#take the mind to a playful childhood with the same backdrop

[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

This is called the corduroy pattern

Parallel lines. Stereoscopic views with a snake running through the lines. Waking up from it's slumber flickering it's tongue for prey

Selling supplements at the price of 1 for the 2

Number check birthday gram 12 soft capitality

Street Fighter imports banality of babality

[chanduu07]

Top event management companies in vizag

 Leor Media Event Management: Making Moments Magical

Top event management companies in vizag��when it comes to creating unforgettable and seamless events, Leor Media Event Management Company stands as a shining example of excellence. With their expertise in a diverse range of event services, including wedding planning, decorations, birthday theme parties, corporate events, and audio launches, they have carved a niche for themselves in the industry.

At the heart of their success lies their commitment to making every occasion a moment to remember. Whether it's a fairytale wedding, a joyous birthday celebration, a professional corporate gathering, or a star-studded audio launch, Leor Media Event Management leaves no stone unturned in crafting magical experiences that leave a lasting impression.

Wedding Planning: Turning Dreams into Reality

Leor Media understands that a wedding is more than just an event; it's a celebration of love and a journey of a lifetime. Their wedding planners work closely with couples, turning their visions into reality, from selecting the perfect venue to curating breathtaking decorations and ensuring smooth execution. With attention to detail and a personalized touch, they weave together every element to create a day that reflects the couple's unique love story.

Decorations: Setting the Stage for Splendor

When it comes to decorations, Leor Media Event Management has mastered the art of transforming spaces into enchanting wonderlands. Their team of creative geniuses weaves magic into every detail, ensuring that each event exudes a unique charm and allure.

Elegance and Sophistication

For weddings and formal corporate gatherings, Leor Media brings an air of elegance and sophistication to the decor. Their skilled designers blend soft hues, lush floral arrangements, and intricate details to create a sense of timeless beauty. Top event management companies in vizag from ethereal drapery to cascading fairy lights, their decorations effortlessly elevate any venue, leaving guests in awe of the refined ambiance.

Whimsical and Playful

For birthday theme parties, Leor Media taps into the world of imagination and fantasy, crafting playful and vibrant settings that ignite the joy of childhood. From whimsical backdrops to eye-catching props, their team adds a burst of colors and creative elements to the decor. Whether it's a fairytale castle or a jungle safari, the decorations immerse young minds in a world of delightful adventure.

Themed Extravaganzas

Leor Media's proficiency in decorations extends to themed events of all kinds. From masquerade balls to retro parties, they bring the essence of the chosen theme to life. Meticulously curated props, table settings, and stage designs transport guests into the heart of the theme, making the experience feel like a journey to another time or place.

Customized Creations

At Leor Media, no two events are the same. They believe in the power of personalization and take the time to understand their clients' visions and preferences. Top event management companies in vizag their decorators work closely with clients, translating their ideas into unique and customized decorations that make every event truly one-of-a-kind.

Innovative Lighting Designs

Lighting is a vital aspect of any event, and Leor Media's experts masterfully use lighting to create the perfect mood and atmosphere. From soft, romantic lighting for weddings to dynamic and energetic setups for corporate events, their lighting designs accentuate the decor, adding depth and dimension to the overall experience.

The team at Leor Media knows that a well-designed and thoughtfully crafted ambiance can elevate any event. From elegant and sophisticated themes to vibrant and whimsical settings, their decoration experts have a keen eye for creating visually stunning backdrops that complement the occasion. From floral arrangements to lighting designs, they create a mesmerizing atmosphere that sets the stage for unforgettable moments.

Birthday Theme Parties: Creating Childhood Dreams

For children, birthdays are moments of wonder and joy. Leor Media specializes in creating themed birthday parties that ignite the imagination and bring fantasies to life. From enchanting princesses to daring superheroes, their team transforms venues into captivating worlds, ensuring that the birthday child and their guests have an absolute blast.

When it comes to children's birthday parties, Leor Media Event Management excels in turning dreams into reality. Top event management companies in vizag they believe that birthdays are not just milestones, but magical moments that shape a child's memories forever. With their expertise in organizing birthday theme parties, they create a wonderland of imagination where little ones can immerse themselves in their favorite worlds.

Creative Themes, Endless Possibilities

Leor Media's team of talented planners understands that every child has unique interests and passions. They take the time to know the birthday child's preferences and curate creative themes that reflect their imagination. Whether it's a whimsical fairy tale adventure, a thrilling superhero showdown, a voyage to outer space, or an enchanting under-the-sea exploration, the possibilities are endless.

Transforming Venues into Fantasy Worlds

Once the theme is set, Leor Media's decoration experts work their magic, transforming venues into captivating fantasy worlds. With meticulous attention to detail, they craft enchanting backdrops, install vibrant decorations, and incorporate themed props that transport young guests to another realm. The result is a visually stunning setting that sparks wonder and excitement in every child's eyes.

Entertainment that Sparks Joy

No birthday theme party is complete without entertainment that sparks joy and keeps little ones engaged. Leor Media offers a diverse range of entertainment options, from costumed characters that bring the theme to life to interactive games, arts and crafts stations, and captivating storytelling sessions. They ensure that children are fully immersed in the world of their dreams, fostering a sense of wonder and delight.

Themed Treats and Delights

No birthday celebration is complete without delectable treats and delights. Leor Media's culinary experts curate themed menus, offering a delightful array of snacks, refreshments, and birthday cakes that match the chosen theme. From magical unicorn cupcakes to superhero-themed cookies, the treats not only taste delicious but also complement the overall ambiance.

Creating Lasting Memories

At Leor Media, the focus is on creating lasting memories for both the birthday child and their guests. The party planners ensure that every detail is carefully planned and executed, so parents can relax and enjoy the celebration alongside their little ones. From beginning to end, the birthday theme parties orchestrated by Leor Media are a joyful experience that leaves everyone with unforgettable memories.

In the realm of birthday theme parties, Leor Media Event Management shines as a company that turns children's dreams into enchanting realities. With their boundless creativity, attention to detail, and dedication to excellence, Top event management companies in vizag they create a magical journey of celebration for every birthday child. From themed decorations to entertainment and delightful treats, their birthday theme parties are a testament to their commitment to crafting moments that children and their families will treasure for years to come.

Corporate Events: Elevating Professionalism

In the realm of corporate events, Leor Media leaves a mark of professionalism and elegance. Whether it's a product launch, a conference, or an award ceremony, they understand the importance of leaving a lasting impression on attendees. With meticulous planning and seamless execution, they help businesses convey their brand message effectively, leaving a positive impact on clients and partners.

In the realm of corporate events, Leor Media goes above and beyond to elevate professionalism and foster meaningful connections. From intimate board meetings to large-scale conferences, they understand that each event is an opportunity for businesses to showcase their expertise, build relationships, and leave a lasting impact on their stakeholders.

Strategic Planning for Success

Leor Media's corporate event planners begin by understanding the specific goals and objectives of their clients. Whether it's a product launch aiming for maximum media coverage or a team-building retreat fostering employee cohesion, their team works closely with the company's representatives to develop a strategic plan tailored to achieve the desired outcomes.

Creating Engaging Experiences

Gone are the days of mundane corporate gatherings. Leor Media excels in infusing creativity and innovation into each event, ensuring that attendees are engaged and captivated throughout. From interactive workshops to immersive digital presentations, they curate experiences that keep participants invested and leave a lasting impression.

Seamless Execution

One of the hallmarks of Leor Media's expertise is their seamless event execution. They meticulously handle logistics, ensuring that everything from venue selection to audio-visual setup and catering is flawlessly coordinated. With their efficient team of event managers, they ensure that each moment flows effortlessly, allowing clients to focus on their core objectives.

Brand Projection and Messaging

In corporate events, brand projection and messaging play a crucial role in shaping perceptions. Leor Media works closely with clients to integrate their brand identity into every aspect of the event, from custom-designed stage backdrops to branded merchandise. They ensure that the event becomes a platform to communicate the company's values, vision, and achievements effectively.

Networking Opportunities

Leor Media recognizes the importance of networking in corporate events. They create spaces and opportunities for attendees to connect, fostering valuable relationships and collaborations. From curated networking sessions to interactive ice-breakers, they facilitate meaningful interactions that extend beyond the event's duration.

Post-Event Analysis

Leor Media's dedication doesn't end with the event's conclusion. They conduct post-event analysis, seeking feedback from clients and attendees to gain insights and identify areas of improvement. This commitment to continuous growth and refinement ensures that each successive corporate event is better than the last.

Leor Media's expertise in corporate events goes beyond merely organizing gatherings; they are architects of unforgettable experiences that elevate professionalism and create lasting connections. With strategic planning, seamless execution, Top event management companies in vizag and a focus on brand projection, their events become powerful platforms for companies to shine, leaving a lasting impact on their stakeholders and setting the stage for future success. As a reliable partner in corporate event management, Leor Media continues to set new standards of excellence, creating engaging and memorable experiences that enrich the corporate landscape.

Audio Launches: Celebrating Art and Talent

As experts in audio launch events, Leor Media understands that an album or movie launch is more than just a promotional event; it's a celebration of art and talent. They work with artists and production teams to create an ambiance that complements the essence of the work, ensuring that the launch becomes a memorable showcase of creativity and passion.

Audio launches orchestrated by Leor Media Event Management Company are nothing short of grand spectacles, celebrating the essence of music, movies, and creative talent. Their expertise in audio launches adds a touch of glamour and excitement, making it an event to remember for both artists and fans alike.

Innovative Themes and Concepts

Leor Media believes that an audio launch should reflect the spirit and essence of the work being launched. They come up with innovative themes and concepts that resonate with the mood of the album or movie. From intimate gatherings to dazzling red-carpet affairs, their team tailors each audio launch to create an immersive experience that captivates the audience.

Star-Studded Lineups and Performances

As a leading event management company, Leor Media has strong connections within the entertainment industry. They leverage these connections to bring top-notch performers, renowned artists, and influential guests to the audio launch stage. These star-studded lineups add a touch of glamour and excitement, elevating the event to a whole new level.

Unveiling Music Videos and Trailers

Audio launches are not just about music; they also serve as a platform to unveil music videos and movie trailers. Leor Media ensures that these unveilings are executed flawlessly, creating a buzz among the audience and generating excitement for the upcoming release.

Impeccable Audio and Visual Production

A key aspect of a successful audio launch is impeccable audio and visual production. Leor Media collaborates with sound engineers, lighting specialists, and video production teams to create a seamless and immersive experience for the attendees. They understand the importance of delivering high-quality audio and visuals to make the event impactful and memorable.

Interactive Fan Engagement

An audio launch is an excellent opportunity for artists to connect with their fans. Leor Media incorporates interactive elements like Q&A sessions, fan interactions, and social media engagements to bridge the gap between artists and their followers. This fan engagement not only adds to the excitement but also fosters a sense of connection and appreciation among the audience.

In the realm of audio launches, Leor Media Event Management Company showcases their prowess in organizing exceptional events that celebrate creativity, talent, and art. Top event management companies in vizag with their expertise in conceptualizing innovative themes, bringing together star-studded lineups, and delivering impeccable audio and visual production, they elevate audio launches to new heights. Leor Media's passion for perfection and commitment to creating immersive experiences shine through in every event they organize, leaving a lasting impact on the entertainment industry and the hearts of music and movie enthusiasts.

Conclusion: 

A Journey of Enchanting Experiences

Leor Media Event Management's dedication to decorations goes beyond aesthetics; it's about crafting experiences that captivate the senses and evoke emotions. With their commitment to elegance, creativity, and personalization, they ensure that every event they handle is an unforgettable journey of wonder and delight. From dreamy weddings to whimsical theme parties, Leor Media's decorations set the stage for splendor, leaving guests enchanted and memories cherished for a lifetime.

In the world of event management, Leor Media stands out as a company that infuses every occasion with creativity, dedication, and expertise. With their proficiency in wedding planning, decorations, birthday theme parties, corporate events, and audio launches, they have garnered the trust and admiration of clients and guests alike. Leor Media Event Management Company continues to make dreams come true, crafting enchanting experiences that leave a mark on hearts and minds, one event at a time. 

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Have you watched Lupin? What did you think? (And are you a fan of the books or other adaptations of the character?)

The short answer is yes, I have seen Lupin on Netflix. Overall I enjoyed it so long as I suspended my disbelief at certain things.

Unfortunately it took being struck down by Covid and being bedridden for me to actually to binge watch the whole series. So I was behind the curve when my friends, French and those outside of France, started to talk about it around me. I had to beg them not to give away spoilers until I had seen it all.

It did surprise me that it won rave widespread reviews outside France because usually French drama series don’t travel very well outside of France. I’m sure even Netflix had no idea how successful it would be for them. I’m sure being in Covid lockdown had something to do with it. In any case I don’t begrudge its success as it’s well earned.

However I wasn’t too surprised that within France itself the French reviews were decidely mixed and divisive. The critic at Le Point painfully hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Le plus gros défaut de l'ensemble reste la pauvreté des personnages, tous unidimensionnels, caricaturaux et aussi épais que du papier à cigarette.“ - loosely translated as, ‘the biggest flaw of the whole thing remains the poverty of the characters, all one-dimensional, cartoonish and as thick as cigarette paper’.

There’s a growing amount of good French stuff on TV and streaming services but a non-French audience will not have had the chance to have seen all of it yet. I can think of any number of French television drama/dramedy/cmedy series that are much better than Lupin with better plots, characters, and even a truer perspective of French society and even modern day France (Dix pour cent (Call My Agent!), Le Bureau des Légendes, Engrenages, Baron Noir, and Paris Police 1900). But you would be hard pressed to find anything that comes close to Lupin just for the sake of something fun to watch during the Covid lockdown.

What makes the current generation of home made French television series so interesting is how much of it is a reflection of France’s own anxieities about itself and its role in a increasingly English speaking dominating world. In a funny way it sees itself as defiant plucky Asterix fighting off the Roman American cultural hordes from totally invading their Francophone culture.

For sure, it has societal and racial issues stemming from its colonial legacy and issues of immigration and integration (France has the largest Muslim population in Europe). However it seems to want to ‘resolve’ these issues through the almost sacramental adherence to French secularist ideals rather than American inspired ideas of social justice and equity. There’s always been something very admirable about the French - from the time of General de Gaulle and perhaps before - always swinging from snooty ambivalence to outright antipathy towards the influence of American culture ‘americanising’ French culture (no to Walmarts or fast food chains for example).

Is it any wonder then that Netflix’s ill-conceived American series ‘Emily in Paris’ was widely hated and mocked within France for just perpetuating those lazy American tropes of Paris and French culture?

Personally I know Francophile Americans, long resident in Paris, who were frankly embarrassed and spent a lot of time apologising to their French friends. I have one American friend who has told me that she was so mad that she would have blind folded Emily and shoved her hard in the car boot and drive her all the way to the poorest of the banlieues in the grimey crime saturated suburbs of Paris - Seine-Saint-Denis came to mind - and dump her preening arse there. She would slap her and tell the spoilt entitied brat to make her own way back home - you know, to her spacious apartment in one of the most expensive arrondissements of Paris that of course(!) any American intern working for French marketing firms can afford.

I digress. My apologies. Watching this God awful show gives me PTSD.

Onto Lupin.

Thankfully Lupin doesn’t try to play to non-French tropes of what Paris is or isn’t. It does skim the surface of current discontents within French culture and society (race, class, power, and money) but ever so lightly so as to not get in the way of just spinning a good crowd pleasing yarn. It invites you to have fun and not to think too much. I have to be honest and say I enjoyed it as long as I suspended my disbelief here and there.

Lupin refers of course to the character Arsène Lupin, the French gentleman thief who stole jewellery from Parisian haute bourgeois and aristocracy at the turn of the century. Lupin, as written in the novels and short stories by Maurice Leblanc between 1905 and his death in 1941, was the archetypical anti-hero, a Robin Hood who stole from those who deserved it but kept the loot himself. He was often portrayed often a force for good, while operating on the wrong side of the law.

Lupin never really made much of an impact outside of France as he had within France where is revered with many French film and television adaptations. In England, we already had a Lupin type character in the form of A.J. Raffles, a cricket playing gentleman thief with his aristocratic side kick, Bunny. E.W. Horning’s stories of Raffles’ daring heists proved to be quite popular with the British public when Raffles first appeared on the scene in 1898. And even later Leslie Charteris’ The Saint took over the mantle from Raffles as the gentleman thief/adventuring Robin Hood.

I think Hollywood tried to introduce him to an English speaking audience (legendary actor John Barrymore even played him) but he didn’t really take off and eventually they found their gentleman thief archetype in Sir Charles Lytton aka The Phantom (played by David Niven and Christopher Plummer) in the Pink Panther movies. So Lupin never got the English audience he deserved.

I first got wind of who Arsène Lupin was when I was growing up in Japan as a child. As strange as it sounds Lupin was big in Japan especially after World War Two. The Japanese did their own take on the Lupin character using Japanese actors and plot lines but it was Lupin.

I don’t know how exactly but I remember watching these scratchy DVDs of these Lupin inspired films. I think it was one of my parents’ Japanese friends who was mad for all things Lupin and he had studied French literature in France. Jogging my memory I now recall these black & white films were done in the 1950s. One starred Keiji Sada and the other version I remember was with Eija Okada (he was in Resnais’ classic film, Hiroshima Mon Amour) as Arsene Lupin called (I think) Kao-no Nai Otoko. I didn’t understand most of it at the time because it was all in Japanese and my Japanese (at the time) was pitiful, but it looked fun.

There was even a Japanese manga version of Lupin which was called Lupin III, - so named because he was the grandson of the real Arsène Lupin.

The 1960s manga series spawned generations of TV series which I do remember watching and finding it terribly exciting if somewhat confusing.

It was French expatriate friends whom my family knew that introduced me to the real Arsène Lupin. They had a few of the books authored by Maurice Leblanc. It was in French so I read them to improve my French but enjoyed the story along the way.

I also remember them showing me scratchy episodes of the 1970s Franco-German TV series ‘Arsène Lupin’ with the monocle wearing Georges Descrières in the lead role. It was a classical re-telling of the adventures of the aristocratic gentleman-burglar and very family friendly viewing. I don’t really remember much of it to be honest.

It was some years before I actually started to read more of the Maurice Leblanc’s novels and short stories collection. I have them all now. I was a teen and I remember being stuck in a snowed in a Swiss Alpine chalet and with nothing else to do but pull out a few dog eared books from the bookshelves belonging to our French host and read to pass the time.

I read Les Dents du tigre, Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, and Les Huit Coups de l'horloge and thoroughly enjoyed them in the original French. I was already reading classic detective and mystery novels (Sherlock Holmes, Poirot etc) so it was natural to read the adventures of Arsène Lupin.

I haven’t got around to reading all the novels and short stories but I have read most of them and I enjoyed them all immensely. In the same way Conan Doyle, through Holmes and Watson, manages to conjure a convincing picture of late Victorian and early Edwardian England, so Leblanc manages to give us a taste of Belle Epoque France through the eyes of his suave gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin.

Indeed it's a lot like reading Sherlock Holmes in that you're always trying to figure out how he did it, but the difference is that you are rooting for the bad guy. You can’t help but be drawn to this gentleman thief who is charming, comic, playful, and romantic and generous. Lupin is not an intellectual puzzle-solver but first a master criminal, later a detective helper, who maintains his curious ethics throughout his adventures. In this regard he is very much the anti-Sherlock Holmes; and I wasn’t disappointed when I actually read the story where Lupin faces off with Holmes himself. Brilliant!

I’ve also seen the 2004 French movie with Romain Duris in the Lupin lead role and it also starred the majestic Kristin Scott Thomas and the sexy Eva Green.

It was a decent adventure flick and it was a clear confluence of different Lupin novels (The Queen's Necklace (introducing Lupin's childhood), The Hollow Needle (where the treasure is the macguffin of the story), The Arrest of Arsène Lupin (the gala on the ship as a backdrop) and Josephine Balsamo, (one of Lupin’s most memorable opponents in the The Countess Of Cagliostro).

Romaine Duris, a fine classical actor, was I felt miscast because he didn’t have Lupin’s levity of wit and be at ease within himself. I love Duris in his other films but in Arsène Lupin and even in his other film, Moliere, he seemed ill at ease with the role. Perhaps that’s just me.

The latest Netflix adaptation (or reimagining to be more precise) is a welcome addition to the world of Arsène Lupin.If you don’t over-think it, it’s bags of fun.

Omar Sy is immensely likeable. Sy is a deservedly a big star in France - he won the best actor César for “The Intouchables,” an international hit - and has played forgettable secondary characters in big-budget American special effects movies (he was Chris Pratt’s assistant in “Jurassic World” and a minor mutant in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”). It was reportedly his desire to play Arsène Lupin, whom he’s compared to James Bond (“fun, funny, elegant”), that led to the series, created by British writer George Kay. And it is on his charm that the series largely, though not entirely, rests.

So the basic story revolves around a jewellery heist. Sy plays Assane Diop, a first-generation French-Senegalese man in contemporary Paris. A collection of Lupin stories, a gift from his father - whose undeserved fate Assane set himself to avenge in long-delayed, Count of Monte Cristo style upon a criminal tycoon - has made the actual Lupin books a foundation of his life and profitably illicit career. This fan-ship goes as far as borrowing practical ideas from the stories and constructing aliases out of anagrams of “Arsene Lupin,” a habit that will attract the interest of a low-level police detective (Soufiane Guerrab as Youssef Guedira) who shares Assane’s love of the books. (That the detective also shares an initial with Lupin’s own adversary, Inspector Ganimard, is possibly not a coincidence.)

Among the many comic delights of Lupin, is an unspoken one. Time and again, the show’s hero, master thief Assane Diop is able to slip into a place unnoticed, or by assuming a minor disguise that prevents witnesses from providing an accurate description of him to law enforcement.

Why is this funny?

Because Omar Sy is six feet three (and, since most actors are short, seems even taller), is roughly as wide as soccer pitch, and is memorable even before he flashes his infectious million-Euro smile. This is not a man for whom anonymity should be possible - even allowing for racial bias in a majority-white country, Assane would be memorable and distinctive - and Lupin seems cheekily aware of this. Like the various incredible sleights of hand Assane deploys to pull off his thefts and escapes, his ability to be anyone, anywhere, is treated more as a superpower than as something even the world’s greatest criminal would be able to pull off.

At one point, when he’s slated for a cable news appearance as a much older man, we learn that Assane is also a master of disguise. The revelation of this skill arrives with a wink in the show, and it feels pointless to ask where he learned it, or how he affords movie-quality latex and makeup. Or rather, asking the question feels wrong.

We know this is impossible, the show seems to be asking its viewers again and again, but isn’t it so much fun?

The performances and the production - it has that particularly European filmic quality of feeling natural even when it gets stylish - keep the series warm even as the plot is made up of incredulous contraptions that require everything to go right at just the right time and for human psychology to be 100% predictable. Its physics are classical rather than quantum, one might say, and like the world itself, which becomes more curious the deeper you peer into things, it is best handled along the surface. You do not want to take too much time working out the likelihood of any of this happening. Just go along for the ride.

Somehow, though, it all works because Sy is so magnetic and charming that questioning plot logic feels wildly besides the point. Though he never looks appreciably different in his various aliases (including one ill-conceived live-TV appearance done under old-man makeup and a thick beard), he changes his posture and voice ( if you watch it in French that is) enough to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief, in the same way that any lead actor as Superman has to do when playing Clark Kent. But Sy and the show are at their strongest when Assane is just being his own Superman self, utterly relaxed and confident in his own skin, and so captivating that his ex-partner, Claire, can’t really resist him despite ample reason to.

If Assane seems practically perfect in every way, he is not perfectly perfect. His most obvious failing is that his criminal shenanigans and revenging make him less than reliable in his daily life, affecting his relationships with ex-partner Claire (Ludivine Sagnier, whom non-French audiences might recognise from “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope”), who despairs of his inability to show up on time to see his son Raoul (Etan Simon). Like Sy, Sagnier brings a lot of soul to her part - though onscreen far less, she’s as important as Sy to the series’ success - and the two actors have great chemistry. Also impressive and key to creating sympathy are the actors who play their flashback teenage selves, Mamadou Haidara and Ludmilla Makowski. Really, you could do away with action elements and build a series around them.

This is a pity because Lupin often fumbles its emotional reveals in other parts - the story of Diop being torn between his job and his family feels like wheel-spinning, rather than genuine emotional intrigue.

Soufiane Guerrab is wasted in the Young Detective Consumed by the Case role and spends most of this season pinning colour printouts of book covers to cork boards and getting waved off by his colleagues, who are all blinded or otherwise hampered by careerism.

But to my mind the weakest link is the villain himself and his daughter. Veteran actor Hervé Pierre hams it up as Hubert Pellegrini, a business tycoon who is the patriarch of the Pellegrini family. He just comes across as animated cartoon villain with no character depth (think moustache twirling Russian villain, Boris Badenov, in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon shows). He just emotes anger a lot without any nuance or hint of complexity.

Even Clotilde Hesme who plays the daughter who is unaware of her father’s criminal tendencies is miscast. For the record I adore Clotilde Hesme as she one of France’s most talented classical actresses (that non-French outsiders will not have heard of). She is a classically theatre trained actress and is one of the best stage actresses of her generation that I have ever seen. I’ve seen her in plays where she is just mesmerising. She has said before that she’s more comfortable on the stage than she is on the screen. And when she has been on screen she still has been a powerful presence. She’s actually won a César too. Here in Lupin, she seems to have no agency and looks bored with nothing really to do.I really hope they give her more scenes in the next part of Lupin.

The series is at its best when following Diop enacting his plans, and when revealing each one from a different vantage, making us privy to every moving part like a magician revealing his secrets. The show captures the momentum of a clockwork heist, the tension of sudden obstacles and the ingenuity of improvised responses, with thrilling precision (especially in “Chapter 1 - Le Collier de la reine,” directed by Now You See Me’s Louis Leterrier).

Lupin is also politically incisive when it wants to be; it brings to mind Ladj Ly’s Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables, which adapted the broad strokes of Victor Hugo’s novel about the 1832 Paris Rebellion, and modernised the story by focusing on the police brutality faced by non-white Parisians.

Lupin opens with Diop disguised as cleaning staff and entering the Louvre after-hours, alongside dozens of forgotten, anonymous non-white workers as they pass by “La Liberté guidant le people,” Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of the July Revolution of 1830 which replaced France’s hereditary rule with popular sovereignty.

Before any semblance of plot or character, Lupin centres broken ideals and promises unkept (without giving too much away, the show’s primary villain has much more nationalistic view of French culture and history which merely adds to a cartoonish caricature than a complex character). The rest of the episode is about valuable jewels once owned by Marie Antionette - one of the most recognisable symbols of wealth and extravagance in times of extreme poverty - which are put up for auction by the Pelligrini family, and bid on by other wealthy collectors with bottomless purses and no sense of irony.

Granted, beyond this auction subplot, explorations of race and class are largely limited to individual interactions, but the show continues to refer back to (and implicitly comment on) its source material in ways that wink at the audience. An elderly, unassuming target of Diop’s schemes seems like an unlikely victim at first - Diop, though he acts in his own self-interest, usually displays a moral compass - until this victim reveals the colonial origins of her wealth, immediately re-contextualising the ethics of the situation, in a manner that Leblanc’s stories did not. (The show is yet to apply this lens to Arsène Lupin himself, who Diop treats with reverence, but that’s a secondary concern since Lupin is entirely fictional in-world).

Barring some nagging structural problems - like cutting to flashbacks when things are getting exciting, or epilogues that feel ten minutes too long - Lupin mostly works. It plants a few personal seeds early on, which it keeps hinting at without fully addressing, but by the time its scattered elements come into focus, the show finally figures out how to weave them together, and delivers a mid-season cliffhanger that renders many of these flaws irrelevant.

Lupin manages to have fun even with an antiquated premise - the story of a suave con-man who charms his way through high-profile robberies - while adding just enough new spin on the concept to feel refreshing. Omar Sy may not have much to work with, but his alluring presence makes Assane Diop feel like a worthy successor to Arsène Lupin.

Lupin isn’t going to win César, BAFTA, or Emmy awards, or even turn heads for its ability to develop tertiary or even secondary plots or characters - that doesn’t really matter. You’re there to see a difficult hero be difficult and heroic - everyone else is there to be charmed, vexed, or eluded by them. Sy’s performance bounds off the screen, and is almost musical. He floats through scenes like he glides over the roofs and through the back alleys of Paris; he outmanoeuvres his foes with superior literary references and sheer athleticism. He is irresistible and also good at everything he tries, even kidnapping.

I would encourage anyone to watch Lupin for a fun care free ride. But the only caveat I would make is watch it in the original French.

If you don’t know French then put on the subtitles to understand (that’s what they are there for). The real crime is to watch this (or any film or television series) dubbed in a foreign language. It’s disrespectful to the actors and film makers and it’s silly because it’s comical to watch something dubbed over.

Please watch it in the original French.

Then go and read the books. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for your question.

[chiseler]

Great Zilches of History

Film is light. There are times, though, when that light may take on a Stygian cast, burning with a flamme noire severity, a weird and otherworldly keenness. Or it may burn lurid and loud — especially if it’s a very old film, acting like a séance that summons the unruly dead. The darkness in cinema best typified by that form we call film noir is in its essence an extension of the peculiarly American darkness of Edgar Allan Poe.

Early, nitrate-based film stock, with its twinkling mineral core, gives Poe's crepuscular light its time to shine and thereby illuminate the world. No longer held in the solitary confinement of a page of reproduced text or an image, frozen, rendered in paint or ink. Poe's singularly tormented vision is finally written alchemically, in cinematographic rays beamed through silver salts; into moving images of such aggressive vitality as to blast every rational thing from one's mind. A Black & White image flipped into negative makes black fire, or black sunlight such as illumines Nosferatu’s Transylvanian forests, through which a box-like carriage rattles at Mack Sennett speed. But with the slightest underexposure, a little dupey degradation of the print, or even a little imagination (such collaboration is not discouraged), this liquid blackness will spread everywhere and anywhere, the most luminous pestilence known to creation.  Be it in the laughing nightmare of Fleischer cartoons of old (Out of the Inkwell, indeed) or John Alton’s vision of the night, we are left to wonder: is daylight burning out the corner of a building, or is it the blackness of the building which is eating into the sky? 

As with many such questions, film permits us no easy answer. We are simply to watch as the characters smudge. As their shadows pulsate and flicker, emanate out beyond themselves. But if Poe represents the loss of control over one’s existence and the ensuing panic, then cinema, consciously or not, takes existential dread as a given.

God, a vague and unseen deity, died at the moment cinema was born, replaced by a new celestial order. Saints and prophets made poor film characters, giving off the feeling of having stepped out of a stained glass window, flat, Day-Glo icons moving uncomfortably through three-dimensional space. Movies rather rejoiced in dirt and rags, texture and imperfection, so that the most lacklustre clown easily outperformed all the icon messiahs. At 45 minutes, Fernand Zecca’s The Life and Passion of Christ (1903) is one of the earliest feature films, but compared to the same filmmaker’s less ambitious, more playful shorts, it’s a beautiful snooze. A different execution climaxes his Story of a Crime (1901), in which we get to see, by brutal jump cut, a guillotine decapitation before our very eyes. This, as Maxim Gorky prophesied, is what the public wants. Or maybe the events of 1901, cinematic and otherwise, allow “the public” to define itself in ways heretofore unthinkable. The year brings Victoria Regina’s propitious death. And with her passing, Edgar Allan Poe’s pronunciamento on celebrity, “the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque," comes to new and anarchic fruition as an incendiary schnook, one of history’s finest.

When he shot President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6th, 1901, the currents of fear and vengeance unleashed by Leon Czolgosz would carry him on a journey from reflexive beatings at the hands of police and a post-Victorian mob – ladies in bustles shedding all restraint, transformed from well-honed symbols of middle-class decorum into yowling banshees, screaming “GIVE HIM TO US!” – straight to the electric chair, from whence his corpse would be taken for additional punishment, a process where ghoulish prison authorities at Auburn separated the head from the body, and then poured sulfuric acid on what remained, before secreting the sorry residue of America’s anarchist son into an unmarked grave.

Despite attempts to erase Czoglosz from history, a visual document survives, oozing with pathos and bitter recrimination. It is impossible, looking into those eyes, not to feel unnerved and, yes, sympathetic with him – his desperate act, after all, was as critical a part of America’s greed-engorged industrial fantasia as the near daily spectacle of peaceful strikers, his friends among them, being slaughtered in the name of profit. 

Cinema’s misspent childhood years in late-Victorian fairgrounds are followed by a grimy adolescence in Edwardian nickelodeon parlours. The medium, which finally comes of age amid gaudy palaces built in its honor, morphs many times. However, All Talking Pictures are the final death knell for the Victorian standard, belching from the screen a thousand inbred tongues that invade the ear willy-nilly. They remind us that when Queen Victoria breaths her last Naturalism sheds decorum, taste, breeding, good table manners.

Edgar Allan Poe essentially owns motion pictures via ongoing necrophilic obsession, since celluloid preserves the dead better than any embalming fluid. Like amber preserved holograms, they flit in and out of its parameters, reciting their own epitaphs in pantomime; revenant moths trapped in perpetual motion. Film is bona fide illumination — as opposed to religion’s metaphorical kind – representing the supremacy of alchemy and necromancy over sackcloth and ashes. The inmates, emboldened under the spell of Klieg lights, were not only running the asylum, but re-shaping the world in their own image.  Both Church and State with their blunt instruments of repression proved impotent against the anarchy of this freshly liberated ghetto.

Holy men were unceremoniously defrocked, their doctrine of abject compliance to class-based norms re-written into storylines enriched by grease-painted floozies, costumed villains, and snooty dowagers brought down a notch by the drunk hobo in her drawing room. Amidst widespread labour unrest and mass poverty, followed soon by the Great Depression, filmgoers of the silent era had a front row view of the plutocracy’s helplessness against a swelling tide of restless humanity. Charlie Chaplin’s itinerant laborer may have accidentally thwarted a plutocrat’s plan for world domination and/or a house renovation, just as Groucho Marx seemed to have spontaneously derailed a social climbing matron’s equally fierce ambitions.

All hail the magic mirrors! Celestial mandalas! Giant eggs and butterfly women! Segundo de Chomón’s The Red Spectre (1907) ruthlessly assaults our eyes with a wraith-magician dissolving through his coffin lid in a red, hand-tinted, flame-flickering hell. His presence, caped, skull-masked, was to herald a new thespic truth, that from this moment forward the art of acting would be reduced to how you respond to light, and how light responds to you. The Specter of Chomon’s dark bauble is in every element Poe’s Red Death — japing and performing tricks for us, his adoring fans and welcome guests, before announcing our doom — literary metaphor slammed against a literal backdrop of amber stalactites, pellucid as an ossuary.

That was a long time ago, in the first decades of the 20th century, before artifice and studios and the commercial paradigm of stardom finally swallowed cinema in one ravenous bite. It was a period when one could see, if one paid close attention, the dreariness of ordinary life at the centre and around the edges of every motion picture brought forth. It lived onscreen in film’s early days, exposing the pretense, however fitful, of opulence or period as simply that: pretense, a fundamental desire to escape reality. But this “escapism” had always been erroneously attributed to the audience’s needs, when in fact it was rather those bankrolling the nascent medium not yet sufficiently in control of itself to impose any order.

The censors were on to something, even if they could never fully articulate what precise blasphemies were being committed. 

Take Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for instance, which isn’t pure noir but is pure Poe: what would the surgical excision of an influence look like? Granted, the noir genre seems an unlikely Poe derivative, but what of Laura — fatalism, romance and necro-fantasy (with Lydecker as Usher)? DOA is the kind of concept Poe might have dreamed up; one of the great noir scribes, Cornell Woolrich is channeling Poe through an all-thumbs pulp sensibility. And how hard would it be to cast Val Lewton as the horror noir hybrid, with premature burials, ancestral disease, lunatics taking over bedlam? Jean Epstein, who adapted The Fall of the House of Usher in 1928, complained that Baudelaire’s translations fundamentally mistook Poe’s innocence for ghastliness. 

The dead in Poe, writes Epstein, are “only slightly dead.”  

To the extent that Epstein was correct, the whimsy that Poe bequeaths to cinema finds itself absorbed in almost material terms — not as sensibility but as a texture whose particular nap or weave is never granted names. In Mesmeric Revelations a voluntary subject is quite near physical death and under the ministrations of his mesmerist, answering precise questions about the nature of God. Before dying, he says God is “ultimate or unparticled” matter: “What men attempt to embody in the word ‘thought,’ is this matter in motion”. The same unnamable textures apparently survive on television, a case of Poe resonating inside our minds, a collective consciousness replaced by cathode rays. 

Deep within the 18 hours of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, there is a moment that, on its incandescent surface, could have been lifted weightless from the great post-war dream of material deliverance; as if the zeitgeist of the mid 20th century had somehow got lost and ended up in this one: Daytime, the top on the convertible is down, the radio tuned, The Paris Sisters singing I Love How You Love Me as a reincarnated Laura Palmer lifts her face to a cloudless sky.  Within this tapestry of an early Phil Spector production — his trademark reverb eternally evocative of Romance and Death (two conditions Spector knows well) — the voice of Priscilla Paris could be a siren sound from the American Beyond, or a dream goddess lullaby from the whispering gallery, or sweet nothings from the crypt.  We don’t know.  We’ll never know.

In this oneiric echo chamber, Poe smiles down upon American blondness, muscle cars soaked in sunlight, candy for eye and ear; the terrible ecstasy of unending motion and immortality.

If Lynch’s Return means going back home, then home is that Lemon Popsicle/Strawberry Milkshake species of innocence proffered by America's music industry between 1957 and 1964. The horror genre always has to have some component of innocence to devastate, be it the existential kind which inspires the malevolence everyone paid the price of a ticket to have vicarious transit with; or the mere victimisation of the unsuspecting. Either way, there was no other period in American popular culture when innocence, of any variety, was so lavishly examined, toyed with, killed.  The free floating chord that opens The Everly Brothers song, All I Have To Do is Dream, remains a lamentation in sound: the sudden recrudescence of Poe’s beating, tell-tale heart.  Adoring such guilt-free teenage odes to sleep, death and sexual desire, David Lynch finds a muse in Amanda Seyfried. Specifically her visionary eyes melting Phil Spector’s dark edifice of sugar in a deathless, Sternbergian close-up — iridescent search lights, ever more urgently scanning the sky above, waiting for the sun to swallow her whole. We can only bear witness, and internalize this shimmering ingenue, this angel in a red convertible, trading places with Old Sol; as if whatever she just snorted has entered our system through hers.  But in that ephemeral instant she achieves oneness with all things; the transcendence of stardom — true, temporal stardom  — shorn of fame and the imperatives of show-business.

To this day David Lynch’s favorite film remains Otto e Mezzo, directed by Federico Fellini: Western Europe’s sorcerer of confectionary delights and unending motion; the man who put the “dolce” in La Dolce Vita. Fellini, he states, "manages to accomplish with film what mostly abstract painters do; namely, to communicate an emotion without ever saying or showing anything in a direct manner." Even if one were to take him at his word — and we must, of course, for no filmmaker has ever been known to misrepresent themselves to us — this seems a strange instance of gravitational pull, particularly in the light of the formal strategies of both men as they developed through time. Lynch has always favored a blunt pictorialism that, in its bluntness, borders on the language of Imagism: the studied simplicity of the language used to complex, powerful effect. Fellini, in 8 1/2 and throughout much of his career, by contrast, unleashes upon the viewer an insanely fluid, brutally precise camera ballet. Any good cinephile might be tempted to resolve the disparities and move toward a brighter, less subterranean comprehension. But, ultimately, such understanding would be a didactic burden no moviegoer needs. For here, in these conflicting dialects, you have a fleeting taste of ideologies swirled together like ribbon candy: a blur of four-wheeled luxury from the New World zooming past regional splendor into that fraternity of man: the socio-economic nirvana imagined by Karl Marx in the Old.

Careening from one via to another at harrowing, white-knuckle speed, Fellini was once heard to lament that “Some of the neo-realists seem to think that they cannot make a film unless they have a man in old clothes in front of the camera.” George Bluestone, recording these words for the pages of Film Culture in 1957, was sitting in the literal passenger seat of that ideal metaphor for post-war ebullience in action: expert, 20th century precision hurtling them through Roman streets with graffiti-scrawled churches proudly bearing the hammer and sickle; that famous Black Chevy skirting the Italian Scylla (the Vatican) and its equally dogmatic Charybdis (the Party). At that velocity, anything could make sense.

“Appearances aside" Bluestone wrote, "the Chevrolet is at every moment under Fellini’s control. He weaves in and out of traffic, misses pedestrians by inches, swerves away from Nomentana’s interminable monuments, dodging yellow traffic blinkers as if he were trying out a darkened slalom.” It is every bit a performance. Rome, after all, is the land of Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Apollo and Daphne — marble-cum-flesh, even as flesh itself gives way to forms that leave the viewer in terrified awe. While reliving his own mythic, carbureted experience, Bluestone does some weaving of his own, quoting Genevieve Agel’s one-line pronunciamento (and, in the process, defining what would soon be labelled 'Felliniesque'), “Fellini is a visionary of the real”, as the passenger positions his driver somewhere between corporeal reality and ecstatic truth while the big man (no old clothes for this maestro) drives and drives. “As one hand lightly guides the wheel, the other gestures — it acts.”

Spirits of the Dead is one of those compendium films, with voguish directors (Malle, Vadim, Fellini) entrusted with bringing to the screen a Poe story each. Only the Fellini episode, Toby Dammit, is notable, but it's very notable, a hallucinatory yarn owing as much to Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! as to Poe's Never Bet the Devil Your Head, its ostensible source. The title character, played by Terence Stamp with white-blond hair and dark roots and constant beads of witch hazel perspiration, is in Rome to attend an awards ceremony and to play Christ in a western, but he's fatally distracted by his new sports car and a vision of the devil in the form of a little girl. Toby's ride through a hellscape of nocturnal Rome seems lifted from Jules Dassin’s 10.30 p.m. Summer (1966), but works even better for Fellini than it did in the Duras adaptation. An oppressively subjective film, Toby Dammit narrows down to the view in the Ferrari's headlights, a ghastly floodlit interzone where human forms are gradually replaced with mannequins and cut-outs, as the city becomes unreal, an elaborate movie set, an uncanny valley laid out for the staging of an epic stunt/snuff film.

Fellini and Lynch celebrate bodily extremes in intriguing if differing ways, which should, in our time, naturally gallop beyond the pale, but nevertheless become wholly, weirdly digestible. It is perhaps the innocent glee of these artists, their wonderment at the vast variety of shapes the human body can assume; an innocence which suspends toward erasure our awareness the way physical representation functions in the 21st century. Lynch presents the disabled as childlike, mysterious, magical beings without ever worrying about lending them agency (The Elephant Man’s John Merrick functions both as passive whipping boy and chic spectacle for the whole of Victorian London), or the mendacity of adult sophistication (the latest Twin Peaks iteration includes a pint-sized hitman who whines like a puppy when his icepick is broken). Is it any wonder Lynch evolved a style which placed them front and center in unmoving shots, without irony or pity? 

Poe, while certainly a pioneer of fake news, also had a way of vindicating the lumpen masses of humanity (to the middle-brow’s abiding chagrin).  

The Mystery of Marie Roget, a Parisian murder mystery, presented as a fictional sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was simultaneously trumpeted as a correct solution to the real-life murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York. When a news article presented fresh evidence while the story was still being serialised, Poe made minor changes to the final instalment to keep his fiction in line with the facts.

He later published a story about an Atlantic crossing by balloon, accomplished in three days, in The New York Sun in 1844. "Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason's Flying Machine!!!"  The piece was presented as truth, and only revealed as "The Great Balloon Hoax" a couple of days later. “The more intelligent believed," wrote Poe, "while the rabble, for the most part, rejected the whole with disdain.” He saw this as a new development: “20 years ago credulity was the characteristic trait of the mob, incredulity the distinctive feature of the philosophic.” 

What had changed? Perhaps the acceleration of scientific and social progress meant that the more literate and scientifically-minded had become inured to startling new developments, so the most surprising events now seemed credible. And since these same technological leaps were always presented as social benefits, the working class was growing skeptical, since they rarely saw any improvement in their condition.

by Daniel Riccuito, R.J. Lambert and David Cairns

Special thanks to Richard Chetwynd

[laissezferre]

theatre review: phantom of the opera, manila cast: jonathan roxmouth, meghan picerno, matt leisy

jonathan roxmouth as the phantom

jonathan roxmouth's phantom would best be described as "the phantom that you would get if you poured pepper labeled 'joj' and salt labeled 'ramin' in a single shaker, shook it til the control of one and the style of another mixed together, and pulled the cap so it could spew out something truly incredible". jonathan's voice is powerful and overwhelming but always in control. not a note was out of place. there were multiple points in the show when i just thought, "this is ridiculous, this is so good". he handles the role, at least vocally, with such care and control. he goes from booming to soothing and vice versa without much preparation, and he pulls it off. and i haven't even talked about his vibrato. after "music of the night", i just knew--this character, this tour, and the future of this show, is in good hands.

between singing and acting, jonathan is very much a singer. even when he's supposed to be screaming--or at parts when most phantoms have resorted to screaming--he's still singing, he's still holding that note.

jonathan's phantom and meghan's christine have a palpable chemistry. unlike my first viewing with carla and ian as the leads, jonathan's phantom gives raoul a run for his money. it's not exactly lnd-levels, but the phantom this time around had better chances. he really uses his height to loom over christine, and christine's reaction to him is this odd mix of fascination and terror.

if i have to have one gripe about jonathan, it would be his vulnerability, or lack thereof. the phantom acts so powerful in act 1, and i don't think he ever really got off that pedestal for act 2.  i felt like his energy and commitment fizzled out in act 2, and he was kind of going through the motions. while i was watching jonathan, i kept remembering ian jon bourg's phantom, and how he looked so utterly depleted by the end. ian was large but he looked so small when he curled in on himself, he didn't have anything more to give. i didn't feel that way about jonathan. my reaction towards him was more of "i'm sorry you didn't get the girl", instead of "i'm sorry these were the cards you were dealt, i'm sorry you've been alone for so long, i'm sorry you've never felt love".

meghan picerno as christine daae

i really love how meghan picerno thinks as she acts. you can almost see the speech bubbles floating above her head as the scene goes. every line has a corresponding expression on her face, and it's not the amateur acting kind, it's more of being always in the moment. right off the bat, you know that she's an intelligent christine. in the hannibal rehearsal when the backdrop falls and everyone's panicking, she stays very still while looking around the stage, thinking, assessing--and you get the feeling that christine daae has a good idea about who's fooling around in the opera house.

meghan puts that same thoughtfulness when it comes to her singing. everything has an intention behind it. her singing improves rapidly in "think of me", but when she gets to the cadenza she becomes uncertain, feels it out, and then goes for the money note. meghan has a solid range--her singing has power, and she's also able to tap that lower register to create solid low notes. i've also never heard "my soul began to soar" so sweetly. both meghan and jonathan are versatile and can sing powerfully when it's called for, and add variation when needed. sometimes though, the experimentation doesn't go very well. "wishing you were somehow here again" was a mix of singing, exclaiming, and gasping. just as you would get into the melody, she sing-speaks, and then breathes at unnatural points in the song.  i guess it would boil down to people's preferences and their tolerance for  "musical expression", but that part didn't work for me.

meghan wasn't kidding when she said in interviews that she wanted to portray christine as strong. she is so aggressive! matt leisy's raoul plays off of her, and because they're both imposing, it sometimes looks like they're well on their way to a domestic. in the rooftop scene, christine dominates the conversation. raoul is trying to comfort her and convince her it's not real, but christine is having none of it. her gestures were screaming "believe me! i'm not crazy!", and i genuinely thought that they were gonna have a row. this forcefulness doesn't just apply to raoul or to the phantom, it also applies to her father. normally in "wishing", christine sings about how she misses her father, but with meghan, i got the impression that she was frustrated and was beating herself up for still missing her father.

also, it may just be me reading into it too much, but i feel like meghan's christine doesn't take well to being comforted. she'll receive comfort, she'll allow herself to be patted and petted, but there will be no visible relief in the set of her shoulders. this kind of makes her seem cold, especially with raoul. in fact, christine doesn't even look at raoul much in the dressing room. instead, she's facing the audience as she reminisces about her childhood--this leads me to think that meghan's christine doesn't start out already smitten with raoul. the falling in love comes later in "all i ask of you" and christine becomes a very eager kisser and audibly sighs into the kiss.

meghan isn't a particularly graceful or playful christine. she's very serious and at times, physically rigid on stage. in il muto, i wanted badly to shake her and tell her, "girl, loosen up, you're supposed to be playing in a comedy". also, meghan didn't join the dancers in hannibal, and the few steps she did looked stiff. i don't know how much of her stiffness is intentional, if it's a manifestation of her fear of the phantom, because she really is terrified of the phantom to the point of paralysis. she's utterly terrified in the rooftop, in the masquerade, in "twisted every way"--in all those scenes there were moments where she bends over and becomes non-responsive to raoul's attempts at comfort.

but despite her fear, she's still able to go head-to-head with the phantom. she snaps and answers him angrily in the final lair. when she sang "it's in your soul that the true distortion lies", i thought she would follow with a growl. when she shields raoul from the phantom, they stare each other down, which is a sight to see because of their height difference, but she gives as good as she's got. she does soften a bit when the phantom allows them to leave. raoul is pulling her to go but she resists repeatedly--not in a “let me spend more time with him" way but in a "we can't leave him here!" way. while there was no chance that she was going to stay with the phantom, she still couldn’t help but be concerned for him.

matt leisy as raoul de chagny

i first saw matt leisy's raoul when he was sharing the stage with ian jon bourg and clara verdier, and i have to say, his portrayal there is startingly different from when he acts with meghan and jonathan. this time, his raoul is less commanding and more floundering. you can see how he's not in control of the situation and how frustrated he is for always being one step behind the phantom. this is not the calm, in-control, dignified raoul that we know. he's absolutely out of his depth and he's pissed. he's not whiny, but you can tell he's rattled. in "notes ii" when christine is already sitting on the chair and he's convincing her to be the bait, he's almost begging her, like it's him who will lose his mind if this doesn't end. and when christine refuses, he angrily goes off at the phantom.

despite that intensity, he never roughhouses christine, but it is sad to see that christine doesn't actively seek his comfort. that's why their "all i ask of you" isn't as dreamy and romantic. while christine does love raoul, it's the phantom who's able to evoke stronger reactions from her (more fear than desire, but still), and it's very much clear that this is christine and the phantom's show. matt, and his voice, disappears in the background. in "wandering child" when all three leads are on stage together, you can really feel that raoul is the third wheel in the scene, and his words are barely heard.

in "final lair" when christine kisses the phantom, matt's raoul looks away and closes his eyes, like he can't bear to see the love of his life kissing another man. i usually check where the phantom puts his hands during the kiss, but matt's turning away was so striking that i just had to look at him.

some other things

overall, i really liked this production and noticed a few things that i wasn't able to because i was sitting nearer this time. the broadway costumes are absolutely gorgeous. i really love the softness of the pink in the star princess costume. this is also the first time i paid attention to carlotta's hannibal skirt--it's as intricately designed as christine's and i prefer it's red-black-gold combination.

i zoned out during notes i and prima donna but don't i always.

there are also some cute blink-and-you-miss it moments. when christine is asked to sing, monsieur reyer is displeased and thinks they’re wasting time. when he says "from the beginning of the aria then", he shows christine the score and when she looks, he snaps it closed in her face. but after the performance, he is seen chatting with christine and he kisses her hand as he exits.

in the don juan rehearsal, christine and piangi also have a moment. when piangi is being scolded for not getting the melody right, christine mouths to him "you can do it". i'm not sure if piangi acknowledges it, but christine goes back to facing meg.

so... yeah, that’s how my evening went. this is the fourth time now that i’ve seen poto, and it’s just as magical as the first time i saw it seven years ago. there are classics, and there is poto, and there’s a reason that it’s managed to run as long as it has on broadway (les mis, i love u, but u have strayed from the path, padawan). it just has a strong sense of identity and no amount of watered down touring shows is going to misplace the brilliant original. the future of poto is bright, and with this cast, it is in good hands.

have a look at my other review: ian jon bourg, clara verdier, matt leisy

[fst-critique]

The Spring 2022 Menswear season was one of the strongest in recent memory. Taking place between Milan and Paris, the seasonal shows concluded within roughly 15 days. Exhibiting a sense of optimism,  designers who chose to show their Spring-Summer sets during the traditional calendar season carried the burning fashion torch onward with an attitude ripe for surprise and enjoyment. Though the venture took place alongside the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, attention to the viral disease was ignored as a focus on dressing for a less constrained future took place over the fear and anguish delt to society over the last 18 months. This summer saw beachside havens, quiet metropolitan stages, and city landscapes used as the perfect backdrop for which many a  lively fashion film and few in-person events took place. The minimal scenes and airy atmospheres reflect comfort and promise that simpler times are indeed ahead. Timelessness and modernity were abandoned as themes of exuberance and living in the moment represented a transformation to showcasing personality. Both time and fashion must move forward. Those involved in leading the art post-Covid did so with fervor and an opportunistic sensibility. This season’s most popular trends are appreciating the natural body, unfettered suiting, and animated colorways. For styles, a revival of streetwear, upscale take on workwear, and exploration of Western wear transpired neatly. Expect next year’s Spring Summer styles to be full of life, adventure, and a new appreciation for the undomesticated world ahead.

TRENDS

The overarching trend of Spring-Summer 2022 was a shift to embracing the natural. Displaying a sense of confidence and vitality, menswear designers across Western Europe tapped into the zeitgeist’s desires to show themselves unabashedly. Strutting alongside a utopian- or dystopian in the case of Rick Owens- beach, owning and touting the body with all its flaws and glory was the focus as fashion seeks to define appeal and sensuality for the present-day man. Going to great lengths to reveal the chest, shoulders, back, and legs, designers from the Prada duo to Rick Owens boasted their models' agile bodies by highlighting the male figure in all its beauty. Raf and Miuccia underwent an exploration of a new identity for their Prada man with light rompers and revealing skorts, while Rick Owens kept to his unisex aesthetic with an organic strategy centered on soft lace tank tops. Stepping outside their full-throttle sex-appeal image for just a second, Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce took to show a subtler side of their brand with a mesh top embroidered with colorful jewels. For his Y/Project presentation, Glenn Martens handy patterns crept into a realm of versatility. Allowing wearers to transform their garments, wool knits included a neckline full of twisted and braided straps that revealed the upper chest and traps seductively. Riccardo Tisci exalted the macho-man through the use of sleeveless gaberdine wool trench vests, as Matthew Williams elected to counter such aggression with lean, slim trousers. For Fendi, Kim Jones highlighted the waist with cropped blazers that New York’s Peter Do would snatch up in a second. Designers want the men of the future to feel comfortable in their skin. Independent of styles that showed restraint, those leading life in such pieces post-lockdown will feel free and jubilant knowing their willingness to escape conventional male dress codes has finally transpired and been accepted.

Breathable, composed suiting is the tailoring of the moment. No excess padding, dramatic variations, or elongated shapes. Instead, ideas played into the ongoing wait-and-see narrative plaguing society at large. In the meantime, as life returns to some level of normalcy, baggy trousers and shapeless jackets offer some reprieve to the lived-in t-shirt and sweatpant pandemic uniform. Prada’s blazers were cut casually with wide sleeves and a slight slope of the shoulder. Bruno’s taste for Lanvin dipped into an oversized look complete with rounded shoulders. His wide notch lapels encouraged an image of 1980’s suiting, as did the jackets mid-thigh cut. Christophe Lemaire and Sarah Lin Tran added to the style with variations that hung loose and away from the body. Shown in an empty carnival at night, Alexandre Mattiussi’s kept to the trend of the oversized suit by including sleeves that extended well past the wrist bone. Dior Men’s Kim Jones and the Meier’s for Jil Sander showed classic styles that were long and representative of a double-breasted fold. Lose and flowing trousers continue to remain in vogue, though the elastic waistband is finally meeting its end. A constant dating back three seasons now, this loose cut of pants is continuing to show a presence. Distancing themselves from any notion of the slim-cut pant, both Lemaire and The Row- in typical fashion- provided a most appealing version with trousers that were wide around the hip yet tapered in at the ankle. Keeping to this shape though done in a less intense version was Véronique Nichanian’s variant styled with a rolled cuff as to show a casual demeanor. The hybrid suite has long been a topic for discussion since the onset of the pandemic. Those looking to abandon the ship of suits once and for all may after all be brought back into exploring the toned-down variations of the season. Cut with an essential purpose and with movement in mind, the non-confirming suit is a trend that will undoubtedly cement itself in menswear for decades to come.

The color scheme most representative of Spring-Summer 2022 is enthused vibrancy. For the moment, minimalism has no place in fashion post-Covid. After months, now bordering years, of isolation and staring at the same grey and beige curtains, colorists are being celebrated by those trapped inside for their approach to redefining life as a place where joy will flourish. Best showcased by Jonathan Anderson's appreciation for the pop of color- bright red, ultramarine blue, and bubble-gum pink- the British designer alleviated boredom with hues that are reminiscent of childhood bliss. Jeremy Scott’s sequined Canadian tuxedo was done in a shiny blue that will be perfect for any Studio 54 disco-themed party. For a more traditional offer, Walter Van Beirendonck opened his collection with three single-breasted suits done up in bright, lush hues of orange, pink, and green. Jil Sander continued the use of the monochromatic with a green trouser and jacket combination. Diversifying their offering with playful separates took shape with a color-blocked jumper, a red, turquoise, white, and black prints played second fiddle to an eclectic silk yellow foulard- maybe Luke and Lucie Meier are colorists after all!  Dries Van Noten continued on the usage of color blocking with typography set in tones of faded yellow, burgundy, and blue as shown in his opening long parka look. Infusions of neon orange and green in sporty jackets added to Noten’s energy. In total, much of the tones found throughout the season harken a mood similar to that of the 1960s London “Youth Quake”. One could easily picture teens across London’s hip Chelsea neighborhood flaunting such outrageously fun styles. As was the mindset back then, these respective color patterns will help consumers express themselves as individuality will continue to hold relevance come Springtime next year.

STYLES

Beginning around 2005 and lasting until 2017, a new type of sportswear was widely adopted and offered as an alternative mode of dress that captured a wide demographic across cities from Moscow to Los Angeles. Oversized t-shirts, high-top sneakers, icon-riddled hoodies, and distressed trousers provided a way for cities youth to embrace a concept of nonconformity. Rising from the previous hip-hop, punk, and rock-and-roll eras of fashion, the gritty, new silhouettes and flashy outfits of urbanites seeped far enough into the mainstream to welcome a contemporary statement known officially as Streetwear. Hood by Air’s Shayne Oliver, Alyx creative director Matthew Williams, and Off-White founder Virgil Abloh played crucial roles in established this scene with offerings that accompanied a combined aesthetic of athleisure and skate-wear. Over the past few years, this style of representation has declined dramatically as the consumer's age and taste grew up all in the same. Such the novel concept of getting dressed up by dressing down introduced the idea of risk-taking to the menswear market that paved a path for a more pertinent display of rebellion. The return and reflection of how to reintroduce and revamp streetwear heading into 2022 was a task undertaken by the most seasoned designers throughout Paris and Milan.

The ease and comfortability factor of the style made a strong case for even some of the most outlandish streetwear variations this Summer.  With lockdowns ending, such a need to define a new look has come as the desire to dress up is equally matched with a proposal to remain dressed down. Virgil Abloh paired his recent menswear endeavor with another collaboration with Nike and his label Off-White. Low-top Air Force 1’s had a makeover as the monogrammed LV logo wrapped around the sneaker's leather exterior. Continuing to embrace his now-iconic concept of scribbling descriptors on products, the terms “Lacet” and “AIR” were printed on his new Louis trainers. The yellow, green, and blue kicks come just months after the designer recently announced his “Dear Summer” project with the American sportswear giant Nike.  A confidant and dear friend of Abloh, Kim Jones furthered the re-emerged streetwear style with his Dior Menswear campaign. A joint effort with Houston rapper Travis Scott, Jones and his musical muse fermented on a plan to coincide formal tailoring with graphic, original sketches from the rapper. The work, more doodle’s than fine art, was felt most in a paint-splattered t-shirt whose broad and slightly cropped cut allows for ease of layering. No stranger to the street movement of the mid-2000s, Riccardo Tisci insisted upon adding to the democratic scheme with his Burberry set. Large and in charge, XL tops with prints representing that of a conceptual camouflage will do anything but hide the wearer. Wrestler-inspired high tops sneakers and bondage trousers completed a new city uniform and should they be adopted by Londonite’s, will help to re-establish the Italian as a leading figure in the movement that he helped define decades ago. Opposed to delivering the tacky, overpriced pieces that contributed to the decline of streetwear in the first place, such improvised, practical ideas will aid in the resurrection of the movement in which teens and young adults will find hard to resist.

With a constant presence across runways every season, workwear products have provided a foundation for menswear designers to build upon dating back decades. Dickie’s overalls, Levi’s 501 jeans, and Martin Margiela’s tabi boots all evolved from the practical functionalities of such historic designs. Utilizing a contemporary vision, textile’s and authentic versions of such hard-scrabbled attire met a softer, fashion-forward interpretation that saw a deeper dive into the meaning of labor-intensive products unfold. Martin Rose, Thebetsile Magugu, and Glenn Martens advanced into an aesthetic of up-scale workwear with their modernized versions of double-knee trousers. Neil Barrett’s pocket-laden jackets will have any fashionable carpenter vying to get their weathered hands on such a useful piece. Virgil Abloh’s PVC jacket and trousers would be a pleasant surprise for Niagara Falls attendants braving the wet majestic mist, though his colorful hockey gloves may suit Canada’s Winter Olympic team more realistically come the 2022 Winter Olympics. Études creative directors and founders Aurélien Arbet, Jérémie Egry, and José Lamali take care of the truckers across major highways with tailored denim trucker jackets that would be digested by even the most unfashionable journeymen. As the world prepares to once again begin the foray back into the office, designers made sure to represent the pride behind the many blue-collar industries that supported the masses during the most intense moments of the pandemic.

Back in the 19th century when cowboys tended to buffalos and wrangled with outlaws in taverns, little did they know just how great of an influence their appearance would have on high fashion nearly two centuries later. Somewhat mythological, these figures represented a time when the United States was undergoing an expansion to the western part of the country that with it brought a whole new look seen through pointy heels, fringed jackets, and loose cotton shirts. The idea that the proverbial lone-wolf traveled on horseback with leather trousers and rhinestone vests is merely a falsity brought on by exited film directors and their inaccurate depictions of history as shown in the 1960s Spaghetti Western movie craze. Thanks to admirers of this lifestyle like Ralph Lauren, the freedom and rugged aesthetic of the cowboy has long been altered to fit a stereotypical metropolitan look supported with calf-high cowboy boots, cow print trousers, and of course, the suede fringed jacket that has gone on to become an easily identifiable staple of any western-loving fashionista’s wardrobe. Drawing a line between escapism and utility, many provided an updated product to accompany the restart of normal life. In many ways, venturing into the post-COVID world mirrors the undertaking of the first pioneers who ventured into the vast wilderness unaware of the challenges and beauty that would accompany the journey. The American western style is back in fashion. Enticing versions of the classic silhouettes and the introduction of more abstract takes define a new period of what it means to be a present-day pioneer.

Dwindled to just two of the four fashion capital cities holding a menswear week, the allotted period felt much shorter than years past. Concluding just a week before the Haute Couture presentations were shown in Paris, those who went on to exhibit and introduce their concepts for the upcoming Spring and Summer seasons did so with an ambitious mindset that allowed for many a rememberable moment. Of such trends and styles, breaking conventionality with exposing the natural body took home the grand prize for daring to reveal the pure human form. Cropped blazers, shorter cuts, and tangible lines introduced a sense of rawness and visibility to how men will and should dress next year. Much in the same way was the soft tailoring that arrived alongside this rise to escaping conformity. Curved trousers, natural shoulders, and oversized jackets avoid restriction and allow for a taste of freedom. Inspiring and spirited, the mod color pallets of the season play their part in exercising the ability for consumers to dream of an easier, joyous life ahead. As far as styles go, the updated streetwear takes, luxury utilitarian forms, and re-imagined western apparel and accessories are set to provide wearers with fashionable looks that will accompany their expeditions from their 300 square foot apartments back into civilization. Menswear is currently one of the fastest-growing and most-watched markets in the scope of the fashion industry. These Spring-Summer 2022 trends and styles will ensure this growth remains constant.

[jebweaver]

Advantageous mediums.

It was a night like many others, nothing particularly odd or out of place. He spent it as usual, locked within his cabin, combing through alchemical notes and texts, experimenting with mixtures of ingredients on hand. One of the many endless nights, intended to be endured in the wait for a sleep that would never come.

The legs of his chair screeched against the floorboards as he pushed from his desk; a night spent without a bite of his preferred vice was a rarity, and tonight would be no different. Rangy legs ate the distance between one end of his quarters and the other, and the vine-encrusted, ornate doors of his liquor cabinet swung open easily enough. The drink uncorked, the vessel of his favored warmth rose to his scarred tiers... yet he didn’t have the focus to take a pull. 

The world around him swam subtly, at first, drawing the knit of his brows in a display of mild confusion. He glanced to the door of the cabin-- surely the tides weren’t so violent within the harbor. He’d turned on heel and uneasily made his way to the door, each step coming with more and more dizziness and unsteadiness-- and he’d only made it half way before he had to take pause, bending at the hips so he could brace himself against the edge of his bed. An azure hue dropped to his hand, breath shaky in tune with the trembling of the bottle in his grasp. He fumbled with the cork in his opposite hand, hoping to seal the vessel so he could toss it aside until he accidentally knocked it from his grip. Glass clambered to the floorboards, spilling the contents across varnished planks. Marcis wasn’t far behind it. The captain’s weight toppled heavily, landing face-first into the growing puddle of pungent whiskey. 

Darkness enclosed around the edges of his vision, and his awareness flicked off like a lightswitch. There wasn’t time to call for help. There was no time to panic.

When he’d come to, it wasn’t in a pool of drink. Nor was he even in his cabin-- the backdrop of dimly lit, foliage rich planters and aged furnishings now replaced by another, equally familiar setting. 

His childhood home. A place long abandoned and long reduced to cinder and ash. It was a quaint little abode; perhaps a tad bit dirty and unkempt -- and above all else, tight-- but comfortable in it’s own respects. A hearth sat on the far side of the room, flame crackling and popping within stone walls. The light within illuminated just enough to keep all corners of the dining area just above complete darkness, casting long shadows across the derelict looking walls and filling the room with the familiar, homely scent of burning firewood. Cob webs clung to the corners, hanging off furniture edge and around the few, weathered paintings that (unsuccessfully) kept the walls from looking too drab. 

To his left sat a cabinet half-filled with forgotten and dingy silverware, coated in a fine layer of dust. A trio of scratched tankards rest on the lowest shelf, two of which wore the same veil of dust and neglect as the rest. A lone, capital letter was carved upon each of the utensils; “J”, “M”, and “A”. There was space for another vessel upon the shelf, though it was nowhere to be found. Not on the table that sat before him, stretching toward the hearth. Not on the ramshackle kitchen counters and cast-iron range to his right. Not on the end table that rest behind him, near the door.

Bewilderment coursed through the man, subdued by the oddest feeling of comfort.  He wasn’t here-- he couldn’t be here, but ‘here’ was still ‘home’. True, it wasn’t how he remembered it. It was dirtier, derelict, and distinctly... empty. Even so, being within the place had stirred some queer feeling of warmth in his chest. 

The man’s one eye directed downward toward the edge of the table, narrowing in a somber moment of concentration. Relishing the moment and storing it away was far easier than trying to fight it, even if it was a dream.

An underwhelming vision broke that concentration; a lithe, pale hand stretching from his peripheral to plant a tin tankard before him. A lowercase “m” adorned the handle.

“You’re early, Marcis. That isn’t like you.”

A familiar voice rung out through the quiet home-- light, filled with a playful reservation but firm. 

The color fell from his face as he twisted, peering up and over his shoulder to lay eyes on a face he’d never been able to forget. Blonde, wispy strands framed her face even now, drawn up into a messy bun over her delicate, pale countenance. Her features were alight with fondness, and the most feigned version of disapproval as soft blue eyes met with his own, lone orb by hearth-fire.

“...M-... hey, mom.”

Marcis’ voice sounded far from his usual; shaky, breathless, and barely above a whisper. His jaw set by reflex, and not because of anger.

“‘Hey, mom’?”

The woman parroted, already moving around him to busy herself with cleaning the table of the clinging spider silk. 

“You haven’t visited in years and that’s all you have to say? Unbelievable.”

The captain watched her with an intensity, gaze shifting between the softness of her face, and the deft workings of her hands as she went about cleaning. Silence was the only thing he offered in response to her chastising. This was a dream-- no, a nightmare; Maria Stonewell had died a long time ago, and it was only a matter of time before she reminded him of the fact. 

A light snort left the woman, reading the period of silence.

“Calm yourself, sunshine. I was only joking.” She looked up from her work, thin, pink lips curling into a playful smile. “It’s good to see you.”

Those words only made a lump form in his throat. This was insulting, what his mind was doing to him right now. Teasing him with something that’d long been lost -- reminding him of family that he could never see again, making it seem so real and vivid. Insulting, yes, but losing his cool wouldn’t do much in the situation but exacerbate whatever was occurring here. That’s how he justified it to himself, anyway. There’s no way in hell he could’ve wanted this again. Marcis’ own smile quirked to life upon his lips, a tired reflection of his mother’s ghostly display. His eye fell away from her features, blinking away the blur that encroached around his vision. “... s’good t’see you too, ma.” “That’s more like it.” The woman let an airy chuckle ring from her dainty frame, already traversing around the table to make her way into the kitchen.  “I hope you brought your appetite. You and Aarin both have grown so much since we last saw you, and your father has been working around the clock just so we’d have enough food on the table to feed our two little men this year.” A breathy laugh left Marcis, punctuated by a sharp sniff. Her back was turned, nobody saw his tears landing on the table aside from himself. His hand lifted to drag a knuckle across his eye. He didn’t feel like a man right now. “... m’not a little man, ma. M’grown. Light’s sake, m’almost thirty n--” A heavy hand landed upon his back, nearly tossing him forward into the table and disrupting the moment he was struggling with. A gruff voice echoed out, now -- like the texture of sandpaper against his ears. Marcis’ jaw set immediately, and a new wave of waterworks leaked from his red-rimmed eye. Silent, but flowing freely now between shaky intake. “You may be a man now, son-- but you know you’ll always be our kid. It’s how bein’ a parent works.” Marcis could hear the smile crossing his father’s grizzled face, and ivory teeth couldn’t clench any harder. “Lifelong job.” “... h-hey, old man...” He didn’t look over his shoulder. He couldn’t. Not with his father. It took all of his composure alone to keep his voice steady and free from cracking.  “Hey, boy.” The man’s figure meandered around Marcis’ chair, pulling out one of the three remaining to take his spot there. Movement occurred, unseen by Marcis due to his sudden inability to open his eye, the metallic thunk of a tankard being dropped into place following. A heavy, satisfied exhale came, and though he couldn’t see him, Marcis could feel his heavy, hazel gaze. “I hear you’re into sailin’ now -- I’d never imagine it in a million years.” “A-ye, dad...” Marcis’ hand lifted, swiping at his nose. He was crying. There was no ignoring it anymore, though his father didn’t seem to take notice despite having full view of his face. Nothing about his voice was sturdy or strong, though humor lurked somewhere in the depth of his voice.  “I fell in love with a girl, once -- she turned m’land legs into sea legs...” His laugh came out broken. “I don’t recommend namin’ anythin’ y’plan to keep for a while after a woman.” A guffaw split the relative quiet of the room, loud and warm. Marcis’ eye cracked, bleary gaze settling upon the man in a moment he’d actually like to see. Joel Stonewell had a boxy jaw-- hidden under the great swell of a salt and pepper beard. A strong, pronounced nose, and sharp, severe looking eyes. In humor, though, they were anything but. “I warned you about the women, didn’t I?” Joel shot his son a ‘I told you so’ look, thick arms crossing his barreled chest. He wore a mop of blackened curls, much like Marcis’ own, which inclined toward the kitchen. “You think it’s all fun and games until you find out you care about ‘em-- and then you’re stuck with ‘em whether you want to be or not.” “... Oh, shut up, Joel.”

Conversation continued for what felt like hours in the dingy household, food distributed gradually over the course of the night. Tears made way to laughs, and the insult he’d initially felt receded into nothing more than an afterthought. He was too enthralled in catching up with something he’d never had the chance to cherish -- the day old adage of ‘youth being wasted on the young, and wisdom on the old’ had never been more applicable. As a child, his parents were troublesome to his wants and desires. Always attempting to save Marcis from himself-- to keep him out of trouble. He’d resented them-- he’d abandoned them. 

Now he could pretend he hadn’t. At least for a night. Pretend, he did. He’d regaled his parents with his adventures over food and drink -- stories of himself, his friends, his work. Stories of the seas, all the happenings of the world in it’s current state... half of the time he felt like he was just rambling, but still they absorbed and listened. Clung to each and every word he had to offer, occasionally prying further into the finer details of his stories, satisfied by the slightest elaboration. 

It was only when he turned the attention toward his parents, did something chime in the distance. It sounded like Stormwind’s bells, marking the change of the hour in the distance.

Joel and Maria exchanged glances with one another, a faint frown playing upon both of their faces. Collectively, they placed the silverware into place beside their emptied plates, and hazel and blue turned to aim at Marcis’ features. Maria spoke first.

“I suppose Aarin isn’t going to show up for dinner this year...” 

The disappointment in her voice caused Marcis to wilt, even though it wasn’t directed at him. He, too, placed his silverware down -- hand crossing the table so he could gingerly take his mother’s hand into his own.

“M’sorry, mom. M’sure he’s just... y’know. Busy or somethin’. Th’man is deeply involved with his work, from what I’ve heard. He’s--” “Involved with the Light, I know. I’ve heard.”

For the first time of the night, the statement had caught him off guard. How did she know? Marcis shot a look to his father, who did nothing but lift his sizable shoulders in a shrug, and took a pull from his tankard. The delicate voice of his mother moved on quickly enough, sighing as she removed her hand from Marcis’ grasp. “... oh, well. You came. You haven’t in a while-- and it was good to catch up with you.” The woman turned her gaze down to the table, already collecting the dirtied dishes. “Though, I believe it’s time for your father and I to turn in.” Joel nodded in agreement, lips pursing tightly under the veil of his beard. Hazel turned upward and locked with Marcis’ lone eye, and those severe looking hues seemed to steel at what he saw on his son’s face; disquiet. The bear of a man set his elbows atop the table, leaning closer to give an affectionate punch to the younger man’s shoulder. “Lose the long face, lad -- we ain’t goin’ anywhere. Come by and visit more. You know where we are.” “Aye. I know where y’are.” 

He parroted, eye downcast from his father’s so he could look upon his cleaned plate. He hadn’t actually eaten in weeks, and it was odd he’d ingested so much over the past few hours. Marcis carefully moved his silverware into place -- a courtesy for his dream family. “I... know I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but... I want y’to know that... uh...” His cadence paused, still staring hard down at his plate. “... I love y’. Both of y’.”

The words had left him with difficulty -- being emotionally open was not Marcis’ forte, and the silence that followed the simple admission between child and parent caused his brow to knit. When he glanced up, the familiar forms of his parents were gone. The plates were gone -- the silverware he’d just used were gone, and the chairs Joel and Maria Stonewell occupied previously were tucked snugly under the table. Everything returned to as it was before his mother’s arrival -- cob webs clinging to table and brass candelabra, tin vessels back in position upon the cabinet.

The tolling of the bells hadn’t stopped since it began, and with each ring, it sounded closer. Mounting until it seemed like the humble abode was built upon the steps of the cathedral itself, bellowing reverberations causing dust and debris to fall from the rafters above. The fire cracked abruptly, sending embers and sparks from the safety of stone to sit upon dried, derelict wood -- and flames were impossibly quick to form. Consuming fire crawled along the walls, reaching for the ceiling as Marcis made little to no move to rise from his chair. 

He only cast an impassive, empty eye across the interior of the structure as it, and himself, were taken by flame. 

Marcis pushed himself up from the floor an indeterminable amount of time later, casting a bleary eye around his cabin. He smelled of whiskey, and he had a dream to forget.

[noirlevity]

If I hadn’t met you.

Pairing: Sarumi Fandom: K Project Warnings: Depression. Self-Harm. Angst. Super I guess. A/N: The full finished version of my other fanfic with the same title. I was inspired by Aimer's song Anata Deawanakereba~natsuyuki fuyu Hana. 

Summary: Fushimi wakes up living like he is living a life not his own.

If I hadn't met you  there wouldn't have been 

such a heartrending clenching in my chest...but still 

If I hadn't met you  without even knowing of strength or gentleness 

I cried in the corner of the room, without seeing anything.

I don't need the seasons  I don't want to touch anything 

At this rate, it'd be all right  if I forget the name of that flower 

But in my dreams, you're laughing 

Even now, it's this way It was the metronome sound of the ECG machine that prodded Fushimi to open his lazy eyes. It started faint like a whisper and then rose to a fortissimo as Fushimi gathered himself.

A digital heartbeat it was in his ears. Resonating with the throbbing organ inside of him, it filled the stillness with life. The sound of his own breath and the stretch of his sinews settled him to reality. He caught a faint scent of disinfectant with a mix of the sweet smell of lily flowers in the air. It made him scrunch up his nose like a baby who had just woken up from slumber. This was his first breath after coma, so to speak. His hands trembled as he tried to move it as if testing whether he was really awake or not. He momentarily forgot the darkness that cloaked around him.

He fluttered his eyelids and stared at the ceiling. The incandescent light above him looked unsettling. The white wall backdrop looked haunting as the ECG machine continued to beat in resonance with his heart. He thinks whether  or not hearts were actually little bombs or dormant little volcanoes we carry like the thought of death in our hearts, haunting us with the thought that life could be taken as fast as it was given.

He sighs. As he closed his eyes, he felt the pressure and the folding of skin. He is alive.

Eyes adjusting to the light inside the unfamiliar place, he panicked as he realized that he is in an unfamiliar place. He felt like he’s been punched and restrained. It felt like air was slowly being sucked out from his lungs as he struggled to gather whatever was left of his composure upon the realization that he was alive.

Something in him wanted to scream, but he could not summon the voice to. He grimaced, clenched his fists, and noticed that he was on dextrose and his arm was bandaged. Everything hurt like hell. He tried peaking at his head. He saw a white  a wirelike fiber wrapped around his head. He was wearing something on his neck too.

Now he was hurting. He shifted his eyes towards the door. He could hear muffled chatter outside. The sound of footsteps tapping against the floor was barely audible, but he could hear them nonetheless. He swallowed a lump in his throat as he tried thinking how he ended up in the hospital.

There was a figure hovering outside. He was talking to someone. After awhile, the door clicked and then a tall man in white uniform entered his room.

“Oh you’re awake.”

The doctor paused for a second, adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and inquired,

“Do you know where you are right now?”

Fushimi scoured the room with his eyes.

“I’m at a hospital.”

“Do you remember how you got here?”

Fushimi creased his eyebrows. He tried to recall how and why he was at a place like that but he couldn’t.

“What’s your name?”

Fushimi couldn’t answer.

“Figured.” The doctor said and excused himself. He was going to get something.

Fushimi waited. He just lay there on the hospital bed thinking; thinking of who he was; of the reason why he was there at the hospital. 

When the doctor came back, he was told that he was suffering from amnesia. His family was waiting for him to wake up. He had been asleep for five days so it would be good news to them. Fushimi did not understand what the doctor was saying. It was too much for him to take in. When he finally met his family everything felt as if this life was not his.

Looking at the two strangers, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Insecure. He looked at the man that was supposed to be his father. He was a tall blond man. He looked like a yakuza but spoke in a gentle soothing kind of way, like he is ready to listen to whatever woes you have, and that you could tell him everything that bothers you. His mother was a gorgeous, buxom woman, blond too with pretty eyes on a face that emanated the impassive coldness of  tundra. She was clearly sleep deprived. Gazing at Fushimi, her face color with emotion. She creased her well tailored eyebrows and embraced Fushimi gently. An embrace was warm, Fushimi thinks. It was if this was the first time he felt like he was embraced like he was important; it felt like this was the first time he felt like he mattered and that made him feel troubled. The body remembers what the mind forgets. If he forgot, then why did his body also forgot? Why did everything felt so new to him?

Something was definitely wrong, and he was not stupid to not to see this. 

He wasn’t discharged immediately. He stayed at the hospital for awhile until the doctor decided that he was fit enough to go out. When he finally did, it didn’t bring him joy. If anything, he felt indifferent and empty. Yet, he went with the flow and didn’t bother to ask any questions. He accepted everything as it was, thinking that even if they were truly strangers, there was nothing in it for them if they took care of him.

When they arrived at the countryside, it amused him that they were all living in the province that didn’t seem familiar to him. He was amused at the thought he didn’t feel  anything. Nothing. Not even nostalgia.  He didn’t really care though. It was convenient—being taken care of; being brought whatever he wanted to eat; being told stories by the kids around the neighbourhood who visited him all the time to “cheer” him up because they tease that “Onii-chan is too gloomy”. They liked making him laugh, which was of course impossible so it became a game to the children. The person who will make Fushimi-onii-san laugh would be the most awesome person who will ever live.

He got used to the children’s visits and their attempt at getting him to open up to them and to finally at least smile. They asked him to teach them how to plant crops, how to do gardening, and even asked him to tell them stories. He just made stories out of thin air whenever the kids were too eager. He didn’t want to break their innocent hearts, so often, he just went with the flow.

One afternoon they were in the garden watering some crops when a child asked him something that disturbed him. 

“Onii-san, onii—san..” The youngest pestered, clinging on to his sleeve. He was a petite boy with a face that made him  look  like a girl. His  large, innocent eyes stared at Fushimi’s own intensely. Fushimi fiddled with his wrist band to hide his unease.

“What?”

“When is Misaki-onii-san coming back? Is he still coming back?”

“Yeah, we didn’t see him for quite some time and we thought that when Uncle and Aunt came back they’re going to bring Misaki-onii-san with them.” The girl said matter of factly, stopping whatever she was doing when he heard her brother’s question.

“Oi!” The eldest snapped running towards their direction, reprimanding his siblings.

“Mama said we shouldn’t bring that thing up idiots!” The other kid whispered.

“Eh? But.. but..”

“No buts..” Addressing Fushimi, the other kid continued, “It’s nothing onii-chan. You don’t need to answer their question. hehe.” The child sounded guilty. Fushimi narrowed his eyes but let it go.

Misaki? Who was Misaki? 

Eager to have his memories back and to figure out who this Misaki guy was, he rummaged through stuff inside the house to find things that would help him. 

He was told that if he was patient, he would sooner or later regain his memories back. And that’s what he’s been doing. Waiting, and writing things down on a journal. Things like what happened during the day, what he did, what he felt, and whether or not he remembered something from his past.

It was no use though. No matter what he did, he still couldn’t remember anything. It was frustrating. He also thought, that maybe there was a reason why he couldn’t remember. Maybe it was better if he didn’t remember anything at all. Maybe he forgot because his past was painful and that this was the reason why he forgot them. His mind is protecting itself from the pain and the suffering he had experienced; sparing him from experiencing them all over again if he remembers; sparing him from the truth and the lies that await him. 

---

Whenever we are aware of something, or someone, that person begins to be part of our world. Misaki was not part of Fushimi’s world, but because of the constant mentions, and the curiosity that was growing in Fushimi, Misaki was now part of it.

He dreams of him. He dreams of him screaming, “Live idiot monkey!” as they both fall. The other reaches out to hold him.  And when he finally does, a soft chuckle in between ragged breath against his cheek feels like he isn’t dreaming at all. It is as if  the feeling of falling wrapped in Misaki’s embrace and warmth is real. The sensation of skin burns.

These dreams always made Fushimi wake up with a start, sweating, and heaving as though he really did fall and his soul just returned to his body when he finally hit the ground. 

Fushimi finally found old photobooks and albums containing picture of him and Misaki together. Based from this, he gathered that Misaki was a friend. His childhood friend. They both grew up in this neighbourhood together. Being best of friends, there was no day that they were not together. 

Of the two, Misaki was the playful one; the adventurer between the two of them, while Fushimi was this quiet and shy child; introverted. The one who spent his time reading books and played by himself. 

Looking at the pictures made him remember a little. He remembered Misaki’s declaration of building him a castle and being his knight. He remembered Misaki waving his plastic sword in the air with confidence as though he was an honorable knight. Brave. Face beaming like spring opening just after winter leaves, sweeping away the loneliness and the darkness that comes with the cold, he looked like the sun.

Fushimi turned to another page. He saw a picture of both of them in an embrace. Fushimi clung to his friend hesitantly, as though he didn’t know how to react to his friend’s enthusiasm at their reunion. His parents were in the background looking at them fondly. 

He remembered that this was when Misaki left and he was thinking of the number of days that Misaki will be gone. He remembered how he fiddled with his hands, praying to God Almighty for Misaki to stay.

Flipping to another page, he saw pictures of them all grown up with others. There were with co-workers perhaps. Behind them, there was a huge name of an establishment which Fushimi figured they worked. That made him decide to go to Tokyo to learn more about Misaki.

Fushimi went to his old workplace first. He was accommodated and even warmly welcomed by his co-workers whom appeared strangers to him. When everything settled, someone came up to him, he was a slender young man with dark wavy hair. He introduced himself as Akiyama.

They talked. They talked about how it is working with Fushimi. He told him that he was efficient; quiet, a silent and effective worker. As they were conversing, he accidentally commented something like he never thought he would end up like that. Fushimi was bothered by this. Akiyama  knew that he made a mistake. He evaded further questions on the matter as much as he could.

The next place Fushimi visited was Misaki’s workplace. He met his friend’s supervisor. They talked about Misaki about how he was a great help; a great friend, and how he would always talk about Fushimi.

“It was a pity he was gone too soon.”

Drat. The storeowner cursed inside his mind. He should’ve not said that. Fushimi’s eyes widened slightly. He wanted to ask what happened. He wanted to ask why was everyone trying to hide something from him.

.

.

.

The clock struck 3 in the afternoon. Fushimi was at the park basking on the warmth of the afternoon sunlight thinking of the things that he gathered.  Misaki. His childhood friend; the boy that the kids loved to hang out with. A hard worker, simple but passionate. A friend. Lost. Gone. Forever.

Beautiful things really are the first to perish. He still wondered what could have happened and why. He touched his wrists and took off the wrist band his mother gave him. There were faint lines on its skin. Scars. He touched them and didn’t bother to think of what could have happened to him to get those. But he knew. The constant heavy feeling he carried was enough proof.

He clenched and unfurled his hand. He touched the faded lines on his wrist again. Fushimi was surprised why he couldn't cry anymore. He wondered whether or not he ever cried before or were his tear ducts all dried up from the very beginning? Was there even a use to chasing after a ghost?

Misaki. Why does everything end with Misaki? Fushimi cluck his tongue and gazed at the sky. It was beginning to dusk; time to go home.

He took something out of his backpack. It was a notebook he found lying inside his room. He didn't check it yet. When he skimmed through the pages, he found an address written in script. He went to that address. When he arrived he realized that it was the apartment where he used to live.

Standing outside his own door, Fushimi felt uneasy. His was brought back from his reverie when  he heard a click on the door. A tall man, with glasses on, and dark hair smiled at him. He looked like he was going somewhere.

“How may I help you?” The other asked.

Fushimi looked away from the stranger. He looked welcoming to the point it was ticking him off. Giving up, Fushimi decided to ask him a question.

“Have you been live here long?”

The other thought for a second.

“No. I started living here after that suicide incident.”

“The what?!” Fushimi was surprised.

“I was told that a young man.. maybe about your age tried committing suicide here by jumping out of his balcony.”

The stranger’s violet eyes settled on Fushimi.

“I heard a friend rushed to his aid and end up dying instead.”

Adjusting his glasses, the stranger continued, “Everyone had been constantly talking about the said incident the past weeks I’ve been here. It is most troubling as I am the new tenant here and hearing such incidents keep me up at night.

“Nonetheless, it is sad to think that an innocent life was lost. This is probably not my place to say this, but young man,  if you’re having a hard time, don’t hesitate to ask for help.”

Footsteps pattered louder.

“Oi, Munakata.. Hurry up!”

“Excuse me.” The stranger smiled at Fushimi.

Addressing another, he continued,  “Just a second Suoh.”

Now turning back to Fushimi,  “I’m Munakata Reishi. So what again is your purpose of coming here?”

“Nothing… I’m just..”

“What’s your name?”

“Fu...Fushimi Saruhiko.”

“Well, Fushimi-kun. I have to go now, my companion is impatient. Feel free to come visit if you like. Here is my calling card.” Reishi handed him his calling card, and left.

“Mattaku… slow.” Fushimi heard Reishi’s companion drawl lazily.

Fushimi just stood there, looking at the other as he walked away from him. Fushimi looked dumbfounded at what he just knew. He gripped on the paper that he was holding.

The wind surprisingly blew colder, making him shiver. He leaned against the balcony. He kept on staring at the piece of paper without reading.

Suicide? A friend dying?

Fushimi pressed his eyes shut. He crumpled the paper in his hand as he gritted his teeth. He remembered now. How could he ever forget? The tears started to stream from his eyes. He bit his lip to stop wails coming from his mouth as the memory of that day filled his mind.

It was an afternoon like this one. Orange light suffused the every crevice of the street, of the hallway of this little apartment which was once his. Light glistened as it peaked from behind the leaves of the trees.

---

Impatient footsteps struck against the ground. Misaki was sweating and he was feeling cold. He had been asking around for Fushimi. He hadn't been going to his job for five days already after they both had an argument about the scars on his wrists.

It made him feel worthless as his friend. It made him feel guilty as well. He kept on telling myself if only he had been beside Fushimi he would have kept him from harming himself. If only he paid more attention to his friend’s suffering.

With nowhere else in mind, he decided to check Fushimi’s apartment. He didn't think that Fushimi would be there. His friend was too intelligent to go where he would be found first. 

When he arrived in front of Fushimi’s door, he didn't hesitate, he called for his friend but no one replied.

Fushimi was inside. He didn't reply because he was wearing his earphones, and his music was on full volume. This was the end. This was the end of his suffering and he chose to be accompanied in his last moments by his favorite song.

Misaki was pounding against his door, screaming his name at the top of his lungs. The neighbors were pissed off. Asking him to stop. He remembered that there was a certain place Fushimi always left his keys, and it was in a plant just outside his door. He checked it and the key was really there. He was able to enter inside. By the time he entered, he saw Fushimi standing on the balcony, about to jump.

Fushimi didn't know what came to him that when Misaki shouted his name at the top of his lungs, the song blasting in his ears was muted, and the only thing that he heard was Misaki’s voice screaming his name.

He turned around and stared at his friend. Why was he there? Why.. of all people was he there? The emptiness in Fushimi's heart didn't allow him to feel things. He felt nothing as he gazed at Misaki. His eyes grew wide and he laughed hysterically. He didn't know why he was laughing.

“Saru… come down from there!”

“Why? Didn't you abandon me already Mi-sa-ki? Why are you acting like my friend now?”

Misaki bit his lip. He was guilty as charged.

“Go to that foolish boss of yours. I don't need you here!” Fushimi bowed his head and clenched his fists.

Misaki took a step closer.

“Don't come! Stay there. Or I’m really gonna jump!”

“Saru… please… don’t.. Come down from there idiot!” Misaki bit his lip as he trembled. He was in the verge of tears.

“Please.. I’m sorry. I’m a useless friend.”

“Misaki.” Fushimi smirked maniacally. He didn’t feel anything. He didn’t really care about anything. He scratched the left clavicle in a desperate need, as if this was going to compensate for his lack of feeling.

He looked at Misaki. He felt it again, the emptiness, the uselessness of being alive, unloved, and unwanted.

“Misaki, it hurts. It really hurts.” Fushimi cried. Pressing a fist to his chest, he broke down sobbing as he stood there ready to die. He raised his head. And then, with a last smile, he jumped. Misaki rushed to his aid and they fell. As they fell, he heard Misaki shout,

“Live idiot monkey!” It was the only thing he heard him say as everything went dark.

——

Fushimi woke up in the hospital. When he opened his eyes, he saw his mother’s worried face. It was unusual to see any emotion in her beautiful countenance.

“We heard that you fainted. So we rushed all the way here. Mattaku. Don’t scare us like that!”

Fushimi exhaled. It was difficult for him to speak while holding back his emotions.

“I… I remember everything now.”

His parents looked at each other in disbelief.

“I remember everything now. I killed him. I killed Misaki.” Face contorting in pain, he sobbed softly.

“I killed him. I killed my best friend! I should have been the one who died. I’m sorry.. I’m sorry for taking him away from you. I deserve to die!”

“Shush.. it wasn’t your fault..” His mother embraced him.

“What happened was out of your control.” 

“Fushimi.” His father embraced him too. The feeling that spread throughout his body was warm.

“We love you as our own child. Please don’t think that you are less than you truly are.”

“Look.” His father made way for the others who came to visit him. He saw Akiyama, and his co-workers at his former job.

“You are loved. And we hope that you wouldn't beat yourself up over Misaki’s death, and live the life he would want you to live.”

Fushimi sobbed, as he realised that he wasn’t fighting a battle alone.

[cinemameta]

A Series of Unfortunate Events: Subverting Expectations

To label A Series of Unfortunate Events a children’s novel would be somewhat of a disservice. Yes, the books are heavily marketed towards children but throwing labels out of the window, it becomes clear the author Daniel Handler, guised under the penname Lemony Snicket, wrote the series with a mature audience also in mind.

The books follow a straightforward plot, which gets pretty repetitive in some chapters, but the overarching themes of tragedy, moral complexity, adultism and the author’s knack for clever wordplay and literary, often time, esoteric references are what make A Series of Unfortunate Events more than just a children’s novel.  It subverts children’s literature by taking familiar tropes, dousing them with dark humor and absurdist satire then setting them afire with Snicket’s ever popular meta-writing. Throughout the pages, allusions to nonfictional characters and pop culture are scattered, with some cleverly integrated to the story and world-building, two favorites of mine would be Sunny exclaiming “rosebud” as she prompts the group to use a sled as an escape vehicle and a villainous optometrist/hypnotist named Dr. Georgina Orwell. The books are abound with off-kilter reference jokes I begin to worry if it’s too alienating for an average child but then again, maybe such highbrow jokes aren't meant for them to understand now. Perhaps their purposes, other than to prove Snicket is a snob, is to introduce and intensify children's thirst for literature.

Other than flexing his extensive knowledge of books, Snicket also dares to impress with his playful, deliberately skewed writing. There are many instances in the books where Snicket totally abandons conventional narrative structure and gets truly creative with syntax and phrase construction but still cautious enough not to be too jarring. Where else can you find sentences being repeated in order to demonstrate the feeling of déjà vu? What book would have a whole page filled with the word “ever” so as to project strong emphasis? Who else would leave two pages entirely printed in black to show how one is speechless and lost for words? Such willingness to be playful with language and narration mirrors the very sentiment of the whole series: even against the backdrop of darkness, it doesn’t hurt to find time to revel.

Upending established tropes is not the only goal here, Snicket also aims to respect the younger ones instead of patronizing them with black-and-white morality. Good people aren’t entirely exempt from doing bad things the same way bad people are not incapable of goodness. The books’ refusal to adhere to moral dichotomies elevates the series a tier higher than those clichéd feel-good fairy tales for it understands that in real life, there are no princes, princesses, witches or evil stepmothers. As a character succinctly puts it, “People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict”.

This rings true with our central villain Count Olaf who, from the very start was painted to be a morally corrupt, sinister arsonist who greatly despised reading books. And yet towards the end, when accused of setting the Baudelaire’s house on fire, an event which served as the catalyst for the series, countered it with “Is that what you think?”. Mere seconds later, he even recites poetry as he nears his final moments. These contradictions in character afford Count Olaf a layered complexity suggesting there is more to him than just a villain.

Much like the antagonist, our protagonists also have their fair share of paradoxes. Perhaps my favorite moment in the entire series would be when the three protagonists begin to question their own nobility as they are forced to recount the many instances they had to resort to wicked deeds for the sake of a noble cause. We assume them to be completely innocent while judging Count Olaf as guilty for his actions but in retrospect, the Baudelaire’s have also lied, stolen and even burned down a hospital themselves. A Series of Unfortunate Events succeeds in acknowledging how futile it is when complicated topics like morality are trivialized and relegated into a two-choice dilemma for children’s consumption because the truth is, even adults tend to have a hard time grasping ethics.

With this, Snicket uncovers perhaps one of the gravest mistakes an adult could do to a child: to maintain the illusion that wisdom is something bestowed as time passes which in turn, undermines the child’s ability to examine the world through their lenses and make their own observations. Adults can be just as clueless as a toddler about the world around them; wisdom doesn’t come with age, sometimes it comes with tragedy. This becomes evident as one by one, most of the adults the Baudelaire orphans encounter continue to fail them despite their best efforts and their noblest intentions.

For all its inclination to the grim and macabre, and its tendency to subvert expectations of children’s literature, A Serious of Unfortunate Events functions excellently as a novel series shedding light on the bleak, often unheard of, chaotic phase that is childhood. If what you expect from these 13 novels is an unremarkably-constructed, middle-of-the-road goodness-triumphs-over-villainy story dashed with unearned B-plot romance, topped off with shoehorned life lessons about friendships or some sort then as Lemony Snicket would say, "Look away". While other books in the children’s section are still too concerned dissecting Neverland, A Series of Unfortunate Events is already on its way up there with the classics.

[ethos-rites]

Bunny Rogers Case Study

Born in 1990, New York City based artist Bunny Rogers serves as a case example of a millennial artist reflecting on and re-projecting her own adolescence through her practice. Her work makes use of dozens of cultural references such as cartoon characters, celebrities, and storybooks and places them under the context of real-world tragedy. She threads connections between these through investigations of subcultures and dynamics of adolescent emotional repression in the 21st century. At times opaque through her references, Rogers’ practice creates a two-way road of interaction: audience-to-artist and artist-to-audience. Bunny Rogers uses her own youth as a navigating needle to weave a memorializing skein of media’s projections on 21st century adolescent violence, alienation, and identity.

At its surface level, much of Rogers’ work operates as sculptural installation. Using professional craftsmanship of commercial furniture building, Rogers juxtaposes the pre-fabricated aesthetic with the intimacies of handmade objects. Her State Skool Chairs and Clone State Chairs from 2014 solo exhibition Columbine Library in Berlin are simple fabricated reproductions of chairs from a high school library setting positioned adjacent to one another and furnished with handmade backpacks of fabric and ballet slippers imbued with adolescent pop culture references. From the same 2014 exhibition, Clone State Bookcase is also a wood and metal fabrication of a bookcase, filled with handcrafted plush dolls in lieu of books. Her 2016 solo exhibition Columbine Cafeteria maintains this approach, fabricating cafeteria tables, chairs, and wardrobes to be adorned with handmade articles of clothing. This contrast between the fabricated and the handmade works to show the stark relationships between the cold, sterile aesthetics of mass-produced space and the personal intimacies of youth cultures that Rogers approaches in her work’s conceptual meditations. For her own attention, the customized details of pieces like the dolls or bags get highlighted, revealing a personal dedication and a fixation on the references she connects in the work.

(Clone State Bookcase. Maple wood, metal, Limited-Edition Elliott Smith plush dolls, "Ferdinand the Bull" third-place mourning ribbons, casters. 97 x 121.5 x 24 inches)

For Rogers practice, these references pull from a network of her own interests, hobbies, and personal history. Characters like Gaz Membrane from early 2000s cartoon Invader Zim, Jeanne D’Arc and Mandy Moore of MTV cartoon Clone High from the same time, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith noted for potentially taking his own life via stab wounds in 2003, along with dozens of other small, niche and nuanced references all appear throughout Roger’s works. On approaching her practice, most of these references needed my own research; I’d understood certain references like Invader Zim or allusions to roleplaying game/website Neopets, though I’m fortunately coming from the cultural standpoint of being born just two years after Rogers. Other references I needed to look up and spend more time with beyond a quick web search to gain some background context to Rogers’ referential motifs. (Thoroughly recommend a watch of Clone High.) In her State Skool Bench pieces from Columbine Cafeteria, Rogers depicts reproductions of these characters reading poetry, set on backdrops of Columbine High School from Columbine, Colorado – location of the 1999 school shooting that Rogers uses as a contextual underpinning for the two exhibitions. In using these characters, Rogers caters towards a very selective audience to make the immediate connections, as I was able to, or asks the audience for the contextual research. For the uninitiated, Rogers work is largely veiled in an opacity with the references serving as windows in; she creates multiple openings for the viewer to gain vantage points into the whole body her work explore. From the audience-to-artist perspective, this waypoint of accessibility is relatively particular and at times demanding or discriminatory. Or, from the artist-to-audience perspective, Rogers’ practice is one of seeking connection. She offers up pieces of herself that are from larger popular cultures: her personal interests in television shows, storybooks, and musicians that come from subcultures shared by others from her generation or cultural backgrounds.  Under the context of Columbine High School, the work calls for a delicate and sympathetically attentive viewing into the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the artist’s references as common responses to the tragedy claim the perpetrators lacked sympathetic and sincere connections that could have prevented their actions. (Cohen, 2016) Rather than a call-for-help to an outsider, the references can be read similar to a teenager wearing a band t-shirt – as a signal for likeminded people with shared affinities for subcultures and fandoms.

  (State Skool Chairs. Wood, grey faux suede, handmade and beaded backpacks, ballet slippers. 28 x 44.5 x 44.5 inches)

           The connection to fandoms and subcultures resounds through Rogers’ practice and in some cases constitutes derivations of celebrity worship. The characters she draws to – Gaz and Jeanne - are written as troubled girls, students coping with difficulties expressing themselves and relating to their peers. Both characters internalize aggression and are prone to dramatic outbursts of language, enacting a female violence in reflection to adolescent male violence such as the Columbine Massacre for which the exhibition takes its name. In giving handmade attention to these characters, Rogers embodies the fascination and idolization adolescents, specifically adolescent girls in this case, build with fictional characters. However, in approaching some of the violent facets of these characters, Rogers also draws reference to niche modes of communicating shared feelings. Clone State Bookcase (2014) features the handmade plush dolls of late musician Elliott Smith in a caricature style reminiscent of characters from Neopets. Speaking from my own experience with the website, Neopets was (and still is) a platform for youth-based message boards in which users were able to anonymously connect with one another in the innocent-appearing context of a comic-styled web game. For a developing adolescent, sharing feelings of controversial and troubling matters such as internal aggression and depression becomes much easier under the guise of anonymity. Platforms like Neopets from the early 2000s evolved over the next decade into blog websites such as Tumblr, creating spaces for users to explore morally ambiguous topics.  In her practice, Rogers investigates subculture circles on these platforms such as one devoted to a romantic fantasized obsession with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine Massacre. (Rogers, 2016) Coming as a post-internet reflection of media’s response to the event fifteen years prior, Rogers explores the outlets that allowed the developing millennial generation to communally work through their internalized struggle with the projected truths of the tragedy.  

Poetry Reading with Gazlene Membrane in Columbine Cafeteria.

For a niche fandom community, being able to speak and express oneself anonymously on an issue otherwise seen as controversial or immoral comes as a rebellious act against repression of emotion. Just as teenage girls’ fanatic response to The Beatles in the mid-20th century can be historically read as enactment of freedom against sexual repression (Cohen 2016), these subcultures Rogers embodies in her practice can be liberating or comforting for an adolescent internalizing media-projected violence without resolution. In her installations, Rogers takes these internalized emotions and materializes them through the enactment of her handmade works. Be it in meticulously repetitive handiwork as in the Elliott Smith plush dolls in Clone State Bookcase or fanatic attention to detail of the bags in Clone State Chairs, Rogers presents this embodied culture as artifact for public examination. In doing so, she creates a bridge between the private lives of the internalizing teen and the public vision of the outsider. The fan art found on Tumblr operates both as expression of emotional empathy for characters by the artist, but also as a call for the like-minded. Rogers’ work also comes as a call for those that get her references and invites them into the shared space of emotional expression.  

In these references, Rogers’ strings together a body of work that is deeply personal to her own childhood and adolescence. Rather than looking at the dynamics of subcultural fandom and adolescent angst as object, she uses herself at subject operating inside a model of cultural investigation that becomes the object. Her work isn’t concerned with accessibility of the outsider further than putting it on display; she invites the audience into her own web of history as an exploratory experience. Her personal website doesn’t serve as a clean and ready artist’s portfolio as much as it’s an extension of her own investigations on her self. A now-expired countdown until her “graduation” of the 27 Club, a playful homage to a spider character, and links to her own blog-like Facebook status updates all work as references to developing youth culture as experienced online. (Rogers, Meryn.Ru n.d.) The model she has weaved together takes in the internet-millennial’s response to media projections of tragedy then investigates and re-projects that response into spaces of sensitivity. The internet-millennial here being a third party witness, or residual victim, to these tragedies and acts of violence. Rogers was a child at the time of the Columbine Massacre of which she contextualizes these two exhibitions. She has not visited the site of the shootings nor has addressed personal relationships with victims or their families. (Rogers, Columbine Cafeteria 2016) In this, she holds true to her role as third-party witness and explores the impact on that third party in her practice.

//end of case study //below are personal reflections

Researching Bunny Rogers’ work came as surprisingly enlightening for my own practice on some facets I’m realizing I’d been getting advised on though that advice had not been connecting. As a teacher, I approached Rogers’ body of work looking for another artist interested in adolescent development in the 21st century. I didn’t expect to find work that was as self-indulgent – looking to her own cosmology as subject rather than focusing on a model as object. This contextualization and re-projection of personal history positions herself as a conduit for cultural reflection. In my own practice, I’ve been interested in researching and building models of similar cultural reflection, though had largely left my own histories as a millennial out of the work. I kept getting asked where I was in my own work, to which I’d usually freeze up and start rambling about my students. My own mark was literally evident in the markmaking of my pieces, which related to a personal history and artistic upbringing in graffiti, though that had become all that was left. I admire Rogers’ methods of using her own self as access into culture rather than just presenting a model to discuss. Her practice embodies much of the facets that interest her. I’m interested in using multi-modal installation as a way to invite viewers to embody experiences and spaces.

Works Cited

Cohen, Sascha. The Columbine Shooters, the Girls Who Love Them, and Me. January 31, 2016. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3dx93w/the-columbine-shooters-the-girls-who-love-them-and-me.

Rogers, Bunny. Columbine Cafeteria. Greenspon Gallery, New York City.

—. Columbine Cafeteria. July 26, 2016. http://societeberlin.com/zh/exhibitions/bunny-rogers-columbine-cafeteria/.

Rogers, Bunny. Columbine Library. Societe, Berlin.

[mrmichaelchadler]

2018 Japan Cuts Festival Preview

Hats off to the Japan Society's film programming team for assembling a remarkably strong line-up for this year's annual "Japan Cuts" program, a series of new and newly restored Japanese films by newcomers and  established filmmakers, like horror director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and documentarian Kazuo Hara. Over the years, Japan Society has cultivated a devoted cinephile audience, and given attendees rare opportunities to see under-seen works by masters like Koji Wakamatsu, Kureyoshi Kurahara, and Kon Ichikawa. This year's "Japan Cuts" continues that trend by highlighting "Hanagatami" (pictured above), a vital new historical drama by Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the trippy 1977 cult classic "Hausu." Japan Society also screened Obayashi's "Seven Weeks" back in 2015, the same year that they gave Obayashi a fairly comprehensive, richly deserved, and well-attended career retrospective.

"Hangatami"—a sprawling WWII drama that follows a group of childhood friends who struggle to remain optimistic in the months before they are conscripted and/or left behind by their loved ones—is a master surrealist's passion project (Obayashi has wanted to make "Hanagatami" for almost 40 years). But it simultaneously does and doesn't feel like a film made by an older artist. Obayashi consistently undercuts optimistic student Toshihiko's (Shunsuke Kubozuka) rose-colored memories of his loved ones by representing their interactions with tons of green-screen computer graphics, as well as a plethora of hyper in-camera effects, choppy zooms, and seemingly unmotivated camera pans and match cuts. Characters dwell on and/or struggle to suppress traumatizing images—a deferred kiss, a soldier's uniform, blood on their shirts—while Kubozuka's grotesquely broad smiles and exaggerated line readings undermine his character's childish, head-strong drive to withdraw from society and/or enlist in the Emperor's army. 

Obayashi's skepticism for his hopeful, desperate young characters is matched scene-for-scene by his contagious affection. He particularly dotes on Toshihiko, especially when Kubozuka's character tries in vain to stitch together his fragmented memories into a dream-like tapestry of regret and missed opportunities. And when Toshihiko inevitably must say "goodbye" to his companions, his optimism dissolves in weak sobs and unsentimental asides: "For Yoshihiko, his youth was like a game of hide and seek. It was dark before he knew it, and everybody had gone home." "Hanagatami" is bound to disappoint anybody who expects more where "Hausu" came from, but it will hopefully fascinate anyone with a taste for the vibrant, challenging films of Alain Resnais, Raul Ruiz, and Seijun Suzuki, the avant garde music of Scott Walker, or the modernist novels of Natsume Soseki. 

Speaking of "vital" and "unsentimental:" check out "Abnormal Family," a masterfully perverse 1984 softcore "pink" pornographic film directed by Masayuki Suo. Suo is best known to American audiences as the helmer of "Shall We Dance," the feel-good 1996 romantic-comedy that was later remade into a tacky 2004 Jennifer Lopez vehicle. Unlike those relatively family-friendly films, "Abnormal Family" follows a sexually active young woman during her brief, but lively time staying with her husband and his family in her father-in-law's house. The film's sex scenes aren't particularly graphic—anything below the waistline is implied due to Japan's strict censorship laws—but they are appreciably kinky.

More importantly: "Abnormal Family" is probably the only homage to the masterful Japanese dramatist Yasujiro Ozu that also features nipple play, melting wax, and BDSM-style boudoir shenanigans. Suo's under-stated, static camerawork proves that he not only knows how to mimic Ozu's style, but also understands how simple, low-angle camera placement creates tension and gives viewers' insight into the subjective reality of Ozu's films. So when Suo places his camera to the side and in front of his cast members: we are overwhelmed by the actors' feelings. But when Suo places his camera to the side and behind his cast members, he subtly captures the reserved, lonely character of his protagonists. 

Suo uses that knowledge to create playful, adversarial tension during dramatic scenes. Contrast these sequences with his sex scenes' relatively egalitarian close-ups: Suo pays special attention to—and doesn't just leer at—both male and female body parts in various states of undress. "Abnormal Family" is another acquired taste, but you'll never know if you've acquired it unless you give it a look.

Adventurous moviegoers would also do well to check out the formally audacious animated feature "Violence Voyager," a disturbing horror-fantasy about a pair of pre-teen boys who wander into a mysterious science-fiction-themed amusement park. The animation in "Violence Voyager" is mesmerizing: hand-painted characters are filmed (and move around using what appears to be popsicles or sticks) like shadow puppets on top of intricate, multi-layered backdrops, which are also almost entirely hand-painted (save for some live-action effects, like splashes of water or fake blood). I found the film's hand-crafted style to be so disarming that I didn't even realize how completely drawn in I was until the film's nightmarish plot—complete with illogical, unpleasant set pieces involving under-age nudity and violence—kicked into high gear. I can't say that I liked "Violence Voyager," but I was very impressed with it as a deeply personal reckoning with childhood sexual abuse. It's elusive, and sad, and completely id-driven in ways that most American animators would be far too uncomfortable to attempt.

I was also bowled over by another new animated film: "Night is Short, Walk On Girl," a psychedelic coming-of-age comedy from Masaaki Yuasa, the director of the brain-melting "Mind Game" and the underwhelming "Lu Over the Wall." "Night is Short, Walk On Girl" plunges viewers into a dense thicket of criss-crossing sub-plots, including stories about a vintage porn collector, a love-sick playwright who refuses to change his underwear until he's reunited with the object of his desire (they call him "Don Underwear"), and the Overdue Library Book Police. But the film's basic story concerns an unnamed young man (Gen Hoshino) who learns to be more like his would-be romantic conquest, the effervescent, resourceful, and hard-drinking "Girl with Black Hair" (Kana Hanazawa). 

Yuasa frequently lets Hanazawa's co-lead take control of his Pynchon-level dense narrative, and gives her far more personality and agency than your average rom-com heroine. The film's many tangents are also complimented by Yuasa's typically dynamic animation style—imagine a unique mix of Max Fleischer's "Popeye" cartoons and Sharaku's caricature-like wood-block portraits—which blends hand-drawn animation with computer graphics. Like many of the best films at this year's "Japan Cuts" program, "Night is Short, Walk On Girl" invites close reading, and rewards patience and curiosity. This might be one of the best programs Japan Society has put together to date; I can't recommend it highly enough.

Japan Cuts 2018 runs from July 19-29. For more information, including tickets and showtimes, click here 

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Meet 12 expat fashion designers who have made India their home

“The India I love does not make the headlines, but I find it wherever I go—in fields or forests, towns or villages, mountains or deserts—and in the hearts and minds of people who have given me love and affection for the better part of my lifetime.” British-born author Ruskin Bond’s sentiment is one that many, who have made India their home, can echo. What unites this set is a new take on craft and tradition. Vogue chronicles 12 designers who are blending fashion and borders.

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Peter and Cecile D’Ascoli

Label: D’Ascoli

Home: Delhi

Peter’s maximalist prints and Cecile’s at-ease silhouettes find common ground at their new-found atelier. Vogue goes behind the tectonic changes in their design gamut. A peek into Peter D’Ascoli’s brainchild, Talianna Studio, reveals a world of heady prints inspired by royal scenarios, while partner and co-creative Cecile’s free-flowing, creature-of comfort clothing under her namesake label speak volumes for the current cultural climate. “There is a change in the zeitgeist—people don’t want faceless, nameless fast fashion anymore,” says Peter, painting a backdrop for their decision to acclimatise to a slower pace of fashion. “But, at the same time, there is a desire for excess. Minimal weaves and solid colours have made way for a line where the decadence of Rajput palaces meets the simplicity of Bordeaux farmhouses,” Cecile weighs in on the sartorial paradoxes within the new D’Ascoli collection.

Peter and Cecile D’Ascoli

Peter, previously a die-hard New Yorker (he lived in Manhattan for 20 years, working with Diane von Furstenberg) with a penchant for the decorative arts, and Cecile, a French creative with an eye for casual elegance, may seem poles apart on paper, but together they are a creative confluence of an up-to-date global aesthetic, born out of India. “We are global citizens and world travellers, and this comes through in the way we create,” explains Cecile. For the duo, scaling their label to pave an international path is, veritably, the natural thing to do. “Our clothing is now on Matchesfashion.com and home decor at Modaoperandi.com and we’re available in Paris and America. There’s no time like right now to become a homegrown vertical label,” says Peter.

Dascoliandcompany.com

Caroline Weller

Label: Banjanan Home: Jaipur

You left New York City to move to India. Can you tell us more about this continental shift? I was born in the UK and moved to New York, where I worked at Calvin Klein and Armani. I got a call for a job in India, so we moved to Bengaluru, but funding for the project dried up overnight. I was drawn to the creativity and craft in Jaipur and it has now been nine years living here.

Caroline Weller

What made you start Banjanan? My New York wardrobe didn’t work here. So, I set out to create clothes that could be worn in different countries and climates. To support the local industry, 90 per cent of the printing and embroidery is done within a 5-mile radius of my home. We launched in 2013 and today stock at Modaoperandi. com and Shopbop.com. The name comes from ‘banjaran’, meaning nomad. I loved the idea that much like the Banjara tribe, my label started in Rajasthan and has migrated around the world.

What do you love about life here? You never know what’s going to happen. Things can get frustrating but I believe there’s a magic in that. You just have to find your rhythm. Banjanan.com

Katherine Neumann

Label: House Of Wandering Silk Home: Delhi Fresh start: “I moved to India in 2010 to combine 
a sustainable 
approach to poverty 
alleviation and my love for fair-trade 
textiles. The thought
 of starting my own
 label with a greater-good 
philosophy came while journeying solo through the ancient Silk Route. With this, House of Wandering Silk started in 2011.”

Design directory: “We co-create textiles with artisans, young designers and NGOs. From upcycled saris to khadi and local 
embroideries, India is in every thread of every product we make.”

Defining India: “Delhi can feel like several different eras all at the same time.” Wanderingsilk.org

Virginia Borrero De Castro

Label: De Castro Home: Jaipur “I know I’m an expat here, but sometimes I feel 
like one in Colombia, too. But I love that I can
 call both places home,”
says the designer who coexists between the 
two hemispheres. The undercurrent of living in two separate worlds is made whole in her design studio, which curates the best of both in India’s Pink City. The suffix of her artist mother’s name (a recurrent inspiration in her collections) is also the title of her India- born label, De Castro. The sophisticated silhouettes
are pretty, yes—but with 
a keen return to craft. Feeding her vision from everything around her, the Jaipur filigree architecture translates into intricate embroidered borders on khadi trousers and kaftans. “For me, India is a gold mine that doesn’t open up for everyone. You need to be patient and research, and only then will the secrets be revealed to you.” So, how does a 25-year- old Colombian in India find herself drawn to the handmade? “Although India is famous for the best cottons and linens, it’s sad to see a lot of synthetic materials imported here from China.” In her pursuit for the pure, she set out to rediscover the double ikat weave by joining hands with weaver families and launching her own store in association with Gem Palace. Instagram.com/decastro.moda

Molly
 Russell

Label: Pink
 City Prints Home: Jaipur “I arrived in India in 2015 for a six-month backpacking trip. In Jaipur, I discovered and fell in love with block-printed fabrics. Within a week I had a company name and a logo. I put together my first collection 
in a friend’s cosy workshop on a farm just outside the city. Shortly after, a shop in London called Press saw our work on social media and requested an order—everything was sold out at their shop in a week! As a trained artist, I like to work with themes. The Riviera collection was based on my childhood spent in the South of France where I also spotted Brigitte Bardot in her gingham finery at St. Tropez market. The latest line, Spring on the Med, is inspired by holidays in Greece—the sweet perfume of oranges and lemon trees, striped sun loungers and lazing in the sand, watching the sky for hours. I believe clothes should be illustrative and playful. We celebrate inconsistencies, as no two prints, weaves or embroideries are ever the same. The attitude in India allows a certain freedom and it’s thrilling to hear the karigars say, ‘Everything is possible, madam.’ In all the chaos, I find myself thinking so clearly!” Pinkcityprints.com

Enda Noone

Label: Ikka Dukka Home: Delhi I moved to India four years ago from London to start Ikka Dukka with my dear friend and business partner, Nilisha Kohli. The label is inspired by vintage finds. We like products that have a heart and a story. This combination makes for keepsakes, worth cherishing for life. In Hindi, ikka dukka means something rare, unique and one-off. That’s exactly what we create. The way we work is constantly changing. Sometimes we come up with a concept and find artisans to develop it or we come across talented craftsmen and see how we can adapt our designs to them. India is a creative playground for the mind. It is a lot like my home country, Ireland— the essence and nature of the people is exactly the same. Ikkadukka.com

Chantal Blommerde

Label: Chandamama Kids Home: Delhi “My love for design traces back to watching my mother sew her own clothes while growing up in a small Dutch town. I was in New York when I met my husband and moved around Asia to be with him. There was a point when I was living in Singapore without a job and about to become a new mother. It was an overwhelming time. In 2011, when our baby was two months old, we moved to India, and setting up a kids’ clothing label seemed like the perfect thing to do. India is an experience of the senses—I love the everyday sights, sounds, smells and people. I have lived in many places and what I know for sure is, we all have the same problems, the same questions and the same joys in life. The country may seem chaotic at first, but there is a method to its madness.” Chandamamakids.com

Liane De Selyss

Label: Joli India Home: Delhi For Liane, or Lili (her Indian moniker), a three-month trip to India turned into a 12-year journey. “I came to India for an internship, but it wasn’t enough time—I had to come back. Six months later, I came back with a job in an export house,” she explains. The designer’s label pieces together India’s everyday eccentric things. “Recycling
 and repurposing
 are a mainstay
 at Joli – Proudly
 Made in India. The country’s popular 
culture is central to
 our collections. For example, our line of choti bags, dari-weave clutches, and lungi bazaar bags.” Shopjoliindia.com

Olivia Dar

Label: Olivia Dar Home: Delhi

When did you move to India? I was raised in Rome, London and 
Paris, and India has now been home 
for 17 years. I made a backpacking trip
 to the subcontinent, where I lived in Dharamshala to study Tibetan culture and then moved to Jaipur to pursue gemology. I settled in the capital around 10 years ago and started my label in 2011. Before India, I worked on embroidery and accessories for French couture houses Christian Lacroix and Yves Saint Laurent.

What’s the story behind your namesake label? I wanted to start a line of contemporary accessories, embroidered by hand for women who love to travel. I started with a small budget and a single embroiderer and now we are a team of 35, stocked across six continents. As a made-in- India label, everything is developed and produced in our studio in Shahpur Jat.

How does your French heritage mix with an Indian aesthetic? 
I love to collect vintage textiles. I have
a bank of French fabrics, lace and embroideries inherited from my family archive. I also love Indian market jewellery. For our spring/summer 2018 collection, we looked to the 
flora and fauna 
of the Caribbean Islands where I spent a lot of my time among palm trees, pink flamingos and exotic birds. Oliviadar.com

Maurits Favier

Label: Raff Home: Puducherry Maurits Favier started Raff with his wife Rashi Agarwal Favier in 2016 out of their hometown, Puducherry. The hand-sewn, zero-waste, ethical and sustainable leather handbags are made in Auroville by a cluster of skilled women. “Each Raff bag is individually handmade on vegetable tanned buff leather, sourced locally and made without chemicals,” he explains. When Favier’s international consulting career stationed him in India in 2012, “something clicked immediately and felt right here.” Although being able to ride his bicycle around Puducherry (much like in his home city, Amsterdam) could be one of the plaintive reasons, he also cites the diverse mix of creatives in the cosmopolitan yet easy-going city as another similarity. Shopraff.com

Martino Caramia

Label: Flame Home: Goa Coming to India: “From running a restaurant in Germany to fashion stores in Spain, life had wound itself in a ruinous consumer-driven cycle. Goa was a thriving abode for a creative community and it’s where I landed 10 years ago and now call home.”

On Flame: “I ended up with a truckload of textiles from my travels around India. When a space for a small boutique opened up, I started designing clothes with these textiles.” The store: “Fashion goes beyond the realm of racks. Our 300-year-old villa-cum-store is a testament to that.” Facebook.com/flamebymartinocaramia

Patrick Hayes and Samantha Delgos

Label: Aiyope Home: Delhi The Australian duo started concept store Aiyope in the capital. The Indophiles find inspiration in the architecture and customs of communities. “For us, it’s not about whether there’s an Indian influence in our collections, but rather which Indian influence underlies our work.” says Patrick. “The unofficial role of an expat is to be an open line of communication between the places we live in,’’ explains Samantha. Aiyope.com

The post Meet 12 expat fashion designers who have made India their home appeared first on VOGUE India.