Graham was asked if he and Dean planned to continue their hostage story and Graham replied that he would need to talk to Dean about it. Apparently they did a follow-up video, but sadly I wasn’t able to see it because I had to leave early to be back at work this morning.

What else... oh yes, I already mentioned this scene with Dwalin and Bombur at one point, which they apparently actually filmed. Basically Graham was asked about the naked dwarf calender and he replied that it was something that came up in make-up like another thing he assumed would come out one day. (The real Adam Brown was also something that was mentioned in this context.) This thing was the Dwalin/Bombur “love story”. But anyway, Graham then started to tell the audience how they just acted out a scene in which Dwalin admits his love for Bombur, which Graham then replicated on stage. So they are at the end of the journey and Dwalin walks slowly towards Bombur saying stuff like “You are really quiet, I like that”, while Bombur watches him with a terrified expression. This goes on for some time, with Dwalin getting closer and closer and just when Bombur wants to say something, Dwalin puts his finger to Bombur’s lips and goes “shh, you will wake the dragon.” Still can’t quite believe that, but well, if they let them do the real Adam Brown, it’s not so far-fetched that they let them do this as well. 

Also, Dean said his man-bun was some kind of midlife-crises choice.

It’s so interesting, you think you can’t hear anything new and then stuff like this comes out. :P

[tortuga-aak]

'Call Me by Your Name' star Michael Stuhlbarg chats about acting in 3 Oscar contenders coming out this holiday season

Frazer Harrison/Getty

Michael Stuhlbarg has starred recently in everything from "Steve Jobs" and "Arrival" to this season of "Fargo."

By the end of 2017, he'll be in some of the most acclaimed movies of the year — "Call Me by Your Name," "The Shape of Water," and "The Post."

Stuhlbarg talks about being involved in these hits, and playing the memorable Arnold Rothstein role in HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."

Every few years there seems to be one actor who shows up in a string of memorable movies, but you have no clue what his or her name is. That kind of actor is referred as a “That Guy” — the face is memorable but not the name — and Michael Stuhlbarg is the latest That Guy character actor to have his moment in the sun. Just look at his filmography since 2015: “Steve Jobs,” “Arrival,” “Doctor Strange,” “Miss Sloane,” and he kicked off this year by starring in the latest season of “Fargo.” But the best is yet to come. Stuhlbarg will finish things off this year with roles in some of the most acclaimed movies of 2017: Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name” (now in theaters), Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (opening December 1), and Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” (December 22). Business Insider chatted with Stuhlbarg about his recent run of hits, what it was like shooting the touching father-son scene in “Call Me by Your Name,” learning Russian in just a few weeks for his role in “The Shape of Water,” his regrets from “Boardwalk Empire,” and the choices an actor now must face in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against some of the biggest names in the industry. Jason Guerrasio: You've been in an incredible groove the last few years. Have you changed how you've gone about taking roles?

Michael Stuhlbarg: I have very little control of the kinds of things that come my way, so I've just tried to make the best decisions possible depending upon what comes along. There are artists out there that I have huge respect for, and in some cases projects involving them have come my way of late, so I've just leap at the opportunity. Whether it's been Noah Hawley with “Fargo,” or Guillermo with “The Shape of Water,” or with Luca, or with Mr. Spielberg with “The Post.” I'm really just making the best out of what has presented itself as an opportunity.

Youtube Embed: http://www.youtube.com/embed/Z9AYPxH5NTM Width: 560px Height: 315px

Guerrasio: And along the way do you consciously have to grab a role here or there that's a payday? To pay the bills?

Stuhlbarg: I've been really lucky in that some of the work that I've had of late has, um —

Guerrasio: Satisfied you both creatively and financially?

Stuhlbarg: Yes. It really has.

Guerrasio: That's great!

Stuhlbarg: Yeah. It's just how things have happened. But it's always understandable when people have to survive. If an opportunity came along and something in my private affairs needed some funding, [laughs] perhaps I would make a different kind of choice. But, as I said, I haven't had much to do with the kinds of things that have come my way.

Guerrasio: What do you mean by that exactly?

Stuhlbarg: Well, there's timing that comes into it, in when something is going to be shot and whether you're going to be available for it. And other than that the only other power I have is if I don't want to be a part of something, I get to say "no." So I guess what I mean is I had no control over Luca being interested in working with me in “Call Me By Your Name.” It just sort of came into my life. I've never really campaigned for a role because I'm not privy to that kind of information oftentimes. So I make decisions on what has been presented to me.

Guerrasio: What grabbed you about the Mr. Perlman character in “Call Me By Your Name?"

Stuhlbarg: Everything about this project grabbed me. The idea that I got to work with Luca. That James Ivory was involved. That we would shoot in the North of Italy. I love to travel for work. That was a wonderful part of this job. And the character itself and the deeply felt sentiments he gets to convey.

Sony Pictures ClassicsGuerrasio: Speaking of that, there's an amazing scene toward the end of the movie where your character has a heart-to-heart with his son. It's a real highlight of the movie. Could you feel what you saw on the script, or while shooting it, that the scene could be a memorable moment in the movie?

Stuhlbarg: I think I had heard previous that it was a part of the novel that people also found to be quite moving. So, yes, going into it there was a certain gravity, I'll say, to that text. We shot the film in chronological order so I certainly felt after being alone with that material for many weeks and trying it a million different ways that I was ready to convey it when we had to.

Guerrasio: Is that a scene where you don’t do a lot of takes? Because you've been with the material for so long I’m assuming you were very prepared.

Stuhlbarg: We spoke through it once for camera movements and then we did what ended up being a more emotional take first and then a more direct take afterwards. And Luca felt like he got what he needed after our two takes and we moved on.

Guerrasio: There's all this chatter of Luca wanting to do a "Call My By Your Name" sequel, is that something that's already been discussed with you?

Stuhlbarg: I just hear it through interviews. I'm in. I had an amazing time. He really loves these characters. I think it would be fascinating to explore them in different ways.

Guerrasio: Did you shoot this first or “The Shape of Water?"

Stuhlbarg: I shot “Call Me By Your Name” first. “The Shape of Water” was not long after.

Youtube Embed: http://www.youtube.com/embed/XFYWazblaUA Width: 560px Height: 315px

Guerrasio: What's great is in the span of weeks we'll see you playing two very different characters, Mr. Perlman in “Call Me by Your Name” then Mr. Hoffstetler in “The Shape of Water.” What grabbed you about that character?

Stuhlbarg: Well, first that Guillermo knew who I was. [Laughs] He said he had written this part with me in mind. The style of that film sort of marries some magical realism and Cold War intrigue with a romance. It's a very different kind of style. And I also had to speak Russian in it, which was a huge challenge.

Guerrasio: With the Russian, how far in do you go with trying to master the language?

Stuhlbarg: I try to go as deeply as I can given the time that I have. In this instance, there's a process that you go through. I had to wait for the dialogue to be written into Russian, that took a while, then I worked with a tutor who helped me break down the nuances. One idea conveyed in English may be done in the reverse order in Russian. So there's hearing the words, then articulating them, and phonetics, and then repetition, repetition.

Guerrasio: This takes weeks? Months?

Stuhlbarg: A lot of my stuff was up first so I didn't have much time, so we're talking weeks.

Guerrasio: Do you enjoy watching with an audience the movies you're in?

Stuhlbarg: You never know what a movie is going to be the first time you see it. It's been living in your head and your heart in particular ways. It's always jarring and often times, with me, my appreciation will grow for it over time when I get to see it a number of times. But I do love to sit there and see people react to it. I love that part of what we get to do. They always end up laughing or crying in places you didn't necessarily expect them to.

HBOGuerrasio: One of your most memorable characters up to this point in your career is as Arnold Rothstein in "Boardwalk Empire.” I talked to Terence Winter once and he said he really regretted not being able to give the character a better send-off. Were you disappointed about that as well?

Stuhlbarg: Well, I had very little control over the situation. HBO had made a decision about ending the series a little bit earlier than I thought so they reduced the size of the final season and Terry said to me he wanted to utilize Rothstein in some way, like in flashbacks, and they just couldn't find a way to do it. Of course, I would have loved to have had the opportunity to have given him a good send-off. And I loved the strange circumstance of his demise, which would have made a great part of an episode.

Guerrasio: Because in real life Rothstein died during a card game or something like that, right?

Stuhlbarg: Yeah. He went to the Park Central Hotel, which still exists in New York City. On the third floor. Shots rang out, we're not sure where the shots came from, but it was supposedly related to the money he owed over a three-day poker game he was in the month before. He didn’t pay up because he thought the game was fixed. He never gave up who it was who shot him. He's got the gangster code. He died a couple of days later. I had a great time learning about him.

Guerrasio: But it has to eat at you a little. That could have been its own standalone episode.

Stuhlbarg: Yeah. But you just have to let things go.

Guerrasio: You starred in the Netflix movie, "Gore," which stars Kevin Spacey and is no longer being released due to the sexual harassment allegations against him. Going forward, do you now factor in sexual misconduct allegations into if you choose a role or not? What I mean is if an actor, director, or producer who has allegations against them is involved in a movie that you are up for a part in, do you now decline? Whether it be because of your own personal feelings or on just a business decision as you may encounter another experience like "Gore" where the movie doesn't see the light of day.

Stuhlbarg: That's a hard question. I think we all have to make our own decisions in regards to these things. I'd like to believe that given time I would make whatever decision I felt was the decision I needed to make. It's an individual choice. I don't know how I would answer that. [Pause] I'll just say these are all individual decisions we all have to make by ourselves. I would have to weigh what was important to me at the time.

NOW WATCH: These realistic animations will mess with your mind

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[09gebaeudereinigung7-blog]

gebäudereinigung graz

Why, for paradises benefit, its none other than a bored, disgruntled Al Gore, Jr. the Guy Who Personally Believes He Coulda/Woulda/Shoulda Been King! Al Gore Jr. cruises about foreign resources in one gas-guzzling, chauffeured Mercedes after another, contemplating one really deep thought after an additional while solemnly touching away on his Mac Powerbook. Earth to Al Gore: Actor Steven Seagal currently toenailed down the glossy however glazed poseur appearance about 9 motion pictures back.

Is previous Veep Gore actually hoping to educate movie target markets about the really significant threats of carbon dioxide exhausts, greenhouse gases and also sudden environment adjustment, or conniving to create a multi-media white paper for the Democratic Partys power schedule? Maybe, it is because Al Gore, as well as the films executive producer Davis Guggenheim, were themselves perplexed as to the instructions in which they were heading with this egotistical political publicity.

For those that missed it, in one scene Gore used a belt buckle the size of a little recipe, when passing via the airports steel detector. Or how concerning the scene where a pompous Al Gore (sans bodyguards) was hailing a cab in Manhattan, but no one identified him? Who actually cares about Al?

The guy, who at one time claimed to have actually created the Web, more very carefully documented his alleged 30-year personal project to assist bring Worldwide Warming to a screeching halt. Were sure Gore was preparing for the I created the Net jokes and dutifully prepared his track document for target markets.

How seriously can we take Researcher Al Gore? In a Washington Message post (March 19, 2000), Als grades as well as ratings were wondered about, during the presidential campaign, and the aide headmaster at Gores independent school, St. Albans, supposedly chuckled at (Gores) scientific research results. He had scored so improperly.

Gores one constant, his glibness, shows up in this quasi-documentary. Primarily its a political commercial, but for whatever reason Gore was so fervently pitching as well as hyping Al Gore was never ever made clear. He hasn't fairly comprehended how severe the earths critical adjustments can affect our civilization, apart from flicking through several photos of receding glaciers and a few various other tidbits. Gore states we could have 100 million evacuees if water level rise, as if those lots of would actually make it through. In contrast, Dr. Lovelock, writer of The Revenge of Gaia, is forecasting the demise of billions of people under the very same earth is melting circumstance. Whom do our team believe? We vote Lovelock, not Gore. The politician confesses, in a recent Rolling Stone publication interview, Lovelock has actually neglected more scientific research than Gore has actually ever before found out.

Whatever gravity the poseur represented throughout his supercilious narration, and in his deep-thinking (however unpleasant) postures, Gore squashed these moments with awkward flashbacks to the 2000 presidential project. (Well, Gore apparently did a great deal of medications in college, so we guess he's entitled to his flashbacks.) While he claimed in his motion picture to have proceeded, the guy still appeared downright bitter throughout this pre-campaigning film farce. His motion picture exudes contempt for the guy who beat him, as well as supplies the same ill will toward any person distantly relevant family members, service or otherwise to the male who is now President of the USA. For those who aided maintain him out of the White Home or dissed him? He repays his opponents in such a way only a screenwriter can: Gore includes his adversaries to his flick.

Of all the lakes in the world which are drying out up, Gore chooses Lake Chad. For those who have actually neglected, it http://sd-gebaeudereinigung.eu was the well-known chads, which set you back Gore the presidency. Darn it Al, will you let it go?

Movie goers must wonder why an ex-tobacco farmer, and also quondam UNITED STATE presidential candidate (going 0 for 2 on presidential projects), has actually just CURRENTLY come out against nonrenewable fuel sources because of Worldwide Warming. Whats his agenda? To educate the public? If that is the case, then the filmmakers should have concentrated on the matter at hand the earth is getting hotter, and we need an option. Dr. James Lovelocks mandate is basic: Atomic energy is the single option. Pay attention up, Hillary Clinton you might have delighted in Als ramblings, as well as stated so in your pompous New York Press Club speech last May, but where is Gores actual solution to the International Warming crisis?

The self-righteous Al Jr. provides no remedy in his flick. Also when asked by a target market in China for his solution, Gore spouts non-sequiturs political rhetoric, however no word of a remedy. The movie director deftly removes prior to Al can look even sillier, while we wonder why Al used no remedy.

Was the blustering Al or his confused movie director hoping the audience would pick a service for them? Just join Als campaign as well as start driving a hybrid cars and truck. In one scene, Al boasts regarding the Chinese riding their bicycles and also flashes an outdated picture revealing this.

In a meeting with Australias The Age paper, published in November 2005, Gore informed the press reporter he was not reflexively versus nuclear power. In another meeting with Grist Publications David Roberts, published in May of this year, Gore reacted to examining about the nuclear energy renaissance, claiming, I doubt nuclear power will certainly play a much bigger duty than it does currently.

Possibly, Gore will begin touting renewables, as Hillary Clinton has done on part of lapdog/energy master Amory Lovins. Miller informed us, We were 100 percent eco-friendly 300 years back, 50 percent renewable 100 years back and 30 percent eco-friendly 50 years ago.

We are discovering to make use of far better technology to make purer power to do more for us. Millers reply on Al Gores message was emphatic, Those that teach regarding saving the earth needs to practice what they speak, but the loudest voices are those that take in the most.

One could look deeper to much better comprehend Al Gores ambiguity towards any solution. Simply in time to cash in on the oil stoppage of 1973, Al Gores papa was paid $500,000 per year for his services. Al Gore Sr. likewise offered as a business supervisor.

Have the wrongs of the dad visited the child? For the past thirty or forty years, Al Gore has supposedly received a mining royalty check from Occidental Oil for zinc ore discovered on the Gore household residential property. Reportedly, Al has been paid around $20,000 each year for mining rights to the property. Thats just chump change. Long prior to the Buddhist Temple fund-raising mess in Los Angeles, Al Gore was involved in uncertain political fundings.

We didnt appearance that a lot extra deeply right into Al Gore. Gores remorse appears rigged; his acting is worthless. He makes a truly huge offer concerning this in his movie (regardless of his very own supposed chain-smoking behaviors as an university student).

Gore likewise forgot his vibrant 1988 presidential political election campaign speeches, defending cigarette farmers in the southerly United States. Our research reveals Gore proceeded approving campaign contributions from cigarette firms until at the very least 1990. Instead of being sincere with his audience, Gore pointed out in passing that the factor he ran for Head of state in 1988 was to provide International Warming up some exposure.

In his movie, Gore asserted to have transformed the way he performed his congressional duties after his six-year old kid was struck by an automobile and also almost died. Throughout his film, Gore utilizes every personal catastrophe to play upon the target markets heart strings. What does that have to do with Worldwide Warming? Absolutely nothing, yet it assists as well as advocates an or else insincere political leader to much better sell his supposed sincerity concerning sudden climate adjustment. The message is great; the carrier requires to use up a brand-new pastime. Like unsuccessfully competing president once again so he can ultimately get his simply is worthy of: Strike Three, youre outa right here!

Why pay excellent money to get bored out of your skull with this blas motion picture? Conserve the $7 to $10 (or more) on Al Gores Inconvenient Infomercial by reading the same things for no charge whatsoever (as well as without the deep-thinking, brooding ex-politician who invests nearly all of his 100 minutes preaching in your face). Kevin Bambrough and Eric Sprott composed a detailed report, covering a lot, otherwise greater than what the Gore film attempted to review.

[anhed-nia]

5/6/17: COLOSSAL, aka GODZILLA VS THE SHINING

I have a lot of dreams about killing people. There is no consistency among the victims; sometimes they are dear friends, sometimes they are passing acquaintances, sometimes they are complete strangers.There is no consistency in my motive. Sometimes I make some sort of violent mistake and decide I need to "finish it"; sometimes I'm following the orders of a ringleader; sometimes I have no idea why I did it. There is never, though, a feeling that I enjoyed it. In fact, the violence itself is rarely "on screen" for much of the dream. The sticky, sour feeling of the violence clings to me, but only as a sort of garnish for my feelings about being a murderer. The experience is confusing and sad, and the aftermath is unbearable. You have changed your life, and even your very identity. You have changed the lives of other people forever, and actually terminated another life, and you have no explanation that would ever be the equal of this event. You have gone from being whatever you thought you were--a wife, a father, a teacher, a fireman, whatever you were--to being a murderer. You wonder if you can face the punishment that you absolutely deserve, and also, whether you can even wrap your head around the logistics of running away and "starting over", even though you'll never be able to live with yourself.

The dreams are not, of course, about actual murder.They are about doing something irrevocable. Or more to the point, the fear of doing something that requires absolute and everlasting commitment, that can never be transformed by apologies or rationales. In the first act or so of a human life, virtually everything can be ameliorated by context, forgiven as youthful folly, or later, as something you did when you were a different person. We romanticize the importance of making bittersweet mistakes to the process of maturing. Then one day, you're a certain age, you've graduated from college, you've entered the job market, and others have the same exacting expectations of you that you have had of your parents. Now your behavior is of consequence. It defines who you are as an individual, and describes your ability to value your life and the lives of other people. Your actions have taken on a sort of indelible quality, making up your dreaded permanent record.

This is, as the trailers let you know, part of the premise of COLOSSAL. It was the part that worried me (even though I've just confessed to being something of an aging zygote myself). I thought, do we really need a SCOTT PILGRIM 2? Are we, the human race, doomed to worship at the shiny plastic altars of high school romcoms and "one crazy night" coed adventures no matter our age or generation? I've never been particularly fond of Ann Hathaway in any case, but like, how old is she by now and is she supposed to be that old in this peppy coming of age comedy about a feckless hipster finding herself? I set this concern aside and committed to a screening on the encouragement of its more novel conceit: A straight up kaiju appears in Seoul, and Mme Hathaway discovers that she's controlling it. I hesitated to write about this movie for a long time after I first saw it, because I felt sure that people would be talking about it, nay, obsessing over it. The formula had indeed been proven out by SCOTT PILGRIM, hadn't it? Or even before that, by Joss Whedon, whose exclusive approach is placing flirty fashion plates in high octane sci-fi/fantasy scenarios. I thought that by the time I got to my keyboard, everything I had to say would have been made redundant. However, as of my second helping of this movie, even the Whedonites in my circles don't know what's going on with this movie, so, here I am. 

For a time, COLOSSAL does make good on its more boring promises. Aging party girl Gloria (Hathaway) has just been dumped by her rich bitch boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens), who is sick and tired of her chronic unemployment and constant gadding about. With nowhere else to go, the erstwhile blogger sensation leaves Manhattan for her vacant family home upstate, where she encounters childhood chum Oscar (SNL alum Jason Sudeikis). Naturally, our narcissistic heroine doesn't remember too much about her apparently charming, rugged, upstanding pal, who seems to have been waiting all these years to show her the love she deserves. He manages to get her flighty attention with the quirky bar he runs, which is "so ironic" and "just like a Wes Anderson movie!" Sometime during what's turning out to be a rolling blackout, Oscar gets boozy Gloria to agree to work at his saloon, creating a great opportunity for the two to couple up. That part of the movie will help this stuck up city girl get back to her unpretentious roots, and then the part of the movie where she learns that a giant monster is physically tied to her will teach her to control her outrageous behavior...right?

Well, that's partly true, but what's MOSTLY true is that after about the first third, COLOSSAL downshifts into a serious and often harrowing drama about addiction and domestic abuse. The first unusual feature of this GODZILLA AND ULTRAMAN'S 500 MIXTAPES OF ETERNAL SUMMER story is that civilian mortality is taken very, very seriously. Anne Hathaway may not be a very good alcoholic--the direction keeps her liquor-fueled crises from feeling organic, and she's always way too put-together, like where was Abbi Jacobson when they were making this?--but she manages to nail the next most important thing, which is Gloria's mindbending horror at the devastation of Seoul. This is probably a good time to disclose my abiding hatred for disaster porn. Even if it centers on Dwayne Johnson tarzanically swinging between crumbling skyscrapers to scoop up errant family members, I am acutely nauseated by "entertainment" about people being blown up and buried alive, as happens absolutely all the time in conditions of war, terrorism, and so-called acts of god. Movies like these, no matter how stupid and breezy, always send chills down my spine. So, on that account, I was deeply gratified to find Gloria immediately and viscerally revolted by the news feed from Korea. But then, she makes the desperate mistake of calling her recently ex'd boyfriend Tim, who has a disturbing reaction to her chosen topic of conversation: "That was nine hours ago. What have you been doing all day?"

At first this just seems like an awkward piece of writing, but it's an important indicator of the film's real focus. Tim really is less interested in massive loss of life and large scale paranormal phenomena, than he is in whether his not-even-girlfriend-anymore is straightening her shit out, and not drinking all night with Oscar and his weird friends. She did, of course, spend all night at the bar, but this is the first time we can tell that Gloria might not be her own biggest problem. Tim seems reasonable at first--of course an independent adult should be gainfully employed, of course people should control their drinking instead of letting their drinking control them. But, his rapid shift of attention from world-changing events to criticizing his loser ex-girlfriend is a major red flag. The fact that Gloria doesn't call him out on this is not only a testament to her guilt, but evidence of something rotten in their relationship.

Meanwhile, Oscar is busy positioning himself as the answer to her prayers. Not only has he set her up with a job, but he begins furnishing her home--first comes a big screen TV, and then a bed, and much more. These gifts are supposedly a response to her specific requests, made during a late, drunken conversation she can't even remember. Oscar's benevolence is therefore a little mysterious, but Gloria is distracted by a bigger mystery: Why it is that the monster emerges in Seoul at the same time each morning, during which she's usually stumbling home from the bar through a playground? That coincidence alone is a little empty, but it gains meaning when she also notices that the creature's physical gestures exactly match her activities (making a phone call, lugging a grocery bag) during these AM sojourns. The next time she's suitably hammered, she decides to prove to Oscar that, using the playground as a sort of game board, she can manifest the monster and make it do whatever she wants. Of course, her being so tipsy results in a clumsy fall, resulting in hundreds of Korean casualties.

Hathaway again produces her impressive, apoplectic shame, which so helps the movie achieve its grave potential. However, while Gloria is feeling the unbearable weight of her responsibility, her would-be hero Oscar is only interested in the fact that, when he helped haul her off the playground, a giant robot turned up in Seoul. Admittedly, that's a pretty wild development, but it's just as important that Oscar seriously lacks empathy. He helps Gloria try to address her predicament, but he doesn't have time for her emotional distress, nor concern for any of the victims--he only has one goal in mind. Like "the one" in a John Hughes movie, he sappily confesses that he's been following the details of her life online ever since she left home, ostensibly because he admires her so much. Savvy viewers will worry that here, COLOSSAL commits the cardinal sin of equating true love with stalking. Personally, I also worried that this was one of those movies where a talented, vital young woman is punished relentlessly for elevating herself above her humble beginnings, ala REALITY BITES and countless others. However, COLOSSAL is a movie that keeps its secrets almost too well, so it's still a welcome surprise when Oscar eventually turns out to have bigger issues than the prideful presumption that he deserves Gloria.

Make no mistake, Jason Sudeikis is the real star of this movie. Many people seemed to have low expectations of him based on his lite comedy track record, but as Oscar, he is capable of often frightening depth and gravity. He begins to reveal his true nature when, intoxicated both literally and by his newfound robot power, he begins stomping around the playground on his own. A horrified Gloria stops him, creating a kaiju battle in Seoul that the global public absolutely loves. Just like in the actual Godzilla franchise, the introduction of a new character makes the once-fearsome creature into a good guy. Oscar takes this pretty hard, especially when the fight turns out to be so very meme-worthy. After a full day of escalating drinking and self-pity, he finally launches an attack on Gloria, which starts as verbal but comes to a nasty physical conclusion. The event is fueled as much by jealousy, as it is by Gloria experimenting with sobreity, which Oscar naturally reads as as a tacit criticism of his drinking. The following day, she visits him at home for the first time, to try to reject the entire household's worth of furniture that he sent over, and we find out how he really lives. Outside, Oscar is a likable, stable-seeming Average Joe who looks like he just stepped out of a truck ad. At home, he's a shambling mess whose inner chaos is reflected by a house that looks a little like something from Hoarders. It becomes clear that his previous romantic affair didn't end due to the woman's "boredom" with him, but with his own destructive behavior. At the sight of a weepy, shame-faced Oscar, Gloria makes two critical mistakes: First, she forgives him, and second, she accepts his tossed off agreement to her inadequate demand that he just stop drinking "after hours". Anyone who has ever dealt with an addict knows where this is going, and actually, where it has been all this time.

Lest anyone think that this narrative turn suggests that Gloria belongs with Tim, the ex shows up in town on the flimsy premise that he's meeting a with a client. He's obviously there to reclaim his woman, but his approach is important: He forgoes reminiscing about the good times, or any form of flattery or affection, for immediately browbeating her about her new waitressing gig. Tim doesn't want Gloria to pull herself up by her bootstraps and make an honest dollar, he wants her to become something that would reflect better on him personally. He's not interested in the loss of life in Seoul because he doesn't have any control over that--he fixates on Gloria, who he could easily replace with a more suitable mate, because he has enjoyed total control over her emotions and her self-esteem. It's not nearly as important for Tim to find companionship as it is for him to retain the passive services of someone he can regularly torture for failing to live up to his personal standards.

The following sequence is terrifying, but for a more subtle reason than that Oscar sets his bar on fire to prove to Tim that Gloria won't leave his side, no matter what he does. Of course, he leaves out the fact that she stays because he's threatened to trounce Seoul any time she's not around to stop him--but, this scene will be familiar to anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship. Your failure to rebel against the tyrant is humiliatingly obvious to everyone around you. Your fear of what this person will do if you "just stand up for yourself" is not. But more to my point, what is really frightening about this sequence is not the grander consequences, for Gloria and for the world. It's that she's trapped at a table, not with two jealous rivals who want to win her heart, but with two men who are fighting for the exclusive privilege of hating her, with the full force with which a man can hate a woman.

Tim's self-righteous loathing of Gloria may be slightly more innocuous than Oscar's unpredictable mood swings and physical brutality. But, the two do overlap. I will say, from extensive experience, that a man can want you to be both better than him, and worse than him, at the same time, and he will reserve the right to punish you for each. A man can entice you with his admiration for your intelligence, creativity and kindness, all of which is so impressive to a sad little nobody like himself who doesn't deserve you. Unfortunately, this Beauty and the Beast routine always dredges up the dangerous question, "If you can love a piece of shit like me, then what the fuck is wrong with you?" Where your love was once considered a prize, it gradually becomes a crime; where you were once regarded as a saint, you are now seen as some sort of degenerate whore who needs to be taught a lesson. He may accuse you, more benignly, of being a "doormat"--but, if you have the nerve to show a little more confidence, then you're suddenly guilty of throwing a spotlight on his inferiority, again. In one of the easier-to-discuss aspects of the relationship I'm describing, my boyfriend went from courting me at my retail job, to dating me and shaming me for my retail job, to objecting to my job search by accusing me of trying to fuck whoever I'd be working for, to crumbling in a fit of self-hatred when I got a job that he would have actually been proud of. In one of my only displays of bravery, I asked him all the time why he wouldn't just break up with me, if he hated everything I did so much. He changed the subject, finding something new to berate me for, 100% of the time that I asked this question. It took me a long time to realize that the answer was, he liked things just the way they were. He wanted me at the ready whenever he had the urge to play out his twin dramas of being a worthless worm, or an imperious alpha male whose shining light no one truly deserved. I was a sort of sundial by which he could prove something about himself, whatever it was that he was feeling most strongly at that moment. Oscar demonstrates this thinking brilliantly when Gloria tries to stop him from perpetrating another mass murder, by assaulting her and shouting in a twisted non sequitur, "YOU THINK EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND YOU! WELL IT DOESN'T, NOT ANYMORE!" If Oscar wants to teach Gloria that she's beneath him, then he's going to have to own her, to make of their relationship a class she can never pass.

Up to this point, Oscar has offered up a textbook's worth of indicators of an abusive boyfriend, without so much as a kiss from Gloria. He spies on her online, he takes advantage of her drunken states to ask invasive questions and trap her into major commitments, he insists on doing her favors that she rejects and then blames her for forcing him to do them, he tries to isolate her from other men, he buys her expensive gifts to keep her in constant debt, he takes control of her income and, later, her ability to go anywhere without him. As is ALWAYS the case, he condemns his absent ex-girlfriend for leaving him for shallow reasons, overwriting the more obvious narrative of alcoholism and intimate terrorism, and inadvertently admitting that he himself fears that he's "boring". The things that he casts as Gloria's virtues--that she was talented from a young age, and ambitious enough to act on his own private dreams of moving to the big city and becoming a writer--are actually the precise things that he has hated about her since early childhood. She even scored the hero role in the conflict playing out in Seoul, where his giant robot inspires only fear and anger. He's going to show her how little she deserves what she has, even if it means beating her with his fists on a playground that children pass on their way to school. (For which I would really like to congratulate the film, actually, you don't usually see this ever outside of  grittier dramas, or more gimmicky pieces like SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY) The end comes into sight when Gloria realizes that Tim's backhanded encouragement isn't a solution to her problems, and more startlingly, that there's probably a patch of land in Seoul that is equivalent to the transcendental playground where Oscar is waiting for her to come and stop his latest rampage. Arriving in Seoul just in time, Gloria manages to manifest her monster in New York. Miraculously, she is able to make it pick up Oscar in its fist, and fling both him and the robot into the nearest (happily coincidental) mountain ranges around each location. It doesn't exactly make a ton of sense, but as I, like Oscar, am burdened by my own damaged subjectivity, I choose to focus on the facets of the film that fulfill my own emotional needs, which includes this terminal act of vengeance. 

I truly wonder how a lot of men view this film, which doesn't employ the same cartoony cliches as typical thrillers about stalkers and bad boyfriends, with their broad-strokes depictions of rape, child endangerment, imprisonment, and beatings. It would be very easy for most men to identify themselves as "not THAT guy" in movies like ENOUGH and THE BOY NEXT DOOR (sorry, J-Lo, but what the fuck?) and be done with the topic, silently reassuring themselves that their actual shitty behavior is no big deal. Even though the United States is currently dealing with actual legislation to decriminalize rape, public awareness has still come a lot farther regarding what constitutes misogyny, than where we were at when I was a teenager, or even in my 20s. My most abusive partner would instinctively proclaim his lefty ally status by invoking his non-white and non-straight and non-male friends at every opportunity, but he didn't know enough not to say to my friends that an annoying acquaintance "needed to get raped". He didn't have the critical thinking necessary to stop himself from sleazily denouncing women who wouldn't help him cheat on me as "only dating black guys". He didn't have the self-confidence nor social consciousness to stop worrying about whether people thought he was a "faggot". Looking back, it's amazing how educated young men, who considered themselves to be on the right side of history, were able to differentiate between wife-beating guns and god people, and their own white knight selves, even though the two groups espoused utterly the same feelings. In a world before the concepts like revenge porn and slut-shaming were widely acknowledged, legions of guys like my abusive ex were especially able to deny their cultural contribution to violence against women, and define their own issues as unique "personal problems" that they could blame individually on "crazy" girlfriends, or high school traumas, or parents who didn't love them enough. I haven't had to find out, luckily, but I've often wondered how men like my ex feel when they watch their heroes on Comedy Central and the like, explicitly damning the behavior of people exactly like themselves. I wonder how my Nerdist-wannabe ex feels when he watches a nerd-baiting action-comedy like COLOSSAL, that turns out to contain an almost academic examination of the way he treated me. I also wonder how I would feel if I had the ability to hurl his helpless body into a mountainside. For better or worse--certainly better, for him--all I can do is write.

[emma-what-son]

The Vulture Batb review

From TheVulture March 2017: The New Beauty and the Beast Is a Lifeless Re-creation of the Original.

Imagine it’s the late 1980s, and you work as an animator at Walt Disney Studios. You’ve been assigned to Beauty and the Beast, a film populated by talking teapots, candlesticks, and wardrobes that’s being pitched as a Broadway-worthy musical extravaganza. You’ve been assigned to design an uppity clock named Cogsworth, and as you sit down to figure out his myriad facial expressions and physical movements, an unshakable thought runs through your head: This is fine, but I just feel so hamstrung by my medium. This guy’s never going to look like an actual clock with a human face. I’m doomed to fail. 

You’d be glad to know, then, that Walt Disney Studios has set out to remedy everything wrong with the original 1991 Beauty and the Beast by producing a “live action” remake of the film. Finally, the unfulfilled promise of the original has come to fruition, by reimagining all its fantastical elements in CGI, and keeping them more faithful to real-world physics, I guess because that seemed like it would be fun.

It’s easy to understand the lure of making the ephemeral tangible; it’s what Disney is banking on for a whole slate of planned live-action treatments of their back catalogue. It’s also the basic premise of Disneyland, and the thing that fuels countless enterprising cosplayers. But in the new Beauty and the Beast the word “tangible” is egregiously stretched. After a couple musical numbers, it occurs to you that the film you’re watching is every bit as animated as the original, but it’s somehow turned out less lifelike, despite its considerable technological advantage.

You likely know the story: A spoiled prince (Dan Stevens) is turned into a beast, and all his servants into objects, in a curse that will be lifted if he ever learns to love and be loved in return. A rebellious bookworm named Belle (Emma Watson) volunteers herself as his prisoner in place of her eccentric father (Kevin Kline) who has accidentally wandered onto beastly property. Over time, they grow fond of each other, despite or because of the lopsided power dynamic in their relationship, but they must overcome the most eligible bachelor Gaston (Luke Evans, the only person having any fun here) and a town full of fearful villagers who would rather see the beast’s head on the wall at the local tavern.

Aside from its production techniques, the film has also sought to update its story for today’s social mores. The poor, provincial town that Belle lives in is more diverse and explicitly anti–female literacy (Belle gets her books from a chapel, not a bookstore), effectively turning her defining hobby into a form of high-stakes resistance. Maurice, her father, is an artist instead of an inventor; it’s Belle who’s out there trying to engineer the world’s first washing machine with a horse and a rolling bucket. And the Beast is revealed to be a bit of a bookworm as well. The titular pair bond over Shakespeare, which softens a romance that’s always been a little hard to swallow.

But it doesn’t make up for his face: an eerie, uncanny valley blend of lifelike CGI fur and Stevens’s human eyes, which never seem to really connect with whatever’s in front of them. We see Stevens briefly as a human in an opening ball scene (which, with its powdered wigs and face paint, unquestionably situates the story in the 18th-century twilight of the French aristocracy — more of that would have been fun), but we’re hardly able to get a handle on him before he disappears into the fur. The same goes for his servants, whose features have been minimized supposedly in the name of realism, but in a way that they all end up resembling the plastered visages in Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon.

Emma Watson is the real headliner here, and physically couldn’t have been more perfectly cast. But someone really should have screen-tested her before she signed on — with an actual green screen. There are actors who can conjure up a world around them on a blank soundstage and make us believe in it just with their eyes; Watson is not one of those actors. Watching her sing to the hills during the re-creation of the iconic “Belle (Reprise)” or wander through the ominous ruins of the castle’s west wing (not that one) I found myself distracted, wondering where she thought she was walking when she filmed it, what she thought she was looking at. Her singing voice could stand to add a little oomph, but it’s the least of the problems in a performance that mostly adds up as a collection of charming poses and furrowed eyebrows. But boy, does she look the part.

If only Beauty and the Beast were just a collection of stills, like a fancy Annie Leibowitz spread for some glossy quarterly edition of Disney Adventures. Unfortunately, it’s over two hours long, and is padded out by a hugely unnecessary number of non–Ashman-Rice musical numbers and a pointless detour where Belle finds out what happened to her missing mother. At every turn, the film seems to ask itself if what the original film did was enough, and answers with a definitive “no.” But hey, at least that clock looked real.

[cinema-tv-etc]

The 2011 film Contagion is even more relevant in 2020, and not just because of coronavirus

The once-again-popular drama has a lot to say about rumors and fake news.

By Alissa Wilkinson Feb 4, 2020

Contagion, the 2011 film about a deadly worldwide virus outbreak, was hugely popular when it came out, raking in $135 million worldwide. And then, a shocker: As the 2020 coronavirus outbreak proliferated, it suddenly became popular again, briefly breaking into the top 10 on the iTunes movie rentals chart on January 28. As of February 3, it was holding steady at No. 11, right behind The Farewell.

Apparently many people reading the news turned to the movies to make sense of what’s going on, and that might have been smart. Upon its release, Contagion was mostly lauded by the scientific community (though not uniformly) for its unusually accurate depiction of how a deadly, highly transmissible virus could spread around the globe, affecting everyone from scientists and government leaders to ordinary people.

The movie features an all-star ensemble (including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle, Bryan Cranston, and more) and a winning writer-director duo in Scott Z. Burns and Steven Soderbergh, who had collaborated on The Informant! in 2009 and, after Contagion, would re-team for Side Effects (2013) and The Laundromat (2019). (Burns also wrote and directed 2019’s The Report.) Like most of their efforts, it’s a taut thriller for wonks, deeply researched and filled with jargon that coaxes viewers to pay attention; behind the entertainment is information that could have a real impact on your own life.

Contagion portrays a world wracked by not just a virus, but a whole set of ills that come along with it — disorder, societal breakdown, the difficulties inherent in finding a cure, individuals who refuse to follow rules, people who set priorities that protect their loved ones before the general public. And no wonder people want to watch it now. It feels like it could have been released yesterday.

Contagion is both horrifying and a little comforting; the scientists do eventually find and release a vaccine, and even though a lot of people die, most of the world’s population manages to survive. World war doesn’t break out. It’s both a horror film and not the worst-case scenario.

But watching Contagion in 2020, what’s most striking about the film isn’t really the central virus itself — or at least it wasn’t for me, though seeing the rising coronavirus fatality count has been heartbreaking. What’s most striking, and what I hope iTunes renters are taking note of, is a different kind of virus, a parallel outbreak for which Alan Krumwiede (played by Jude Law) is patient zero.

Contagion argues that bad information is at least as contagious as the virus itself

Alan Krumwiede is a kind of character who still felt a little fantastical, as I recall, in 2011. He’s a blogger, a conspiracy theorist, a “freelance journalist” in the mold of Alex Jones, with 12 million devoted fans and a penchant for the spotlight. To his audience, Krumwiede peddles various theories about the virus, such as the idea that it’s been genetically engineered. He goes on national television to accuse CDC director Dr. Ellis Cheever (Fishburne) and the entire government apparatus of conspiring with Big Pharma to suppress a simple homeopathic cure, called forsythia, in order to profit off a vaccine.

But Krumwiede is a charlatan who stands to profit off forsythia himself. (Jones has made a hefty sum off his own hawking of dietary supplements — like a pill that will cure the “fungal epidemic” sweeping the nation.) In a video posted to his website, Krumwiede fakes the symptoms of the virus and then “heals” himself with forsythia. Later, we see him roaming the streets in full protective gear, even though he’s supposedly immune; it was all a scam.

Yet Krumwiede’s falsehoods contain just enough of the truth that they spread quickly, infecting viewers prone to his cocktail of fear, paranoia, and mistrust of authorities, particularly those who are supposed to be looking out for them. That, as he tells one man, is his “brand.”

When he confronts Cheever on TV, Krumwiede argues that, as with Hurricane Katrina and Wall Street (presumably he means the housing crisis), what’s really going on is being hidden from the everyday man. Cheever, trying to keep his cool, rebuffs him. “In order to become sick,” he says, “you have to first come into contact with a sick person or something that they touched. In order to get scared, all you have to do is come into contact with a rumor, or the television, or the internet. I think what Mr. Krumwiede is spreading is far more dangerous than the disease.”

“Oh, really,” Krumwiede shoots back. Then he reveals on air that an email written by Cheever has surfaced and is circulating on Facebook. Cheever had sent it to his fiancée, warning her of a quarantine about to be enforced in Chicago, where she lives. The quarantine wasn’t announced to the general public until several hours after the email was sent. See? you can almost hear Krumwiede’s 12 million viewers shouting through the screen. They are withholding the truth from us.

The scary part about Krumwiede’s brand of “virus” is that it infects people’s minds and causes them to act in ways that expressly counteract their own best interests, not to mention the greater good. Once the vaccine has been developed, he threatens to advise his viewers to avoid it, and when he’s arrested and charged with securities fraud, conspiracy, and likely manslaughter, they pool their money and post his bail.

Even “reasonable” people seem prone to his way of thinking in the wake of the virus, whether or not they’ve come into contact with Krumwiede themselves or would ever listen to someone like him in other circumstances. One scientist tells another, offhandedly, that he’s read that the Americans have a cure and are manufacturing it in secret; when she asks him where he’s read that, he says, “The internet.”

“The internet? You believe it?” she says.

“I don’t know,” he replies.

Obviously, people have always been able to sell theories and fake remedies for all kinds of problems to people who are scared for their lives, throughout history. But Contagion reminds us that the structure of the internet allows bad information to spread in a way that uncannily mimics a very contagious virus. (Smallpox, Kate Winslet’s scientist character informs us early on, was often transmitted from one patient to three others; the spread of false, harmful information is much faster and covers more ground thanks to the internet.) And that false information — those unverified rumors and sinister theories — have real-world implications.

I guess that’s easy to see in 2020, with QAnon and Pizzagate and so many other internet-fueled, garden-variety conspiracies wreaking havoc on the real world all the time. But even sensible people find it difficult to resist hoarding masks or shutting out hoaxes about the spread of coronavirus. We’re afraid, and our fear mixed with rumor and hearsay can have dangerous consequences.

Which is why Contagion still rings so true today — and why, maybe, it’s good that people are watching it in times like these. It’s probably not an inoculation against paranoia, but it at least provides a bit of a barrier between us and the virus.

Contagion is available to stream on Hulu (with Cinemax add-on) or digitally rent or purchase on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon, Vudu, and Google Play.

https://www.vox.com/2020/2/4/21120178/contagion-movie-coronavirus-itunes-fake-news

[adambstingus]

5 BS Celebrity Stories We Need To Stop Clicking On

We are currently drowning in a sea of entertainment news. For every one event in Hollywood, there are 500 articles written about it. This means that in order to get hits, some websites find themselves bending the truth eeeeeever so slightly. Or in the case of headlines like these, they take the truth, put it in a paper bag, and light it on fire on your doorstep for you to stomp out.

5

Your Favorite Star Just Teased Their Next Big Movie! Or Not!

Before the internet, you mostly found out that a new movie was going to be released when you saw a trailer which confirmed that yes, Batman would be returning. Now, you can learn such information years in advance, due to headlines screaming that the star or director has proclaimed a movie is “in the works,” or something to that effect. Then, two years later, you’re like, “Wait, wasn’t that thing supposed to be out by now?” That’s because those headlines are usually manufactured bullshit.

For example, while I was writing this, Rotten Tomatoes said the biggest story of the week was Steven Spielberg revealing that after Harrison Ford goes scowling into retirement, the next Indiana Jones would be played by a woman:

Stuff

Complex

CNN

But Spielberg didn’t really say that at all. He said the upcoming Indiana Jones film would be the last for Harrison Ford, so the series could only continue in a different form (i.e. as a reboot). A tabloid straight up asked him about going with a female lead, and he said that there was nothing wrong with it and joked, “We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan,” revealing that, while he is a master filmmaker, he is first and foremost a dad.

Throw in the fact that Spielberg doesn’t own the rights to Indiana Jones (Disney will decide where the franchise goes next), and you realize that asking about anything beyond his personal involvement is futile. But interviewers do this all the time. They give a leading question about a film, get a vague “sure,” then run with the scoop. For example, interviewers have been asking Scarlett Johansson about a solo Black Widow movie for years, resulting in headlines like …

Polygon

… which is misleading, because there is no “Black Widow movie” set in stone yet. Or they’ll ask Marvel captain Kevin Feige, leading to the headline …

Empire Online

… even though an exec saying they’re “creatively and emotionally … most committing to” Black Widow but not actually putting it on their three-year schedule is the exact opposite of a commitment. It’s like when your parents said “We’ll see” when you asked them to buy you a drum kit.

No matter what project it is, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a stick figure flipbook of a boy hitting a can with a stick, you’ll find the same bullshit. Asked about a Family Guy movie, a producer said, “There are no specific plans,” but also, “if I were a gambling man, I’d say within the next five years,” and joked that he was putting money on that. Thus, headlines read:

Independent

This is a pattern you’ll see throughout this article — celebrities will say vague shit off the cuff, and journalists will dig through it for a headline. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find an actual article about an interview that feels honest. One of the few that I found concerned Daniel Craig, who, when asked about playing James Bond after Spectre, said, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.”

The 25th James Bond film stars Daniel Craig and hits theaters next year.

4

A Celebrity Admitted That They HATE Their New Film! But Not Really!

When an actor hates life on set or hates their famous role, that makes for a hell of a story. But you’re probably only going to hear it years later, because no actor wants a reputation for sabotage. So every time you see a headline about an actor badmouthing their movie, there’s a good chance that they … didn’t badmouth anything. For example, apparently, the lead actress in the new Tomb Raider began literally taking a dump on a film reel when asked about her experience playing Lara Croft.

Bounding Into Comics

Wow, Alicia Vikander trashes Tomb Raider? Let’s see this clip, in which she says … the previous movies were good, hers is also good, the video game’s realism was good, a sequel might be good, and, in the last 15 seconds, she agrees with the interviewer that it’s weird that the film has so few women in it. Huh. She didn’t trash anything.

OK, well then how about when Jennifer Lawrence spontaneously burst into flame when asked about playing Mystique one more time:

Refinery29

Lawrence’s first quote in the article is “I love these movies.” She then says that she loves the director, and loves fans, and that Dark Phoenix is her best experience yet. So what does she hate? “The paint.” Getting into costume is difficult. You might notice that this isn’t bashing the film. Very few people like to be doused in paint and latex for 16 hours a day. Most people don’t like wearing pants for 16 hours a day. So it’s not unreasonable, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that she “hates being in X-Men,” as the headline proclaims.

OK, fine. So it seems like a lot of these sites are blowing minor things out of proportion. But how about the time that Batman v Superman was so boring that it caused Michael Shannon to slip into a coma?

GQ

First off, Shannon wasn’t in Batman v Superman. They used a rubber model of him. He was never on set, and though he recorded a few lines, they weren’t used. Also, he fell asleep while watching it on the tiny screen on an airplane, because it was an international flight and he was tuckered.

But what about actors who hate their characters? That’s got to be something that happens in real life. Actors who find the characters they play to be so morally reprehensible that they have to shout it out loud. Actors like Jamie Dornan, the guy who portrayed Christian Grey, who was apparently doing something to the extent of burning copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey on set.

The Loop

Nope, he only says that Christian’s “not the sort of bloke I’d get along with. All my mates are easy going and quick to laugh.” And who would want to hang out with the characters they portray? Jack Nicholson doesn’t sit around waiting for homicidal clowns to buy him a beer, and Dornan probably won’t be chilling with any sociopathic billionaires in the near future.

3

This Celebrity Is Fed Up With Political Correctness! Maybe?

Hollywood is known as a bastion of liberalism, but if you believe clickbaity headlines, aging actors with no stake in the matter are calling press conferences to loudly tell they world that they’re not going to take it anymore. You tell ’em, boys!

Express

AOL

Read Next

Create A Jetson’s Future With This Machine Learning Bundle

Almost always, a site is reprinting one extract from a much longer interview some other outlet did on a bunch of topics, such as John Hurt’s terminal cancer diagnosis, or Eastwood doing family friendly films against his lawyer’s advice. “70/80-year-old thinks younger people are different” may be the least interesting part of the interview, but it’s the only part the sites highlight, so they can scratch a specific itch. I’d love to tell you the movie stuff John Rhys-Davies told Adam Corolla or Mel Brooks told BBC, but the full recordings are gone, and all we have left is:

Hollywood Reporter

DailyWire

But that’s all old news. Here’s the latest on Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin literally calling the #MeToo movement shit!

Page Six

Famous News

Must Haves

By “bowel movement,” Seinfeld meant we’re expelling something we must be rid of — the harassers are the shit in this metaphor. It’s a #MeToo endorsement. The story could really have been just about smarmy Baldwin being an ass (watch Seinfeld alternate between agreeable and then dying inside, realizing he must tactfully fight Baldwin on this), but the twist here is that Baldwin was the interviewer. He was luring Seinfeld into making their conversation controversial. Jerry didn’t take the bait. The media did.

When Matt Damon was interviewed about #MeToo, one line got quoted again and again. “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?”

Huffington Post

Boston

Out of context, it comes off like his entire cause is to defend butt pats, proclaiming it loudly and defiantly with a sword and shield in front of the Damon family crest. But Damon was talking about an actual person who’d touched butts and an actual person who’d molested children, saying there’s literally a difference (one so obvious, you might call it self-evident) — but noted that both acts “need to be confronted and eradicated without question.” He also said a bunch of other pro-#MeToo stuff, and then a really interesting bit on NDAs.

But the headline’s going to be whichever part grabs the most outrage. If manufacturing disagreement and drumming up hatred is what it takes to pay the bills, then that’s what they do.

2

Holy Shit, The Star Was Injured On Set! Or Maybe They’re Just Joking!

Acting can be physically challenging. And like any activity that requires movement, you can get injured while you do it. SERIOUSLY injured. Like Jennifer Lawrence in Mother! levels of injured:

Indiewire

LADBible

Indy100

Given that rib dislocation isn’t a real thing, I wondered whether this was a joke (specifically a reference to the movie, in which Ed Harris loses a rib). Or they might have meant some other rib injury, and Lawrence also supposedly tore her diaphragm. Diaphragm rupture is a real injury … one usually caused by stabbing, gunshots, or car accidents. If someone ruptures their diaphragm and hurts a rib by “hyperventilating,” that would be an extreme medical oddity, not a cute anecdote about how method J-Law is.

But no one apparently cares enough to clarify. Also, “breathing so hard she ripped herself open” is apparently a whole genre of on-set accident:

Express

US Magazine

A ripped stomach muscle is generally not caused by yelling a bunch. Was Theron even being serious? It’s reported seriously, but in the interview, everyone’s laughing throughout. She gave the stomach story in another interview too, and the interviewer immediately changed the subject to her wardrobe.

And wait till you hear about poor, afflicted Gary Oldman:

Screenrant

NME

Independent

He did say that. But actual nicotine poisoning is a big deal — as in phone poison control, because it can be fatal. And it’s caused by swallowing a lot of nicotine at once, not by smoking for several weeks. Maybe Oldman only meant “I went through a whole LOT of cigars”? That’s not dramatic enough. Gotta hint that the toxic cigars have brought him one step closer to the grave.

I’m not calling these celebrities filthy liars. Maybe something crazy did happen to them, or maybe they’re indulging in a little hyperbole to liven up some interviews. And that’s fine, as this is the film junket and not 60 Minutes. But unexplained anecdotes shouldn’t end up as headlines, not without additional reporting.

So when Jonah Hill talks for 25 seconds about being hospitalized for bronchitis due to snorting Wolf Of Wall Street‘s fake coke, maybe 800 sites don’t have to share that in a headline. Not until someone asks, “When you first said this a couple years ago, you didn’t mention hospitalization and weren’t so sure it was bronchitis, and also, bronchitis doesn’t lead to hospitalization, unless you’re like 90 years old. So what I’m asking is this, Mr. Hill: Are you secretly 90 years old?”

1

A Celebrity Confirmed Your Favorite Fan Theory! If You Twist Their Words A Bit!

Fan theories are so prevalent now that they’re getting back to the actors involved. For instance, someone sat Neil Patrick Harris down and asked about the popular fan theory that How I Met Your Mother‘s Barney wasn’t really a womanizing jerk — we just see him that way because unreliable narrator Ted wants his kids to hate Barney so they’ll prefer that Robin be with Ted. Harris said that the theory made a lot of sense. So we were all treated to headlines saying:

Pretty 52

Digital Spy

The Sun

But Harris didn’t confirm anything. He didn’t offer insider info about what the writers intended, or about how he played the character. Nor did J.K. Rowling when she said a convoluted fan theory about Dumbledore being the physical embodiment of Death is “beautiful and it fits,” yet headlines reported that she too had “confirmed” a huge fan theory. And nor did the Jar Jar Binks actor when headlines said he released a “Bombshell” about Jar Jar being a Sith Lord. (He said, “That’s really a George Lucas question. I cannot answer that question.”) At this point, it seems like literally any combination of words would have been interpreted as a confirmation.

The reality is that celebrities will almost always cheerfully nod along with a fan theory if it’s interesting enough. They’ll even jokingly accept balls-out absurd theories, and don’t count on websites spinning their amusement into truth bombs. So no, no one on iCarly seriously confirmed their character is half-bee (but headlines say they did). Tom Holland didn’t confirm that he keeps a frog in his mouth (but headlines say he did). And Steve from Stranger Things is probably not the father of Jean Ralphio from Parks And Rec, despite the headlines that screamed that the genealogy lined up.

Headlines about fan theories are next-level bullshit because they’re lies about fiction. And besides, the coolest fan theories are so weird and so involved that they’ll probably never be confirmed. Let’s say your theory connects all the Pixar movies, and it later becomes the most famous theory of our age. Don’t wait for Disney to “confirm” it. If you like the theory, believe it, and to hell with anyone who says you’re wrong. To return to Star Wars again, Mark Hamill said of a fan theory, “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer … You should not be ashamed of it.”

Vanity Fair‘s headline about that interview with Hamill:

Vanity Fair

CONFIRMED! THANKS, MARK!

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

Start collecting your own sound bites for the world to misinterpret, get yourself an audio recorder.

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more dumb news that shouldn’t be news, check out 5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On and 6 News Stories Everybody Needs To Stop Sharing On Facebook.

You SHOULD click on THIS LINK and follow us on Facebook.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-bs-celebrity-stories-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182618263082

[allofbeercom]

5 BS Celebrity Stories We Need To Stop Clicking On

We are currently drowning in a sea of entertainment news. For every one event in Hollywood, there are 500 articles written about it. This means that in order to get hits, some websites find themselves bending the truth eeeeeever so slightly. Or in the case of headlines like these, they take the truth, put it in a paper bag, and light it on fire on your doorstep for you to stomp out.

5

Your Favorite Star Just Teased Their Next Big Movie! Or Not!

Before the internet, you mostly found out that a new movie was going to be released when you saw a trailer which confirmed that yes, Batman would be returning. Now, you can learn such information years in advance, due to headlines screaming that the star or director has proclaimed a movie is “in the works,” or something to that effect. Then, two years later, you’re like, “Wait, wasn’t that thing supposed to be out by now?” That’s because those headlines are usually manufactured bullshit.

For example, while I was writing this, Rotten Tomatoes said the biggest story of the week was Steven Spielberg revealing that after Harrison Ford goes scowling into retirement, the next Indiana Jones would be played by a woman:

Stuff

Complex

CNN

But Spielberg didn’t really say that at all. He said the upcoming Indiana Jones film would be the last for Harrison Ford, so the series could only continue in a different form (i.e. as a reboot). A tabloid straight up asked him about going with a female lead, and he said that there was nothing wrong with it and joked, “We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan,” revealing that, while he is a master filmmaker, he is first and foremost a dad.

Throw in the fact that Spielberg doesn’t own the rights to Indiana Jones (Disney will decide where the franchise goes next), and you realize that asking about anything beyond his personal involvement is futile. But interviewers do this all the time. They give a leading question about a film, get a vague “sure,” then run with the scoop. For example, interviewers have been asking Scarlett Johansson about a solo Black Widow movie for years, resulting in headlines like …

Polygon

… which is misleading, because there is no “Black Widow movie” set in stone yet. Or they’ll ask Marvel captain Kevin Feige, leading to the headline …

Empire Online

… even though an exec saying they’re “creatively and emotionally … most committing to” Black Widow but not actually putting it on their three-year schedule is the exact opposite of a commitment. It’s like when your parents said “We’ll see” when you asked them to buy you a drum kit.

No matter what project it is, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a stick figure flipbook of a boy hitting a can with a stick, you’ll find the same bullshit. Asked about a Family Guy movie, a producer said, “There are no specific plans,” but also, “if I were a gambling man, I’d say within the next five years,” and joked that he was putting money on that. Thus, headlines read:

Independent

This is a pattern you’ll see throughout this article — celebrities will say vague shit off the cuff, and journalists will dig through it for a headline. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find an actual article about an interview that feels honest. One of the few that I found concerned Daniel Craig, who, when asked about playing James Bond after Spectre, said, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.”

The 25th James Bond film stars Daniel Craig and hits theaters next year.

4

A Celebrity Admitted That They HATE Their New Film! But Not Really!

When an actor hates life on set or hates their famous role, that makes for a hell of a story. But you’re probably only going to hear it years later, because no actor wants a reputation for sabotage. So every time you see a headline about an actor badmouthing their movie, there’s a good chance that they … didn’t badmouth anything. For example, apparently, the lead actress in the new Tomb Raider began literally taking a dump on a film reel when asked about her experience playing Lara Croft.

Bounding Into Comics

Wow, Alicia Vikander trashes Tomb Raider? Let’s see this clip, in which she says … the previous movies were good, hers is also good, the video game’s realism was good, a sequel might be good, and, in the last 15 seconds, she agrees with the interviewer that it’s weird that the film has so few women in it. Huh. She didn’t trash anything.

OK, well then how about when Jennifer Lawrence spontaneously burst into flame when asked about playing Mystique one more time:

Refinery29

Lawrence’s first quote in the article is “I love these movies.” She then says that she loves the director, and loves fans, and that Dark Phoenix is her best experience yet. So what does she hate? “The paint.” Getting into costume is difficult. You might notice that this isn’t bashing the film. Very few people like to be doused in paint and latex for 16 hours a day. Most people don’t like wearing pants for 16 hours a day. So it’s not unreasonable, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that she “hates being in X-Men,” as the headline proclaims.

OK, fine. So it seems like a lot of these sites are blowing minor things out of proportion. But how about the time that Batman v Superman was so boring that it caused Michael Shannon to slip into a coma?

GQ

First off, Shannon wasn’t in Batman v Superman. They used a rubber model of him. He was never on set, and though he recorded a few lines, they weren’t used. Also, he fell asleep while watching it on the tiny screen on an airplane, because it was an international flight and he was tuckered.

But what about actors who hate their characters? That’s got to be something that happens in real life. Actors who find the characters they play to be so morally reprehensible that they have to shout it out loud. Actors like Jamie Dornan, the guy who portrayed Christian Grey, who was apparently doing something to the extent of burning copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey on set.

The Loop

Nope, he only says that Christian’s “not the sort of bloke I’d get along with. All my mates are easy going and quick to laugh.” And who would want to hang out with the characters they portray? Jack Nicholson doesn’t sit around waiting for homicidal clowns to buy him a beer, and Dornan probably won’t be chilling with any sociopathic billionaires in the near future.

3

This Celebrity Is Fed Up With Political Correctness! Maybe?

Hollywood is known as a bastion of liberalism, but if you believe clickbaity headlines, aging actors with no stake in the matter are calling press conferences to loudly tell they world that they’re not going to take it anymore. You tell ’em, boys!

Express

AOL

Read Next

Create A Jetson's Future With This Machine Learning Bundle

Almost always, a site is reprinting one extract from a much longer interview some other outlet did on a bunch of topics, such as John Hurt’s terminal cancer diagnosis, or Eastwood doing family friendly films against his lawyer’s advice. “70/80-year-old thinks younger people are different” may be the least interesting part of the interview, but it’s the only part the sites highlight, so they can scratch a specific itch. I’d love to tell you the movie stuff John Rhys-Davies told Adam Corolla or Mel Brooks told BBC, but the full recordings are gone, and all we have left is:

Hollywood Reporter

DailyWire

But that’s all old news. Here’s the latest on Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin literally calling the #MeToo movement shit!

Page Six

Famous News

Must Haves

By “bowel movement,” Seinfeld meant we’re expelling something we must be rid of — the harassers are the shit in this metaphor. It’s a #MeToo endorsement. The story could really have been just about smarmy Baldwin being an ass (watch Seinfeld alternate between agreeable and then dying inside, realizing he must tactfully fight Baldwin on this), but the twist here is that Baldwin was the interviewer. He was luring Seinfeld into making their conversation controversial. Jerry didn’t take the bait. The media did.

When Matt Damon was interviewed about #MeToo, one line got quoted again and again. “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?”

Huffington Post

Boston

Out of context, it comes off like his entire cause is to defend butt pats, proclaiming it loudly and defiantly with a sword and shield in front of the Damon family crest. But Damon was talking about an actual person who’d touched butts and an actual person who’d molested children, saying there’s literally a difference (one so obvious, you might call it self-evident) — but noted that both acts “need to be confronted and eradicated without question.” He also said a bunch of other pro-#MeToo stuff, and then a really interesting bit on NDAs.

But the headline’s going to be whichever part grabs the most outrage. If manufacturing disagreement and drumming up hatred is what it takes to pay the bills, then that’s what they do.

2

Holy Shit, The Star Was Injured On Set! Or Maybe They’re Just Joking!

Acting can be physically challenging. And like any activity that requires movement, you can get injured while you do it. SERIOUSLY injured. Like Jennifer Lawrence in Mother! levels of injured:

Indiewire

LADBible

Indy100

Given that rib dislocation isn’t a real thing, I wondered whether this was a joke (specifically a reference to the movie, in which Ed Harris loses a rib). Or they might have meant some other rib injury, and Lawrence also supposedly tore her diaphragm. Diaphragm rupture is a real injury … one usually caused by stabbing, gunshots, or car accidents. If someone ruptures their diaphragm and hurts a rib by “hyperventilating,” that would be an extreme medical oddity, not a cute anecdote about how method J-Law is.

But no one apparently cares enough to clarify. Also, “breathing so hard she ripped herself open” is apparently a whole genre of on-set accident:

Express

US Magazine

A ripped stomach muscle is generally not caused by yelling a bunch. Was Theron even being serious? It’s reported seriously, but in the interview, everyone’s laughing throughout. She gave the stomach story in another interview too, and the interviewer immediately changed the subject to her wardrobe.

And wait till you hear about poor, afflicted Gary Oldman:

Screenrant

NME

Independent

He did say that. But actual nicotine poisoning is a big deal — as in phone poison control, because it can be fatal. And it’s caused by swallowing a lot of nicotine at once, not by smoking for several weeks. Maybe Oldman only meant “I went through a whole LOT of cigars”? That’s not dramatic enough. Gotta hint that the toxic cigars have brought him one step closer to the grave.

I’m not calling these celebrities filthy liars. Maybe something crazy did happen to them, or maybe they’re indulging in a little hyperbole to liven up some interviews. And that’s fine, as this is the film junket and not 60 Minutes. But unexplained anecdotes shouldn’t end up as headlines, not without additional reporting.

So when Jonah Hill talks for 25 seconds about being hospitalized for bronchitis due to snorting Wolf Of Wall Street‘s fake coke, maybe 800 sites don’t have to share that in a headline. Not until someone asks, “When you first said this a couple years ago, you didn’t mention hospitalization and weren’t so sure it was bronchitis, and also, bronchitis doesn’t lead to hospitalization, unless you’re like 90 years old. So what I’m asking is this, Mr. Hill: Are you secretly 90 years old?”

1

A Celebrity Confirmed Your Favorite Fan Theory! If You Twist Their Words A Bit!

Fan theories are so prevalent now that they’re getting back to the actors involved. For instance, someone sat Neil Patrick Harris down and asked about the popular fan theory that How I Met Your Mother‘s Barney wasn’t really a womanizing jerk — we just see him that way because unreliable narrator Ted wants his kids to hate Barney so they’ll prefer that Robin be with Ted. Harris said that the theory made a lot of sense. So we were all treated to headlines saying:

Pretty 52

Digital Spy

The Sun

But Harris didn’t confirm anything. He didn’t offer insider info about what the writers intended, or about how he played the character. Nor did J.K. Rowling when she said a convoluted fan theory about Dumbledore being the physical embodiment of Death is “beautiful and it fits,” yet headlines reported that she too had “confirmed” a huge fan theory. And nor did the Jar Jar Binks actor when headlines said he released a “Bombshell” about Jar Jar being a Sith Lord. (He said, “That’s really a George Lucas question. I cannot answer that question.”) At this point, it seems like literally any combination of words would have been interpreted as a confirmation.

The reality is that celebrities will almost always cheerfully nod along with a fan theory if it’s interesting enough. They’ll even jokingly accept balls-out absurd theories, and don’t count on websites spinning their amusement into truth bombs. So no, no one on iCarly seriously confirmed their character is half-bee (but headlines say they did). Tom Holland didn’t confirm that he keeps a frog in his mouth (but headlines say he did). And Steve from Stranger Things is probably not the father of Jean Ralphio from Parks And Rec, despite the headlines that screamed that the genealogy lined up.

Headlines about fan theories are next-level bullshit because they’re lies about fiction. And besides, the coolest fan theories are so weird and so involved that they’ll probably never be confirmed. Let’s say your theory connects all the Pixar movies, and it later becomes the most famous theory of our age. Don’t wait for Disney to “confirm” it. If you like the theory, believe it, and to hell with anyone who says you’re wrong. To return to Star Wars again, Mark Hamill said of a fan theory, “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer … You should not be ashamed of it.”

Vanity Fair‘s headline about that interview with Hamill:

Vanity Fair

CONFIRMED! THANKS, MARK!

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

Start collecting your own sound bites for the world to misinterpret, get yourself an audio recorder.

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more dumb news that shouldn’t be news, check out 5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On and 6 News Stories Everybody Needs To Stop Sharing On Facebook.

You SHOULD click on THIS LINK and follow us on Facebook.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-bs-celebrity-stories-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/

[samanthasroberts]

5 BS Celebrity Stories We Need To Stop Clicking On

We are currently drowning in a sea of entertainment news. For every one event in Hollywood, there are 500 articles written about it. This means that in order to get hits, some websites find themselves bending the truth eeeeeever so slightly. Or in the case of headlines like these, they take the truth, put it in a paper bag, and light it on fire on your doorstep for you to stomp out.

5

Your Favorite Star Just Teased Their Next Big Movie! Or Not!

Before the internet, you mostly found out that a new movie was going to be released when you saw a trailer which confirmed that yes, Batman would be returning. Now, you can learn such information years in advance, due to headlines screaming that the star or director has proclaimed a movie is “in the works,” or something to that effect. Then, two years later, you’re like, “Wait, wasn’t that thing supposed to be out by now?” That’s because those headlines are usually manufactured bullshit.

For example, while I was writing this, Rotten Tomatoes said the biggest story of the week was Steven Spielberg revealing that after Harrison Ford goes scowling into retirement, the next Indiana Jones would be played by a woman:

Stuff

Complex

CNN

But Spielberg didn’t really say that at all. He said the upcoming Indiana Jones film would be the last for Harrison Ford, so the series could only continue in a different form (i.e. as a reboot). A tabloid straight up asked him about going with a female lead, and he said that there was nothing wrong with it and joked, “We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan,” revealing that, while he is a master filmmaker, he is first and foremost a dad.

Throw in the fact that Spielberg doesn’t own the rights to Indiana Jones (Disney will decide where the franchise goes next), and you realize that asking about anything beyond his personal involvement is futile. But interviewers do this all the time. They give a leading question about a film, get a vague “sure,” then run with the scoop. For example, interviewers have been asking Scarlett Johansson about a solo Black Widow movie for years, resulting in headlines like …

Polygon

… which is misleading, because there is no “Black Widow movie” set in stone yet. Or they’ll ask Marvel captain Kevin Feige, leading to the headline …

Empire Online

… even though an exec saying they’re “creatively and emotionally … most committing to” Black Widow but not actually putting it on their three-year schedule is the exact opposite of a commitment. It’s like when your parents said “We’ll see” when you asked them to buy you a drum kit.

No matter what project it is, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a stick figure flipbook of a boy hitting a can with a stick, you’ll find the same bullshit. Asked about a Family Guy movie, a producer said, “There are no specific plans,” but also, “if I were a gambling man, I’d say within the next five years,” and joked that he was putting money on that. Thus, headlines read:

Independent

This is a pattern you’ll see throughout this article — celebrities will say vague shit off the cuff, and journalists will dig through it for a headline. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find an actual article about an interview that feels honest. One of the few that I found concerned Daniel Craig, who, when asked about playing James Bond after Spectre, said, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.”

The 25th James Bond film stars Daniel Craig and hits theaters next year.

4

A Celebrity Admitted That They HATE Their New Film! But Not Really!

When an actor hates life on set or hates their famous role, that makes for a hell of a story. But you’re probably only going to hear it years later, because no actor wants a reputation for sabotage. So every time you see a headline about an actor badmouthing their movie, there’s a good chance that they … didn’t badmouth anything. For example, apparently, the lead actress in the new Tomb Raider began literally taking a dump on a film reel when asked about her experience playing Lara Croft.

Bounding Into Comics

Wow, Alicia Vikander trashes Tomb Raider? Let’s see this clip, in which she says … the previous movies were good, hers is also good, the video game’s realism was good, a sequel might be good, and, in the last 15 seconds, she agrees with the interviewer that it’s weird that the film has so few women in it. Huh. She didn’t trash anything.

OK, well then how about when Jennifer Lawrence spontaneously burst into flame when asked about playing Mystique one more time:

Refinery29

Lawrence’s first quote in the article is “I love these movies.” She then says that she loves the director, and loves fans, and that Dark Phoenix is her best experience yet. So what does she hate? “The paint.” Getting into costume is difficult. You might notice that this isn’t bashing the film. Very few people like to be doused in paint and latex for 16 hours a day. Most people don’t like wearing pants for 16 hours a day. So it’s not unreasonable, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that she “hates being in X-Men,” as the headline proclaims.

OK, fine. So it seems like a lot of these sites are blowing minor things out of proportion. But how about the time that Batman v Superman was so boring that it caused Michael Shannon to slip into a coma?

GQ

First off, Shannon wasn’t in Batman v Superman. They used a rubber model of him. He was never on set, and though he recorded a few lines, they weren’t used. Also, he fell asleep while watching it on the tiny screen on an airplane, because it was an international flight and he was tuckered.

But what about actors who hate their characters? That’s got to be something that happens in real life. Actors who find the characters they play to be so morally reprehensible that they have to shout it out loud. Actors like Jamie Dornan, the guy who portrayed Christian Grey, who was apparently doing something to the extent of burning copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey on set.

The Loop

Nope, he only says that Christian’s “not the sort of bloke I’d get along with. All my mates are easy going and quick to laugh.” And who would want to hang out with the characters they portray? Jack Nicholson doesn’t sit around waiting for homicidal clowns to buy him a beer, and Dornan probably won’t be chilling with any sociopathic billionaires in the near future.

3

This Celebrity Is Fed Up With Political Correctness! Maybe?

Hollywood is known as a bastion of liberalism, but if you believe clickbaity headlines, aging actors with no stake in the matter are calling press conferences to loudly tell they world that they’re not going to take it anymore. You tell ’em, boys!

Express

AOL

Read Next

Create A Jetson's Future With This Machine Learning Bundle

Almost always, a site is reprinting one extract from a much longer interview some other outlet did on a bunch of topics, such as John Hurt’s terminal cancer diagnosis, or Eastwood doing family friendly films against his lawyer’s advice. “70/80-year-old thinks younger people are different” may be the least interesting part of the interview, but it’s the only part the sites highlight, so they can scratch a specific itch. I’d love to tell you the movie stuff John Rhys-Davies told Adam Corolla or Mel Brooks told BBC, but the full recordings are gone, and all we have left is:

Hollywood Reporter

DailyWire

But that’s all old news. Here’s the latest on Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin literally calling the #MeToo movement shit!

Page Six

Famous News

Must Haves

By “bowel movement,” Seinfeld meant we’re expelling something we must be rid of — the harassers are the shit in this metaphor. It’s a #MeToo endorsement. The story could really have been just about smarmy Baldwin being an ass (watch Seinfeld alternate between agreeable and then dying inside, realizing he must tactfully fight Baldwin on this), but the twist here is that Baldwin was the interviewer. He was luring Seinfeld into making their conversation controversial. Jerry didn’t take the bait. The media did.

When Matt Damon was interviewed about #MeToo, one line got quoted again and again. “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?”

Huffington Post

Boston

Out of context, it comes off like his entire cause is to defend butt pats, proclaiming it loudly and defiantly with a sword and shield in front of the Damon family crest. But Damon was talking about an actual person who’d touched butts and an actual person who’d molested children, saying there’s literally a difference (one so obvious, you might call it self-evident) — but noted that both acts “need to be confronted and eradicated without question.” He also said a bunch of other pro-#MeToo stuff, and then a really interesting bit on NDAs.

But the headline’s going to be whichever part grabs the most outrage. If manufacturing disagreement and drumming up hatred is what it takes to pay the bills, then that’s what they do.

2

Holy Shit, The Star Was Injured On Set! Or Maybe They’re Just Joking!

Acting can be physically challenging. And like any activity that requires movement, you can get injured while you do it. SERIOUSLY injured. Like Jennifer Lawrence in Mother! levels of injured:

Indiewire

LADBible

Indy100

Given that rib dislocation isn’t a real thing, I wondered whether this was a joke (specifically a reference to the movie, in which Ed Harris loses a rib). Or they might have meant some other rib injury, and Lawrence also supposedly tore her diaphragm. Diaphragm rupture is a real injury … one usually caused by stabbing, gunshots, or car accidents. If someone ruptures their diaphragm and hurts a rib by “hyperventilating,” that would be an extreme medical oddity, not a cute anecdote about how method J-Law is.

But no one apparently cares enough to clarify. Also, “breathing so hard she ripped herself open” is apparently a whole genre of on-set accident:

Express

US Magazine

A ripped stomach muscle is generally not caused by yelling a bunch. Was Theron even being serious? It’s reported seriously, but in the interview, everyone’s laughing throughout. She gave the stomach story in another interview too, and the interviewer immediately changed the subject to her wardrobe.

And wait till you hear about poor, afflicted Gary Oldman:

Screenrant

NME

Independent

He did say that. But actual nicotine poisoning is a big deal — as in phone poison control, because it can be fatal. And it’s caused by swallowing a lot of nicotine at once, not by smoking for several weeks. Maybe Oldman only meant “I went through a whole LOT of cigars”? That’s not dramatic enough. Gotta hint that the toxic cigars have brought him one step closer to the grave.

I’m not calling these celebrities filthy liars. Maybe something crazy did happen to them, or maybe they’re indulging in a little hyperbole to liven up some interviews. And that’s fine, as this is the film junket and not 60 Minutes. But unexplained anecdotes shouldn’t end up as headlines, not without additional reporting.

So when Jonah Hill talks for 25 seconds about being hospitalized for bronchitis due to snorting Wolf Of Wall Street‘s fake coke, maybe 800 sites don’t have to share that in a headline. Not until someone asks, “When you first said this a couple years ago, you didn’t mention hospitalization and weren’t so sure it was bronchitis, and also, bronchitis doesn’t lead to hospitalization, unless you’re like 90 years old. So what I’m asking is this, Mr. Hill: Are you secretly 90 years old?”

1

A Celebrity Confirmed Your Favorite Fan Theory! If You Twist Their Words A Bit!

Fan theories are so prevalent now that they’re getting back to the actors involved. For instance, someone sat Neil Patrick Harris down and asked about the popular fan theory that How I Met Your Mother‘s Barney wasn’t really a womanizing jerk — we just see him that way because unreliable narrator Ted wants his kids to hate Barney so they’ll prefer that Robin be with Ted. Harris said that the theory made a lot of sense. So we were all treated to headlines saying:

Pretty 52

Digital Spy

The Sun

But Harris didn’t confirm anything. He didn’t offer insider info about what the writers intended, or about how he played the character. Nor did J.K. Rowling when she said a convoluted fan theory about Dumbledore being the physical embodiment of Death is “beautiful and it fits,” yet headlines reported that she too had “confirmed” a huge fan theory. And nor did the Jar Jar Binks actor when headlines said he released a “Bombshell” about Jar Jar being a Sith Lord. (He said, “That’s really a George Lucas question. I cannot answer that question.”) At this point, it seems like literally any combination of words would have been interpreted as a confirmation.

The reality is that celebrities will almost always cheerfully nod along with a fan theory if it’s interesting enough. They’ll even jokingly accept balls-out absurd theories, and don’t count on websites spinning their amusement into truth bombs. So no, no one on iCarly seriously confirmed their character is half-bee (but headlines say they did). Tom Holland didn’t confirm that he keeps a frog in his mouth (but headlines say he did). And Steve from Stranger Things is probably not the father of Jean Ralphio from Parks And Rec, despite the headlines that screamed that the genealogy lined up.

Headlines about fan theories are next-level bullshit because they’re lies about fiction. And besides, the coolest fan theories are so weird and so involved that they’ll probably never be confirmed. Let’s say your theory connects all the Pixar movies, and it later becomes the most famous theory of our age. Don’t wait for Disney to “confirm” it. If you like the theory, believe it, and to hell with anyone who says you’re wrong. To return to Star Wars again, Mark Hamill said of a fan theory, “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer … You should not be ashamed of it.”

Vanity Fair‘s headline about that interview with Hamill:

Vanity Fair

CONFIRMED! THANKS, MARK!

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-bs-celebrity-stories-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/5-bs-celebrity-stories-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/