#terry crews is a hero of mine

[gofancyninjaworld]

Not in the webcomic (end of MA arc update)

One of the questions often asked by fans  is ‘when did character xyz appear in the webcomic’? I started to think  about who is and isn’t in the webcomic and realised that the list is  quite extensive.

As it’s quite long, I’ll start with the discussion. Basically, if a character absolutely doesn’t have to be in the story just that moment, ONE will leave them out of the webcomic. All the cool, interesting things that would add context or even just be great to  explore, sorry, can’t have them – that must have been driving him crazy.  Ah well, the art of great story-telling is knowing what to leave out. I salute ONE’s self-discipline.

A listing of who is who.NB: For all sections, unless the names are too awful, I’ve gone with Viz over scanslations where available.

A: Not present at all

Heroes

Armored Assistant Manager

Battery Man

Butcher

Captain Mizuki

D-Pad

Darkness Blade

Doll Master

Double Fall

Food Battler Futosu

Funeral Suspenders

Gearsper

Glasses

Grad School Graduate

Great Philosopher

Gun Gun

Hacker Net

Hyokotto and Studless

Lightning Genji

Meat Hammer

Mohican and Pineapple

Monocross

Narcisstoic

Needle Star

One-Shotter

Piko

Pink Hornet

Poison

Rabbit

Red Muffler

Shooter

Shoulderpads

Smell Master

Spring Mustachio

Surly Brothers (Angry Man, Crying Man and Smile Man)

Trap Tengu

Twin Tail

Watergun

Wild Horn

Most Tank Toppers not introduced

Good Guys

Blast's crew 

Guiches 

Narinki

Waganma

Sekingar

Zeimeet

The members of the HA executives appear  to be differentiating themselves and developing individual personalities, with continuity from the earliest chapters, even if most of them are still unnamed.

Now named: Bushouhige (previously known as the Bearded Worker) and Jinzuren (previously known as the Bespectacled Worker).

Exma

Gobrich

Torgeva

Cautous

Police Chief Kuma and all the other police officers.

The mercenaries

The Council of Swordmasters

ALL the Super Fight contestants

Bad Guys

Cow Stomach

King's would-be assassins 

Monsters

100-Eyed Octopus

170,000 Year-Old Cicada Nymph and Imago

Awakened Cockroach

Bakuzan 

Black Roast

Building Booper

Demon Fan 

Demonic Pugilist

Destrochloridium

Devil Executioner

Elder Centipede

Evil Ocean Water

Eyesight

Face Ripper

Free Hugger

Gameberos

Gigakigan

Gouketsu

Grizzly Nyan

Haragiri

Hotdog

Incarnation of Electric Light String

Jagaan

Junior Centipede and Venus People Trap

Lafreshidon

Machine God G4 – final pilot form

Machine God G5

Maikoplasma and Electric Catfish Man 

Marshal Gorilla

Master Joe 

Monster King Orochi

Nyan

Piggie Bank 

Platinum Sperm

 Psychos-Orochi

Rhino Wrestler

 Sage Centipede

Showerhead

Sludge Jellyfish

 Spiderino

 Supermouse 

Suppon 

Surprise Attack Plum 

Three Crows

 Unihorn 

Urokodon

 Vacuuma

Vomited Fuhrer

Ugly 

Withered Sprout

 Zombiefied Subterraneans (victims of the real monsters rather than monsters themselves) 

Insect Mine workers (again, minding their own business)

All the unnamed monsters in the Monster Association (previously there had only been 17 members)

All the monsterised martial artists

All of Puri Puri’s ‘honnies’ both before and after monsterisation

All the monsters that went to rescue Garou excepting PhoenixMan

The ugly fish monsters that attacked Amai Mask’s concert

B: Introduced in manga earlier than in webcomic

Air (webcomic chapter 95)

Blast (we're still waiting to see him!)

Bones (finally appeared in webcomic chapter 114)

Butterfly DX (webcomic chapter 95)

Chain N’Toad (webcomic chapter 95)

Crescent Eyebroll (webcomic chapter 96)

Feather (webcomic chapter 104) 

Gale Wind (webcomic  chapter 115) 

'God' (webcomic chapter 80)

Green (webcomic chapter 96)

Heavy Kong (webcomic chapter 114)

Hell Fire Flame (webcomic chapter115)

McCoy (webcomic chapter 106) 

Peach Terry  (webcomic chapter 114)

Red Nose (webcomic chapter 124)

Shadow Ring (webcomic chapter 96)

Sourface (webcomic chapter 111)

Suiko (webcomic chapter 123)

Suiryu (webcomic chapter 124)

Zenko (not yet seen; explicitly mentioned in chapter 125)

C: Significantly increased in presence

This  is a bit of a subjective category because there are more pages in the manga, so of course characters get to show up more! I’ve therefore looked at characters where their increased presence gives us a significantly different view of them, serves to change their character development or modifies the plot. I’m leaving Garou and Saitama out for  what I hope will be obvious reasons. Your mileage may vary. :)​

Bomb

Justice at last! No longer the other old man who exists for colour commentary and getting beat up, his relationship to Bang has been expanded on so we understand how integral he has been to making Bang the person he is. We also finally get to appreciate what a redoubtable fighter he is in his own right.

Death Gatling

Added:  In the webcomic, all we saw of Death Gatling was him being set up as  bait to draw out Garou, who obligingly attacked him. There’s so much more to his experiences, his thinking and his organisational ability that it’s not even funny.

​Dr. Kuseno

Added:  In the webcomic, he appeared briefly in chapter 40 and then not again until 106, and then even more briefly. In the manga, we’ve gotten to  know more about who he is, how he interacts with people and what his  relationship with Genos is like. We learn that he uses drones to retrieve Genos when his misadventures have gone a little too badly amiss, but isn’t afraid to show up in person.Fun little meta here. In his secondary character poll, ONE  had Dr. Kuseno say roughly the following: ‘I’m going to become a   semi-regular character by supporting Genos occasionally…’ Or so I used   to think. But it’s actually hilarious how rarely I show up lol.“ Link.  And then Murata cracked his knuckles…​

Drive Knight

Added:  Everything after the Alien Invasion arc. In the webcomic, he disappeared in the aftermath of the Alien Invasion and did not appear again until chapter 138. In the manga, we finally get to see how he fights, get an idea of how he thinks and see his actions regarding the Monster Association.  As of chapter 93, we finally learn that he is a cyborg, making him the fourth known cyborg in the series. He’s shown in  the manga that he is a very calculating and capable fighter -- he's the sole S-Class hero to have single-handedly subdued a cadre. He's also given us more of a look at his true agenda, even if we're yet to see its full extent.​

Genos

Added: His tussle with Sonic aside, everything from chapter 45 - 83 is entirely new and 83 onwards is greatly expanded, showing us a much clearer view of his progression. The result of all his battles showed clearly in how he picked Garou apart, whereas in the webcomic he’d just unleashed a flurry of wild swings that’d gotten him a cracked face for his troubles. Going strictly by the webcomic, he’s mostly just there and the one day comes out and says he can fight dragon-level monsters now and you’re like 'What? From where?'  In the manga, the progression past that point is so much more evident and justifiable. He has grown as a person as well, something Saitama himself has noticed (nothing like this has happened in the webcomic).​

Metal Bat

Added:  Seeing how he actually interacts with Zenko, which has been both heart-warming and quite important to how the story goes. Also added has been his bodyguard role with Narinki and Waganma, which led to his fighting multiple monsters and eventually with Garou. Without this, we would not have learned about his Fighting Spirit as of yet. Otherwise, his webcomic presence consisted of appearing in the Alien Invasion arc  and then not at all until after the Monster Association arc for a couple of panels. So much of what makes Metal Bat a deserved fan favourite comes from the manga, not the webcomic. No explanation for his missing out on the raid was given. He’s come out to fight despite his injuries, which is to his credit.​

Phoenixman

Added: From a ridiculous monster who died in a flash, Phoenixman lived up to his name, coming back again and again. He’s also proved to be a terror in another way: intelligent, deeply manipulative, and able to access a spiritual world, this monster was far too dangerous to live. Unfortunately, he was also too interesting to die. Currently depowered, we await the future depredations of... Monster Chick Man.

Pyskos

Added: Talk about a Major Villain Upgrade! She’s gone from someone with a terrifying vision and a half-baked idea to wipe out the world with a pathetic number of monsters to one of the most dangerous fiends in the series.

Tank Top Master

Added:  A lot more about his relationship with his Tank Topper Army. As with  Metal Bat, he’s pushed himself out of hospital to go rescue people, then  get pulled into fighting.  We’ve also gotten to see a relationship  develop between himself and Mumen Rider, which looks to have been  mutually-beneficial. ​

Tareo

Added:  Now he is named. In the webcomic he was just the ugly kid. He used to  be a random kid that Garou happened to save and chased after the  monsters to rescue from their headquarters. Now, over several chapters,  we see him develop a friendship with Garou, how important protecting him  has been as a catalyst for developing Garou’s strength and how vital a  link to Garou’s humanity he is. No longer just a morality pet, he  actually gets a personality, we get to see his personality in his own  right, we see his experiences through his world view and we are going to  see how he develops as a character.​

D: Removed in the manga

Owing to copyright issues, Goddess Glasses has been removed in favour Do-S (or  Super S) and the Hotrod Brothers have been replaced by the ninjas Gale  Wind and Hell Fire. In both cases, their concepts remain very similar,  but ONE has taken the opportunity to greatly expand their role and  integrate what they do more closely to the plot. In particular, Do-S appears to have been a great motivator for Fubuki to up her game and do something about her sister. The monster ninjas, in intervening in Sonic’s life, gave us an insight into the ninja village that Sonic came  from and their fierce (if super short) battle with Flashy Flash was far  more entertaining and insightful than the webcomic equivalent.

[aion-rsa]

The True Story Behind James Cameron’s Titanic

https://ift.tt/3shvKln

James Cameron’s 1997 blockbusting tearjerker, Titanic, puts an epic love story in the middle of the greatest maritime disaster in the history of the North Atlantic. On April 15, 1912, midway through its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Because of a severe shortage of lifeboats, 1,517 people died. In the weeks which followed, the luxury liner was said to have been billed as “unsinkable,” but that claim had never been made until after the nautical disaster.

This and other myths have lived on, thanks particularly to Cameron’s romantic (and often fanciful) movie. And yet, not all truths have been lost at sea.

Jack and Rose

Jack Dawson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Rose DeWitt Bukater, played by Kate Winslet as a young woman and Gloria Stuart when elderly, are a myth. They are fictional characters. Jack wasn’t slipped $20 for rescuing Rose, and never taught her how to spit off the side of a ship like a man. But there was a member of the Titanic crew named Joseph Dawson. Born in Dublin, Joseph Dawson worked as a coal trimmer, evening out piles of coal which were shoveled into the ship’s furnaces.

Rose DeWitt-Bukater is the first film character portrayed by two actors who were both nominated for an Academy Award. Winslet was nominated as Best Actress, and Stuart was nominated as Best Supporting Actress. Rose is modeled on Beatrice Wood, who did not travel on the Titanic. Born in San Francisco to wealthy parents, her coming out party was cancelled the same year the Titanic sank.

Beatrice joined the French National Repertory Theatre under the stage name Mademoiselle Patricia, playing more than 60 roles before she was noticed by artist Marcel Duchamp. She was well known by artists during the Dada period, and lived long enough to be invited by James Cameron to the opening of Titanic.

Captain Edward John Smith

Before skippering the Titanic, Capt. Edward John Smith (Bernard Hill) spent 40 years at sea without major incidents. Smith had been working on boats since he was a teenager. He earned a master’s certificate, which is required to serve as captain, in 1875. He became a junior officer with the White Star Line in 1880. He commanded his first ship in 1887. Like many veteran captains, he occasionally ran ships aground, and was captain of the Olympic when it collided with the British cruiser Hawke off the Isle of Wight in 1911, a year before he helmed the Titanic.

The Titanic received iceberg warnings several days into its maiden voyage. Smith adjusted the course but reportedly did not decrease speed. He was away from the bridge when the ship struck an iceberg. The first damage report, from Fourth Officer Joseph G. Boxhall (Simon Crane), found no damage. But a closer inspection from the Titanic’s designer Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber), found five of the ship’s 16 watertight compartments were flooded. The Titanic could have stayed afloat with up to four flooded compartments. At about midnight, Andrews reported the ship would founder within 60 to 90 minutes. Smith gave orders to uncover the lifeboats and alert the passengers at 12:05 a.m.

Because of some of the reported incidents, some historians wonder whether Smith was in a state of shock at the news. Crewmen didn’t lower the lifeboats until 12:45 a.m., and only because Second Officer Charles Lightoller (Jonny Phillips) reminded the captain to give the order.

Smith’s final moments are unknown. Early newspaper reports alleged he shot himself with a pistol. Several witnesses claimed to have seen him swim to a nearby lifeboat with an infant in his arms before swimming back to the Titanic. Some witnesses said he was swept off deck by a wave, others believed he made it to an overturned lifeboat. Smith’s body was never found.

Joseph Bruce Ismay

J. Bruce Ismay (Jonathan Hyde) was born Dec. 12, 1862, near Liverpool, England. His father was the founder of the White Star Line. Educated at Harrow and tutored in France, he travelled the world before becoming the New York company agent for White Star Line. He became head of Ismay, Imrie & Company after his father’s death in 1899, oversaw its acquisition by J.P. Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine Company in 1902, and was named president of IMM in 1904.

In 1907, Ismay met with Lord Pirrie of the Belfast shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff to discuss building a fast luxury liner with huge steerage capacity which would rival the Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania. Three ships were built, the RMS Olympic, RMS Britannic, and the pride of the fleet, the RMS Titanic. The ship was built by British White Star Lines at a cost of $10 million. It weighed 46,000 tons and was 882.5 feet long.

History puts culpability for the Titanic disaster on Ismay. He reportedly demanded the captain increase speed in spite of the iceberg warnings, but during the U.S. Senate’s Inquiry into the disaster, he testified the ship was never going at full speed and didn’t even have all of the boilers on. Ismay was the company officer who gave the order to cut the number of lifeboats onboard from 48 to the Board of Trade standard minimum of 16, plus 4 collapsible Engelhardt boats. But Ismay also helped crewmen get the lifeboats ready and convinced passengers to board the lifeboats before danger was visibly apparent. Ismay boarded Engelhardt C, the last lifeboat launched, only 20 minutes before the Titanic crashed beneath the waves.

While Ismay was attacked in the press and branded a coward for escaping while so many working-class women and children died, testimony from surviving officers exonerated his actions as in the best interest of the passengers. Ismay retired from IMM and the White Star Line in 1913.

Chief Engineer Officer Joseph Bell

Joseph Bell (Terry Forrestal) was from Farlam, Cumbria, and a family who had been farmers for generations.  Born in March 1861, Joseph began his seafaring career as an apprentice engine fitter at Robert Stephensons and Co. in Newcastle. Bell joined the White Star line in 1885, serving on vessels working the waters of New Zealand and New York.

Joseph, was promoted to Chief Engineer on the Coptic in 1891 and married Maud Bates in 1893. By 1911, he was the Chief Engineer on White Star Line’s Olympic before being transferred to the Titanic. His staff consisted of 24 engineers, six electrical engineers, two boilermakers, a plumber, and a clerk. None survived the sinking.

The Unsinkable Molly Brown

Legend has it, Margaret Tobin Brown (Kathy Bates) was called “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” because she helped evacuate the ship, took up one of the oars in the lifeboat, and threatened to throw Quartermaster Robert Hichens (Paul Brightwell) overboard if he didn’t go back to the boat to save more people. The myth says the nickname was plucked from the first words she said upon landing safely in New York: “Typical Brown luck. I’m unsinkable!” But Brown actually got the tag as an insult from Denver gossip columnist Polly Pry as revenge for the story of a local hero being printed in another magazine first.

Molly Tobin was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1867. Her Irish family was part of a wave of immigrants who came to America after the country’s industrialization. Margaret went to school until age 13 when she began working in a factory. She left in search of better work conditions. She met J.J. Brown, a mining engineer, and they were married on Sept. 1, 1886. While most of their neighbors in the Leadville, Missouri community lived in devastating poverty because of the 1893 Silver Crash, J.J. discovered gold in Ibex Mining’s Little Johnny Mine, where he was made a primary shareholder. The couple became nearly instantaneous millionaires.

Moving to Denver where the Silver Crash also took a heavy economic toll, Margaret became part of the Progressive movement, fighting for public baths, public parks, and other city improvements. The Browns separated in 1909 but never divorced. Margaret and her daughter Helen were on an extended vacation with Col. John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV and Madeleine Astor in 1912 when they heard news about a family member’s health issue at home and booked passage on the first available ship, the Titanic.

After the crash, Margaret was lowered in lifeboat number six, which was equipped to hold 65 passengers, but set off with 21 women, two men, and a twelve-year-old boy onboard. Margaret manned an oar. Her knowledge of foreign languages helped her bring passengers aboard the Carpathia, the first ship to answer the distress call. Margaret distributed blankets and supplies, and got the first-class passengers to donate money to help less fortunate passengers.

Brown continued her Progressive program, helping miners striking against the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Twenty people were killed when a battle broke out between the miners and private guards hired by the company in one of the most violent labor conflicts in American history. Once the aftermath and PR battles died down, Margaret moved into her summer home in Newport, Rhode Island where she became involved with Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, the President of the National Women’s Suffrage Association.

The two women spearheaded the National Women’s Trade Union League, which advocated for a minimum wage, an eight-hour workday, and did not distinguish between women of the upper classes and working women.

Margaret wrote newspaper articles, gave public speeches, and was drawn to the radical side of the party, which pushed for a national suffrage amendment. In July 1914, Brown and Belmont organized the Conference of Great Women, which led to Margaret’s bid for a U.S. Senator seat representing Colorado. She shifted her focus when World War I broke out, traveling to France to work for the American Committee for Devastated France.

After WWI, Molly indulged her lifelong passion for the stage, performing in plays in Paris and New York. The 1960 Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown was based on her life, Debbie Reynolds played her in the 1964 film adaptation.  Brown died in her sleep on Oct. 26, 1932, at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City.

Madeleine Astor and Jacob Astor IV

Madeleine Astor (Charlotte Chatton) was five months pregnant when she boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France with her husband Col. John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV (Eric Braeden); her husband’s valet, and her maid and nurse. Madeleine was the daughter of William Hurlbut Force, a shipping magnate, and her family was part of Brooklyn high society. The Astors were ending their extended honeymoon which began with a trip from New York on Titanic‘s sister ship, the Olympic.

When the Titanic was sinking, Astor’s husband helped her and her maid into lifeboat four but was denied entry himself by Second Officer Lightoller, who said the boats were for women and children only. Col. Astor perished with the ship. Madeleine Astor gave birth on Aug. 14, 1912. Her late husband’s will was conditional, and when Madeleine married her childhood friend, the banker William Karl Dick, four years after the Titanic tragedy, she lost her stipend from his trust fund.

Isidor and Ida Straus

Here’s a real heartbreaker greater than even Kate and Leo. Remember the image of a couple holding each other and crying as water seeps into their cabin? They were based on the tragically real figures of Isidor and Ida Straus, two of the wealthiest people on the Titanic.

Born into a Jewish family in Otterberg in 1845, back when that village was part of the Kingdom of Bavaria and Germany did not yet exist, Isidor immigrated as a child with his family to the United States. Growing up in Georgia when the Civil War broke out, he even considered joining the Confederacy before instead becoming a blockade runner for the South (think Rhett Butler). After the war, he moved to New York City where he met Ida, a fellow immigrant from the Germanic states.

In New York, Isidor worked at L. Straus and Sons, which quickly became the glass and china department at Macy’s. Yes, that Macy’s. The original one. By 1888, Isidor and his brother became partners in the first major American department store. By 1896 they owned it. Around this time, Isidor even served a single term as a Congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives.

When the Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912, Isidor and Ida were returning home after a holiday in France. As a first class passenger woman from one of the finest cabins on the ship, Ida was almost immediately offered space on a lifeboat. Isidor escorted her to it, but when it came time to get on, she refused. She wouldn’t leave her husband. Isidor was then also offered a spot on the lifeboat beside her, but he also refused, saying he would “not go before other men.”

So both of them declined the lifeboat space and instead gave it to Ida’s maid. One witness said she heard Ida say, “We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go.” They walked off back toward the neck, never to be seen again.

And the Band Played On

The crew of the RMS Titanic took the adage “women and children first” very seriously. The Titanic‘s eight-member band, led by violinist Wallace Hartley (Jonathan Evans-Jones), never even jockeyed for position. When the band heard the ship was going down, they set up in the first-class lounge and played to keep passengers calm. As the water rose, the band moved to the forward half of the boat deck. Hartley worked for the Cunard ship line before taking the gig on the Titanic. The other band members were violinists George Alexandre Krins and John Law Hume, violist and bassist John Frederick Preston Clarke, cellists John Wesley Woodward, and Roger Marie Bricoux, and pianists Percy Cornelius Taylor and Theodore Ronald Brailey.

According to some passengers, the final song played was “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” a hymn written in 1861 by the Rev. John Dykes. Versions of this song play in the films Titanic (1953), A Night to Remember (1958) and Cameron’s Titanic. This was discounted by Colonel Archibald Gracie, an amateur historian who survived the disaster.

Read more

Movies

Saving Private Ryan: The Real History That Inspired the WW2 Movie

By David Crow

Movies

How Saving Private Ryan’s Best Picture Loss Changed the Oscars Forever

By David Crow

“I assuredly should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all, and one likely to create panic,” he is quoted as saying in Steven Turner’s book, The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the Eight Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic. He recalled that the band played cheerful songs to keep spirits up. Other survivors also reported hearing songs like “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “In the Shadows.”

“Nearer, My God, to Thee” was sung by passengers who survived the 1906 wreck of the SS Valencia and had been played during the impending doom on the decks of the Titanic, but those passengers who heard the song had disembarked earlier than the crew.  Wireless operator Harold Bride told The New York Times he heard the song “Autumn” before the ship sank.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post The True Story Behind James Cameron’s Titanic appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3asID5P

[federationsound]

Federation Invasion #500 (Dancehall Reggae Megamix) 03.24.21

Fade Away. Junior Byles

Jah Glory  - Glen Washington               

Why Be Afraid - Tony Rebel

Ghetto People Song - Everton Blender

Are You Satisfied - Ras Shiloh

Never Dis the Man - Sanchez

In This Together - Luciano, Louie  Culture & Terror Fabulous

I Wonder - Sizzla

Good Ways - Sizzla

Never Give Jah Up - Sugar Minott                 

Jah Jah Bless Me - Jah Cure

Earth a Run Red - Richie Spice                  

Lots of Sign - Tenor Saw

Declaration of Rights - Freddie Mcgregor

Created by the Father - Dennis Brown

Punchline - Luciano

Who I Am - Capleton

Praise Ye Jah - Sizzla

Praise Him - Sanchez

Seek God - Bounty Killer

Kette Drum- Determine & Beenie Man

Think You Have It All - Shabba Ranks

Jah Jah City - Capleton

Love The Solution - Jah Cure

Liberation - Morgan Heritage

  2) Badman Tunes

  Gangsters Anthem - Terror Fabolous

Bogus Badge - Louie Culture

Murderer - Barrington Levy & Beenie Man

Respect - Shabba Ranks

No Threat - Coco Tea

Sail - Wayne Wonder

The Test - Spragga Benz

Gundelero - Cobra

Bandelero - Pinchers

Carpenter - Pinchers

Find and Kill - Cobra

Narrow Escape - Capleton

Top a Top - Bounty Killer

Shine & Criss - Shabba Ranks

Mi Gun Talk - Terry Ganzie

Yu Think A Little Gun - Cobra

Whoa - Cobra

Down in the Ghetto - Bounty Killer

Action Speak Louder Then Words - Bounty Killer

War - Bounty Killer

Gun Man Tune - Panhead

Dead This Time - Bounty Killer

New Gun - Bounty Killer

Lodge - Bounty Killer

Gun

Bad Man - Assassin

Crime - Cobra

  3) Bounty Killer / Beenie Man

  Long or Tall - Bounty Killer

Make It Tan So Den - Beenie Man

Not Another Word - Bounty Killer

Mobster - Beenie Man

War Beyond The Stars - Bounty Killer

Any Mr. Man - Beenie Man

Dunns River Fall - Bounty Killer & Scare Dem Crew

Wicked Man - Beenie Man

Spy Fi Die - Bounty Killer

Dem Nuh Have No Heart - Bounty Killer

It's A Wonder - Beenie Man & Risto Benji

Memories (Stop Live In The Past) - Beenie Man

Suspence - Bounty Killer

Dengue Fever (- Beenie Man

Ask Fi War - Bounty Killer

Benz & the Bimma - Bounty Killa

Girls Dem Way - Beenie Man

Stucky - Bounty Killer

One Of Us - Ghost & Beenie Man

Mi Heartbeat - Bounty Killer

Slam - Beenie Man

  4) 90’s / 2000’s Juggling

  Desperate Measures - Baby Cham

Blazing - Surprize / Wayne Wonder

Magnum - Spragga Benz Introducing Twice

Bad Mind - Tony Curtis

Let Dem Have It - Merciless

Opportunity - Buju Banton

Dark Glass - Beenie Man & Goofy

Warlord - Bounty Killer

Shotta - Boom Dandimite

Soco Numa - Buccaneer

Mega Nitro Mix - Bounty Killer

Fed Up - Bounty Killer

Bad Mind Ago Kill Dem - Capleton

Wha Dat Fa - Baby Cham

Step It Up - Baby Cham & Frankie Sly

The Return - Baby Cham

Middle Fingers In The Air - Baby Cham

Mi See It - Frankie Sly

We Are Jamaicans - Shaggy

Caught In A The West - Bounty Killer

Quarter To Twelve - Simpleton

Anti Christ - Captian Barkey

God Bless - Shabba Ranks

Dun Wife - Cobra

Peanut Punch - Fabby Dolly

  5) Dancing

  Do The Reggay - Toots & The Maytals

Della Move - Admiral Bailey

Duck - Red Dragon

Stuck - Early Black

World Dance - Beenie man

Tatie - Snagga Puss

Dance The Angel - Harry Toddler

Bogle - Buju Banton

Butterfly - Jigsy King & Tony Curtis

All About Dancing - Tony Matterhorn

Row Like A Boat - Beenie Man

Higher Level - Elephant Man

Pon De River - Elephant Man

Skip To Ma Luu - Serani feat. Ding Dong & Razz & Biggy

Dweet - Ding Dong & Bravo

Bad Man Pull Up - Ricky Blaze

Tek It To Dem - Ricky Blaze

Blase - Elephant Man

Weh Di Time - Voicemail, Delly Ranks & Bogle

Ready To Party (Weh Di Time 2)- Voicemail, Delly Ranks, Bogle & Ding Dong

Willie Bounce - Elephant Man

Ele Medley (Willie Chin Kopa Remix) - Elephant Man

Scooby Doo (Black Chiney Remix) - Elephant Man

S.T.O.P. - Sultex

Wacky Dip - Voicemail Feat. Ding Dong

Arcle - Galtego Bay Sweep - Crazy Chris feat. Ami

Cut Dem Off - Ricky Blaze                   

Everybody Dance - Merital

  6) Vybz Kartel

  Portmore Scheme (Dub) - Vybz Kartel

Represent Portmore - Vybz Kartel

Seh Weh Yuh Feel Fi Seh - Vybz Kartel

Welcome The Outlaw - Vybz Kartel

Run Them Down - Vybz Kartel

Court Case - Vybz Kartel

OK - Vybz Kartel & Bascom X

Most High - Vybz Kartel

Start Well - Vybz Kartel

Up To The Sky - Vybz Kartel

Sweet To The Belly (Remix) - Vybz Kartel & Celine Dion

Whine (Wine) - Vybz Kartel

Robbery - Vybz Kartel

Portmore Freestyle - Vybz Kartel, Singa Blinga, Geez & Lennymatic

My Scheme - Vybz Kartel

My Gun - Vybz Kartel

How Gun Rise - Mavado & Vybz Kartel

Weh Dem A go - Vybz Kartel & Javinchi

Laugh & Shot Dem - Aidonia & Vybz Kartel

When Badman Buss It - Aidonia & Vybz Kartel

Work’ Boss - Vybz Kartel

Dancehall Hero Part 2 - Vybz Kartel & Popcaan

Party Me Say (Me Nice) - Vybz Kartel

Portmore City to Uptown - Vybz Kartel

Drive By - Vybz Kartel

Girls Like Mine - Bounty Killer & Vybz Kartel

Gal Clown - Bounty Killer & Vibez Cartel

Gun Clown - Vybz Kartel

  7) Dubplates

  Nice Up The Dance / Reggae (Dub) - Kabaka Pyramid

Heavy (Dub) - Pad Anthony & Jigsy King

Cool Out Son(Dub) - Jr Murvin

Sound Boy Killing (Dub) - Kojak

Full Up (Dub) - Bunny General

In The Ghetto (Dub) - Johnny Osborne

Murderer (Dub) - Johnny Osborne

Gangster Sound (Dub) - Johnny Osborne

Modern Day Judas (Dub) - Jesse Royal

Here I Come (Dub) - Barrington Levy

Prison Oval Rock (Dub) - Barrington Levy

Spanish Town Rocking(Dub) - Chronixx

Sudden Flight (Dub) - Protoje

News Carryin’ Dread (Dub) - Chronixx

BLXXD MXNEY (Dub) - Protoje

Steamin (Dub) - Fyakin

Four Twenty (Dub) - Capital D

Father Protect Me (Dub) - Keznamdi

Immaculate (Dub) - Kabaka Pyramid

Smoke Badman (Dub) - Chino

Late Night Scheme (Dub) - Vybz Kartel & Wayne Marshell

Prison Life (Dub) - Vybz Kartel

Bashment Party Medley (Dub) - Wayne Wonder

Medley (Dub) - Mr Easy

Medley (Dub) - Baby Cham

Eagles Cry (Dub) - T.O.K.

Uzi Draw (Dub) - Vybz Kartel

  8) Remix Segment

  Sound Bwoy Killing (Dub) - Mega Banton

Forever Young (Dub) - Wayne Wonder

Mix Up (Dub) - Agent Sasco

People (Dub) - Ward 21

King Kabaka (Dub) - Kabaka Pyramid

Raggamuffin (Dub) - Koffee

Here Comes Trouble (Dub) - Chronixx

Lonely - Bascom X

Nobody Has To Know - Kranium

Like Glue - Sean Paul

Ravin - Popcaan

Summertime - Vybz Kartel

Beat Up - Vybz Kartel

Stamina Daddy - Buju Banton

Memories - Beenie Man

Tour - Capleton

Who Dem - Capleton

No Way - Spragga Benz

Goggle - Tanya Stephens

Foundation - Beenie Man

Brooklyn (Dub) - Screechy Dan

Easy (Dub) - Suku Ward

  9) Showtime Riddim

  Galong Ya Gal - Baby Cham

Gal Splurt - Cobra

Gal Pon De Side - Frisco Kid

Hot Gal - Shaggy

Bashment Party - Rayvon & Red Foxx

Seargent Wallace - Frisco Kid

Searching Dem Searching - Wayne Wonder

Rain Again - Mr. Easy

98 - Spragga Benz

We Nuh Like - Spragga Benz

Slurp - Stranger (Dave Kelly)

Hypocrite - Beenie Man

Eagle And The Hawk - Bounty Killer

Murderer (Dub) - Bounty Killer

Weed Medley (Dub) - Bounty Killer

Humble Thought (Dub) - Sizzla

Ganja Medley (Dub) - Roundhead

Weed Blazing (Dub) - T.O.K.

Send On (Dub) - Vybz Kartel

Send On The War (Dub) - Vybz Kartel

Touch Me If Ya Bad (Dub) - Vybz Kartel

Get To The Point (Sizzle) - Sizzla

Praise Ye Jah (Dub) - Sizzla

Keep It Blazing (Dub) - T.O.K.

Rock And Pop Off (Dub) - T.O.K.

Medley (Dub) - Ward 21

Rhyme (Dub) - Timberlee

Rass Piece A Punaany - Natalie Storm

Medley (Dub) - Cobra

Oldies Medley (Dub) - Sean paul

  10) New Tunes

  Safe N Sound - Chronixx

Lockdown - Koffee

Elephant Man - Time Cow & RTKal

Me & My Lady - Tessellated

Young Boss (Remix) - Blvk H3ro x Wayne J x Skillibeng

Budum - Jada Kingdom

Likkle Bit a Money - Govana

Mr. Universe - Skillibeng

5Gs - Runkus, Kabaka Pyramid, Jesse Royal, Munga & Royal Blu

New Step - Runkus feat. Kabaka Pyramid

G - Royal Blu & Runkus

Thy Will (Remix) - Lila Ike feat. Skillibeing

Trample Dem - Kabaka Pyramid

Like Royalty - Protoje ft. Popcaan

Mango - Sevana

Fresh & Clean - Jaz Elise ft. Govana

Sean Paul & Suku - Space Ship

Gal Policy - Kranium

Ambition - Yaksta

Cool As The Breeze / Friday - Chronixx

Yeng - Intence

Clip Tall - IWaata

Crocodile Teeth - Skillibeng

Check out this episode!

[grigori77]

2019 In TV - My Top 10 Shows

This past year may have sucked balls in a lot of ways, but we certainly never got short-changed when it came to our TV.  There was an absolute WEALTH of truly cracking TV around, both on regular networks and on the various on-demand platforms, and so here is my pick of the best, my absolute favourites of 2019.

10.  WATCHMEN

Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof brings us a blinding sequel to comic book legend Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel with a delightfully trippy, ruthlessly efficient rug-puller that seems pretty tailor-made for HBO.  Old faces return in interesting ways, while there are some cracking new “masks” on offer, particularly Regina King’s Sister Night and the always-brilliant Tim Blake Nelson as morally complex antihero Looking Glass (in some ways very much the show’s own answer to Rorschach).  It never goes where you expect it to go, and refuses to give easy answers to the questions it raises, effortlessly paving the way for more next year ...

9.  THE BOYS

Amazon offers up its own edgy, thoroughly adult superhero property with this darkly funny antiheroic gem based on the cult Garth Ennis comic, expertly adapted by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.  Karl Urban dominates as Billy Butcher, the foul-mouthed, morally bankrupt “leader” of a makeshift crew of mercenaries, hitmen and psycho killers devoted to “taking care of” superheroes when they inevitably go bad.  Season 1 ultimately serves as an origin story, showing how the team come together, laying quality groundwork for the incoming sophomore tour that promises to open the already fascinating world out significantly.

8.  PREACHER (SEASON 4)

More Garth Ennis, namely this blinder of a closing season for AMC’s consistently impressive adaptation of his best known series for Vertigo comics.  Surprisingly epic, deliciously subversive and constantly, darkly hilarious, this thoroughly non-PC series from showrunners Sam Catlin, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (yes! I Know!) certainly went out on a high note, providing its loyal followers with perfectly-pitched bow-outs and sometimes heartbreaking goodbyes for all its players, especially its dynamite leads, Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga and, in particular, Joe Gilgun as unapologetic bad boy vampire Cassidy.  A worthy end to one of my all-time favourite TV shows.

7.  THE WITCHER

While it’s clearly taken its look from the wildly successful video games, Netflix’s second most ambitious long-form offering of the year takes its lead from the fantasy book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski that started it all.  With its somewhat episodic set-up and decidedly twisted narrative timelines, it take a few chapters to get the hang of it, but there’s plenty to draw you in, from the exotic world-building to the frenetic action and compelling collection of richly crafted characters.  Henry Cavill is the titular hero, lovably grouchy mutant monster-hunter Geralt of Rivia, but the real scene-stealer is co-star Anya Chalotra as roguishly self-serving mage Yennefer of Vengenberg.

6.  CARNIVAL ROW

One of the year’s two big sleeper hit TV surprises for me was this inventively offbeat allegorical Amazon fantasy series from The 4400 creator René Echevarria and screenwriter Travis Beacham. Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevigne are the star-crossed lovers at the heart of this intriguingly dark and dirty murder mystery thriller set in Victorian London-esque city-state the Burgue, in which humans struggle to co-exist alongside a struggling disenfranchised underclass of fae (fairies, fawns, centaurs and the like).  The racial turmoil undertones are writ large throughout, but this is far more well-written and lavishly appointed than you might expect on first glance, and almost ridiculously addictive viewing.

5.  LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

My other big TV surprise was this wonderfully bizarre sci-fi anthology series of animated shorts from Netflix, mostly adapted from an eclectic selection of short stories from a wide range of top-notch literary talent including Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi, Marko Kloos and Alastair Reynolds (a particular favourite of mine).  As you’d expect from the brainchild of Deadpool director Tim Miller and producer David Fincher, this is edgy, leftfield stuff, frequently ultra-violent and decidedly adult, and the wildly varied nature of the material on offer makes for a decidedly uneven tone, but there are some absolute gems on offer here, my favourite being Suits, an enjoyably simple tale of salt-of-the-earth farmers on an alien world utilising clunky mech suits to protect their settlement from rampaging giant xeno-bugs.

4.  THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE

The show with the biggest cinematic wow factor in 2019 had to be this long-awaited prequel series to Jim Henson’s classic fantasy movie masterpiece, created for Netflix by, of all people, Louis Leterrier (yes, the director of The Transporter, Now You See Me and Clash of the Titans, if you can believe it). The technology may have evolved in leaps and bounds, but there’s a wonderfully old school vibe in the delightfully physical puppet effects used to bring the fantastical world of Thra and its denizens to life, so that it truly does feel like it’s based in the same world as the film.  This was EASILY the most visually arresting show of 2019, packed with exquisite character, creature and set design that perfectly complements the awesome work done by Henson and Brian Froud on the original, while the writers have created a darkly rich narrative tapestry that makes Thra seem a more dangerous place than ever.

3.  THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

I was a HUGE fan of My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s magnificently oddball alternative superhero comic, so when I learned that Netflix were adapting it I was a little wary because I knew how spectacularly hard it would be for ANY showrunners to get right.  Thankfully Steve Blackman (Fargo season 2) and Jeremy Slater (The Exorcist TV series) were the right choice, because this perfectly captured the outsider nature of the characters and their endearingly dysfunctional family dynamic. Ellen Page, Tom Hopper (Black Sails, Merlin), David Castañeda and Emmy Raver-Lampman are all excellent as the more “functional” Hargreeves siblings, but the show is roundly stolen by Misfits star Robert Sheehan and Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn’s Aidan Gallagher as nihilistic clairvoyant Klaus and the old-man-in-a-child’s-body sociopath known only as Number Five. Consistently surprising and brilliantly bonkers, this was definitely the year’s most wonderfully WEIRD show.

2.  STRANGER THINGS (SEASON 3)

Writer-director duo the Duffer Brothers’ ultra-nostalgic 80s-set coming-of-age sci-fi horror series remains the undisputed jewel in Netflix’s long-form crown with this consistently top-drawer third season expertly maintaining the blockbuster-level standards we’ve come to expect.  This year the cross-dimensional shenanigans have largely been jettisoned, replaced by a gleefully nasty through-line of icky body horror that would make major influences like David Cronenberg and Stuart Gordon proud, as perennial teenage bad boy Billy Hargrove (the fantastically menacing Dacre Montgomery) becomes the leader of an army of psychic slaves under the control of the Upside Down’s monstrous Mind Flayer.  The kids are all brilliant as always, Winona Ryder and David Harbour really get to build on their strong-yet-spiky chemistry, and the show is almost effortlessly stolen by Joe Keery as one-time golden boy Steve Harrington and series-newcomer Maya Hawke as his nerdy new foil Robin Buckley, who were very nearly the cutest couple on TV in 2019.  Another gold standard season for a true gold standard show.

1.  GOOD OMENS

Sadly, legendary author Terry Pratchett died before he could see the adaptation of one of his most beloved novels (and one of my all-time literary favourites too) see the light of day, but at least his co-author Neil Gaiman was around to bring it to fruition with the aid of seasoned TV director David Mckinnon (Jekyll, Doctor Who, Sherlock), and the end result sure did him proud, perfectly capturing the deeply satirical voice and winningly anarchic, gleefully offbeat and gently subversive humour of the original novel.  David Tennant and Michael Sheen could both have been born to play Crowley and Aziraphale, the angel and demon nominally charged with watching over the young Antichrist in preparation for his role in the End Times, even though they would both much rather the world just went on quite happily the way it is, thanks very much. This is about as perfect an adaptation as you can get, the six hour-long episodes giving the surprisingly complex story time to breathe and grow organically, and the result is the most fun I spent in front of my TV this year.

[letterboxd]

Ghosted Films: A Director’s Nightmare.

To mark a conversation with Peter Medak about his new documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers, which details a particularly tumultuous early 1970s film shoot, Dominic Corry looks at how the inherently nightmarish pursuit that is filmmaking has informed other movies.

“Every frame you set up references yourself and your entire life, so bits and pieces indirectly of your life go into every movie.” —Peter Medak

On a certain level, filmmaking is an essentially traumatic experience. The extreme number of moving parts, umpteen tiers of variables—both creative and practical—and the cacophony of egos involved all amount to what in the best-case scenario could generously be considered organized chaos.

And for the most part, it all falls on the director’s shoulders. Although the long-prevailing auteur theory is regularly and healthily challenged these days, our default perception tends to be that whatever happens, good or bad, it’s the director’s fault. Some directors process their filmmaking nightmares by writing a review of the film on Letterboxd. But in the case of journeyman filmmaker Peter Medak (The Changeling, The Krays, Romeo Is Bleeding), he chose to process his filmmaking trauma by… making a film about it.

The Ghost of Peter Sellers revisits the making of the 1974 Peter Sellers-starring pirate comedy Ghost in the Noonday Sun, an infamous folly of a film that has long haunted Medak. It’s also one of those rare films on Letterboxd: at the time of writing it has just two reviews, and only 26 members in a community of two million have noted seeing it. Giving it one and a half stars, EWMasters writes: “Pretty awful. I mean talk about throwing it on the stoop and seeing if the cat’ll lick it up. There is one very good sequence where the crew goes to town on this big plate of fish and vegetables that’s really well done—but otherwise, this is really only worth the time of a Sellers completist”. (Perhaps the main character’s name—Dick Scratcher—should have sounded alarm bells.)

Medak is not the first filmmaker to spin non-fictional gold out of a director’s nightmare (in this case, his own). His movie follows in the footsteps of legendary documentaries such as Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper’s 1991 film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which revealed the full extent of the already infamous insanity that comprised the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 classic Apocalypse Now, and used extensive footage shot at the time by Coppola’s filmmaker wife Eleanor (filmmaker spouses are handy to have along for the ride, as Nicolas Winding Refn also knows). And there’s Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s 2002 work Lost in La Mancha, which detailed Terry Gilliam’s (ironically?) Sisyphean efforts to film an adaptation of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

In both instances, the films in question were (eventually) made—and released to some acclaim (one considerably more than the other)—but as The Ghost of Peter Sellers shows, the shooting of Ghost in the Noonday Sun was such an epic boondoggle that the unfinished film sat unreleased for years and was much later released to no acclaim whatsoever.

The uphill battle to make his never-released horror movie Northwestern made indie filmmaker Mark Borshadt an unlikely filmmaking hero thanks to the breakout success of Chris Smith’s 1999 documentary American Movie. Like with Ghost in the Noonday Sun, the efforts to make a film proved more interesting than the film being made.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kevin Bacon in ‘The Big Picture’ (1989).

There are several narrative films of note that have successfully captured the specific pandemonium of filmmaking. Richard Rush’s 1980 cult classic The Stunt Man follows a fugitive who stumbles his way into the titular job on a big chaotic Hollywood production (Peter O’Toole plays the Machiavellian director), while Christopher Guest’s under-appreciated 1989 comedy The Big Picture stars Kevin Bacon as a hot young director who is roughed up by the Hollywood machine. It’s a notable and often overlooked antecedent to The Player, and like the Robert Altman classic, is more about ‘the business’ overall than the specifics of filmmaking, although in both cases Hollywood proves itself analogically appropriate.

Playwright, writer and director David Mamet’s own filmmaking experiences obviously inform his 2000 comedy State and Main, in which a Hollywood production takes over and smothers a small town with its singular thinking. It’s not hard to imagine Mamet processing his own filmmaking trauma in State and Main, just as the Coen brothers famously did in Barton Fink, their ode to writer’s block supposedly inspired by the difficulty they had penning the screenplay for Miller’s Crossing.

Charlie Kaufman channeled his own creative struggles into the screenplay for the 2002 masterpiece Adaptation, then built on those themes with his wildly ambitious 2008 directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, whose more maddening aspects arguably capture the irrational nightmare that is filmmaking better than any film directly ‘about’ filmmaking.

With her 2018 documentary Shirkers, writer Sandi Tan gained some measure of closure regarding an indie film she had starred in and written in her home country of Singapore, in 1992. The documentary (which shares its name with the original movie) has her revisiting the footage from the never-released film, which was stolen (!) 25 years previously by its director—and Tan’s filmmaking mentor—George Cardona.

Back to Peter Medak. In The Ghost of Peter Sellers, which premiered at Telluride Film Festival in 2018 and has just had its virtual screening release, we learn that Hungarian-born Medak was a rising directing star in the early 1970s in London, hot off the Oscar-nominated Peter O’Toole film The Ruling Class. Unable to resist an offer to work with Peter Sellers, then comedy’s reigning superstar—mostly thanks to Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films—Medak set about shooting a treasure-hunting pirate film on the island nation of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.

In addition to the usual production problems associated with shooting on boats, Medak had to contend with the titanically and infamously fickle Sellers, who quickly turned on him and attempted to get him fired. Sellers also antagonized the other actors, then, after failing to get the production shut down, brought in his friend and longtime creative collaborator Spike Milligan to try and salvage the film, but things kept going wrong, leaving Ghost in the Noonday Sun unfinished and Medak with the blame for the production’s troubles.

Director Peter Medak with Peter Sellers (as Dick Scratcher) and Spike Milligan (as Bill Bombay) on the set of ‘Ghost in the Noonday Sun’, finally released in 1984.

Although Medak’s career recovered, he has clearly been carrying around a lot of hurt associated with the experience, and it’s remarkable watching him work through that on screen by revisiting Cyprus, telling the story of the shoot, and talking to some of the people involved. Sellers (who died in 1980) looms large over the film, but it also has interesting content surrounding the great Spike Milligan, who died in 2002.

Why did you decide to revisit this experience with a documentary? Peter Medak: Because it’s been haunting me for all these years. Because it should’ve been a really very successful film and I was blamed for everything going wrong, when in fact it had nothing to do with me. It was due to Peter’s changing mind and state of mind, and all kinds of things had physically gone wrong on the film. It was always easiest to blame the director for everything and my career at the time was very high up after [The] Ruling Class and this should’ve been the icing on the cake and it wasn’t.

It really bothered me for many years afterwards, even though I went on working. I was asked to do it by the producer of the documentary and I originally said “It’s the last thing I want to do”, because it would mean I would have to go back to Cyprus where I shot the original movie and go on the water, and I never want anything to do with water anymore because a lot of the disasters on the film, production-wise, were all connected with shooting at sea, which is totally impossible to do. Then I thought: well, you know, I should just do it and try to explain what happened on the film. And because some of the explanations were funnier scenes than the original film. So that’s why I did it.

Peter Medak fishing for answers in ‘The Ghost of Peter Sellers’.

In the documentary, you talk about needing to free yourself from the experience by making this film. Do you feel like you achieved that? Well, I think I did because I had a wonderful time doing it. A very sad time at the same time because when you go back to places where you shot 45 years before, it creates a very strange kind of illusion inside your mind, your heart and everything of the time. And having been there then and then being there again, it’s a very strange kind of a supernatural feeling in a way. It felt like you have died and your ghost is actually revisiting all these things you know. I called it The Ghost of Peter Sellers because it sounds good and also because the original film was called Ghost in the Noonday Sun, and this ghostly feeling of mine of revisiting that island after all these years, it’s a very, very strange feeling and somehow the film captures that emotionally.

Do you feel like the large distance from the shoot was necessary to be able to revisit it? It’s not that I thought about it every day of my life, but I talked about it to all the people who I worked with in my following career. When I was doing Romeo Is Bleeding with Gary Oldman, my darling Gary said to me one day, “You know, we are crazy, what we should do is make a movie about your movie, but I don’t want to play Peter Sellers, I want to play you, with your Hungarian, broken-English accent.” We had a script written but we never did it. That was a good 25 years ago.

Peter Medak in front of a promotional poster for ‘Zorro, The Gay Blade’, his 1981 film starring George Hamilton and Lauren Hutton.

So you had considered doing a scripted version of it? Yeah, but I don’t know quite what we would’ve done. I said to Gary at the time: “I never want to go on a boat again”, and so I thought in my mind that the scenes would start each day [with] the characters getting off the pirate ship and they come ashore—that’s where the scenes would begin. I’m sure we would’ve done something quite wonderful, and it would’ve maybe explained the things the [documentary is] trying to explain because I guess that’s what has unconsciously driven me. Because [for the documentary], we didn’t write one word of it, I just completely did it out of instinct. Where I want to shoot, what I want to shoot, and how we should go from here to there. I loved it, so going back on to it was quite easy. It did show me actually what a wonderful medium it is, documentary, because you can do anything with it. It’s a much freer form than scripted movies. Which is rigid. And this is liquid.

Did you have any other documentaries about filmmaking in mind when you went into this? Not really. I knew Terry Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha, because I love Terry and I love his films and we know each other and knew each other. Terry was very fortunate, because he had so much trouble before on Baron Munchausen, that he decided to have a documentary film crew filming the whole process, so he had the material available, which allowed him to make his film. I said to him after [a screening], “You were lucky because you didn’t make the movie. I had to suffer through 90-something days of shooting with Peter [Sellers].” But of course since then, Terry made the film, and he made something slightly different than what he was originally gonna do.

Peter Medak retraces his steps in ‘The Ghost of Peter Sellers’.

Did any of your subsequent films feel nearly as difficult? Most movies are very difficult to make, and always when you anticipate problems, they never seem to happen. When I did The Changeling, everybody said “George C. Scott is very, very difficult to work with” and he was an absolute angel with me and [it was] the easiest thing to do. It was a wonderful ghost story. I’m very proud of that film. It will live forever. All movies are like your kids, your own children, because you put so much emotion, so much of your soul. That’s what I’m saying to [Ghost in the Noonday Sun executive producer] John Heyman [in The Ghost of Peter Sellers]: the director’s viewpoint is completely different from the producer’s because every frame you set up references yourself and your entire life, so bits and pieces indirectly of your life go into every movie. Because of that it becomes an incredibly personal journey when you put your absolute soul on the line. When it gets criticized or not accepted or whatever, one takes it very personally because the whole thing came from a very personal experience, even though the subject may be nothing to do with you.

Peter Sellers on the set of ‘Ghost in the Noonday Sun’.

Even within the canon of famously difficult performers, Peter Sellers is notorious. How would you describe him to a modern audience? Well he was a genius, there’s no question about it. But he was a manic-depressive person. And it’s a generalization, but most of the great comics are manic-depressive. And he changes his mind all the time. One minute, he loves you, next minute, he hates you. One minute he loves the subject, next minute he doesn’t wanna do it, he wants to get out and all that. So it is very up and down. When you’re running film with a crew of 150 people, and boats on the sea, and weather’s changing and everything, you can’t have that, because you fall behind the schedule and things go wrong.

At one point very early on, all he wanted to do was get off the movie. And then he did everything he [could] to sabotage the film so the film would close down and he wouldn’t have to finish it. But it didn’t just happen on my film, it happened with all his biggest successes, including the Pink Panther movies. Because if you look into Blake Edwards, each one was an absolute nightmare for the director and for the film company, United Artists. And I was gonna include that in the documentary but it had nothing to do with the Ghost in the Noonday Sun so I didn’t. I actually shot some scenes with one of the executives from United Artists at that time who had to deal with the insanity of Peter and also Blake Edwards. I say ‘insanity’; I didn’t want to say it too much in the documentary because I love Peter, even today. And it’s wrong for me to accuse him of those things because it sounds like I’m excusing myself. Peter was crazy. There’s no other way one can describe it. Touched by God. And so was Spike Milligan. But Spike had the love of goodness. Peter had kind of a nasty streak on him when he turned on people.

There’s a moment in the documentary where you suggest that Spike Milligan is more influential than he gets credit for. Do you think he’s under-appreciated? Totally. Totally. Totally. Because his talent was absolutely, monumentally genius. I always say this, but Spike basically created Peter Sellers through [legendary BBC radio programme] The Goon Show. And he also gave him all those various characters and developed those voices for him. It’s all in The Goon Show. The Monty Pythons, they were inspired by The Goon Show and they made it into television. Not story wise, but style wise. That kind of zany, insane humor. Spike was a total genius. Not that Peter wasn’t, but they stood together, completely overwhelmingly wonderfully insane. But Spike was quite something. He was incredibly human, he was incredibly gentle. And incredibly kind. Peter was incredibly combative. And he had that most incredible ego.

But all our lives come from our backgrounds and what our past was and where we come from, and Peter had a very sad upbringing and a very sad life and he was tremendously influenced by his mother. When his mother passed away, he kept on talking to her for ten years. When he came to Cyprus to make the movie, he arrived with big blow-up [photos] of Liza Minnelli—who he’d just broken up with a week before—and his mum. And it sounds terrible when one says it, but psychologically, some of the answers are there. But at the same time, both Peter and Spike, I can’t tell you what a gift it was… I mean the reason I did the film is: who could give up the chance of actually working with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan? It doesn’t matter what the fucking script is, you know? It was a wonderful thing and I would do it all over again tomorrow.

Related content

Our Showdown on films within films

‘The Ghost of Peter Sellers’ is screening in virtual theaters now. It will be available via video on demand services from June 23. A list of all the films mentioned in this article can be found here. Comments have been edited for clarity and length.

[poorreputation]

SPN 1X02 Wendigo Retrospective Meta

Tagging: @emblue-sparks @metafest @verobatto-angelxhunter @evvvissticante @dea-stiel @sudo-apt-get-destiel @wildligia

Summary (via IMDB)  Sam and Dean make a stop at Blackwater Ridge and end up helping a young woman and her brother find their other brother, who mysteriously disappeared, while on a camping trip, in the woods.

Teleplay by: Eric Kripke

Story by: Ron Milbauer and Terri Hughes Burton

Directed by: David Nutter

Post under the cut:

Episode Notes:

Our first Then-Now segment.

November 2, 1983- This, combined with Jess' tragic death, establishes it's been 22 years between the Winchester's lives being ruined by fires. The Pilot, oddly enough, didn't make the significance of the dates clear. I chock it up to the Pilot having so many drafts. that some plot relevant stuff got lost in the shuffle.

And, now our title card has sound! The first time we see SPN's logo, it's completely silent. Again, constant tweaks between episodes.

Blackwater Ridge

Lost Creek, Colorado

We open on 3 people camping, as one dude calls his sister Haley to deliver exposition.

Of course they're being hunted in the woods, as the camera gives us a monster's eye view.

Haley's brother (still nameless) is reading when one of his friends is attacked. Now, knowing this production crew, there must be some significance to the book he's reading-

-it's Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Who, in this book, wrote of the Hero's Journey.

I- I'm, I can't, Kripke, no. It's only episode 2, slow down. Please. You're getting ahead of yourself.

Gary's fucked. Bye, Gary.

Palo Alto, California

Confirmed, Jess died on 11/2.

Sam expresses grief, and then regret, in not telling Jess the truth, as we're treated to a bad jump scare that only got me the first time.

Dean offering to let Sam drive, to get his mind off of things, asking how Sam's doing. Doesn't buy it when Sam shrugs it off.

To find Jess' killer, they have to find John, who is nowhere to be found. 

Connecting the dots already between Mary and Jess.

Blackwater Ridge

Lost Creek, Colorado

A bunch of abandoned gold and silver mines, hmmm...

Haley sounds like a worried older sibling. I'm sure Dean can relate.

Sam assumes Dean wants to get in Haley's pants, while Sam just wants to find John as quickly as possible. Dean notes his brother's change in attitude to "shoot first and ask questions later".

Tommy's his name. Tommy Collins. Alright.

Oof, Haley's really the older sibling. Looks like there's a 2nd brother, too, that she's cooking for. Reminds me of flashbacks of younger Dean, providing for Sam. Haley's very observant, as well, asking for ID and noting Dean's unusual car.

Parents gone, only "two brothers and me", not "us three". Call it clunky writing, or call it Haley identifying herself  not as her sibling's equal, but as the one in charge.

Dean connecting with Haley on her urgent need to find Tommy, "I think I know how you feel." At first, one would think he's just referring to John, but everything we've seen thus far from Haley screams as someone searching for a little sibling/feeling parental.

Haley shows Sam and Dean Tommy's last message (recorded on his fucking flip phone. Tommy would be the kind of person to use a go-pro or a selfie stick). Every 23 years. Alright, first off, I love how cryptic the Pilot was about the monster reveal, while here it's just 'Wendigo' in the title. Second, the similarity between the Wendigo and what John's ultimately hunting: a creature killing every 20 or so years. Maybe the slight difference of 22 years vs. 23 made John leave. Or, he figured out it was a Wendigo, and dumped the case on his kids without any heads-up.

Sam and Dean interview a Wendigo survivor from '59, someone who was so young when it happened, no one believed him. It all got swept under the rug as a Grizzly attack.

A little detail I'm noticing now; the Wendigo is vulnerable to fire, that's why it left the kid in '59 alive. The boy had fallen asleep in front of the cabin fireplace. And earlier, the Wendigo, just before killing Tommy's friend, hesitated at the sight of the campfire.

Sam and Dean figuring out the creature has to be corporeal, ruling out spirits and demons as potential culprits, means John probably knew, too. Knowing John's looking for the Yellow Eyed Demon this whole time...

Sam wants to tell Haley the truth to keep her from going into the woods, and Dean counters with this:

Dean: "Her brother's missing, Sam. She's not gonna just sit this out."

To further my point from before; the focus is on the worry a guardian would have for a dependent. Dean sees John as the man with all the answers. Dean relates to Haley not because his worries over John are equal to Haley's about Tommy, but because he's probably fretted over Sam the same way. An alternative, and equally valid point, though, would be Dean sympathizing with Haley over losing 'Family', as I brought up in 1X01, when Dean insists to Sam he's not only a Hunter, deep down, but a Winchester.

Sam: "Finding Dad's not enough? Now we gotta babysit, too?" (at the idea of Haley coming with them on the Hunt). The glare Dean gives in response to this shows how much Sam is missing the point.

The guy Haley hired is just trying to do his job. I used to be annoyed with him, but with this rewatch, I'm more annoyed at Dean. Dean's the one who insists they can't tell anyone their secret, and yet they (Sam and Dean) could've benefited from cooperating with Haley's group. It makes Dean come across as an arrogant know-it-all who dismisses the help of an expert despite being on such unfamiliar terrain.

We catch up with Tommy, who sees his friend get eaten. That's gonna need some therapy.

Dean starts sizing up the guide Haley hired, Roy, and Dean's doing the whole "Well, has anything ever hunted you back?" shtick. Right as Roy saves Dean's ass from a bear trap.

After Haley confronts Dean (who up to this point has just been giving Roy a hard time), he tells her part of the truth; he and Sam are really brothers, and they're looking for their father. Telling Haley this is the "most honest I've (Dean) been with a woman. Ever."

M&Ms as provisions. Of course, Dean. Only a 26 year old can get away with that.

Roy calls the group over to Tommy's campsite, which is wrecked.

Haley finds Tommy's phone. It must seem like any chance of getting in touch with her brother is gone for good. Dean comes up and assures her Tommy could still be alive. I'm sure Dean's felt this many times with John, especially now.

The Wendigo mimics a man's voice, lures everyone away, and takes the distraction as an opportunity to destroy/steal the group's supplies.

Putting it all together, Sam figures out it's a Wendigo. He tries to talk the group into going back to the cars, not giving the whole truth, and Roy's, rightfully, fed up. Think of it from Roy's perspective; these two actual babies come waltzing in, clearly lying about their government job, almost getting themselves caught in a bear trap, Sam and Dean must seem like a couple of walking disasters.

Poor Roy. Your greatest crime has been using logic.

Now, thiiis, referring to the Wendigo as not only a Hunter, but the perfect Hunter.

Dean: "Nobody likes a skeptic, Roy." Dean, you were pulling that shit with Roy, first. "Well, has anything ever hunted you back?" Having all the answers doesn't make you any less of a douche.

Sam and Dean come to the conclusion John has probably never set foot in Lost Creek. I still stand by the idea John checked it out, and then ruled it out. Sam and Dean have so little to go off of, in finding John, they're grasping at straws.

"Saving people, hunting things. The family business." Connecting what the Winchesters do as Hunters, and the Wendigo itself is the perfect Hunter. More on that, later...

Why doesn't John just call, play it to them straight? Because Sam won't listen to John, but he will listen to Dean, who's bought John's philosophy hook, line and sinker. And, John's so obsessed with revenge he sees nothing wrong with this.

The Wendigo once again tries to trick the group.

Bye, Roy.

It's the next day, and everyone left tries to regroup.

Sam and Dean fill Haley and her remaining brother in on Wendigos. Since the only instance of people being up in Lost Creek were miners, I'm guessing the Wendigo was a worker who got lost/trapped in a tunnel collapse with only their fellow miners to keep them company. And fed.

So, Wendigos are creatures who were once people, but give in to cannibalism. They then develop an insatiable hunger, but never turn wild; they're still very much Human.

Hi, Roy. Nice to see you're still hanging around.

Dean and Haley have been kidnapped, who could have ever seen this coming?

Dean's trail of M&Ms leads Sam and Haley's brother to an abandoned mine. Sam and the brother fall through the floor, finding the Wendigo's kitchen. They find Dean, Haley, as well as Tommy.

Dean volunteering himself as bait is tragically typical.

For once, Sam has to look up (at the Wendigo).

Okay, real quick, I appreciate the time and energy it took to make the Wendigo costume. For obvious budgetary reasons, SPN relies on monsters that conveniently look Human, so it's a real treat for the baddie to actually look monstrous.

Haley: "Must you cheapen the moment?" ladies, gents and distinguished individuals, this is Dean propositioning someone without saying a word and using only his facial expressions. People are gonna get confused over the next 14 seasons over Dean not verbalizing he wants to fuck, but I'm happy to say he's been doing it from the start. Bonus points is that Haley instead gives Dean a kiss on the cheek, which seems to fluster Dean, implying he wasn't actually expecting her to respond. Almost like Dean's putting up a front, or something.

Sam takes Dean up on his offer to drive, how sweet.

Post Episode Meta/Notes:

(These were all written during the episode, so if the flow feels weird, that's why. I just want to try sticking meta related stuff at the end)

(After Sam and Dean realize John was never in Lost Creek) Another thing, though, is this shows a similarity between John and Sam; with a 'bigger' hunt in mind, they're willing to let 'smaller' cases pass by. Call it selfish (it kinda is) call it what you will. Now, look at Dean. He may be arrogant, yes, but he can step into someone else's shoes and understand they need help. Haley's just gonna blunder into the Wendigo's clutches, otherwise. This is an example of, despite the separation of time, John and Sam have a lot in common.

(After going into the origins of the Wendigo) A person gives up their Humanity to become the perfect Hunter, but is forever consumed by hunger... for flesh, or revenge?

(After Dean and Haley get kidnapped) OH WAIT I'VE GOT IT ALL WRONG.

Roy is a stand-in for John. Older Hunter that's been at it for as long as Sam's been alive, acting condescendingly towards the younger Hunters, undermining their ability. Dean's giving Roy a hard time because he can't and won't say the same to John's face.

After that whole speech from Dean about all John knows being in his journal, and having that book bestowed upon him and Sam, it started to click for me.

That’s my take on 1X02 Wendigo! Thank you for reading, share your thoughts, and let me know if you wanna be tagged in my next meta on older Supernatural episodes! And, if you’re interested in more content about this particular episode, I have a post on both it and 14X16 Don’t Go in the Woods!

https://poorreputation.tumblr.com/post/183625991916/spn-14x16-dont-go-in-the-woods-meta?is_related_post=1

[talk-shit-get-fit]

Hei! Your blog is fun and you seem pretty cool, so I was wondering whether you'd have any advice for a gym newbie? Just finished weeks of physical therapy & got the advice to start working out more so my back doesn't get bad again (esp when uni starts again & i'll be back to sitting around for like 8h/day). I don't know much about gym atmosphere (i just know *those* people, who go to the gym) but being a short chubby (mostly? passing) trans guy doesn't exactly make me v/ confident. All the best!

Finally getting to this. Again sorry for lateness, was sick all last week. Anyway, fun? pretty cool? Debatable but I’ll accept it. Thanks. Ooh, newbie advice. I’ll try to reblog all the for beginners stuff i have on blog after i post this. 

Hooray for completing PT. I had to go through a couple months of it after a long hospital stay when i was younger. Hope back stays all good. May reblog posture posts too.

So, similarly I knew nothing about gym atmosphere when I started, like 3 or so years back. Most fitness I ever did was the occasional run every month or so. For the most part, i relied on being naturally slim and young metabolism to offset all the junk food i ate.

I’ll offer as much advice as I can but don’t take my word as gospel. Ultimately, find what works best for you and what you enjoy. Its the best way to ensure you stick to it.

ADVICE-ish: 

So one, a gym is not required. Fitness can be done near anywhere and easily without equipment as long you have a comfortable space around you. 

however, if you do go to a gym or similar place(I go to the YMCA) feel free to call them up and request a tour. Staff should gladly show you what is available at their facilities and in the case of the Y will give you a 7 day free trial pass. Not sure if other places offer it, but never hurts to ask.

Also ask if they happen to know the gym off-peak hours, these are the times when it tends to be less crowded and i’ve found the times i find the most variety of people working out. Ages, body shapes, and workout intensities of all types. Off-peak hours can also allow you enough time to be able to try out many machines /get used to the space without the pressure of worrying your getting in people’s way. 

Even if you do come across “those” kinds of gym people they rarely are paying attention to anyone. Some body builders workout near me when im there and they are way more invested in their workout than what i or the elderly or less experienced members are doing. 

Sometimes, you may catch them staring or they’ll unsolicited advice. Feel free to ignore it and instead ask the staff for insight. That is literally their job, along with assisting or spotting whenever it is needed. Whether you intend to lift weights or not, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO ASK THE STAFF FOR HELP.

Going to use Terry Crews words since he put it so well: “It has to feel good. I tell people this a lot - go to the gym, and just sit there, and read a magazine, and then go home. And do this every day. Go to the gym, don’t even work out. Just GO. Because the habit of going to the gym is more important than the work out. Because it doesn’t matter what you do. You can have fun — but as long as you’re having fun, you continue to do it.“  

Another thing to etch into your mind is comparison is a killer. One of my yoga teachers had a mantra she always recited before starting class. “No competition, no comparison. Our practice takes place on our own individual mats.”

Although she spoke about yoga, it applies to whatever exercise you partake in. Just because person next to you can run longer, it does not diminish what effort you put in. To use my own example, because of how my body is naturally slim my arms, no matter how hard i train them will never look like some of the other gym people. Their body is not mine, mine is not theirs. Where we started from was not the same, our goals may not be the same, but we each put in effort and that is what matters most. 

Sidenote, despite some members having more showy muscles than me, it is not uncommon for me to be able to outlift them either in terms of weight or endurance. but again people get built different.

Whatever type of exercise you do land on make sure its ones you enjoy. Like i hate burpees. They have many benefits, are great exercise, and i hate them. When i did put them into my routine, i had to drag myself to do each one, like most people. but i wasn’t enjoying it overall. Hence they were banished to the land of wind and ghost for me. To be replaced with something i liked doing and was a good exercise. 

Hell, I didn’t start lifting until like a good year into joining a gym. At first i just stood in the corner of the gym and did bodyweight exercises while listening to TED Talks. Figured those exercises are simple enough, require no equipment typically, and bonus i got them from Darebee. 

You may have seen me post them around here, if not just search my blog or tumblr for the tag and you’ll see them. They are super cool, free as hell, nerdy as fuck. The website also includes some long term programs, up to 90 days and even nutrition advice all still free. Plus their apps have no ads and again FREE. the whole thing is just donation based and i have to plug them whenever i get the chance. Were it not for their Hero’s Journey program i wouldn’t have gotten in the habit of regular exercise, i missed about 6 days in total but meh. I’m sure whatever media you are fan of they’ll have some exercise routine to go along with it.

Don’t be afraid to experiment or change up routine until you find something you love and fits in with your schedule and goals. Although there is great value in having a set routine that you can easily follow, don’t be beholden to it strictly. Whether that means not doing something when a part of your body isn’t feeling it, reorganizing whole routine(something i do on occasion), or adjusting an exercise to better fit you.

To use burpees example again, they typically call for jumping up high during the exercise. However, i’ve seen plenty modify it so to be easier on their knees and instead reach up high without jumping so as to be better on their knees. 

For sure listen to your body, know that you should never feel pain when exercising(if you do, stop and reassess what you’re doing or skip exercise if needed). Form is way more important than you think, feel free to look up tutorials about any exercise on youtube to correct your form but keep in mind their body is not yours so adjust if you must. 

Look honestly I could go on for a while about possible advice, so feel free to message or send ask again with any specific and i’ll do my best to answer. Just know that I’m not a professional and just giving whatever advice i can.

[kartiavelino]

Before stardom, Boyd Holbrook was ‘just a hillbilly from Kentucky’

You’ll be able to by no means fairly predict the influence of a likelihood encounter. Simply ask Boyd Holbrook, new hero of “The Predator” — the most recent installment of that blockbuster extraterrestrial franchise. Holbrook says he could have by no means left the coal-mining city of Prestonsburg, Ky., for the Hollywood limelight if he hadn’t ran into actor Michael Shannon at a division retailer in Lexington. “I was working on the retailer when Michael Shannon got here in,” Holbrook recollects. “I acknowledged him from ‘Vanilla Sky’ and I requested him, ‘How do you do what you do?’ He instructed me to get into theater. “It was very serendipitous,” Holbrook, 37, says of the comfortable accidents which have formed his profession — and introduced him to an ethereal wine bar on the waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to talk with Alexa. “I’m simply a hillbilly from Jap Kentucky.” Or a lanky fashion-model-turned-action-hunk, who’s quickly changing into a fixture of main releases, from the 2014 psychological thriller “Gone Lady” to final yr’s hard-hitting X-Males movie “Logan.” On the small display screen, the actor has loved arguably much more success, starring as DEA agent Stephen Murphy on Netflix’s hit sequence “Narcos.” He additionally simply wrapped filming on his subsequent Netflix undertaking, “Within the Shadow of the Moon” — a gut-punching, mind-bending homicide thriller instructed in nine-year chapters. (We’ll see him age within the thriller with the assistance of “The Form of Water’s” gifted make-up crew.) Extra importantly, Holbrook says, he and his spouse — Danish actress and mannequin Tatiana Pajkovic — are new dad and mom to their 8-month-old son, Day (named for “daylight — as a result of he’s shiny”). “I’ve a lovely spouse and a lovely child boy, who’s the middle of my life,” he says. The household lives in a transformed pole barn on 10 acres in Bovina, NY, but in addition retains an condo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “Fatherhood is the best alternative I’ve ever had in my life.” Leather-based jacket, $3,400 at Dior Males, 17 E. 57th St.; T-shirt, $65 at Cotton Citizen.Richard Ascroft As for his personal childhood, he says he was a discontented, quiet and uncultured child with a heavy Appalachian drawl. He “spent each waking hour” at his great-grandmother’s home whereas his father labored in a mine. After her demise, Holbrook dreamed of escaping his blip of a city alongside Route 23, aka “The Nation Music Freeway.” When it turned clear that a basketball scholarship wasn’t his ticket out (“Seems I wasn’t superb,” Holbrook laughs), he latched onto one other lengthy shot: slam poetry. Impressed by a scene within the 1998 unbiased movie “Slam,” Holbrook started to jot down his personal verse and to assume severely about efficiency. “Being from Jap Kentucky, you’ve obtained Loretta Lynn and Dwight Yoakam and a lot of well-known country-music individuals,” he says. “However I was into Def Jam. There was one thing in regards to the ‘burst’ [of slam poetry] that I discovered simply so goddamn horny, thrilling and clever.” After his encounter with Shannon, Holbrook stop his job on the division retailer and obtained a part-time gig constructing units at a native theater firm by means of his sister (who’s now a social employee). He wasn’t lengthy on the job earlier than one other bit of virtually unbelievable luck got here his manner. “Anyone stated, ‘Hey, let me take your image. I’m going to submit you to be a mannequin,’ Holbrook recollects of his inconceivable encounter with a scout. “To be sq., I didn’t even know what ‘mannequin’ meant. I had no thought. I was like, ‘No matter.’ A month or two later, I was nearly 21 and had a free flight to New York. My cousin lived in Hoboken and I lived on her sofa for a month. I had $1,100 and I made that final eight months by working at a espresso store in Union Sq..” However quickly Holbrook was posing for the style business’s high designers, together with Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs. “I was string-bean skinny and ravenous,” he says. “However I was the speak of the city.” Though he had solely left the state of Kentucky about thrice earlier than transferring to New York, he was instantly flying all over the world for shoots and spending prolonged durations of time in Paris. “It’s a very bizarre business,” he says, including that at this time he shuns designer seems to be for a uniform model, paired together with his assortment of seven customized hats and the 1973 Rolex he had delivered to Alexa’s cowl shoot. “I might relate to the stereotypical Jap European lady coming from nothing. Now you might be in a huge metropolis, being profitable and also you don’t need to return to your former way of life. However for those who don’t educate your self by the point you might be 30, you aren’t going to have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I noticed it [coming].” As soon as once more, Holbrook says he had an virtually miraculous break. 5 to attend movie faculty at NYU and examine the Meisner approach with Brooklyn-based guru Terry Knickerbocker (his performing coach to at the present time), Holbrook despatched a script he’d written to indie administrators Larry Clark and Gus Van Sant. Clark toyed with directing the function (it was by no means made), whereas Van Sant provided him a function in his movie “Milk.” “It was a ‘The place’s Waldo?’ half,” Holbrook says. “I was a glorified background character. However I gave my first line to Sean Penn. I obtained to chop my enamel with the most effective of the most effective.” With perseverance and coaching, the roles saved coming. As soon as restricted by his Southern accent, two years of dialect classes have given him the vary to leap from Center American to a very satisfactory Australian accent (additionally because of some teaching from his buddy Sia). And after working with a Navy SEAL-turned-stuntman, Holbrook went from lean vogue mannequin to main man. “We have been up at 4 a.m., operating on the seaside in Santa Monica, swimming in ice-cold water,” Holbrook says of coaching for his “Predator” character, Quinn McKenna, a mercenary soldier. “I was getting used to s – – t that you simply aren’t meant for use to. I don’t assume I ever handed any of the challenges, however I can’t think about exhibiting up on set and making an attempt to wing it. That may be a catastrophe.” Nonetheless, Holbrook says that he has no real interest in being typecast as an Motion Jackson. “Christian Bale stated one thing that makes a lot of sense: ‘Play one thing overseas,’” Holbrook says. “It’s an escape. I don’t need to be myself. I don’t know why. That’s a deep philosophical query.” He hopes to make use of his high-paying roles in mainstream movies to fund tasks which have actual which means in a world getting ready to environmental catastrophe. The star is actively producing and performing in his personal movies, together with an ecological thriller for Fox titled “The Thirst,” a Nellie Bly biopic and the HBO drama “O.G.,” which was filmed on location in a maximum-security jail. “My job makes use of me,” he says. “It exhausts me. It’s very taxing. So I’m going to make use of it. I’m not going to make a silly horror movie that doesn’t have any social significance. I’m going to make stuff that’s difficult and progresses a collective consciousness. That’s what’s up.” It’s clear Holbrook’s seemingly uncanny success isn’t nearly luck or stars aligning. “I feel you might want to take duty in life,” he says. “At first you simply need to get the basics proper and have this lucid drug excessive by means of performing. Then you definately develop out of that and you might want to take management.” Mr P. sweater $295 at Mr Porter. Richard Ascroft “Chase” hooded sweatshirt, $108 at Carhartt Wip. Richard Ascroft Leather-based jacket, $3,400 at Dior Males, 17 E. 57th St.; T-shirt, $65 at Cotton Citizen; Fendi pants, $690 at Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Ave.; Adidas Originals “Famous person” sneakers, $80 at Adidas. Richard Ascroft Off-White jacket, $1,000 at Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Ave.; T-shirt, value upon request at Berluti, 677 Madison Ave.; Ben Taverniti Unravel Challenge denims, $690, comparable types at Barneys; Sneakers, $930 at Dior Males; 1858 Computerized Chronograph watch, $4,300 at Montblanc, 600 Madison Ave.; Socks, $18 at London Sock Firm. Robert Ascroft Leather-based jacket, $3,400 at Dior Males, 17 E. 57th St.; T-shirt, $65 at Cotton Citizen. Richard Ascroft 6 View Slideshow Vogue Editor: Serena French; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Groomer: Benjamin Thigpen at Assertion Artists Share this: https://nypost.com/2018/09/18/before-stardom-boyd-holbrook-was-just-a-hillbilly-from-kentucky/ The post Before stardom, Boyd Holbrook was ‘just a hillbilly from Kentucky’ appeared first on My style by Kartia. https://www.kartiavelino.com/2018/09/before-stardom-boyd-holbrook-was-just-a-hillbilly-from-kentucky.html

[juanpis880927]

Playlist de la Década (2011-2020)

Selección personal de 100 canciones que sonaron entre los años 2011 y 2020:

- Rebellion / Linkin Park ft. Daron Malakian (2014)

- Get Lucky / Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers (2013)

- Con Las Manos / Seis Peatones (2012)

- 25 / The Pretty Reckless (2020)

- Jardín Secreto / Burning Caravan (2013)

- Invisible / U2 (2014)

- For You, And Your Denial / Yellowcard (2011)

- All Is Mine / Phedora (2015)

- Bend / The Post War (2020)

- Cielo / Sotomayor (2015)

- Dirty / Sevendust (2018)

- End Transmission / Fire from the Gods (2016)

- Figure It Out / Royal Blood (2014)

- Humanos Como Tú / División Minúscula (2014)

- In Between / Beartooth (2015)

- Knuckleduster / Muzz (2020)

- La Espera / Cultura Profética (2013)

- Medayork / Crew Peligrosos (2011)

- Nuevos Caminos / Blast 55 (2018)

- Only For You / Heartless Bastards (2013)

- Pompeii / Bastille (2013)

- Quimera / Rocka (2012)

- Sirens / Pearl Jam (2013)

- Te Espero / The Hall Effect (2014)

- Underdog / Alicia Keys (2020)

- Voices / Alice In Chains (2013)

- War Of Change / Thousand Foot Krutch (2013)

- Can’t Hold Us / Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Feat. Ray Dalton (2011)

- Como Tú / León Larregui (2012)

- The Enemy Inside / Dream Theater (2013)

- Something From Nothing / Foo Fighters (2014)

- Cuarteles de Invierno / Vetusta Morla (2015)

- Carry On / Norah Jones (2016)

- Black Smoke Rising / Greta Van Fleet (2017)

- All The Stars / Kendrick Lamar, SZA (2018)

- All Over Now / The Cranberries (2019)

- A Good Song Never Dies / Saint Motel (2020)

- Black And Red / Reignwolf (2019)

- Cuando Ríes / Sismo (2011)

- La Flotadera / Hello Seahorse! (2012)

- Left Hand Free / Alt-J (2014)

- Oro / Diamante Eléctrico (2019)

- The Underside Of Power / Algiers (2017)

- Violeta / Armenia (2019)

- 45 / The Gaslight Anthem (2012)

- Wish I Knew You / The Revivalists (2016)

- The Heart from Your Hate / Trivium (2017)

- Skyline Divided / Seven (2017)

- Planetas / Oh’LaVille (2016)

- Live To Rise / Soundgarden (2012)

- A Las Nueve / No Te Va A Gustar (2012)

- Born In Winter / Gojira (2014)

- Curtains / Arcane Roots (2016)

- Doing It To Death / The Kills (2016)

- El Tesoro / El Mató a un Policía Motorizado (2017)

- Hardwired / Metallica (2016)

- La Piel del Camino / Catupecu Machu (2017)

- Not Alone / Discrepancies (2018)

- Still Breathing / Green Day (2016)

- Guadalupe / The Mills (2011)

- Tararea / AlcolirykoZ (2017)

- Un Manual Sin Instrucciones / V For Volume (2012)

- Vervain / The Dose (2018)

- Where You At / The Bohicas (2015)

- Abrasive / Ratatat (2015)

- Copacabana / Izal (2015)

- El Puñal / La Derecha (2012)

- Latinoamérica / Calle 13 Feat. Totó La Momposina, Susana Baca & María Rita (2011)

- Cuando Sea Grande / El Cuarteto de Nos (2012)

- La Casa / Caramelos de Cianuro (2011)

- Heavyweight / Our Lady Peace (2012)

- I Will Wait / Mumford and Sons (2012)

- Locket / Crumb (2018)

- Sure And Certain / Jimmy Eat World (2016)

- Told You So / Paramore (2017)

- Wake Me Up / Avicii (2013)

- All The Kings / Editors (2016)

- G.O.A.T. / Polyphia (2018)

- Heroes / Gang Of Youths (2017)

- Lluvia / Bajofondo (2013)

- Magangué / Sidestepper (2017)

- Safe And Sound / Capital Cities (2011)

- Texas / Superlitio (2020)

- Way Down Way Go / Kaleo (2015)

- Wide Open / The Chemical Brothers Feat. Beck (2016)

- Try To Dissapear / Baroness (2015)

- Swerve City / Deftones (2012)

- High Road / Mastodon (2014)

- Feel Invincible / Skillet (2016)

- Dog On A Leash / Adelitas Way (2014)

- Laberinto / Tequendama (2019)

- Here We Go / Lower Than Atlantis (2014)

- Listen / DJ Shadow, Terry Reid (2012)

- Somos Dos / Bomba Estéreo (2015)

- Titanium / David Guetta Feat. Sia (2011)

- Shakin' Off The Rust / The Blue Stones (2019)

- Aquarimantina / Electric Sasquatch (2016)

- The Doomed / A Perfect Circle (2017)

- The Signal Fire / Killswitch Engage Feat. Howard Jones (2019)

- Lo Que Tengo / Ultrágeno (2017)

[brigdh]

Reading Saturday

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey. Book 6 of The Expanse series. "I made my name with the story on the Behemoth. Aliens and wormhole gates and a protomolecule ghost that only talked to the most famous person in the solar system. I don't think my follow-up to that can be "Humans Still Shitty to Each Other". Lacks panache." That's Monica Stuart, a journalist looking for her next story, but it makes a fairly good summary of Nemesis Games as well – though I'd disagree about it lacking panache. After five books of zombie viruses and a vast galaxy of empty planets for the taking and physics-defying abandoned security systems, Nemesis Games features pretty much no alien content at all. Instead we have humanity reacting to these events, mostly in negative ways that feature them being, well, shitty to each other. The biggest reaction comes from the Belters, millions of humans born and raised in no-gravity or low-gravity. Those conditions have led to extremely low bone-mass (among other physical adaptations), which means all those new planets out there for the taking? The Belters won't be going to them, at least not without months or years of expensive medical therapy that's out of reach for most of them. They can see the future coming, and it's going to abandon them to poverty and irrelevance. They lash out with terrorist attacks on a scale grander than any before, as though enough violence will force humanity back to where it was before the first encounter with the alien protomolecule. That might be an impossible goal, but a hell of a lot of people are going to die anyway. Meanwhile, the spaceship Rocinante is in need of repairs, which means our four main characters are out of action for a few months. They take this opportunity to split up and visit family and old friends – Amos to Earth, Alex to Mars, Naomi to the Belt, and Jim stays with the ship at the repair station. Having separate plotlines means that each one gets their own POV, and you guys, I was so excited! I've been waiting to hear Naomi or Alex's voice since Book One, and this does not disappoint. Amos's narration was particularly well-written; he's a straight-up sociopath (though one who tries to do good nonetheless) and struggles to recognize emotions either in himself or in others, often defaulting to describing social situations as a set of maneuvers toward a desired outcome. It lends his POV a curiously flat tone, but one that is really interesting to read. The four crew members are still separated when the terrorist attacks begin, and most of the emotion in the book comes from them trying to desperately make their way back to one another. Each one thinks of the others as family, as home – this is such an absolute fantastic series for those Chosen Family feels – especially Jim, and who would have thought the boring action hero of Book One could become such an adorable softie? He spends a significant portion of this book being sad that no one will do the space-equivalent of texting him back, and I love him so much. Holden could sit at a tiny table skimming the latest news on his hand terminal, reading messages, and finally check out all the books he’d downloaded over the last six years. The bar served the same food as the restaurant out front, and while it was not something anyone from Earth would have mistaken for Italian, it was edible. The cocktails were mediocre and cheap. It might almost have been tolerable if Naomi hadn’t seemingly fallen out of the universe. Alex sent regular updates about where he was and what he was up to. Amos had his terminal automatically send a message letting Holden know his flight had landed on Luna, and then New York. From Naomi, nothing. She still existed, or at least her hand terminal did. The messages he sent arrived somewhere. He never got a failed connection from the network. But the successfully received message was his only reply. After a couple weeks of his new bad Italian food and cheap cocktails routine, his terminal finally rang with an incoming voice request. He knew it couldn’t be from Naomi. The light lag made a live connection unworkable for any two people not living on the same station. But he still pulled the terminal out of his pocket so fast that he fumbled it across the room. Each character gets to star in a very different genre within this one book: Jim himself is in a political thriller, trying to find the mole hidden in the security forces; Amos is making his way through a post-apocalyptic landscape; Naomi is in a prison-break movie; and Alex gets at least two extremely cool car chases (well, spaceship chases) between being a detective following the paper trail. All of them are great, but I think my favorite is Naomi's, which is an incredible depiction of the harm and suffocation of emotional abuse (gaslighting in particular) and the depression and learned helplessness that can result, especially when everyone around you sees nothing wrong. We get a lot more about her long-awaited backstory, as well as Amos's, and there are reappearances of a lot of my favorite secondary characters: Martian marine Bobbie, failed murderer Clarissa Mao, foul-mouthed politician Chrisjen Avasarala. (Though I'm still holding out hope Prax will show up again someday; I miss him.) All through The Expanse series I've admired Corey's focus on petty human squabbling and politicking in the face of grand, universe-changing discoveries. Nemesis Games is that thread turned up to eleven. It's not a cynical series, though; for every narrow-minded failure there's an equally small but important triumph of friendship or justice or well-meaning. It reminds me of Terry Pratchett, in a way. Not at all in Corey's style of writing or type of humor, but they both have a view of humanity which is simultaneously realistic and fond and exasperated. And if there's a bigger compliment than that, I don't know what it is. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. A security robot/cyborg armed with all sorts of guns and other methods of killing has hacked its governor module, allowing it to do whatever it wants, and nicknames itself Murderbot. But it turns out that what Murderbot really wants to do is spend hours watching dumb sci-fi TV shows, avoid eye contact or any social encounters with humans, and not have to deal with its own emotions. Unfortunately that last one is hard to avoid. In this book, Murderbot is heading to a mining planet where it knows something bad went down in its past, involving lots of human deaths. But Murderbot can't remember exactly what happened, since its memory was wiped, and so it's off to investigate. Getting to the planet means hitching a ride on a spaceship run by a massively complicated AI (which Murderbot promptly nicknames ART: Asshole Research Transport) and then getting a job as a human bodyguard to a group of scientists heading down to the planet's surface. Things, unsurprisingly, go wrong, and Murderbot finds itself with another pack of dumb humans in need of protection. I enjoyed Artificial Condition a lot, but it's not quite as good as the first book in the series, All Systems Red. Part of that is very simply that it's a middle book of the series, and it shows; progress in the larger plot is made, but not much, and there's a feeling of spinning our wheels while we wait for big events to happen. That said, it's still an extremely enjoyable novella (only about 120 pages), which builds out the world from what we learned in All Systems Red. Now we have sexbots and ship navigators, more about how different governments interact and function (or don't), and some hints as to what's going on with the company that created Murderbot. Plus there's Murderbot's wonderful narration, which honestly is worth the price of admission all on its own. A section from where it introduces ART to trashy entertainment: I watched seven more episodes of Sanctuary Moon with it hanging around my feed. Then it pinged me, like I somehow might not know it had been in my feed all this time, and sent me a request to go back to the new adventure show I had started to watch when it had interrupted me. (It was called Worldhoppers, and was about freelance explorers who extended the wormhole and ring networks into uninhabited star systems. It looked very unrealistic and inaccurate, which was exactly what I liked.) [...] “It’s not realistic,” I told it. “It’s not supposed to be realistic. It’s a story, not a documentary. If you complain about that, I’ll stop watching.” I will refrain from complaint, it said. (Imagine that in the most sarcastic tone you can, and you’ll have some idea of how it sounded.) So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on. At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time. After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please. So I started the first episode again. C'mon, tell me you wouldn't read a million pages of that, plot or no plot.

[DW link for easier commenting]

[cat-sophia]

If You Aren't Watching The Expanse, the Best Scifi Show on TV, Here's What You Need to Know to Start Tonight

It’s been a year since The Expanse’s tense season two finale, and we are deliriously excited for the season three premiere tonight on Syfy. You should be, too. The scifi series is strong on every front: a thrilling story equally packed with political intrigue and tons of space action; fascinating and well-written characters; and gorgeous special effects. But if you’re finally ready to start watching the series, there’s a good deal that you should know. We have you covered, of course.

This also works equally well as a refresher for those whose memory of where the series left off might be a bit dusty—after all, a lot of shit hit the fan at the end of last season. Either way, here’s all you need to know to get up to speed on the best scifi show on TV.

source - x

Here’s the deal

The Expanse is based on the scifi novel series by James S.A. Corey, the pen name of author duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. It’s set some 200 years in the future, when technology—especially the Epstein Drive, a fusion drive that enables efficient, long-range space travel—has allowed humans to colonize Mars as well as the asteroid belt. When The Expanse begins, long-simmering political tensions between Earth (still outwardly lush and gleaming, but sagging under serious infrastructure problems) and Mars (which has prioritized its military over its terraforming efforts) have pushed both sides to the brink of war. Meanwhile, the various factions of rough-hewn Belters, as they’re known, agitate for their rights under the aegis of the Outer Planets Alliance, which is viewed by many on Earth and Mars as a terrorist group.

The show follows a diverse array of people from across the solar system, all of whom struggle with tough choices as part of their survival. Turf wars are one thing, but the unstable situation becomes way more complicated after the discovery of the alien “protomolecule” on one of Saturn’s moons. At first, the protomolecule seems like just a terrible new plague—anyone who touches it is guaranteed a slow, agonizing death. But as The Expanse’s plot thickens, it soon becomes apparent that the substance’s unknown origins mean its capabilities extend way beyond the realm of human comprehension. That doesn’t stop sinister corporation Protogen (Earth-based, but working for the highest bidder) from immediately trying to weaponize it, first by unleashing it on thousands of unsuspecting Belters living and working on the asteroid Eros—and later by using it to turn a group of specially-selected children into terrifying “hybrid” supersoldiers.

By the end of season two, the existence of the protomolecule is no longer top-secret, and the stuff has become so widespread that wiping it out of existence is no longer possible. It’s so inescapable, “it’s part of the equation now,” as one of the characters points out in the season two finale. It has so far been the driving force behind every plot thread—what is it? Who has it? Where did it come from? What can it do? Oh fuck, what’s it doing now?—though the stakes vary depending on who’s involved.

Who’s who

R.I.P. First, we must mention two important characters who presumably met a fiery end when Eros, transformed from asteroid into giant missile by the protomolecule, smashed into Venus: Miller (Thomas Jane), a Belter and former police detective, and Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), the missing person he’d been hired. Though Julie was born a rich Earther, she joined the OPA in defiance of her father, slippery Protogen chief Jules-Pierre Mao (François Chau), and worked to expose his company’s plans for the protomolecule. While tracing her last known movements around the Belt, Miller—a hard-drinking, cynical loner—unexpectedly falls in love with her. Though she succumbs to the alien pathogen before they ever get to meet in person, he’s able to connect with her consciousness through the protomolecule (like we said, its capabilities extend way beyond the realm of human comprehension), and convinces her to steer Eros into Venus instead of its original target, Earth—thereby saving billions from annihilation. A sanitized version of their love story turns them into folk heroes around the Belt, though the loss of his daughter does nothing to change Jules-Pierre’s diabolical scheme.

The Rocinante crew Originally thrown together as co-workers on the doomed ice hauler Canterbury, Captain James Holden (Steven Strait), pilot Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), engineer Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), and mechanic Amos Burton (Wes Chatham) bond after surviving the one-two destruction of the Cant and then the Donnager, the Martian ship they encountered immediately after. After barely escaping both disasters—both caused, it’s later learned, by Protogen-affiliated stealth ships—in a Martian warship (later rechristened the Rocinante), and unwittingly finding themselves at the center of an interplanetary powder keg, they accept help from Fred Johnson (Chad L. Coleman), the head of the OPA-controlled Tycho Station. Though they’re a mixed group of Earthers, Martians, and Belters, and they butt heads a lot, they’re ultimately more loyal to each other than to any particular political faction. Each Roci crew member has their flaws, some more serious than others, but by the end of season two they’ve sort of all come around to Naomi’s declaration that “We have to do good where we can, when we can.” If that means breaking some laws here and there, well then so be it.

As luck (or not) would have it, they were among the first people outside of Jules-Pierre Mao’s organization to know about the protomolecule, having encountered it while searching the ship that helped get Julie Mao to Eros. That links them to Miller, who becomes a contentious member of their team for several episodes—and since the show’s overarching story is focused on the protomolecule, it makes them key players in The Expanse’s ongoing intrigue.

The botanist The newest arrival on the Rocinante is Prax Meng (Terry Chen), a mild-mannered botanist and single dad whose low-key life on agricultural outpost Ganymede was completely shattered when a battle between Earth and Mars devastated the station. He links up with the Roci crew after realizing he knows a doctor who’s got ties to Protogen’s black-ops division; he agrees to help them track the man down while he looks for his missing daughter. But while he’s searching for the girl, he realizes she’s been kidnapped into the human-protomolecule hybrid project. His quest to rescue her before she’s transformed into a terrifying supersoldier will no doubt be a big part of season three.

The diplomats United Nations assistant undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is as delightfully foul-mouthed as she is fabulously dressed. A master manipulator, she’s also the queen of the withering put-down, and she’s spent her entire career advocating on behalf of her beloved Earth. But as whip-smart as Chrisjen is, she underestimated the evil cunning of her boss at the UN, Sadavir Errinwright (Shawn Doyle), who was secretly working with Jules-Pierre Mao behind her back. After coming clean to Chrisjen about his misdeeds, and seemingly agreeing to fall on the sword for the Eros near-disaster, Errinwright murders his Martian counterpart (making it look like a heart attack), wrests control of the protomolecule project from Mao, and puts Chrisjen in his crosshairs. As season three will no doubt demonstrate, the time for polite meetings is way past over for these two former colleagues.

The Martian When we first meet Bobbie Draper (Frankie Adams) at the start of season two, she’s a tough, impulsive, totally gung-ho Martian marine, eager to put her training to use and put the smackdown on Earth. But she grows disillusioned after the Ganymede attack when she—the only surviving eyewitness—is forced by her superiors to lie about what happened, including, ahem, that part about the protomolecule-human hybrid she glimpsed ripping people apart on the battlefield. With nothing left for her on Mars, she defects to Earth and becomes part of Chrisjen’s posse, saving her neck when an outer-space meeting with Jules-Pierre Mao goes sideways after Errinwright’s betrayal.

The OPA leaders Fred Johnson (Chad L. Coleman) and Anderson Dawes (Jared Harris) are both OPA bigwigs, so they both believe above all else that the Belt comes first. But they’re pretty much unalike in every other way. Johnson was born on Earth and was a colonel in the United Nations Marine Corps (Earth’s military), but became a scapegoat (and then a pariah) after Earth wiped out a mining colony of rebellious Belters on his watch. Dawes, a born and raised Belter, recruited Johnson into the OPA, where the latter eventually rose through the ranks to control Tycho Station. Their relationship has grown unsteady over the years, thanks to Dawes’ increasingly radical tactics, which bump up against Johnson’s goal that the OPA should be given a seat at the diplomatic table on equal footing with Earth and Mars. But everything between them fractures forever over (what else?) the protomolecule, after Dawes kidnaps a Protogen scientist from Tycho Station, intending to use the man’s knowledge to bring the weapon to the Belt. Little does he know that Johnson has his own protomolecule stash, thanks to Roci engineer Naomi—a Belter who figured that if Earth and Mars both had their hands on it, the Belt should have it, too. Will the protomolecule inspire the two men to work together, and maybe even unite all of the various Belt factions into a united cause? Maybe??

Who (and what) will be new

So far, two new characters are known to be joining the main cast: Rev. Dr. Anna Volovodov (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Klaes Ashford (David Strathairn). In the books—with a storyline that will inevitably be somewhat altered to fit the TV show—Anna is an Earth-born Methodist minister living in a small colony on Europa who’s drawn into the investigation of “the Ring,” the alien gateway that forms as a result of the protomolecule’s activities on Venus. The Ring will likely be a huge part of season three, and (in the books, anyway) Ashford is also a key player in the storyline; he’s the Belter captain of the Behemoth—a battleship constructed by the OPA from the Mormon colony ship Nauvoo, which was commandeered by Fred Johnson in season two as part of the plan to destroy Eros. Beyond reading the novel series, however, the best glimpse of season three comes from the full-length trailer (as well as this very fun Syfy promo video), which suggests that Bobbie and Chrisjen will have some more buddy-team adventures (yes!), the Roci crew will butt heads (of course), Chrisjen will finally meet James Holden face to face, Prax’s daughter still appears to be 100 percent human, the protomolecule is still out there doing terrible things, and Chrisjen will reclaim her authority eventually, delivering a speech that promises—perhaps after the discovery of the alien stargate?—that “we will face the unknown together.”

Why you should watch

We’ve drooled over the characters and story above, but it’s still worth emphasizing yet again how nuanced and layered the writing on The Expanse really is. There’s also a ton of sly humor—mostly due to Chrisjen’s colorful way with language, as well as the excellent chemistry between the Roci mates—and genuinely emotional moments that the show really spends its time building toward, so that the eventual payoff is always earned. Plus, the show is great-looking and technically outstanding—its thrilling special effects (so many awesome, perilous space battles!) and perfectly-calibrated production design (from the sleek interior of the Roci, to Chrisjen’s impeccable accessories, to the eerie blue of the protomolecule) make The Expanse one of the most dazzling examples of scifi worldbuilding that television has ever seen. And, it goes without saying, it’s entertaining as hell. Get yourself some lasagne—the Roci crew meal of choice—and dig in, kopeng!

[mechagalaxy]

Sten Hugo Hiller - 627184: Mountain Climbing Mecha Combat #1317

(By Sten Hugo Hiller - 627184) Mountain Climbing Mecha Combat #1317 Brought to you by ANN Highlighting the November 3362 Anzu Run This time the Gaming Authorities decided that the only Mech model they would allow to fight on the mountains was the 15 ton Anzu. -Unless you fought on the lowest top (K11), they had an unlimited event. What can one say about the Anzu? It is cheap to buy and upgrade, my four dozens have so far cost me less than 400K Ferrite and 250K Bioptics. And the equipment they use havent cost me any Niodes or Crystal either. They are fearfully fast, and will normally outdraw any buyable Mech within a reasonable tonnage range. On the other hand. They have poor targeting, bad Dodge, nonexisting shields and paperthin armor. Then there is the unfortunate tendency they have to blow themselves up. All in all, a model I steer well clear of, -unless as now, they are the sole legal choice. The last time they had been used was in April this year when they had netted me a Nephilax on K4, so the formation was pretty recent. Still, I was not really happy about signing up this time. We were to fight on K3 this time vs opponents having licences up to 130 higher than mine (with corresponding bigger formations, more weapons and armor), and this time I would be away for the whole scramble. But an hour or so before the scramble started the only two contestants in formation was seemingly Don Lindley from Spirit of Bunny on the top slope and Chong Chin from the Heroes on the top. A quick strike against out of formation Bob Schlomer of the Black Star Lycan Rangers saw us on the slopes, but Chin`s formation was too strong for us this time. Well, that was what I could do, so the crew were left to hold as best they could and to get me some footage of all the action. I reasoned that if any latecomer were to aproach, there were after all a couple easy out-of-formation targets below me on the slopes, so the crew should be reasonably secure. Should and was is however not the same. A vengeful Schlomer noticed he had been thrown down, got into correct formation and beat the guilty party before he trashed Lindley for the top spot. However, he was also unsuccesfull in beating Chin of the top. So when I returned, my crew had finished last, but the footage had still  been taken so it was clear that this events winners had been: Div 1 436+ (21 Commanders): Sherriff Leary Wretham, Warlocks HQ (12m,58s) 2: Fabio Favaro 3: Bernard Johnson 4: Jeff Haas 5: Shawn Wretham 6: Were Wolf 7: Sal Vezzosi Jr 8: Lewis Reed 9: Terry Cole 10: Dan Ross Div 2 -435 (16 Commanders): Randy Taylor, Death Dealers (3h,30m) Div 3 -327 (8 Commanders): Chong Chin, Heroes (5h,13m) Div 4 -236 (15 Commanders): Yusuke Paul Okabayashi, M&L Team Banzai (20m,26s) Div 5 -188 (27 Commanders): Ken LeBlanc, D.D.A. (1d,2h) Div 6 -130 (16 Commanders): Eman Eliforp, Mad Scientist.7 (6m,31s) Div 7 -98 (18 Commanders): Siegfried Gust, Black Star Bandits (27m) Div 8 -66 (20 Commanders): Ila Mari Antonsen, Sacrificial Lambs (5h,45m) Div 9 -43 (12 Commanders): NameOfProfile, Mad Scientist 1 (18m,29s) Div 10 -27 (14 Commanders): Freddy Jieffrancis, **R.V.** (4h,33m) Div 11 -16 (13 Commanders): roskaa, RED AXE (1d,5h) On the ten highest tops, where only Anzu`s were supposed to fight 6(G,1S)+10(4S)+5(G,2S)+11(G,1S)+6(1S)+11(2S)+9(1S)+11(2S)+9(2S)+12(3S)= Three Golds, nineteteen Silvers and sixty-eight Bronzes were awarded to Commanders who obviously had non-Anzu`s in their formations. Total Contestants: 180 Total medals claimed: 152 (of 165 possible) Compared to the Shocklite event we just had, thirty-two additional Commanders signed up for the fighting. But the imbalance between the tops led to a full dozen of unclaimed Bronzes (from four tops), that had to be returned for resmelting after the award ceremony. The last half-hour saw five Golds changing hands at least once, while the other six where held for at least two hours, -two of them for more than a day. Was this due to a lack of interest, or perhaps it was more a lack of Anzu`s? One way to gauge the fierceness is to look at the number of medals held for more than 30 minutes in this event: .............Silvers......Bronzes Div 1 ....3 of 4.........8 of 10 Div 2 ....4 of 4.........7 of 10 Div 3 ....4 of 4.........3 of 3 Div 4 ....3 of 4.........5 of 10 Div 5 ....2 of 4.......10 of 10 Div 6 ....2 of 4.........5 of 10 Div 7 ....1 of 4.........4 of 10 Div 8 ....2 of 4.........7 of 10 Div 9 ....3 of 4.........5 of 7 Div 10 ..4 of 4.........9 of 9 Div 11 ..4 of 4.........8 of 8 We had a trio of tops (K3, K10 and K11) without any succesfull medal attacks. The only two tops that had enough action to redistribute most of the medals was K6 and K7. This was one of the "none events" None of the clans got more than one Gold, None of the unaligned Commanders got one, and none of the last events winners got a follow-up win. Upcoming event: Smaller Gateways Here we have an event where the total tonnage a Commander is allowd touse is limited by what top they fight on. On the lowest top (K11); this limit is just 205 tons, but for each higher top the limit increases by 75 tons. So those fighting on the highest top will be allowed a total tonnage of 955 tons. Event ends September 2 between 2030 and 2100 New York Time

[hecateblack]

The Dungeon Master

*gifs are not mine*

So for NaNoWriMo this year I had some trouble deciding which current story idea to turn into a project, suffering from a chronic case of Plot Bunnies. 

But, I finally settled on one story that I’ve been wanting to write for over a year, ever since I became obsessed with the online epic Critical Role, and Dungeons and Dragons. 

(If you haven’t watched this show, you need to watch this show. Right now.)

(Like seriously.)

‘The Dungeon Master’ is about a motley crew of High School students who join a newly formed ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ after school club for extra credit. However, during their first game they suddenly find themselves pulled head-first into the fantastical rpg, by the mysterious power of their DM, Mr. C, taking on the personas and powers of their characters. 

In a land where every Hero and Adventurer has been killed by a tyrannical evil, these reluctant heroes are forced to take on a quest to return home, while struggling to master their newly gifted skills and powers. 

...

I suck at synopsis, and I’m making it sound way blander and more generic than I intend. 

But yeah, four High School students are dragged kicking and screaming onto a life-endangering quest by a mad DM, into a world where every single Hero and Adventurer has been either banished to another dimension or simply killed. 

I’m drawing a lot of inspiration from writers like Joss Whedon and Terry Pratchett when tackling the characterization, humor, and drama of this story. Especially since those two, and Neil Gaiman, have really influenced who I am as a writer the most. 

And hopefully that will be evident as I’m writing this. 

I’ll try and post excerpts from the story through November (whatever I feel is good enough for people to read), but for October I’m obviously mostly just going to focus on building the plot and characters. 

But I’ll try and post more about that as well. 

If anyone is an avid D&D player, I’d love to get feedback on how I am realistically portraying how D&D is played. 

That is to say I HAVE PLAYED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS BEFORE. I WAS THE DM. 

But I am mostly looking for how the game is ran from the players’ POV, since the characters are going to be the ‘players’/heroes. I’ve only ever DMed. 

Anyways, I hope you guys will keep checking my blog and keep reading, and whoever is interested in adding me as a Writing Buddy for November, feel free. 

I get more motivated if it’s more of a competition. Slytherin, yo. 

[digworldart]

Episode 1: getting your feet wet

The town of Brewer awoke to wet socks, and reports that the dam had sprung a minor leak while everyone slept.

Four adventurers answered a bounty to investigate the leak, as there was suspicion of an illegal Goblin mining crew being the culprit.

A human ex-construction worker, Terry.

A half-elf warlock specializing in immolation, Felix

A golden Dragonborn thief, Cory

And a half-elf cleric named Kara, who is deaf, but communicates though an enchanted necklace.

Eventually they found the source of the tremors causing damage to the dam. The culprit was not mining, but an enormous jewel-encrusted toad. A fired dam worker by the name of Buck Willy returned to the lake to illegally treasure hunt, with a magic fishing hook that plucked the gems from the toad’s back, throwing it into a rage.

Upon discovery by the heroes, the frog snuck up behind Buck, and swallowed him, and the hook whole, causing the frog immense pain from within.

Terry had found a magic item of his own, a medallion which transfers the strength and length from one arm to the other arm. The team managed to diffuse the situation with only minimal maximal damage to the frog’s eye, by reaching in, and pulling out the hook, as well as a slightly stomach acid-burned Buck.

Triumphant, the team returned to Mayor Woodley’s office, with mostly naked criminal in tow for their reward. He tried to underpay them, but through some judicious negotiations on the part of Felix and Kara, they managed to get some extra gold, as well as keep the buggy they were lent to drive to the investigation site.

[sqrrlbot]

Hey so, I don’t know if anyone’s interested, but just in case someone is: 

Overwatch is free to play this weekend and I really recommend trying it - it’s a game that actually actively is investing in diversity and inclusion, and even if they stumble sometimes they’re still trying and getting a lot of things right too and tbh that’s about the most you can hope for in the world of gaming rn. I won’t say it’s perfect or defend everything they do or have done, but I do think they’re coming out on top (and I’m a pretty cynical and hard-to-please asshole): 

They have 11 female characters (out of 24), many characters of color representing every continent except Antarctica (although one character does have a base there too!), several characters with prosthetic limbs, one canonically lesbian character - because you know, baby steps - and a canonically autistic person (the first main character/hero in a video game who is autistic, and she’s not depicted as being weird/know-it-all genius, etc etc).  

It is a team-based shooter but there are arcade modes where you play for fun and the heroes are very varied so you can definitely still enjoy the game if you don’t like shooting or don’t have the best aim. 

If you do want to play and want someone to hang out with or to show you the ropes send me a PM with your Bnet tag (or ask for mine)! I’m around at various odd hours so we can probably find a time to hang out. :) 

(PS: If you’re still not convinced, there is strong talk of Terry Crews voicing a hero in the future. TERRY. CREWS.)

[thechrispavon]

Xbox E3 2017 Briefing - Reaction

Xbox One X. Basically PS4 Pro's competitor. 

Just forewarning: I play on PlayStation mainly for nostalgia’s sake. I grew up with the PS1 and PS2. I’m getting used to their online services, mainly because I’m a single-player kind of gamer. That and my PS3 got yellow-lighted. My brother (who was gaming more than me at the time) switched to the X360 when it first released. Now, I have a regular PS4 while my brother has an Xbox One. 

I don't have a PS4 Pro or a 4K TV. I'm rocking the original PS4. My brother has the original Xbox One. Sooo... They'll have to lower the prices on 4K TVs with HDR for me to commit. 

I hear the One X has backwards compatibility. My brother has a lot of Xbox 360 games. 

Forza 7. My brother is a gearhead so he'll love this game. Me? Not so much. 

Oh let's show a new Porsche none of these gamers have the money to actually buy. 

4K @ 60FPS seems to be the keyword that makes these gamers cream themselves. Just saying. 

Do these professional drivers actually play Forza? 

Next title! Oh my, an FPS. Is this a sequel to a newer IP? IDK. The trailer music screams Inception. Oh, those animal monsters look nice. I can tell the visits are going to get annoying. Idk. Nice attention to detail though. Post-apocalyptic? What kind of game is this? That bigger monster reveal was underwhelming. Metro Exodus. Meh. Haven't played the first one. 

4K WORLD PREMIERE OMG Whatever. Uh? 4K Age of Empires? Oh. Another Assassin's Creed game. Whatever. AC: Origins. Apparently it's in Egypt. EPIC GAMING ADVENTURE ™. 

Xbox One X sounds like a redundant name. Like Wii U. 

QUALITY BIRD GRAPHICS ™ Not impressed. 

All of this showcasing reminds me that I need to get a new TV for my PS4 gaming. I have a pretty thick plasma TV. It contains mercury. Not good. So all this resolution talk means nothing if it doesn't fit on my TV with faded colors. I don't want anything fancy. Just 1080p with HDR probably. Nothing too big. 

Anyway, AC: Origins doesn't impress me. 

Hooray, more shooters. Ugh. Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. 

Another exclusive. Shooting and Mining? Bad voice acting. Deep Rock Galactic. 

Ok seriously fuck the guy saying Yehh at everything. 

Exclusive. Post-apocalyptic. Army? Zombies? Really? Yawn. At least be a bit creative. The animation kinda sucks. Not even fluid  So it's a tower defense thing? Cars. Boomer. Yeah, this is utter shit. This fucking trailer is so long. Pretty boring. State of Decay 2. Next. 

Exclusive. Ooh nice design. Uh what the fuck? What? Darwin Project. The Shoutcaster ruined it. 

Minecraft? Again? I thought we were over that. Next. I don't know how you make Minecraft more detailed with bigger resolution.

Japan. Hilarious. Little crazy. Fun. Oh. It's Dragon Ball. Never mind. The layout reminds me of the old DB games. Like Ultimate Battle 22 or something. (Yeah, I’m old.) But you know, updated. Like Guilty Gear or Skullgirls or Marvel vs. Capcom or something. Dragon Ball Fighter Z. Nice. 

Exclusive. Looks beautiful. MMORPG? I'd play this. Not gonna lie. Black Desert. Ok. 

Exclusive. Another post-apocalyptic. That cinematography looks nice. Wait what. Pixel characters. Wow. The Last Night. Yeah, is definitely play that. Very cyberpunk. 

Exclusive. Ok. I like quirky designs like this. Johnson Vendetti. Nice guitar lol. What the fuck is this. Lol. The Artful Escape. (Coming when it's damn ready.) Alright cool. 

Code Vein. Sick. Don't know what it is but it's anime as fuck. Bandai Namco. Oh ok. 

Sea of Thieves. Exclusive. Shared world. Yeah, but I like single player games. I'm not into the pirate scene either. Looks fun though. 

Exclusive. Oohh. Space. Tacoma. 

Exclusive. What. Fox thing. What. FEED ME SEYMOUR. *Exhausted sigh* I don't know anymore. Fart joke from an onion. Fantastic. I'm sure kids will enjoy this. Super Lucky's Tale.

Exclusive. Oh my God is this Cuphead? YES FINALLY. GIMME THIS SHIT. SEPTEMBER 29. FINALLY. I LIVE FOR THIS. 

Exclusive. TERRY CREWS? BEST THING EVER. Is this Crackdown? I liked the other ones so this is good. Crackdown 3. Good. 

ID@Xbox Game Montage Time. Let's see what looks good in about 10 seconds of footage​. Unruly Heroes. Observer. Hello Neighbor, of course. Shift. Eh, not much.  

Next few games. 

Exclusive. Stylistic. Oooh. Wow, these characters have no faces. Light and Darkness themes. This looks really nice. Ashen. 

SQUARE ENIX WORLD PREMIERE. THEY OWN MY ASS ALREADY. WHATCHU GOT, SQUARE? OH SHIT LIFE IS STRANGE 2. FUCK YES FINALLY OMG. GIMME THIS SHIT. WHATS GONNA HAPPEN NOW? BIG APPLAUSE FROM ME. IM IN. IM SOLD. WHAT? BEFORE THE STORM. 3 EPISODES? ONLY 3? FIRST ONE COMES OUT ON AUGUST 31. THAT'S SO SOON. YAAAS SQUARE. GIMME THIS SHIT. 

Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Alright. I don't know what other Middle Earth game I played. I think it was Shadow of Mordor. I loved it. Oh God. So much for being an optimist. Yeah I'd play this. By the way, the acting and facial capture is amazing. Brûz is funny as hell. 

Exclusive. AW SHIT. PIANO GUY. WHAT IS THAT CUTE LEMUR THING? That's a frog... and a giant spider. Nice owl. Ohhh noooooooo. Great music. Ori and the Will-o-the-Wisps. I love it. 

Hey, Sony. Where's your backwards compatibility?! YOU HAVE A GREAT LIBRARY BUT COME ON. I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO ANOTHER SERVICE FOR BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY. 

Your last presenter is from EA? Really? New IP. OH. BIOWARE. Anthem. Oh wow. This looks really nice. This looks pretty crazy. So is this basically BioWare's answer to Destiny? But will this have a good story? Lol they think players talk to each other like this. I'd play this. But I'll probably do it single player. 

Right now, I don’t really have an incentive to upgrade to a 4K-ready console like the Xbox One X or the PS4 Pro. Some of the games showcased at Microsoft’s Briefing looks nice. I’d probably borrow my brother’s Xbox to play exclusives like Ori and Cuphead.