#teo and ripley

[b33tlejules]

This time I'll get to stay

What if we were both ReGenes and escaped together and our bond of survival turned into a bond of siblinghood and we promised to keep each other safe. And then we clumsily stumbled our way into being vigilantes and one of us was better at being a hero while the other wanted to remain hidden. And then what if during a mission one of us saw the other point their gun into their mouth and the other had no choice but to tackle them but the window was right there and the ground tore us both apart.

Then imagine we're separated for five years, each being told the other is dead and both being haunted by the negative space left by their absence. And then one of us escapes first, and the other escapes second and by some miracle we find each other again. But we're both so broken, and it takes a while for either of us to trust again.

What if. What if.

(Ripley belongs to @localcryptic )

[localcryptic]

WIP wednesday (and it’s actually a wednesday this time woo!) tagged by @westealtoys !

i got a ton of random ripley sketches/doodles/projects going on, so here’s a collection of ripley WIPs. WIPleys, if you will (feat. two doodles of @b33tlejules 's teo lol)

i inflict wip wednesday upon @b33tlejules @typhros @autumnfangirler and @aurriearts :3 and anybody else who wishes to participate! i wish to see all that you create

[disappointingyet]

This is my now traditional list of favourite movies of the year. These are all films that – as far as I can tell – were first commercially available either in cinemas or on streaming in the UK this year. So it doesn’t include eg, Hit Man or The Holdovers. Other than that, these are solely being judged on: did I like them?

As I did last year, I’ve also written about other stuff I have seen that you might be interested in – which this time turned out to be so long I split it into two: Broadly Mainstream & Documentaries and Arthouse & Indie.

2023, then, the year of Barbenheimer (I saw Barbie, didn’t see Oppenheimer). And the year of the great superhero box office crash. Meanwhile, there were two austere French courtroom dramas critics loved, two films about young women born in Korea but raised elsewhere trying to make sense of their identities that also got excited reviews plus an avalanche of movies featuring cast members of Chicago restaurant TV drama The Bear.

I saw plenty of films, and there weren’t many I think I missed out on. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon felt like a film to watch with friends but we couldn’t sort out a time. Eileen and Dream Scenario sounded interesting but non-essential, but BlackBerry I very much did want to see but couldn’t get round to.  Saltburn generated a fair amount of debate, but by most accounts is precisely Ripley x Brideshead set in 2006 with tunes by Flo Rida and MGMT by the director of Promising Young Woman, and that’s a film I don’t need to see. 

Some near misses from this list: The Innocent, Alcarrás and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Oh, yeah, and maybe the most fun I had in a cinema for what was officially a 2023 release was seeing the 4K etc restoration of Stop Making Sense, but a bit of a scrub-up does not equal an actual new movie. And on that note, here’s the list:

1. Kuolleet Lehdet (Fallen Leaves)

This is recommended cautiously – there are other films on this list I would steer most people towards before this one. But it is a movie I absolutely loved. I think it’s the 18th feature film made by director Aki Kaurismäki in a 40-year career, and easily in his five best. If you’ve never seen a Kaurismäki film, the easiest way to describe them is like Jim Jarmusch movies but Finnish. And if you haven’t even seen a Jarmusch film? Well, his movies are slow (but crucially short!). Most of the characters dress like they are living in the late 1950s or early ’60s and drink in bars that seem to come from that time too, but the films are set in the present day. The characters are usually somewhat on the margins of society and often somewhat lonely. There’s not a lot of dialogue. And, this is very important, they are funny as well as melancholy. In short, this is a very distinctive world that you’re likely to find either very appealing or pretty baffling.

Fallen Leaves is a simple story about a woman and a man who meet and have a series of misconnections while other stuff is happening in their lives. It’s very lovely but if you lose patience within the first 10 minutes, I get it, I really do. But I think it’s great. 

Full review here

2. Past Lives

We open with someone speculating about the two men and a woman drinking together in a New York bar at 4am – who are they to each other? Then we are whisked back to Seoul a couple of decades earlier, and gradually make our way to that late night and learn who Na Young/Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) are. Céline Song’s drama is about friendship and love but also very much about the trauma of (bourgeois) emigration – the sense that not only did you leave a place and its people behind, you left a version of yourself there.

It’s an elegant, restrained yet emotionally raw film. I was going to say it feels in places like a three-hander but would be to forget Hae Sung’s drinking buddies, who provide welcome comic relief. And when your quibbles are as nit-picky as ‘maybe one too many magic-hour shots’, then you’re talking a seriously good movie.

3. Rye Lane

Delightful romantic comedy that manages to both play by the rules of the genre and feel fresh. Girl meets boy at an art show and they spend a day and evening wandering around together and getting into low-stakes misadventures. Set and very tangibly filmed in places I know extremely well* and does so without triggering my ageing South Londoner’s prickly defensiveness.  (*In my review, I say that the geography is all plausible. Recently I had dinner with friends who live locally and have seen the film, and they were not buying into the idea that you would buy hot food at Brixton Market and eat it in Brockwell Park – approx 15 minutes walk away. Which I guess makes them even more South London than me...)

Full review here

(Disney +)

4. Fremont

Afghan interpreter for the US military tries to get to grips with life in California. Gruelling social realist drama about trauma and exile? Uplifting/flag-waving account of the power of living free? Broad culture-clash comedy? No? How about ultra low-key indie, filmed in lovely black & white, in which Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) shuffles between her job making fortune cookies and her sessions with an eccentric psychiatrist (Gregg Turkington). The b&w, the gentle eccentricity of many of the characters, how little Donya says even though she is on-screen in almost every scene, have prompted comparisons with Jim Jarmusch, which I think are fair, although there’s much less of the fetish-of-cool stuff here (also, as it happens, in none of the Jarmusch films with a sole protagonist is that character female.) Very little happens, and I really liked it.

5. Anatomie d’un chute (Anatomy Of A Fall)

Bloke falls to his death out of the window of his house up in the snowy French mountains – question is: accident, suicide, murder? If murder, the only suspect seems to be his widow (Sandra Hüller), a writer who doesn’t much like living in France, especially not in the mountains, and also doesn’t feel confident expressing herself in French (the bulk of her dialogue is in English), attitudes that doesn’t seem likely to endear her to the local media or legal system. Because, yes, this is a courtroom drama, if very much not one in the manner of John Grisham. It’s an intense, relentless film, one almost without a score (what music there is – and it’s important to the plot and the film – is mostly diegetic, but there is a little cheating on that). Hüller is very good as the protagonist we’re not meant to be sure whether to root for (although I’m inherently sympathetic to anyone who would rather be in London than stuck up a mountain, however beautiful that mountain is). A few side thoughts: the kid made me think of The Omen, the prosecutor of reality TV  judge Rob Rinder and I would have sworn blind that the defence lawyer was in some band that had an EP out on Creation Records in 1988, only the actor is about 15 years too young for that. 

(It’s a very good film.)

6. Asteroid City

Wes Anderson’s latest comes with multiple levels of story within story that felt unnecessary the first time I saw it – on rewatch they made more sense. But the main narrative – of parents and their children fetched up in a sun-baked nowhere town in the 1950s – I found effective and very moving both times. Anderson’s films always have at least an undertone of sadness, but this is probably his most directly mournful picture since Moonrise Kingdom. As usual with Anderson, the cast is ridiculously stacked – Tom Hanks fits in surprisingly well – and there are actors (Ed Norton, Adrien Brody) who are vastly better in his films than they generally are in anyone else’s. I laughed, I cried – no, I really did, and I think this was the only film this year that made me do both.

7. Killers Of The Flower Moon

Is Killers Of The Flower Moon a masterful piece of film-making, a supreme example of Martin Scorsese’s novelistic ability to guide a camera to the details that bring a culture to life, featuring a luminous performance from Lily Gladstone and telling an important story? Yes. Is it a sadistically long* movie that runs you through the same incidents three and sometimes four times, one that inflicts on us many scenes of Bob De Niro and Leo DiCaprio doing that terrible Method-bore jutting lip/downturned mouth thing at each other? Yes, that too. 

It tells an ugly tale from American history – we’re in the 1920s and oil is discovered on Osage land in Oklahoma, making that nation’s members all very rich. Inevitably, tragically, a lot of white folk aren’t having that, and start scheming about how they will get their hands on the wealth. What I wasn’t expecting is that along with the murder the film’s title previews, the plot involved lots of white guys marrying Osage women. It’s fascinating and horrible and Scorsese tells it with great images and some humour and there’s great casting. But it’s still unnecessarily long (think of the span of time covered in GoodFellas – and that came in at a respectable 2hrs 26mins).

*In the debate about whether there should be intermissions in this movie, some people were saying. ‘Who are you to presume to know more about films than Scorsese and his legendary editor Thelma Schoonmaker?’ Seems like a fair point… except: these are people who seemed to have thought Polar Expressing De Niro in The Irishman looked OK, so I’m saying their judgement isn’t what it was. 

8. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

By and large, the critical response to Across The Spider-Verse was split between those who felt it was even better than Into The Spider-Verse and those who thought it was good but lacked the ‘blimey, look at everything they are managing to do and oh my god it makes so much more sense to do superhero movies as animation than clunky CGI’ shock-of-the-new of the first film. The latter is basically my position: this is a very good film but Into The Spider-Verse was a near-instant classic.* ATSV is not as funny, and suffers (for me) from the fact that much of it happens at a larger scale and there’s more multiverse stuff to get your head around etc, and it ends on a cliffhanger (boo!) But it’s still easily the best big budget/action film of the year for my money.

(*Although somehow only 7th on my films of 2018 list! In retrospect, I’d move it up, but still only to maybe 3rd – 2018 turns out to have been a great year for films I like.)

9. Reality

If you are phobic to excruciating small talk, you should probably avoid this film. The dialogue comes entirely from an FBI transcript, and the agents spend a very long time trying to put their suspect at ease before finally getting to the questions about what she allegedly did. So many awkward attempted bits of connection about pet ownership and going to the gym…

It starts with Reality Winner (yes, that is the name of a real person), played by Sydney Sweeney, driving home. Before she’s out of the car, two FBI agents have come up to her window. Almost all of film is them and her standing outside her bungalow doing the prelims for the questioning and then finally going inside to interrogate her. It feels like real time but it’s not quite that. The look of the film is quite raw, there’s no score, it feels very plain although there are a couple of welcome weird touches. 

It’s an uncomfortable watch, but if you can stay with it, it’s an impressive and rewarding film.

10. All The Beauty And The Bloodshed

This documentary wants to tell you two important stories. One is about the campaign to get artistic institutions to distance themselves from the Sackler family, the generous donors who (alas) made their money from Valium and Oxycontin. The second is a history of assorted art movements and bohemian scenes of the late 20th-century US. The person whose life connects all this is the photographer Nan Goldin (the art world’s most influential figure, apparently). Goldin’s pictures are also a key part of this film’s visual appeal, and the director Laura Poitras is well of aware of that, and happy to give them the space they deserve. Quite a brutal watch, but worth it. 

Full review here

11. Wham!

The angle this documentary takes gives us the story of Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael as a benign version of Single White Female with a touch of All About Eve crossed with Pygmalion. Here, the person who has had their look and career appropriated turns out to have been coaching the impersonator and at the end wishes them well as they soar off into superstardom. 

That’s how I’ve long understood the Wham! story but this fills in the details and adds some ambiguity: Ridgeley enjoyed songwriting and being tagged the ‘talentless one’ clearly hurt him. The image choices that led some to assume George Michael was gay (many years before he came/was forced out) were actually made by his busily straight bandmate – we were right for the wrong reasons, which is to say wrong. But what I found fascinating is that once George* – who had been strong-armed by Andrew into a music career – started to understand how good he could be, he developed a Michael Jordan-esque competitive fury.

The voices of the two Wham! members provide the bulk of the narrative, added to by lots of excellent archive. The short span of Wham!’s career is a huge plus for a pop documentary - it avoids the usual problem of what to do about the later stuff only the subjects of the film care about. Just like the band, the documentary knows how to stop when the going is good.

*I can’t treat ‘Michael’ as a surname in this context.

(Netflix)

[sellyripley]

Ok guys! Hope you’re all well! I’m...trying to be! Maybe we all need a bit of a distraction? 

Tagged by @smimon :D

Tell us your one favorite character from different fandoms and tag some peeps!

1. Robot Trains: Duke!!! ❤❤❤

2. Alien: Ellen Ripley (She’s kick ass)

3. Aliens: Lance Bishop ❤

4. Prometheus: David (He’s an undeniably captivating villain...❤) 

5. Alien Covenant: Walter (He’s the sort of android you’d want on your side in an emergency). 

6. Star Trek (Original): Spock (Vulcans are my inspiration in times of emotional turmoil )

7. The X-Files: Fox Mulder (Fox Mulder is my inspiration in times of...paranormal investigation...lol)

8.  Stargate SG1: Daniel Jackson (I nearly majored in anthropology because of him. ...I changed my major a lot, actually) 

9. Black Mirror: Kabir Dudani from the “U.S.S. Callister” episode. (A sensitive genius...stuck in a psychopath’s computer simulation ❤ :( 

10. House MD: Gregory House (Although, I actually think a lot of irl health care providers were inspired to start acting like assholes, by this show. The original Gregory House is the only one who can pull it off...)

11. Invader Zim: Dib 

12. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Nny

(Bonus round, shows I’ve gotten into thanks to my son:)

13. Tayo the Little Bus: Really tough call between Gani (he’s got a cool backstory with the whole reincarnation thing...) and Hana (I kind of want to be her lol. :P ) 

14. Tittipo: Teo (He seems more emotionally complicated than meets the eye!)

(Ok...have literally taken an hour to finish this little by little in between everything else.)

How to tag people...? Let’s see... @stormvanari @solitaria-fantasma @darkaudi @katrinthecat @nintendoandsega (even though I know you’re the silent type, @nintendoandsega but you dig Robot Trains so you’re cool in my book.), @passage-not-granted (but you’re the same person as @smimon though aren’t you?) @gritsandbrits And anyone else who wants to play! I need to send this off before my son destroys my computer lol. 

[andrewscottsource]

Andrew Scott reveals his social-distancing essentials

A new interview with Andrew Scott, sharing some of the things he’s using to deal with what the world is going through.

READ HERE “The BAFTA-winning actor – who also happens to be the sexiest priest we know and the star of Showtime's much-touted forthcoming remake of The Talented Mr Ripley – is currently holed up in his London home. Here he exclusively reveals his social-distancing essentials to our style and grooming director, Teo van den Broeke.”

[andrewscottbrasil]

|ENTREVISTA| Andrew Scott revela seus essenciais para o distanciamento social

Por: Teo van den Broeke - British GQ

“O ator vencedor do BAFTA - que também passa a ser o padre mais sexy que nós conhecemos e que também é a estrela do aclamado próximo remake da Showtime, The Talented Mr. Ripley-  está atualmente escondido em sua casa em Londres. Aqui, ele revela, exclusivamente, os seus essenciais para o distanciamento social para o nosso diretor de estilo e cuidados pessoais, Teo van den Broeke.

2019 foi um grande ano para Andrew Scott. A estrela do ator irlandês -bem como o ascendente- foi estratosférica com os papeis cruciais em Fleabag da Phoebe Waller Bridge e a sua vez como muito celebrada no palco Old Vic como Garry Essendine no Present Laughter do Noël Coward.

2020 estava previsto para ser um ano ainda maior, com a gravação prestes a começar em Ripley, o próximo remake da Showtime, The Talented Mr. Ripley de Patricia Highsmith, na Itália no final desse ano, mas atualmente, como o resto de nós, o ator ganhador do BAFTA está preso em sua casa.

Aqui, a maravilha e sábio que Scott é, fala para o nosso diretor de estilo e cuidados pessoais, Teo van den Broeke, sobre seus essenciais, alguns mais surpreendentes que outros, ele conta em vê-lo através de nosso estado coletivo atual de distanciamento social.

Contas da Amazon (e aplicativos de podcast) estejam à postos...

1. O podcast de Elizabeth Day ‘How to Fail’ com Mo Gawdat

 “Mo Gawdat escreveu um livro em felicidade [Solve for Happy] e Elizabeth Day o entrevista em seu podcast. Ele apenas fala com uma humanidade incrível, generosidade, sabedoria e calma sobre o que isso poderia ser e como ao invés de nós seguirmos o rebanho, nós deveríamos focar em o que nós fazemos e pensar em nós mesmos. A maioria de nós estão seguros, ele diz, apesar disso, ele não minimiza a dor que algumas pessoas estão passando, e isso está sendo muito beneficial. É brilhante. Elizabeth Day já entrevistou o grande filósofo Alain de Botton também, apenas caras quem tem ótimas visões gerais.”

Ouça o podcast aqui.

2. O botão de mudo

“Eu encorajo todas as pessoas a usarem isso. Nós estamos cercados de muita informação no momento. Às vezes, você tem que ser como, você sabe, eu não preciso ver uma foto de uma prateleira vazia no mercado porque aquilo significa para mim que você, meu amigo, é uma prateleira vazia.  

“É apenas tentar não espalhar o que você já ouviu antes. Esta é a primeira pandemia que nós tivemos com redes sociais e há muita informação. É brilhante, Instagram, mas você repentinamente se torna consciente, quando o seu mundo se torna menor que você apenas não precisa engajar. E a miséria das pessoas parecem ser o mesmo que se exibir – pessoas tendem a exibir sua miséria tanto quanto que o que elas têm de fabuloso. Há algumas pessoas no Instagram que me fazem pensar, ‘Essa pessoa está invadindo minha vida diária. E eu nem cheguei a conhecê-la!’  Então, para ser capaz de decidir, ‘Eu não preciso de você nesse momento.’, há algo bom sobre isso. Trata-se de procurar consolar as pessoas em vez de ser consolado.   

“Às vezes, você precisa parar e olhar para o trabalho de fora, o que é importante. Isso soa como um clichê, mas, é um que uma grande coisa para mim.” Ache o botão de mudo no Facebook, Instagram e na maioria das plataformas das redes sociais.  

3. As aulas de dança do Ryan Heffington.

“Ambas as minhas irmãs me colocaram nas aulas de dança do Ryan Heffington. Ele está sediado em LA e ele é tão cheio de alegria e isso é muito estúpido – ele pede que você pegue peças de roupas e as gire por aí. Ele tem alguns movimentos chamados ‘soque o Presidente’. 

A música é bem divertida, bem de acampamento. É no horário de Los Angeles – Eu acho que é às dez em ponto [da manhã] – mas, a live fica lá até o outro dia. Mas, ele é um coreografo muito brilhante e ele te guia através dos movimentos então, não é tudo intenso. Depois, você apenas se sente realmente brilhante!”

Siga Ryan Heffington no Instagram aqui.

4. Faixas elásticas

“O número quatro é bem básico, mas, são essas faixas elásticas [de ginástica]. Você pode fazer muito com elas. Nesse tempo onde todo mundo está na cabeça, é importante manter os exercícios. Eu nunca havia usado isso antes porque eu sempre fui à academia,  mas eu descobri que você pode suar em casa! Com exercícios! Você pode fazer todos os tipos de coisas com isso (faixas elásticas) – você estica elas o quanto você conseguir.”                             

5.Spray de sais marinhos da Murdock

“Porque é o único pedaço do mar que eu estou tendo agora!”

6. Meditação

“As pessoas continuam dizendo, ‘Fiquem conectados’ e eu acho que isso é importante, mas a pessoa que você está gastando todo o seu tempo é consigo. E se eu não estou checando o que está acontecendo comigo, e eu estou constantemente fazendo FaceTime com as pessoas e olhando mais para fora do que para dentro... você pode ficar um pouco louco. Então, está sendo um bom tempo para meditar. 

Eu tive uma experiência mista com a meditação, mas como as coisas tem se tornado um pouco mais mentais, eu precisava de um pequeno espaço. E com toda essa informação, eu descobri que se você olhar para dentro e achar paz, você é capaz de levar essa para o mundo. Isso não é besteira de hippie para mim, eu sinto que é cientifico. Se você fica melhor em achar a calma em você mesmo, eu acho que é mais fácil para fazer sentido no que está acontecendo.”

Assista a entrevista inteira com Andrew Scott no Instagram TV do @teovandenbroeke. (x)

Tradução livre em PT-BR feita pela nossa equipe. 

[b33tlejules]

you are SCARING the white bitches!!!

featuring pre-heartbreak Anathema, Ripley ( @localcryptic 's boy) and Teo

[b33tlejules]

Bro we are literally transgender metaphors..........

(ripley belongs to @localcryptic )

[b33tlejules]

they enter the room and teenagers by mcr starts blasting out of nowhere

@localcryptic and i have cooked up the most diabolical fhr highschool au just for the drama of it all.

an incomplete list of everything we've established so far:

Ortega twins real. Ricardo is head of the soccer team and Julia is head of the rugby team.

Their school mascot is The Rangers

Herald's on the cheer team with Argent (everyone assumes they're dating because they're both popular but its complicated)

Chen's on the soccer team

Junior Julia saw freshman Teo, said "is anyone going to be friends with her?" and didn't wait for an answer. Now they're in a codependent lesbian situationship that is gong to crash and burn when Julia graduates.

Ripley is in the tech crew for the theater department

Ricardo gets poached by the english teacher/drama teacher and makes him join theater because he's an actually good actor.

The Heartbreak incident is a chemistry class extra credit assignment gone wrong. Anathema survives with a few burns. Teo and Ripley are expelled and forced to change foster homes without being able to say goodbye.

[b33tlejules]

They're literally siblings your honor.

Sidestepverse au where @localcryptic 's Ripley and my Teo are stuck in the same apartment.

Also Julia and Ricardo Ortega are separate people.

Shenanigans ensue.

[b33tlejules]

these dumbasses.

ripley belongs to @localcryptic

[b33tlejules]

behold. a semi-complete chart of the relationship dynamics between mine and @localcryptic 's sidesteps.

Key:

Red is for malicious intent, Green is for familial bond, Light blue is peace on earth, Teal is for ambivalent/no strong opinion, Pink is love and Purple is lust.

[b33tlejules]

pomeranian ripley headcanon versus Actual Fursona ripley. if you care.

(this freak belongs to @localcryptic )

fuck it. dog fursona time. you know whats up.

if you send me your sidesteps i can also design them a fursona. but for a price. of one dollar.

[b33tlejules]

Memories of a simpler time (ft. @localcryptic 's Ripley having a normal time with Ricardo)

Avi keeps torturing me with visions so everyone else has to suffer with me

[b33tlejules]

Hey I accidentally projected my oc into my friends mind so hard he dreamed he was her and saw through her eyes perfectly. Did my oc just switch custody to my friend? How do I get her back? Do we have to have a psychic battle?

[b33tlejules]

Some more highschool au shenanigans (ft. @localcryptic 's Ripley and @kidhellion 's Nikki)

they enter the room and teenagers by mcr starts blasting out of nowhere

@localcryptic and i have cooked up the most diabolical fhr highschool au just for the drama of it all.

an incomplete list of everything we've established so far:

Ortega twins real. Ricardo is head of the soccer team and Julia is head of the rugby team.

Their school mascot is The Rangers

Herald's on the cheer team with Argent (everyone assumes they're dating because they're both popular but its complicated)

Chen's on the soccer team

Junior Julia saw freshman Teo, said "is anyone going to be friends with her?" and didn't wait for an answer. Now they're in a codependent lesbian situationship that is gong to crash and burn when Julia graduates.

Ripley is in the tech crew for the theater department

Ricardo gets poached by the english teacher/drama teacher and makes him join theater because he's an actually good actor.

The Heartbreak incident is a chemistry class extra credit assignment gone wrong. Anathema survives with a few burns. Teo and Ripley are expelled and forced to change foster homes without being able to say goodbye.