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hobnob2020 · 5 days ago

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The Veilguard review

Big spoilers ahead for the people that haven't finished the game yet.

So after plugging 70+ hours I've finally completed Veilguard.

This will just be a general overview of how I felt about the game, I'll likely do a separate one for Solas/Mythal and Lavellan and one for a Lucanis romance.

First off I want to say that any negative criticism I had for the game I am reminded of how difficult this game was to get off the ground running in the first place; it experienced multiple layoffs, it pulled the team to focus on Anthem when it failed, the team was reduced, OG writers left and multiple people lost their jobs once their work was complete and lets not forget those that worked on this during a pandemic so I think it's important to keep coming back to this so that we can just appreciate what we had as an end product.

Now the end product itself, did I enjoy it? absolutely.

I've laughed, I've been giddy, I've been angry at times and in those final moments was reduced to tears that reconciliations were reached and it was the end of a very long 10 year wait.

I want to start from the beginning where we welcomed our Rooks because holy moly is the character creator detailed. I mean seriously every single Rook I've seen is a catwalk model 😂

Every faction felt different and the brief history to your character was really well done; I went with a female mage elf I the Crows and I loved being a Crow from the get go; the decision that she made that essentially forced her to leave the Crows because she'd basically f*cked up a mission was really interesting because there's still that tension once she returned with Viago (who I adored BTW, his disappointing fatherly persona against Teia's comfort and protectiveness was just perfect) and it set the course for every Rook wanting to prove themselves.

Briefly touching on the Inquisitors creation I was so happy that this was an early decision and hearing her say "it's good to see you again" was like a stab to the heart and felt like I was being welcomed back home after such a long journey.

Once into the gameplay it's hard to ignore how beautiful the graphics look, Minrathous' design was so unexpected and how the locals were treated makes me wonder how Dorian ever survived 😂

There were certain scenes that just blew me away and made me realise just how far games have come to allow us them; the moment you open the doors at Weisshaupt and see Ghilan'nains massive looming face in the clouds was just breath taking, in fact the two gods in general were very well done and there wasn't enough of them in my opinion.

The animation as a whole was very good and again compared to Origins this game is on a different level of good (hate to compare it to other games but Balders gate is probably the closest contender).

There's a particular scene with Lucanis as a romance where he walks over to you after you basically say you like what you see and that Spite doesn't define him, the way his face moves, the little smile, the way his eyes drop to your lips when you touch him floored me and I think having motion capture for this game definitely paid off.

The mechanics of the game were fantastic and as I've yet to play anything other than my mage I am excited to play other classes and possibly Warrior for the first time across 4 games, although Spellblade ruined a mage for me as I love being able to be upfront in a battle and found it perfect for my Crow mage.

I went with purple Rook for this playthrough as I wanted a charming Crow who had far too much energy and was awkward in the best way possible and loved every minute of it; Bioware has always been very clever at establishing the different personalities and how they affect the world around them. Going into a scene and having your Rook react by themselves depending on their personality makes the character feel real and that we aren't just following the same thread of dialogue.

When you first meet Solas they didn't lie that it would feel like an end game mission, the dialogue was fantastic, his voice actor is just incredible and he has a talent to be confident, insecure, determined and doubtful of his own words all in one and it was very easy to fall In love with Solas during inquisition.

I really enjoyed how the first decision you make as Rook ends with the gods escaping, either Harding or Neve being injured which puts doubts in your friendship and leadership from the beginning, that Solas who we'd believed to be the big bad was essentially trapped and looked like a kitten compared to these evil beings who want world domination, it really makes the player question how are we going to fix this massive mistake that we've created, because it takes the gods no time to get to work whilst we scramble to find a team and cleanse multiple parts of Thedas at the same time aswell as setting up base in the fade where we dig deep into the history of Solas and the ancient gods past.

The companions of this game I felt were individuals in their own ways with their own back stories and present problems but I felt as a whole weren't as good as say the previous game; there was no double crossing mages or people with their own greed and agendas, no hidden pasts like Blackwall which personally fell abit flat for me.

In fact I'd say the only one who had an interesting story was Lucanis after his imprisonment and demonic possession and the struggles that came with it.

I don't think I'll romance anyone else other than Emmrich as the others just don't interest me.

It just felt like you were constantly flitting to the Lighthouse and back to grind out companion tasks in order to gain approval and faction points, there was no option to just have a conversation like previous games instead it was very much on their terms and where you were in the game which was something i really missed.

Still, their personalities were very different and characters like Lucanis, Taash and especially Emmrich stole my heart very quickly.

The banter was top notch quality as per 👌 some of my favourites were from Taash and Lucanis, just being a Crow in the middle of their conversations about capes was hilarious at times.

The voice acting as a whole was very good, I felt with some characters particularly Neve it felt abit flat in moments but Bioware have a knack for finding talented voices; having someone as bubbly and excited as Bellara to the deadpan and slightly blunt at times Taash made for a very diverse team.

Returning characters was always a welcome and there were some surprising cameos such as Isabella in the Lords of Fortune faction.

I know alot of people were disappointed that this game felt limited in bringing over past choices but it needed to make sense; Sera isn't going to return and be found in the deep roads etc, it needed to serve a purpose to The Veilguards story and I'm happy with the ones we did get.

When it came to the three decisions from inquisition yes I was disappointed at first; why are we ignoring who drank from the well, why aren't we talking about Hawke, who's ruling Fereldon, who's Divine?.

I think we need to remember that after 4 games the decisions from little to big are so vast that there's simply no way to fit it all in and satisfy everyone and baring in mind this game is for new players too.

Having this game set outside of Ferelden means those decisions won't carry weight in Veilguard, who is divine won't affect us, where Hawke is doesn't affect us because we know they'll either be in the fade or fighting against the evil.

And yes a codex could of helped address any of this but again, it's a smaller team now at bioware and the focus is on Rook this time around, it's their turn and tbh reading codex' is time consuming when you've got gods to fight 😂

The only decision I really wanted brought over was who drank from the Well because as a Solasmancer he was so pissed at me but I think I know why it was glossed over.

I think having Solas being able to control your Inquisitor would have the issue of consent and violation and as a romance that doesn't feel right, especially given how Mythal basically manipulated Solas and used him as a slave it just goes into uncomfortable territory.

We could also argue that Solas absorbed Mythals essence so all that's left is her memories and the tiny fragment you find in the crossroads so essentially Mythal ceases to exist thus there's no pledge anymore for the inquisitor and that she only needed her help to fight Corypheus, who knows but I'm glad Solas wasn't able to do that to the Inquisitor.

The endgame was amazing, finally killing Ghilan'nain was so satisfying and Lucanis was an absolute bad ass doing it, seeing Solas become the dreadwolf and hearing his pained cries was heartbreaking even if he couldn't stop betraying my Rook 😂.

Forcing you as a player to lose a character despite high factions and hero status was brutal, and I unfortunately lost both Davrin and Assan. As much as I loved them both, it made sense to his character to die in that way, and Harding has so much more to do for the dwarves and titans.

I'll talk about Solas/Mythal and Lavellan on another post but I was very happy with how it ended, seeing the art concept of him making himself tranquil just shows how differently it could of gone, and I honestly expected them to die in each other's arms.

If I think of anything else I'll add it onto this post but yeah, 10 years man and it's over, well not over completely as I'm creating an Emmrich romance as we speak but I can't believe years of speculation and doubt is now in our hands forever.

Yes this game could of been better in parts and blew my expectations away in others but I loved it and I think the negative criticism over characters like Taash, the three previous decisions, crazy solasmancers which bring the team down is so unjust and people need to reflect on themselves as humans.

All I would say to those that critic this game as heavy as they have is to take their time and play it again, you'll find things you missed the first time around, really read the codex', just sit back and understand what the characters are saying, read between the lines and just take it back to beginning of this post, this game very nearly didn't happen and alot of talented people that have given you this game have lost their jobs so please just be grateful for what we do have and pray that this isn't the end of dragon age.

Edit:

The whole Varric thing was probably my least favourite thing about the game, not because he died but it just didn't make sense that Rook didn't know until the very end.

I had my suspicions because he was always tired and going back to bed and something about it didn't feel right.

For other companions to say "oh we thought you knew" was just silly, I could understand Solas using his powers to create an illusion but why not on all the companions because surely Rook at some point was like "Oh i'll take some food to Varric" or "have you been to visit him", without that Rook just sounds crazy 😂

#dragon age 4 #dragon age the veilguard #dragon age #da4 #solas dragon age #solas #dragon age spoilers #dragon age the veilgaurd spoilers #veilguard spoilers #solas x female lavellan #solavellan hell #lucanis dellamorte

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flowersofstarlight · 2 months ago

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Block By Block: The Amulet ⚔️🛡️

For @blockbyblockseries

(MCSM Remake by WazzyWorks)

This fan-made project is made by Wazzy who rewrites and was able to construct a new story for this game in the form of an animated series and has a lot of help with voice actors, animators, artists, builders, writers, etc. for MCSM fans and newcomers to experience a new story of the Heroes’ journey. This is a remake of MCSM that will be fully-animated and a completely different story from the game.

“Block By Block: The Amulet” is a reimagining of the MCSM game developed by Telltale Games. They also add a lot of newer things that Mojang update for Minecraft like new creatures, blocks, biomes, etc. The axolotes, the Phantoms, the Warden, the amethyst, and Lush Caves did not appear in MCSM since it came out on October 13, 2015.

So as I said before, the remake is going to be completely different from the original game along with the plot, the characters, the locations, and everything. Go subscribe to his channel and watch the trailer if you’re interested to watch it when it releases. Follow @blockbyblockseries to not miss new updates and announcements to see more.

youtube

I also wanted to mention that Wazzy and his team are NOT affiliated, nor working with TellTale games or Mojang to bring MCSM games back and make Season 3. Like I said, this is a fan-made project. They had to change the title, the characters’ outfits, add new mobs, biomes, other new things from Minecraft updates, and rewrite the story completely different from the game to avoid copyrights.

The reason why they will not use “Minecraft Story Mode” as the title is because MCSM is owned by Mojang (even though they probably don’t care about it and are not planning to revive it in the future). And it could potentially get them sued, deleted, or anything bad like that might happen to his channel, which I hope that doesn’t! Wazzy and his team work really hard and put a lot of love into creating something amazing for a fan-made MCSM project. I would be really upset if something bad ever happens to their project.

Wazzy, if you’re reading this, I want to let you know that you are awesome and talented! Your team (like the voice actors, animators, artists, and builders) also did an amazing job for this project too! You really brought my childhood back and reminded me of why I love MCSM so much, which I’m really happy about.

It brings me joy to revisit my childhood and see the familiar characters that we know and love. It’s also nice that MCSM is still remembered and fans really love this fan-made project, and are also excited as I am to watch the remake. And your animation skills have improved well and it looks incredible. Outstanding too,

Despite so many flaws MCSM games have, it still holds dear to my heart. The official trailer you released is incredible and made me speechless! The animation, the backgrounds, the lighting, and everything in the trailer looks so COOL! This is a lot more epic than I imagined, and also breathtaking. Knowing how determined and passionate you were with your project, you did a fantastic job to make something awesome!

Anyway, I’m so excited to watch Block By Block: The Amulet when it releases. I hope you and the team will still be able to continue the MCSM remake. It might not be perfect, but I know it will be great and worth the wait. Keep being awesome and have a wonderful day. And I hope you like the fanart I drew. 😊💖��🌼🌸

#MCSM #block by block: the amulet #Block By Block #minecraft story mode #minecraft: story mode #mcsm remake #mcsm fanart #minecraft #mcsm jesse #mcsm reuben #mcsm petra #mcsm lukas #mcsm axel #mcsm olivia #Youtube

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madelynhimegami · 6 months ago

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To my knowledge, you like Puyo Puyo! But what do you enjoy most about it?

Honestly, it might be easier to explain my intoduction to the series. Ideally we'll get there in the end either way. You ever seen one of those "What I Played/What I Expected/What I Got" memes? My story is pretty much like one of those.

I don't remember when I started learning bits and pieces about it, or when Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine went from being itself to a Puyo game in a trenchcoat in my mind. But by mid 2017 I knew the aforementioned (I called the CPZ boss in Sonic Mania a Puyo boss on twitter when I played it), recognized Carbuncle, recognized Draco Centauros (thanks to a friend who is still a big fan of her), and had heard that there was some sort of story to it, but didn't know a lot of details.

Then in September of 2017, a friend of mine mentioned that he had been playing Puyo Puyo Tetris lately as his go-to "pick up and play" sort of game. I looked it up in the eshop, saw it was cheap, and thought a pick-up-and-play game was what I needed and bought it. Not that I knew shit about playing Puyo well, but I at least had some basic competency at Tetris to balance things out.

And hey, at least the story mode would be a good way to learn! So I dove in to the story and started playing.

I was expecting the story to be inconseqential to my enjoyment of the game. Something either generic or corny, with characters that ranged from "tolerable" to "painful anime cliche."

The thing that knocked me on my ass almost immediately was that the writing was actually funny, made better with the English cast's fantastic delivery.

Those are all from just the story's first chapter! The first one is from the prologue! The other two are from the third scene (couting dialogue before and after a round of gameplay together as one scene)! And it kept going!

For the record, even though I was picky with what to include, and stitching lines from the same scenes together, I still had almost fifty (50) funny moments I wanted to drop out of context, in a game with a rough total of two hours of story material collected to write this post. And then I had to narrow it down further just so I wouldn't hit the image limit too quickly.

Was it a little corny and awkward at points? Sure. Several voice actors had to grow into their roles. Plus, the impression I always had from the script-- an impression that's only gotten stronger the more I learn about this series and then come back to this game-- is that someone on the development team was not expecting this to be all that successful overseas. And not for no reason, since Puyo Puyo's tried to get its foot in the door in the west several times by this point. But the end result of this lack of faith was a localization team that tried very hard to make this game stand on its own merits with as little understanding of the games that had come before as possible. Which, honestly I think they did a pretty dang good job of! Especially since it didn't shy away from the hard-hitting stuff when it came. Which I'm going to intentionally leave even further out of context so as to not give away all of it.

There was also this line here, which was what first clued me in that the writing's quality wasn't an accident, that the writer is actually thinking all this stuff through:

Fun fact, the only people you will see in your dreams are people you have seen while you're awake. The parts of the brain responsible for dreams can't make up new faces, or throw together composites of preeviously-known ones. Hence, this question, which does in fact get answered in the next scene, in a way that made me go, "Ohhh, that's really smart, actually!"

But yeah. That was just this one game. It took me a few more years before I tried other games that had been translated, fan or otherwise, but the more I've played and the more I learn about these characters and their worlds, the more engrossed I get. It's a hyperfixation now. It seems like there's always something new I'm learning about it, but it's not overwhelming, it just feels like I'm knowing a good friend better and better. The modern artstyle is deceptively simple and very endearing, and so many of the characters are interesting and fun. And the current writer is just so galaxy-brained, I'm not even kidding.

The characters in the Puyo Puyo series are all morons. They're all crazy. But at the end of the day, they care about each other, no matter how little they want to admit it. And they all have their own theming to the magic they use. It's a lot of fun. From your standard-fair RPG spells, to cosmic forces, to math terms,

I can't recommend this series enough, no matter what your skill level with puzzle games is! There's something in it for everyone.

Unless you're looking for genuinely evil characters, I guess. Like, there are characters that are intimidating or sinister or threatening, but almost none of them are actually evil. Fraid the closest to that this series has is a(n as-of-now) gender-ambiguous Elon Musk with better hair in the Japan-excusive gacha game.

Further reading from the author (that isn't already on their tumblr):

[1]

[2]

[3]

#puyo puyo #puyopuyo #puyo #puyo posting #ask the princess

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natlacentral · 7 months ago

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STYLISED EXTREMES

RARE IS IT TO FIND A YOUNG ACTOR WHO ALIGNS SO PERFECTLY WITH THE ROLE HE’S BEEN CAST TO PLAY, THOUGH SUCH IS THE CASE WITH IAN OUSLEY. THE YOUNG TALENT, KNOWN TO FANS OF THE NEW LIVE-ACTION VERSION OF AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER AS MASTER STRATEGIST SOKKA, HAS TURNED HIS CHILDHOOD FANTASIES INTO ADULTHOOD ACTING DREAMS. HE TALKS TO US ABOUT HOW MARTIAL ARTS SHOWCASED HIS ACTING TALENTS AND FINDING LOVE WITHIN.

You’re playing the character of Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe in this new Live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender and you’re trying to restore peace and save the world with Katara and Aang. How was it to play such an iconic character?

It was such a blessing to play the role of Sokka. I grew up on the show and it was one of my main inspirations for starting to do martial arts, so it was surreal to get the opportunity to join this project. Sokka to me has always been the voice to the audience in a way and was obviously so funny in the animated show that trying to capture the essence of the character is something I took very seriously… by not taking myself too seriously. It was a balance of being free in that space while still making it fit the live-action tone of our show.

How has being Cherokee played into how you shaped Sokka and approached portraying the character?

Building the world of the water tribe, which is based on indigenous culture, is something that was obviously crucial for us to capture accurately. Sokka is a proud member and leader of the Southern Water tribe and as a show, everything from the set designers, costume department, to props team created the physical world for us to live in, which made it easy to melt into the story we’re telling. I’m incredibly grateful to be on Team Water tribe with such a beautiful cast of amazing indigenous actors and actresses.

It’s never easy to come into a well-established franchise. How does this live-action version remain true to the original spirit of the animated series, will there be any easter eggs in this show that fans of the original series will recognise?

There are more than a handful of easter eggs in our show that the fans will be excited to see. They’ve already found so many of them just in the teaser, which is so fun to watch. Part of what makes this project so special is that everyone working on it has such a deep emotional connection to the show and wants to make it as good as possible, which means keeping that same breath from the show we’re basing ours on. Everyone was working their hardest to bring to life their side of the world whether that be an actor with the character they were playing or the writers' room bringing the scripts to life. For me, that meant trying to fight for as much comedy as I could every day, which is such an important part of the original show.

Did you have to learn any new skills for the role and what were they?

We did a six-week boot camp before we started shooting, which included stunt training every day, with all four of us together for most of it. That meant that I learned how to bend all four elements, and as we all know, my character can’t bend any of the four elements. In fact, when we meet him, he really doesn’t like bending at all because it was the main cause of his trauma in the past. Most of my stunt training consisted of learning how to look “untrained” as a fighter. We worked on throwing wide punches and improper hand placements for the forms with Suki and stuff like that.

Talk to me about the costumes. Do you remember when you did your first fitting, how did it feel transforming into Sokka?

It was one of my favourite parts of our show, getting to put on such intricate, detailed costumes daily, the costume designers really did such a fantastic job. The first time at the fitting with my wolf tail freshly cut and everything, was the first time any of it truly felt real. When I put on those clothes, especially my “warrior” look, it felt like I was living the real-life version of playing pretend in my room as a kid! Of course, when I was a kid, I was pretending to be Zuko, but still.

So, how did acting come about for you?

I got into acting through my martial arts competitions and being in the local paper for winning a state or district title. A talent scout from my hometown reached out to my mom to invite me to come audition, and being 13 years old, I’m sure I was terrible, but I was shameless. I think she saw something in me because she invited me into the class, and then I moved to Los Angeles when I was 14, (where I’m still based), and took acting classes out here.

You’re still working on learning your craft being so young and ready for what’s to come. Do you see yourself becoming more of a transformational or character actor? What are the dream roles for you?

What a fun question! You’re right, I’m still working on my craft, and as an actor I don’t think you ever stop getting to do that honestly. What excites me right now is material that is going to stretch me equally as an actor and as a person. I love the research part of taking on a character, so a role where I could totally transform sounds really intriguing to me. I have always been drawn to extremes, so I love stylised films and then also, very realistic films. Tim Burton and Yorgos Lanthimos have been such inspirations to me on the stylised end of things, so the opportunity to jump into something otherworldly would be very enticing. A dream role for me right now would be to do something completely different from Sokka and play the villain of a story whether that be in a superhero context or otherwise.

Would you be open to playing romantic leads too, given your Instagram bio: ‘I was made for love’?

That’s so awesome. Yes, I totally would be open to playing a romantic lead, but as for my bio, it’s meant to be more of a mission statement in a way. I think we were all made to love and truly be loved. I’ve found that sense of identity in loving God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Speaking of love, fashion is a passion of yours I see. There must be plenty of designers falling over themselves to dress you and make you their muse. Any favourites?

Some of the brands that are really catching my attention right now are Maison Margiela and Acne Studios, but my personal favourite has been Hedi Slimane’s Celine as you can probably tell!

You have a clothing line called KALÓ SOIL. Tell us about that and how it came to be as well as your passion for repurposing clothing and vintage items.

Kaló Soil is a project I joined in on with a couple of my friends. We were selling a collection of curated vintage items from the 1940s-1990s. We eventually added our own in-house collection to our brand to learn how to cut, sew, pattern, and creatively direct a brand. Some of our styles include taking patterns from our favourite vintage pieces such as a fencing jacket from the 1940s made with brand new materials with our own twist on the detailing.

What are you wearing right now just in case your style icon is reading this?

Well, Denis Rodman, if you're reading this right now, I’m wearing some Hedi-era YSL boots, baggy raw denim Kaló Soil jeans that have some real gnarly heel drag on them, an old 3/4 sleeve French chore jacket and a Tiffany chain from the ‘70s that used to be my grandma’s.

What about music, a fash-influencer must pay homage to the tunes too. What’s your ear porn?

I really love music. I had a scary number of minutes racked up on my Spotify wrapped this year honestly. I’ve been listening to a lot of Blaze Foley these days. I grew up in a very musical family, so I’ve played drums my whole life. I sing every day, everywhere I go, and my friends wanna kill me for it, I’m sure!

Ok, choose one song that sums up your wish for the future.

Let It Be by The Beatles

#natla #atla #avatar the last airbender #netflix avatar #netflix atla #avatar netflix #atla netflix #ian ousley #behind the blinds #interview #photoshoot

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dalt20 · 1 year ago

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Tooning in 4. Dev Ross part 4 of 7

DL: Yeah. Well the episode all’s Fahrenheit in love and war? Process of that episode?

DR: I believe that was a script doctor job. They weren’t please with..uh.. the first writers take on it, so i took it over and redid it.

DL: Well do you remember people like John Behnke, Rob Humphrey, and Jim Peterson? They were the creators of quack pack. They wrote for darkwing duck.

DR: Not really. I didn't interact with them

DL: Well but you know them right?

DR: Of them only. Our department was getting really big by then.

DL: Well you know Doug langdale? He was working the same time as you on DD, goof troop and bonkers. Also Aladdin.

DR: Yes, I knew him but barely

DL: Well, he went in to do great things. He’s working with Hollywood producer James wan on samurai rabbit for Netflix.

DR: Nice! I no longer follow any animation as I only work in live action now.

DL: Yeah! Well we’ll save that special project until the end of the interview. But don’t worry we’ll come back to it.

DR: No worries.

DL: The darkwing Duck episode, up up and awry. Process on that episode?

DR: Don't really remember anything about it

DL: Oh well it was your lowest rated darkwing episode on IMDb. 6.9 to be exact.

DR: Well, you can't please all the time.

DL: Time and punishment? Process for that episode?

DR: My inspiration was that Christmas movie where an Angel takes Jimmy Stewart forward in time to see the effects on his family and community if he committed suicide!

DL: Oh it’s it a wonderful life, eh?

DR: Right! Are we going to go thru every episode I wrote because I really don't remember... Tad and I would sit in his office and just throw around crazy ideas. He was fantastic to play off of. So many times we'd come up with concepts just by riffing. We'd talk about movies, books, look at comic books, the news...

DL: By note, yeah it would be redundant to just go over every darkwing Duck episode you wrote .

DR: Thanks! I would have to excuse myself then. I don't think about the old stories ever! A writer must stay current or die

DL: Writing for The little mermaid for Disney and CBS .

DR: Horrible experience.

DL: Why was that?

DR: I had come back to Disney after being lent out to Universal. I was assigned Little Mermaid but my story editors never came into the office so we couldn't riff on ideas like I used to with Tad. Their was hardly anyone around then and very uninspiring. No team work or comraderie. I was really unhappy so quit soon after. I went freelance then and only worked with Tad and Kevin Hopps. I worked a bit with two other story editors but again no teamwork there.

DL: Oh. Kevin hopps was a sitcom writer. He wrote for Norman lear.

DR: Yes! Great talent and great human being!

DL: I know. So, did you watch the original film?

DR: Which one?

DL: The 1989 film with Jodi benson? The classic box office success! Putted Disney in the map again and started the Disney renaissance.

DR: Yes, I did!

DL: Thoughts on the film?

DR: It was charming. Songs were fantastic! May I ask you a question?

DL: Sure, Go ahead!

DR: I don't want to sound rude, However, I wrote for Disney so long ago. I don't understand how my thought are even interesting on such old work. How my thoughts are even halfway interesting on why I wrote something. I'm curious as to what you will do with my answers.

DL: I’ll post on my blog. My job is to know about the writing process of the episodes of some shows.

DR: I'm not ungrateful, just wondering.

DL: As a interviewer. As of saying.

DR: Most staff writing processes are the same. We team up to throw around ideas to see what sticks.

DL: Hmm. Ok.

DR: I mean it will more interesting to talk more about the dtv films.

DL: We pitch ideas to our producers to see what interests them. They may like half of an idea from me and the only half from you and then tell us to construct a story out of the blended ideas. That's the way it works.

DL: Ok. Can I ask you about Aladdin : return of Jafar?

DR: That was totally a group think story. A dozen of us sat around and spit balled ideas. We agreed on one the broke up the story with each of us writing a section of the movie.

DL: Was it true that the film was a pilot for a tv series.but Michael Eisner didn’t know how to release the show, so he told you to make a pilot film?

DR: I don't remember.

DL: Well that’s what most people say. But it was the most sold video in 1994, next to the lion king!

DR: Right!

DL: Did you got a cut of the VHS sales?

DR: No! Staff writers only got salary. It's how most animation writers get ripped off. My films for Univeral made millions but I got nothing but a small fee for writing.

DL: Oh, I’m thinking about theatrical films. Now they get the money from the films.

DR: Depends! It depends on their agent!

DL: Yeah. So you wrote 4 episodes of cro for children’s television workshop/film Roman and ABC. Tell me what was cro?

DR: It was a show all about math.

DL: Oh. So how would your episodes work with a premise of cavemen and math?

DR: Vey difficult! You have to know the conceit of the show.

DL: Oh. What age were they approaching to?

DR: Very hard to write for!

DL: So how was CTW in general, The creators of Sesame Street?

DR: Loved them!

DL: Can you tell me about them.

DR: Just very smart and innovative thinkers. I love that! I love working for out of the box thinkers. They also appreciate crazy creators like me.

DL: well were you happy mark zaslove was the story editor on the show?

DR: Mark was brilliant but was a very tough boss. Very talented and very demanding.

DL: well did you feel upset when the show got canceled?

DR: No!! It was a very hard show to write for!

DL: Well apparently CTW got upset, that's why they created the cable channel noggin.Did you know that?

DR: No.

DL: well yeah. going back to disney, you wrote for bonkers and jungle cubs.

DR: Yes. Hated Bonkers.

DL: why? was it a roger rabbit ripoff?

DR: I believe so. It just wasn't a good concept. Character was horribly unlikeable. Not at all fun to write for.

DL: who was? bonkers or lucky? or in season 2, miranda?

DR: Both... I didn't write on season two and barely on one. I shouldn't say both, definitely Bonkers. I think so. It was a bad ripoff.

DL: well question. why anyone make a show about a cartoon in a cartoon? that makes no sense.

DR: Exactly.

DL: thoughts on the president of Disney TVA, frank price? he was your boss on jungle cubs and return of jafar.

DR: No opinion. I had enough on my plate being a full time writer with three kids!

DL: oh. well moving on to jungle cubs, how was writing the humans must be crazy?

DR: I liked that show a lot but was freelance by then and only did 2 episodes.

DL: oh how did you feel about the jungle book characters but as babies, a la muppet babies?

DR: I liked them a lot. It is always fun to imagine what an adult was like as a child! I think that about people I meet!

DL: well did you like the orginal film?

DR: Loved it!

#dev ross #disney afternoon #walt disney animation studios #animation #animation interview #disney #disney television animation #tooning in.#cro #children’s television workshop #CTW #jungle cubs #Aladdin #return of jafar #the jungle book #the little mermaid #disney ariel #darkwing duck #bonkers

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nothingunrealistic · 1 year ago

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review roundup: billions 7x10 “enemies list”

a strong entry in the streak of underwhelming even-numbered episodes this season! what did reviewers think?

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 10: Mutually Assured Destruction

To borrow some terminology from professional wrestling, an art form much beloved by the traders and lawyers of “Billions” (to say nothing of the show’s writers), Mike Prince is a monster heel champion. He is a bad guy at the top of the heap, gold around his waist and his last defeat a distant memory. Seemingly impervious to attack, Prince steamrolls every babyface contender who comes his way. He is an effective villain because he has been booked to be unstoppable — all to better set up the moment when he is stopped. This week’s episode of “Billions” is that moment. And the babyface responsible for handing Prince his first real setback? Bobby Axelrod.

hmm well i seem to remember prince experiencing a real setback about five episodes ago at someone else’s hands. maybe it’s just me!

(U2’s “Beautiful Day” cuts off so hard the moment Axe appears that your brain will supply the needle-scratch sound effect.)

fantastic description. it really did feel like that.

With Taylor by his side and Chuck pestering him to come through with his promised aid in the anti-Prince efforts, Axe tries and fails to extricate Wendy through financial means. It isn’t until he takes Taylor’s advice to come up with a play no other Wall Street brain could see coming that he succeeds.

once again taylor is the most competent non-axe person on team kill prince extended edition!

But the behemoth has been staggered for the first time in a long time, and Axe is now back in the United States and free to plot with Chuck, Wendy, Wags and Ira.

is that the whole list?

This is music to the ears of a killer like Victor, and he happily swipes a strong idea from the timid Tuk to burnish his own chances. By contrast, Rian, disgusted by how Prince duped her and Wendy, rejects the job when Philip all but hands it to her.

nope, that’s the wrong order! philip offers rian the partnership and she declines, then she witnesses victor stealing tuk’s idea, then she finds out that prince tricked her and wendy re: mental. important to get the chronology right when you’re tying cause and effect to it!

Ironically, it’s a pep talk from Victor, who tells her she is afraid of her own killer nature, that persuades her to just walk right in and demand the partnership. Her self-confidence convinces Philip she’s right for it, after all.

who’s gonna point out that rian has been preying on the weaker animals from the day she arrived? (god i hope it’s winston.)

It’s too bad, really. Just when it seemed like the likable Rian might extricate herself from Mike Prince’s moral morass, perhaps even joining the fight against him, she joins his brain trust. Or is that precisely the idea? Could she be the insider Chuck’s cabal needs, now that Wendy, Wags and Taylor have all been frozen out?

i don’t think rian is in prince’s brain trust *or* a mole therein. i think she’s just wandering around bouncing off of everyone she interacts with and will go down with the prince capital ship if she doesn’t make a new move.

The use of Slayer’s “Angel of Death” as the episode’s climactic needle drop made my metalhead night. I like how Bobby Axelrod has his own trademark musical genre on this show.

sean and i can never really be friends because he loves axelrod’s shitty metal bands but hates the eagles. also, i must wonder about the semiotics of heralding axe’s triumphant return with a song about josef mengele after comparing prince to hitler all season.

In a revealing moment, Kate tells Chuck’s new up-and-comer, Amanda, why she ultimately left the Southern District for the greener pastures of Prince Capital: Unlike Chuck, Prince is honest about who and what he is. So does that mean this Kate, the new Kate, is being honest about who and what she is? Yikes. If you want evidence that learning Chuck’s methods can make you a monster, Kate is exhibit A.

and also recall that “he pretends to be good but he actually sucks” was the number one criticism of prince all through seasons 5-6! sacker claiming prince doesn’t hide who he is? laughable!

“Whimsy has a half life, and you’ve reached it,” Philip tells Rian regarding her general vibe of wisecrackery. I prefer the Rian who laughs off the insult to the one who winds up taking it into consideration.

don’t we all.

We get a price tag for how much Taylor stands to lose if Prince makes good on his threats: $650 million. That is a price Taylor is willing to pay, which tells Axe an awful lot.

and it reminds me why i love taylor so so so much.

A common criticism of “Billions” is that its constant pop-culture references can seem forced. This time around, that’s the idea, as Prince bobbles two separate Quentin Tarantino references during the standoffs with Bobby that begin and end the show. Axe goes so far as to point this out — sure, it’s the show hanging a lampshade on what is either a tic or a signature, but it makes sense.

this isn’t the first time someone’s been criticized or otherwise analyzed for the choice and manner of a pop culture reference. they were pretty overt about it this time, though.

Mike Prince’s Bobby Axelrod impression: not half bad!

mentions of prince’s axe impression: 1. contrast sean’s assessment of taylor’s impression of oscar (or more precisely, asia kate dillon’s impression of mike birbiglia) in 5x06 as “spot on.”

Vulture: Billions Recap: Welcome Home, Bobby

three stars! i see sarene stands closer to my position than to the imdb rating.

Bobby Axelrod just doesn’t work as a supporting character. With two episodes left in Billions, Axe has finally returned Stateside after an almost two-season absence, but good God, getting him here was harder than pulling an abscessed tooth. And that was just this episode alone!

so true! they should have left him out entirely 🥰

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m conflicted by the Axe homecoming. On the one hand, Billions is infinitely better whenever Damian Lewis is onscreen. That is an undeniable fact.

no, that’s an easily deniable opinion. i’m denying it right now.

Even now, with Axe firmly aligned with Team Wendy-Chuck-Wags-Taylor, I’m still scratching my head over why the four of them needed him so badly. Chuck giving Axe the “Thank God you’re here” cliché? Insert eye-roll emoji. At this point, I’m not impressed with how Billions turned Wendy into a damsel in distress needing to be rescued by Sir Axelrod. And it will take a lot more than Axe showing up in a Slayer T-shirt for me to feel confident that he’ll ultimately topple Mike Prince. Axe’s big save of the episode — screwing with Prince’s dainty ego to keep Wendy out of prison — isn’t going to set Prince back for long. While I get why we had to wait until the end of “Enemies List” for Axe’s surprise New York reveal, these kinds of narrative setups sometimes make Billions tedious. Did it have to take the entire episode for Axe to devise a workable plan? Of course not, but what’s a drama without tension?

yeah, this gets at the heart of what i disliked about this episode. so much of it was devoted to team kill prince extended edition sitting around going “well we can’t do anything without axe and we can’t get axe. sucks for us” and assorted rian-centric subplotting. was it really only axe who could have thought of “use derek against prince and use kai huang liu to get derek”? couldn’t we have spent more time on taylor going off to see axe, one of the few interesting and successful moves made toward taking down prince in this whole episode, and a little less on wendy going “oh no i’m in trouble because i tried to run away from killing prince and didn’t realize i was stepping into one of his traps which wouldn’t even exist if i hadn’t tried to run away. well i guess i’m screwed, carry on without me”?

Speak of the devil (or is she?), the next scene has Kate ordering Wendy and Wags to comply with the new leadership structure at Michael Prince Capital (where it’s publicly announced that they’re on staff, albeit stripped of all authority). I’m suspicious of her behavior here because while her character isn’t warm and fuzzy, she’s not an Über-bitch, either. Please tell me she’s a double agent for someone in the government. She’s too smart not to have a long game. Also curious is Kate’s recruitment of Chuck’s SDNY colleague Amanda Torre at a “Women in Criminal Law” breakfast. She hints that Amanda could take over for her at MPC when she runs for Congress … along with planting a seed of doubt about Chuck and his so-called good intentions.

hm. i haven’t taken “sacker is secretly a double agent!” seriously from damianista, and i still don’t believe in it, but its proposal by someone who actually has an editor forces me to consider it a little more seriously. i don’t think the way she dealt with wendy & wags was really out of character — it’s reminiscent of how she talked to taylor & philip about the dissolution of tmc in the season premiere, and i don’t recall anyone saying that seemed off — but i do wonder what the point of this setup with sacker and amanda, which it seems will continue into 7x11, is going to be. surely it isn’t just “we snipe at each other about how we would never work for the other person’s boss (again) and then go about our business.” (and more broadly i’ve wondered about the point of amanda being introduced at all; it seems her connection with sacker is the answer.) but sacker pitching amanda on taking over her job once she runs for congress doesn’t seem like the move for someone trying to take down prince, unless that’s how she intends to get someone still affiliated with sdny into the building without making prince too suspicious.

Another character who’s been unfairly stuck with the short end of the stick all season is Taylor Mason. It feels like Billions doesn’t know what to do with them. Unfortunately, sending them off to Haddon Hall wasn’t the answer either. Taylor is officially out at MPC, so they show up at Axe’s doorstep, having left their $650 million portfolio behind and determined to “take that fucker down before he rises any higher.” While it’s nice to see Axe and Taylor bonding again, their attempts to figure out how exactly Prince has ensnared Wendy and how they can circumvent his communication blockade didn’t lead to any breakthroughs.

the real dirty secret of this season of billions is that if taylor were leading the charge to take down prince, and was as competent in that role as they are in their actual supporting role, he’d be dead by now. and billions doesn’t know what to do with them because the writers decided that wendy Had to shine this season, and also that axe Had to come back and help save the day, and didn’t see the contradiction in forcing wendy to lead team kill prince while ensuring that she’d never be able to succeed on her own.

Now that Wendy is officially the CEO of Mental, she has full access to the company’s financial data, and the books look a little sketchy. So she has Rian help her do a deeper dive into Mental’s financials. You’ve heard of boy math and girl math, right? Well, Rian says Mental has been doing “Enron math.”

what is it about rian that makes people write the worst things i’ve ever had to read?

During an encrypted FaceTime, Wendy pleads with Axe to return to the U.S. — not for her sake, but for democracy’s sake. (Would someone please explain why Bobby Axelrod is suddenly Captain America?)

if you’re breaking out a marvel reference, i’ll respond by paraphrasing another: he wants to save america so he can go back to being one of the idiots who lives in it.

She rattles off a bunch of Billions plotlines to help Axe better understand Prince’s willingness to throw friends and loved ones under the bus to serve his own needs. When she gets to The One Where Prince Hands Over the Son of a Business Partner for Expedience and The One Where Prince “Let a Climber He’s Trying to Rescue for His Wife Get Taken by the Fucking Chinese for Self-Preservation,” Axe’s eyes light up.

they were really going hard on calling back to prior episodes here! and not at all on considering whether it was Only Axe who could come up with an according scheme.

At a flashy campaign gala at Lincoln Center, Prince and his entourage arrive to the strains of U2’s “Beautiful Day.” Just in time for Axe, clad in the most Axe uniform ever (a Slayer T-shirt and leather jacket), to perform a human record scratch in front of an ashen-faced Prince.

yet another fantastic description.

Axe has the best plus-one ever for the evening: Derek, as in Andy’s climbing lover/the guy Prince had captured by the Chinese government.

since sarene has repeated axe’s description of derek as his plus-one, let me put forward my suggestion that they should fuck.

Derek is more than willing to book himself onto every cable-news program and spill every depraved detail about Mike and Andy Prince’s very, very open marriage. Again, Prince shrugs it off. That is until Axe aims his words squarely at “President Cuck”: Voters don’t pick the guy who “can’t satisfy his own wife.” (I mean, they do, but Axe is on a roll here.)

lol and lmao. the other dirty secret of this season of billions is that they want us to believe “guy who’s never held office before can run for president as an independent and feasibly win” and “guy who’s had extramarital sexual relationships, and whose wife has as well, can’t possibly be elected president” at the same time, and the historical record shows the exact inverse of that.

Sorry, Corey Stoll, but you’re no Paul Giamatti doing Jeffrey DeMunn-as-Senior. That Damian Lewis–as-Axe impression fell flatter than a pancake (eater).

mentions of prince’s axe impression: 2. mentions of chuck’s chuck senior impression: 1. mentions of taylor’s oscar impression: 0, sadly.

Prince wanting U2 to play “Until the End of the World” at his gala was a poetic choice. (The Achtung Baby tune is a fictional conversation between Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot.)

i looked up the lyrics, so let me add some detail: it’s a fictional conversation between jesus christ and judas iscariot that makes them sound like ex-lovers. wonder what prince likes about that!

Throughout the episode, I wondered if Showtime scored the band for a cameo like they did with Metallica in season one. But as soon as I heard the album track of “Beautiful Day” (as opposed to a live version), I knew Bono wasn’t showing up.

i wondered the same thing!

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Damianista): Billions on Showtime, Episode 10: Enemies List

Back in New York, Prince is getting ready to make an announcement about the recent significant structural changes at MPC. Knowing that several employees (read “former Axe Cappers”) will come to Wendy and Wags crying after the announcement, Kate tells Wendy and Wags that, for their own sake, they should comply and act like they fully support Prince’s decisions.

in this case, it couldn’t be anyone other than former axe cappers, seeing as the only people who have been hired since prince took over are 1) sacker, who was present for wendy & wags & taylor being strung up in private, 2) philip, ditto, and 3) dollar bill, a former axe capper. hard to believe prince capital is thriving when he has so few employees who aren’t holdovers from when he showed up. or so few employees, period.

As both plans are now gone, Taylor steps up and takes us all back to Alpha Cup Charity Poker Tournament at Edison Ballroom in Season 2 Episode 3 Optimal Play. “A bad motherfucker once told me hate is nature’s most perfect energy source. Endlessly renewable.” That bad motherfucker needs to sit down and listen to the hate. Fair enough!

and i went so crazy about it!

In Chuck’s mind, Wendy, Taylor and Axe all being unaccounted for attests to the abilities of the enemy they are confronting. Prince is ruthless. Wags thinks Taylor may have bailed out like Colonel Markinson in A Few Good Men but he cannot be more wrong.

i finally looked up this comparison and. uh. colonel markinson “bailed out” via suicide. that doesn’t seem to be what wags means to imply, or what chuck takes from it, but geez.

Honestly, I have also been thinking that Bradford might join the alliance against Prince, especially after his facial expression in Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie when he hears Prince promise to his Taiwanese business partner trade privileges once he becomes the POTUS. But now that Bradford is talking about being filter/buffer/protector to Prince like Kelly and Mattis were to 45, and Haldeman and Ehrlichman were to 37, I am not that sure about his motivations. And is it me or Prince is a bit like 37 because Nixon also had an enemies list of his own and he loved bugging the offices of his opponents:)

it’s not just you, since wendy explicitly compared prince to nixon on the grounds of having an enemies list. but yes, i’ve never expected luke to join team kill prince because he’s only here for prince and for the power he could get from joining prince in the white house.

So Wags takes the necessary risk and tells them all. Still, he adds, there is a level beyond that, a veil, beyond which even he cannot see. And it is my pleasure to share the job ad Wags has for the person they need to do this. “Need the instincts of a truffle hound mixed with a Daniel Negreanu-like ability to think 9 moves ahead, mixed with the cold and steady hand of a sniper a la Barry Pepper in (Saving Private) Ryan. The full package.” There is only one man, ladies and gentlemen, that fits the description.

doesn’t mean there’s only one person that fits the description!

Food for Thought: I keep going back to Wendy telling Wags at the end of Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie that they have to do it like in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. I love the book and the original movie in which 12 people coordinate to murder a man who hurt so many people in the past. And since every word and reference used in Billions has a purpose, I believe it will be an alliance of 12 that will collectively coordinate to take down Prince in the series finale.

i think the validity of this theory expired when prince found out about the assassination attempt before the alliance even reached 6 people, but sure, let’s see where we’re at now.

So let us count: Wendy, Wags, Taylor, Chuck, Ira, and Axe. Six. I am positive that Kate is not the soulless woman she portrays this season, she is just playing the long game, and she will be part of the alliance who takes down Prince. I also think that Kate approaching Amanda at the Women in Criminal Panel they were panelists on together could be a subtle, but effective way of reaching out to Chuck. Seven. And then we have Philip who is not a big fan of Prince since he screwed Prof. Ruloff in Episode 7 DMV. Eight. More importantly, one of the dozen murderers in Murder on the Orient Express is the victim’s right-hand man! So, ladies and gentlemen, I put my money on Scooter to join the alliance against Prince. Scooter’s face spoke volumes when Prince came to his office to say he could not allow him to conduct the NY Philharmonic in Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie. I am positive this is not the first time Prince disappointed Scooter. I am also thinking about Dr. Mayer. Why did she let everyone go to take Wendy as a patient? Out of her big heart? And if she is reporting to someone, who is that? Prince or Scooter? My hunch would be Scooter since Prince has not confronted Wendy about what she said to Dr. Mayer. Scooter may have found out about Wendy’s plan early on from Dr. Mayer and may have been playing along. And I am sure Wendy knows about it all. With Scooter, we have nine We are three people short. I believe one of those may be Andy. She knows Prince better than anyone and that the rescue mission could go wrong only if Prince wanted it to go wrong. Ten. Then we have Bradford. He has been witnessing what kind of man Prince is for a while, and when he realizes that Prince would not let him be the filter/buffer/protector, he may join the ranks of the opposition. Eleven. And, ladies and gentlemen, I believe the last member of the alliance will be Rian. While she was considering to leave the company, once she sees the trap Prince has set up for Wendy, she returns to the office and accepts Philip’s offer to take one of the new partnership slots. I think Rian will play a critical role in the downfall of Prince. And Prince leaving his fingerprints on her tablet in Episode 9 Game Theory Optimal may come in handy soon!

sigh. okay. here’s my analysis:

wendy, wags, taylor, chuck, axe, and ira are givens, barring a shocking last-minute betrayal from one or more of them. 6.

senior and allerd were both tangentially involved in the plot this episode and last, so we have to rule them in. 8.

i still don’t expect sacker to join team kill prince. if she is trying to take him down, which i don’t think she is, i expect it to be for her own ends rather than The Good Of The Country. however, i would ultimately expect amanda to work against prince. 9.

philip is still a wild card because of the question of whether he really signed that waiver and because he now possesses chekhov’s signoff power which has yet to be used. if he’s prince’s man to the end, none of that serves any purpose. 10.

i’m not sure andy will be involved any further, but derek is already involved. 11.

i don’t expect luke to change sides. scooter is a maybe, but leaning toward no.

let’s look outside mpc. winston is around and will be back for 7x11 for purposes & with motivations unknown. mafee will surely come back at some point, and he’d never take prince’s side in this.

now let’s look inside mpc, where the prince cappers’ loyalties are about to be tested. ben & tuk may quit, but would they go over to axe? would rian give up on her partnership slot to fight against prince? what about dollar bill & victor?

shut up about prince’s fingerprints! shut up about prince’s fingerprints!

Entertainment Weekly: Billions recap

kyle did not do a recap of this episode. can’t say i’m too broken up about that.

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Gingersnap): The Unbeatable, Unstoppable, Unparalleled MVPs from Billions Season 7 Episode 10, “Enemies List”

Gingersnap Oh my gosh, you guys! This episode was the best episode of Billions season seven, and dare I say, one of the best episodes of the entire series.

go rate it ten stars on imdb, why don’t you?

Preet Bharara vs Donald Trump Vibes – Chuck and Prince. Chuck pretends to handle the Kai Huang Liu situation for Prince by releasing the NFT scammer to the Taiwanese authorities as a gesture of good faith in hopes Prince won’t fire him upon his 1600 Pennsylvania Ave residency. That way Prince won’t have to look duplicitous in pardoning the son of his business associate while President of the United States. This mirrors the notion of Bharara’s SDNY ousting after refusing to submit his resignation as part of the 2017 dismissal of U.S. attorneys when Trump was president. Chuck is being proactive.

not everything is about trump! and billions already alluded to the ousting of US attorneys after the 2017 inauguration by having chuck being one of the few US attorneys who hung on after the 2017 inauguration until he was fired at the end of season 3! if anything, this is reflecting that earlier plot point!

Axelrod Defined – Wags sums it up perfectly. Instincts of a truffle hound + next level poker player + a cold-hearted but steady-handed sniper. Yep, that’s our Bobby Axelrod.

axe wasn’t even the best poker player at haddon hall this episode!

When the Protégé Counsels the Mentor Award – Taylor. Taylor reminds Axe that even Icahn, Buffet and Ackman could strategize the needed moves, then Taylor brought it back full circle to season 2, episode 3 ‘Optimal Play‘ by re-quoting back to Axe his own advice, “A bad motherfucker once told me ‘Hate is nature’s most perfect energy source. Endlessly renewable.’ Lean into that feeling. Because what this is going to take is one hate-fueled bad motherfucker.”

they gave that advice to their own protégé first and now they’re giving it back to their former mentor! the real full circle!

Thanos The Mad Titan – Prince.

PLEASE get some other source material to reference.

Damianista […] Perfect Job Ad – Wags Wags’ description of the person the alliance needs for their operation against Prince to be successful would make the perfect job ad! “Need the instincts of a truffle hound mixed with a Daniel Negreanu-like ability to think 9 moves ahead, mixed with the cold and steady hand of a sniper a la Barry Pepper in (Saving Private) Ryan. The full package.” It is perfect because there is only one person that fits the description!

[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

Lady Trader […] The Dr. Spock Award: I have likened Taylor to Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan several times “From the Trader’s Desk”, but this week they get the Dr. Spock award for helping Axe with Gordie. I’m sure Taylor will combine the two Spocks and give Gordie very good logical advice.

i think you’re overestimating taylor’s skill as a child psychologist. (you also don’t understand spock, but that’s an issue for another time.)

TheTailThatWagsTheDog The So-Close to Being There Award – Goes to me. I was supposed to be in that scene outside Lincoln Center. They had put out a general casting call for extras and I had applied and been accepted to be in it. I was all set to go to New York and Lincoln Center. I was going to be in a scene with Damian Lewis and Corey Stoll! This was going to be SO FRICKIN’ AWESOME! And then the day before I was supposed to go up to NYC I got this email

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN!

this email is strengthening my suspicion that the gala scene was supposed to be longer and got cut down from what it was. my other piece of proof for that: this clip seemingly showing andy and ayles on set for that scene, though they did not appear in the episode.

Lost Souls Award (tie) – Sacker and Philip. Sacker is just plain flat-out obnoxious to Wendy and Wags, and Philip looks like a corporate zombie when talking to the traders (especially Rian and Tuk). Can either one of them save their soul in these last two episodes? How can Sacker think any of this is ok knowing how Prince has bent and broken the law this season? How can Philip stand to do Prince’s bidding knowing what Prince did to his mentor? One of them has to show some kind of backbone here, don’t they? That would be awful if they stayed this particular course.

i mean, this is the “giving in to the lure of money and power at the cost of your moral compass” show, but yes, i do expect one of them (philip) to ultimately switch sides.

LOL Award – Prince asking for loyalty from his traders. Didn’t he try to (and is continuing to try to) spy on his own workers. Why exactly would they show fealty to him? Is he that delusional? Don’t answer that.

well he has all their money, so how could they possibly be disloyal to him??? (lol. lmao.)

Best Musical Reference – In The Air Tonight – Phil Collins – why is it that when someone references this song, the only thing they talk about is that drum fill? I wonder if Phil is perturbed by that, that this really good song of his is basically only known for a 10-second drum fill?

ben didn’t only talk about the drum fill — the reason he brought it up was to quote one of the verses in reference to his suspicions about the organizational changes. (and the drum fill bangs.)

I’m Sorry But He Doesn’t Belong Award – Tuk. I know he’s a really sweet guy, but does anyone believe that he would be employed by a mercenaries group of traders and dealers the likes of which Prince would hire? I don’t. He doesn’t fit – never really did. Rudy fit better than Tuk did. Sorry – just calling it like I see it.

rudy was incompetent. tuk has actually made some successful plays. and prince has barely hired anyone since he took over, so it’s not like he can afford to lose tuk at this juncture.

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Lady Trader): “From the Trader’s Desk” Don’t Kick the Hornet’s Nest! Billions S7E10 “Enemies List”

turns out lady trader posted a standard recap of this episode after all!

Before I get into the Axe/Prince cage match, I want to address and explain some financial questions I got on X (formerly known as Twitter) and then go into some observations. A few readers wanted to know why at the end of the episode, Prince tells Scooter, Kate, and Philip to go to all cash and clear the portfolio of every position. He is doing this because now that he knows his enemies are circling, it will be much harder for them to hurt him financially if the fund is in all cash. No companies that they can buy out, no insider trading claims, etc. However, there are several downsides to this strategy. Prince Capital just sold all the fund’s holdings in foreign investments and in fully invested in US-based assets. Going to all cash in such a short turnaround time would cause people to ask, “What does he know that we don’t?” and “Why is he getting out of American investments?” For someone running for President of the United States, bailing on the country you want to lead is not a good look. Also, the selling of all those assets at once would cause enormous market fluctuations. Prince Capital has billions of dollars of assets under management – you don’t just unwind that number of stocks, bonds, and private equity investments without causing havoc to the markets. Additionally, you are not going to continue to be the best performing fund on the Street if you are all cash. You can place your money in high yielding bonds and treasuries, but you are still not going to get nearly the kind of returns you would if you were fully invested; I also don’t think your clients will be willing to pay a 2/20 fee for cash positions. They are paying for active management, not fixed income. Finally, you have a staff of traders, analysts, and portfolio managers – what are they supposed to do all day if they can’t trade?

certainly all relevant points! i believe someone specifically mentioned in 7x11 that it would be hard to justify a 2 and 20 fee for cash, though i can’t recall who. though by the end of 7x11 it’s hard to assert that prince Has a staff of traders, analysts, and portfolio managers.

Last week in my own Q&A, I asked why Rian didn’t know Mental was controlled by Prince through a shell company. Well, this week we know why – it was a set up by Prince the whole time. The financials both Wendy and Rian saw were fake. They were numbers that Prince wanted both to see in order for the offer to be tempting enough for Wendy, and to be endorsed by Rian. How could this happen? Mental is a private company, which means there is less public information published about it. If it were a public company, it would be required to file various reports to the SEC, like 10-K and 10-Q reports that would state the company’s balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow. It would be much harder to fake the numbers on a public company. No doubt it has been done (like Rian states about Enron) but I do think Rian would have been able to spot it.

that does explain that. and taylor mentioned that it was a private company before wendy and rian looked at the numbers again.

This got me thinking: who was the one who told Wendy to open her folder of job offers? Wasn’t that Dr. Mayer? I have been suspect of Mayer’s intentions from the beginning and this strange coincidence just makes me question her motives even more. She seemed a little bit too pleased when Wendy signed that contract in her office.

dr. mayer did encourage wendy to look at her job offers, but wendy had already begun doing so by that point.

I’m hoping that Rian is stepping into the partnership role to be a saboteur from the inside. She has had a front row seat to see what kind of person Prince is and I can’t believe she is suddenly motivated just by money. The pep talk from Wendy probably put her on the path to doing what is right.

having seen 7x11: lol. lmao.

I was so happy to see Axe and Taylor working together again. From the first time Taylor stepped into the offices of Axe Capital (when they were back in CT) we knew they brought something different to the firm, but more importantly was a good partner with Axe.

we did not know that from the first time taylor stepped into the offices of axe capital, because they were an intern there for three months before we or axe ever met them. but points for mentioning taylor!

When Axe was forbidden from trading back in S3, who did he put in charge of Axe Cap? Taylor. They did temporarily become enemies in S4 (which was all Axe’s doing), but they both realize they bring out the best in each other.

that enmity really began in season 3 and extended into season 5. i don’t think you can say they bring out the best in each other, full stop, and leave it there.

Before I continue, I can’t wait to see exactly how Chuck got Axe to be allowed back in the United States. He got Andolov back by saying he was using Andolov as an expert witness in by commodity fraud case in the oil industry. Is Axe going to be a witness against Prince? And where is Bryan Connerty? I do not believe that the request to Kate to get his law license back was put out there for no reason. I could totally see Bryan being legal counsel for Axe Global when all of this is said and done. He will finally become a lion!

having seen 7x11: i doubt any of this will be relevant 👍

Getting Prince to back down from possibly putting Wendy in jail for 35 years by using Andy’s “friend” Derek is genius.

come on now. we’re all adults here. you can use a term for derek that clearly indicates he and andy were sleeping together, rather than winking and nudging and using air quotes about it.

#billions #7x10 #review roundup #reposting because the original wasn't showing up in my blog tags

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lomappreciationblog · 2 years ago

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Thoughts on the first LOM anime episode!

Short form: It's perfect, you guys.

Long form below: and I do mean long, I have so many thoughts and all of them positive!

Well, first of all, the art is gorgeous! All the characters look great, and I so adore Shiloh especially. They went all out making sure his design looks good, being the main character and all.

The backgrounds! Are! So beautiful!!!

I have to hold back from squeeing, they faithfully recreated the rooms of Home and the setting of Domina - in the church, you can see the organ and the tapestry on the wall! I love the stylization where the backgrounds have sketchy lines, and oooh, the way that tree leaves are made to look like Hiroo Isono's art for the Mana Tree? I don't know how else to describe it, but they did a fantastic job of bringing LoM's storybook visuals to life.

The illustrations for the ED are amazing too! They look like color pencil illustrations and you can see the various Jumi relationships in the art. Rubens and Diana standing side by side, and it seems like the two new blue Jumi characters are friends or partners. The Lucky Clover Sisters are together, and Rubens sees Esmeralda off, which makes sense because one of the possible scenes you can see in the Teardrop Crystal quest is Rubens encouraging Esmeralda to learn magic. It's just....so good. I am a little nervous that both Esmeralda and Rubens are among the Jumi shown with their eyes closed and only Pearl and Elazul are accompanying Shiloh at the very end...I mean, we all know what happens to Rubens and Esmeralda but I hope they get some more scenes at least!

Some more specific character stuff:

It so warms my heart to see what Shiloh's relationship is like with the other villagers. They did a fantastic job showing how much Domina means to him and setting up that he was raised communally by everyone (the part where he mentions he got his house as a gift from the villagers is just...ugh, my heart!!) And the way he deals with Bud and Lisa are so cute too, I love how he tells them not to call him Master and all that but pretty much adopts them anyway, heh. They also gave him an age here, he's 15 years old, so I guess Seraphina is, too? Poor guys having to save the world at so young an age, but that's how the Goddess rolls. Oh yeah, speaking of the Mana Goddess, I kinda wished they didn't show her like in the game's intro, because leaving her appearance to your imagination is more powerful imo, but it's not bad. Her design is pretty, but I don't exactly think it fits what I think of her.

As for Elazul, they handled him so well too!! They introduce him as this rude guy who seems like a meanie but the way he asks Shiloh after to help him apologize to Rachel is just masterful. Because Elazul really was like that in the game! He seems like a jerkass but underneath he's really just a worrywart softie who comes to appreciate the player character a lot. They made his smile so adorable!

And bonus points for showing in the anime that Duelle take his ankles lol, don't underestimate the Onion Knight. Speaking of Duelle, I love that he's this tough no-nonsense guy and shows some experience - again, lines up with what the game shows - he's one's of the very few characters who appears in other areas. And of course he could knock down Elazul - he's the one who gives you a tutorial on fighting!

Oh, and the way they integrated how artifacts work make so much sense! Because in the game you are practically rebuilding the world and only the player character is fully aware of it, but here it's explained as Shiloh uncovering the world that the other inhabitants ceased to be aware of. I just love how they presented the info about how the world's inhabitants grew afraid to desire, but Shiloh is changing that. Ugh, this doesn't make much sense when I type it out! But I just think they really nailed the world of Fa'Diel and did so without making it too exposition-y.

All in all it's a really good first episode! It doesn't get bogged down in too many details while providing all the worldbuilding and character it needs while being absolutely beautiful to look at. I couldn't ask for more. I do love seeing the peaceful everyday life scenes so that was a lovely bonus.

I am aware though, that as someone who played the game (and like a dozen times at that) everything makes sense to me, but to someone who's not aware of LoM it might be a bit confusing. There is that, but I think all in all they did a good job, and I'm looking forward to episode 2!

#legend of mana #legend of mana anime #worth all the wait you guys!#the animation team and writers did such a fantastic job

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tangledmemories · 2 years ago

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Ice Queendom has definitely become one of my favorite pieces of media to take place within the Beacon Era. I feel it did a fantastic job of expanding on several subplots that the original series had neither the time or budget to do in great lengths.

In Volume 1, we see the formation of Team RWBY as Ruby struggles with the responsibilities of being leader, Weiss resolves to be a better teammate and person, and Blake learns to trust her team and open up to them. And also Yang is there.

In Volume 2, the writers and animators do a good job of showing just how far the team has come, both in their dialogue and in their interactions on the battlefield. You can see how much closer they are than before.

But Ice Queendom has the chance to explore the in-between. They show how Weiss and Blake came to understand each other better and resolve their differences. They show how Ruby became more confident as leader and forms a closer bond with Weiss. And also Yang is there.

Overall it's just a great addition to the early volumes as a whole in terms of both story and character work, and I really enjoyed it!

#rwby #rwby ice queendom #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #yang xiao long

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years ago

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Why isn't Nightwing a bigger deal? He has all of Batman's skills and Superman's faith in humanity and is arguably the most beloved hero in the DCU, but most people seem to know him either as the leader of the N̶o̶t̶ ̶J̶L̶ Teen Ttians or just Robin.

Thank you for asking me about Nightwing, I've been wanting to write a piece about him for a while now. The short version is that everyone who claims Dick becoming Nightwing was him "moving out of Batman's shadow and becoming his own man" is completely wrong.

Dick Grayson is a fantastic character, someone who saved Bruce Wayne in-universe both by forcing Batman to grow up a bit, and the countless times he saved Batman's life as his partner whether as Robin or Nightwing. Dick saved Batman in the real world as well, hard to believe but Batman was actually in danger of being cancelled due to poor sales early on. Enter Robin, a young daredevil audience stand in the creators hoped would get kids interested in reading Batman. And it worked! Sales on Batman doubled once Robin showed up which is crazy to think about, but Dick Grayson has always been a popular character. Cartoons like Teen Titans, Batman: The Animated Series, and The Batman only helped grow his audience.

Character-wise, Dick Grayson really does fill a number of crucial roles in the DCU. For Batman, Dick is proof that Batman is a positive force. Meeting Batman helped change Dick for the better, helped him heal after his parents died. With Dick, Batman can take comfort in knowing that yes, he has made a difference in the world for at least one orphan boy, which is all he wanted when he lost his parents himself. To the wider DCU, Dick is a friendly face who convinces others that Batman is competent and not a complete asshole. He took this kid in, trained him to be one of the best heroes the DCU has seen, and did it all out of the kindness of his heart. That someone like Dick can confront the evils of Gotham and not break means there's still hope for that city. As Robin, Dick has led the Titans and is an icon in his own right as The Sidekick, the original, the one every other Robin is built around copying or contrasting. The one all other superhero sidekicks are drawing on as a basis. As Robin Dick Grayson is very much on Batman's level.

Just not as Nightwing. As Nightwing, Dick has been a second rate Daredevil which means he's a third rate Batman (fully prepared to get hate for this but I've read and enjoyed the Miller and Bendis DD runs so I feel entitled to my opinion). A typical Nightwing run tends to go like this: Moving to Bludhaven (which is Gotham... but WORSE!), Dick Grayson usually enrolls in a pointless job we don't care about in order to provide some meaningless soap opera drama that doesn't go anywhere. Patrolling the city as Nightwing, he fights a variety of bad guys who are usually rather lame and unthreatening, with his big bad being a Kingpin knockoff called Blockbuster. Villains are fought, long running plotlines are set up, then everything is abandoned because it's Batfamily event time, and Dick has to run back to Gotham in order to play sidekick again. Usually his involvement is completely superfluous and it would've been better if the writer had gotten to opt out. By the time we finally get back to Nightwing's solo plotlines, the audience has usually ceased to care and the run gets cut short.

That's how Nightwing has been since the New 52 at least. Anyone who thinks that's "becoming their own man" is out of their mind. Dick is so thoroughly in Batman's shadow that he got shot in the head and spent a longer time as "Ric" which everyone fucking hated and sold like shit, than he did as Agent Grayson which was extremely well-received. Reiterating: Ric went on longer than Grayson because of a fucking Batman plotpoint Tom King wanted where Bruce was sad and cut off from the Batfamily because of Dick getting shot. Not just calling out King either, how many times was Kyle Higgins Nightwing run derailed because of Scott Snyder's crossovers? Or how about that entire run getting dumped to the side because Johns wanted to out Dick during Forever Evil, a Justice League/Lex Luthor story? DC has repeatedly made their contempt for Nightwing clear, he's Batman's sidekick still in their eyes, and he serves whatever story role the Batman writer wants.

Hell his best stories tend to have been the ones where he's not Nightwing. He was Robin in a good chunk of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans run. Morrison really showcased his depth as a character when they wrote him as Batman, their time with Dick under the cowl was actually one of the first Batman runs I ever read, and no Nightwing run has ever matched it in terms of quality in my humble opinion. Scott Snyder's work with DickBats also was a high point for the character, showing Dick as competent and examining his relationship with Gotham and the Gordons. King and Seeley gave him one of the best comic runs with Grayson, a series where he wasn't even a "superhero" technically! When it comes to actual pre-New 52 Nightwing runs that are highly recommended where he *is* Nightwing, there's Chuck Dixon and uhhhhhhh... Tomasi's brief run before Dick became Batman? It's not exactly an overwhelming list.

Look there has been good work done with Nightwing, I'm not claiming there hasn't been. Tim Seeley wrote a great run with Nightwing Rebirth. Seeley fleshed out Dick's Rogues Gallery with cool new ones like Raptor, he brought back old foes like Dr. Hurt (why oh why couldn't you have brought back Flamingo too?), he gave Dick's world some character it solely needed. Bludhaven under Seeley is pretty much the only time I've really felt like it lived up to being Dick's city.

The problem with fictional cities is you have to put in the work to give them the character of real cities. You have to make the cities feel like characters in their own right. Gotham is the best example of this, it's a character all it's own, one that tells you a lot about Batman and his cast. In contrast Bludhaven is usually one of the worst. Any place that wants to claim to be worse than the city that is built over the gate to hell and gets wrecked every other month by the Arkham freaks has to really put in the work to compete. Simply put, Bludhaven typically fails utterly. There's nothing about it that makes you really buy it's worse than Gotham, I mean does anyone really think Nightwing's Rogues wouldn't get their lunches eaten by Batman's? No, no one genuinely buys that. When Bludhaven claims to be worse, it just comes across as tryhard, an attribute that does end up telling you about Nightwing in unintentional ways.

So Seeley didn't do that. Instead he created a city built for a hero like Dick Grayson. Someone who is bright and flashy, but does have an element of darkness to him. Someone who loves the spotlight, but often uses it to obscure. Seeley turned Bludhaven into Las Vegas, and that was the fucking best concept for Bludhaven I have ever seen, it makes so much sense. Las Vegas is the "Entertainment Capital of the World" and isn't that the perfect city for a hero who got their start working in the circus? Isn't the aesthetics of the gleaming casinos, the glamorous sex appeal of the performers, and the spectacle of the shows, all being used to cover up the seediness of mob bosses meeting backstage perfect for Nightwing? It's so utterly unlike New York City, yet Las Vegas is still dangerous, it's got a crime culture all it's own. Seeley used it to great effect, as did Humphries during his brief run, and I will always be pissed that DC didn't continue to use it. That should have stuck around and been the definitive look for Bludhaven.

How Seeley's take on Bludhaven was treated feels like a small scale version of how Nightwing in general gets treated. Whenever creators pitched ideas for him, if editorial thought there was potential to break big, they asked for those ideas to be repurposed for Batman instead. Anything big or good gets repurposed for Batman or tossed to the side so Nightwing can go back to his default: having irrelevant adventures in a city that is supposedly worse than Gotham but can't live up to it. Just like how Nightwing is supposedly better than Batman but never gets to show it. Goddamn it's so frustrating seeing his potential get wasted like that.

The Nightwing book should be one of DC's most ambitious books in terms of storytelling. You can go from traditional superhero stories, to romantic soap opera, to spy stories, to crime noir, to horror, to cosmic adventures, and ALL of them would fit because Nightwing is someone who has a foot in both Gotham and Metropolis. He's got friends everywhere on every team, and has been a hero longer than most Leaguers have at this point. No reason DC should still be afraid to let him loose and insisting on hewing close to what Dixon established almost over 30 years ago is only holding him back. At the very least get him some better Rogues, why the hell didn't he get to keep Professor Pyg? That's Dick's villain not Bruce's! Bullshit that they didn't let Dick keep him. Hopefully Flamingo comes back, with a slight revamp I think he'd make a great reoccurring Nightwing Rogue.

Luckily it does look somewhat like Nightwing fans have reason to be optimistic. While Taylor isn't to my taste, DC clearly views him as a "big" writer, and that they put him on Nightwing says a lot. Taylor has been selling well so far, so hopefully he gets to tell his story, hilarious that even he lampshaded having to write Dick running over to Gotham for another tie-in after Taylor's big opening arc was all about Dick committing himself and his money to Bludhaven. Scott Snyder is apparently working on a Black Label Nightwing book which will explore how he's a different detective than Bruce. The Gotham Knights video game has him as one of the main stars, and while Titans is... controversial, it's one of the most popular streaming shows and Dick is the main character. There's a lot of content coming that features him in the starring role, and that will only help his star rise further.

For the first time in, well, ever it feels like DC may be serious about elevating him. Time will tell if it pays off, but I for one choose to be optimistic that the 2020s will be a turning point for Dick Grayson where Nightwing becomes hugely popular in his own right. Not just as Batman's sidekick.

#nightwing #dick grayson #batman #gotham knights #titans #dc comics

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frankendykes-monster · 3 years ago

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In the final act of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, young Phoebe has a sudden realisation about the farm that her family has inherited from her eccentric grandfather. “This isn’t a farm,” she boasts. “It’s a trap.”

She could just as easily be talking about the film itself. Afterlife is a belated sequel to the original Ghostbusters, consigning Ghostbusters II to a weird continuity limbo where Ray still owns an occult bookstore but there’s no way that that the film’s climax could have happened. The film follows the family of Egon Spengler, his estranged daughter and her two grandchildren, who take ownership of his farm shortly after his death. Inevitably, the family unit learns that the eccentric patriarch who abandoned them in the middle of the night with no explanation really did love them all along.

Afterlife is suffocated in a reverential nostalgia that treats the original Ghostbusters as a fetish object. Sure, a casual audience member might watch Ghostbusters as an irreverent mid-eighties comedy that was cleverly skewing Reagan era values, but Afterlife instead sees an earnest classic of American cinema that deserves to be venerated and celebrated as a monument of popular culture. Much like Ivo Shandor erected the skyscraper at 55 Central Park West as a tribute to the Cult of Gozer, Afterlife has been erected as a monument to the cult of Ghostbusters.

It’s telling that the movie’s subtitle is “Afterlife” rather than “Resurrection.” This is not a movie about breathing new life into an existing property. It’s not about finding anything new or interesting to do with these characters or concepts. Instead, it’s about finding a way to tap into the audience’s desire for Ghostbusters nostlagia as a way to wring a few more dollars. In its own way, Afterlife is as cynical as Peter Venkeman in the original Ghostbusters, but at least Venkeman had the decency not to disguise his ruthless pragmatism as earnest sentiment.

Afterlife is a nightmare coloured in shades of sepia-tinted nostalgia. It is a story about how the best that children can ever hope to accomplish is to emulate their forebearers, foresaking any identity of their own as they grapple with problems that their grandparents singularly failed to resolve. It is a story about how even death is not enough to remove a respected actor and writer from his obligations to a piece of intellectual property, and a reminder of how easily the dead can be animated to serve the demands of the living.

In the world of Afterlife, the dead exist to satisfy the living. This isn’t nostalgia, it is necrophilia.

Before diving into Afterlife, it’s worth reflecting a little bit on what Ghostbusters actually was. Not how the film is remembered, but how it actually existed. The film was set and shot in eighties New York City. Despite the fantastical premise of a team of ghost hunters, the movie largely reflected the reality of the city at that moment in time. It is a story about three academics fired from Columbia University in the middle of a recession, and a fourth team member who is so desperate for a job that he will believe anything that they pay him to believe.

The original Ghostbusters is among those rare films that captures the spirit of a particular time and place on film. It reflects the New York of the era in the same way that films like Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, After Hours, The Warriors, Streets of Fire, Panic in Needle Park and even Escape from New York do. It’s a film that doesn’t couch its portrayal of its time and place in trite sentimentality or easy nostalgia. Egon himself is candid that the team are working in a “demilitarised zone.”

Afterlife doesn’t unfold in any real place. Nominally, the film takes place in a small town in rural Oklahoma, but it never feels like anywhere tangible. It feels like an image of rural America conjured from the paintings of Norman Rockwell or the dreamscapes of Terrence Malick. It’s all golden fields, American flags, old barns filled with treasure. “I didn’t know places like this still existed,” Callie tells her two children on their first night in town. She’s half right. Places like this never existed. It’s revealing that director Jason Reitman had to take his cast and crew to Alberta, Canada to create the illusion of this pasteral United States.

To be clear, there is something to be said for depicting rural America on screen. However, it should be depicted as it is, not as the nostalgic fantasy of those with no real attachment to it. There is something to be said for a version of Afterlife that treats rural Oklahoma in the same way that Ghostbusters treated New York City, perhaps evoking Winter’s Bone or Mickey and the Bear. Instead, the version of Oklahoma featured in Afterlife is the version of America conjured into being in “Main Street, U.S.A.” in Disneyland. It’s a fantasy.

Then again, Afterlife trades in fantasy. Afterlife demonstrates the siren call and the dangers of nostalgia. It demonstrates the crucial difference between nostalgia and history. Nostalgia presents the past as the audience wishes it was. It offers them a comforting illusion over the messy reality. It throws a warm blanket around its audience, and it assures them that there was a time and place when everything was right, and that this can be recaptured if they close their eyes and they wish hard enough. It’s a fiction, but it’s a comforting one.

Afterlife essentially reduces the familiar Ghostbuster mythos down to a cheap knock-off of an Amblin picture. This is part of the film’s nostalgic drive. The casting of Finn Wolfhard tips the movie’s hand, evoking the way in which Stranger Things plays with the nostalgia for eighties children’s movies like The Goonies. Of course, this suggests at least two levels of refraction from the original Ghostbusters, both in transposing the wry and irreverent original to the logic of an Amblin film, and then filtering that already misplaced juxtaposition through the lens of Stranger Things nostalgia. There’s little of the essence of Ghostbusters left.

Afterlife reduces anything potentially interesting to a set of familiar iconography, expecting the audience to gasp and clap in recognition as some Pavlovian response. Reitman’s camera glides over proton packs and lingers on ghost traps like it is taking in the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of The Lost Ark. This isn’t just awe, it is religious worship. At one point, the young characters discover a body perfectly preserved in a glass sarcophagus. It would be an easy metaphor for what Afterlife is attempting, but Afterlife is more interested in puppetting that corpse for its own ends.

There’s a ruthless cynicism to the nostalgia lurking beneath the colour-corrected fields of gold in Afterlife. The bulk of the movie is built around the legacy of the character of Egon Spengler. Spengler was played by Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. Ramis also co-wrote those films, and was a guiding creative light on the films. The actor was unfortunately the first member of the original cast to past away, and there’s something deeply depressing in the way that Afterlife treats Ramis’ passing as an opportunity.

Not only does Ramis’ death give the movie cheap emotional leverage, it also turns Ramis himself into a prop that the movie can manipulate to serve its own ends. The opening sequence of Afterlife features the death of Ego Spengler, played by a barely-glimpsed body double. Spengler’s ghost quite literally haunts the rest of the film, communicating with his family through ambiguous actions. He plays chess with his granddaughter Phoebe. He seems to guide his grandson Trevor to the old car in the barn.

Watching Afterlife, it’s perhaps easier to imagine Ray or Peter in the Egon role. Ray was always the character most obsessed with mythology and ghostbusting, and it’s easy to imagine Ray giving up everything in his life to go live on a farm in the middle of nowhere because some occult prophecy told him to. Peter was the most sexually active and most commitment-phobic of the four, making it easier to believe that he could father a daughter and abandon that daughter when times got tough. (It’s interesting to imagine Afterlife as something closer to Broken Flowers.)

In contrast, Egon is a much harder fit for what Afterlife requires of the character. In the original Ghostbusters, the idea that Egon would be sexually or romantically interested in anyone was treated as a joke. In Ghostbusters II, Egon was – aside from Peter – the member of the team least bothered by the fact the team was out of business, because it let him run his other experiments. In Afterlife, the biggest piece of the puzzle isn’t that Egon mysteriously abandoned his family, it’s that he had a family in the first place and that he would move to Oklahoma.

Of course, it feels like Afterlife settled on Egon because Harold Ramis was dead. His passing meant that Ramis was both less likely to object to the characterisation of Egon as a terrible father and less likely to object to having to show up on set for more than a day of filming at the climax. With Ramis gone, Egon can be rendered easily within a computer and cast with a body double, making him easier to manipulate as a piece of hollow intellectual property.

At the heart of Afterlife is the same theme of generational failure that defines so many of these nostalgic sequels, both good and bad. It’s there in Han Solo’s failure with Kylo Ren in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens. It’s there in Danny working through his own father issues in Doctor Sleep. It’s even present in something as light and inconsequential as Coming 2 America. At the heart of Afterlife is the idea that the older generation have failed their children.

This is most obvious with Egon, who abandoned his wife and daughter without even saying goodbye and turned his back on his friends without any warning. (“Egon Spengler can rot in hell,” muses Ray at one point in Afterlife, and it seems like a reasonable way to talk about a close personal friend who steals property and leaves without saying goodbye.) Callie never knew her father. Phoebe and Trever never knew their grandfather. That was entirely his choice, particularly in an era of mobile phones and internet access. Egon failed the people who were relying on him.

Indeed, Afterlife underscores the point more directly. Whereas Ghostbusters II imagined the team dealing with a new threat and a new enemy threatening New York, Afterlife resurrects the threat of Gozer and Zuul from the original Ghostbusters. Part of this is just simple nostalgia – a reminder of the audience of that thing they liked from the original film, to tickle the nostalgia receptors. However, it’s also a compelling argument that the main characters of the original Ghostbusters were failures. They had one simple job, to defeat Zuul and Gozer. They failed at it, as Zuul and Gozer still threaten the world.

There is a potentially interesting story in here. It would be interesting to interrogate the idea that this elder generation fundamentally failed in their responsibility to make the world a better place for those who would follow, that they failed to deal with their own messes, and that their failures will return to haunt their children and grandchildren. Phoebe and Trevor are kids. They did not ask to be embroiled in an epic existential struggle to save the world. If Egon and his friends had actually done what they set out to do, maybe their kids wouldn’t have to risk their lives to “finish what they started in 1984.”

Unfortunately, Afterlife lacks any real introspection. It doesn’t see this story as a tragedy. In the world of Afterlife, it’s made clear that the only possible function of children and grandchildren is to affirm the older generation, to inflate the egoes of those who came before and to validate their life choices. Of course these descendents become empty recepticles for the hopes and dreams of those who came before, what more could children hope to be? What could children want other than to reflect their forebearers’ glory back at them? Why would these people have any hopes or dreams of their own?

Early in Afterlife, young Phoebe is established as effectively a clone of Egon Spengler, rewiring the house’s electricity in her spare time. However, Phoebe has the arrogance of youth. She has her own interests, and she doesn’t believe in ghosts. Luckily, there’s a middle-aged superfan nearby to helpfully explain to her how she is wrong, and that she needs to reconnect with her heritage. The kids in Afterlife are not characters, but functions. Phoebe’s closest friend is a young kid named “Podcast”, a choice that handily saves the film the effort of investing in characterisation.

Afterlife has a great cast. McKenna Grace is a wonderful child actor. Carrie Coon is one of the finest actors of her generation. Paul Rudd is charismatic and charming. However, none of these actors are given anything to play beyond veneration for what came before. In a moment that feels lifted from Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, Callie completes her emotional arc by acknowledging, “I’m Callie Spengler.” Paul Rudd’s Greg Grooberson is the film’s requisite fan boy. It’s revealing that Ghostbusters II cast Rick Moranis in the role, while while Afterlife flatters fans by casting the sexiest man alive.

There is, of course, a none-too-subtle reality subtext at play in all of this. Afterlife is directed by Jason Reitman, the son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman. It appears that even behind the camera, children exist primary as extensions of their parents’ dreams. The press circuit for Afterlife has largely consisted of the younger Reitman talking about Ghostbusters the way that Afterlife expects Phoebe to think about Egon, something of a homecoming to a part of his life with which he had a "complicated" relationship. Even the meta-narrative of Afterlife is couched in cynical and trite sentimentality.

Of course, Jason Reitman is only returning to Ghostbusters because of the commercial failure of his own more recent projects like Tully and Young Adult. Had those projects found an audience, it seems likely that Reitman would still be making his own films quite apart from the legacy of his father. In some ways, Reitman’s return to the Ghostbusters franchise feels like that millennial tragedy, the sad story of more and more young people forced to move back home with their parents.

Of course, Afterlife never actually deals with any of the interesting subtext underpinning this generational saga. Egon is never really held to account for leaving his wife and child behind. The Ghostbusters are never called out for failing to properly tidy up after themselves when they confronted Gozer. Instead, Afterlife is a nostalgic fantasy about how the kids will never have to take the training wheels off the bike, because daddy always loved them and will always be their for them.

Despite all the hard work that Phoebe and Trevor do to clean up the mess they inherited, Afterlife still insists that the grown-ups should swoop in at the last minute to claim all the glory. (It’s also a pragmatic production choice, as it allows the film to indulge in nostalgic fan service, while also acknowledging that none of the original actors – with the exception of Dan Ackroyd – seem particularly excited to be back on set for longer than a day.) It’s very similar to Lando Calrissian swooping in on the Millennium Falcon at the climax of The Rise of Skywalker, a reassurance that the older generation is still virile and hip and cool.

It’s crass and cynical and vulgar, particularly in its treatment of Ramis. Afterlife naturally ends by arguing that Egon really wasn’t a terrible father after all, but the logic is hardly convincing. Then again, Afterlife understands that the logic doesn’t have to be convincing. It is just telling the audience what it thinks they want to hear, what they are primed to process without any critical insight or consideration. It’s easier to believe that these sorts of absent and failed fathers were really great people than it is to engage with the actual consequences of their actions.

Like The Rise of Skywalker, Afterlife wraps a warm blanket around its audience, and promises them a return to a time when things were better. It lets them travel in a way a child travels. Round and round, and then back home again – to a place where busting made them feel good. If the goal of nostalgia is to make the past look so much better than the present, Afterlife succeeds in that alone. After all, anything has to be better than this.

- Darren Mooney writing for them0vieblog

#ask to tag #for clarity sake i still think ghostbusters 1984 is bad and its treatment in this film is bizarrely hilarious

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canmom · 3 years ago

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PMMM?

Oooh, OK then. So I actually wrote an Animation Night post on Madoka, back on Animation Night 10 - hard to believe that's 81 weeks ago now. Back then, though, my posts were much shorter and I didn't discuss the production in much detail. However I did end up talking about SHAFT again later in the post about Kizumonogatari on Animation Night 51.

Anyway, I love Madoka. I admit, my engagement with the series has just been the original anime and Rebellion, and not any of the expanded world of gacha games and manga and the spinoff anime adapting the gacha - but I would rank Rebellion as one of my favourite animated films and I can't wait to see what they do with the upcoming sequel.

Last time I wrote about Madoka, I mostly wrote about Gen Urobuchi. I generally speaking think he's an immensely talented writer and I've enjoyed basically all the stuff he's worked on from Psycho-Pass to Fate Zero (yet to watch through Kamen Rider Gaim or play Sayo no Uta but I hear great things), but Madoka wouldn't be half the show it is without the incredible design work of Ume Aoki, distinctive direction of Yukihiro Miyamoto [and Akiyuki Shinbo overseeing all SHAFT projects, but see below], fantastic animation of too many key animators to name, gorgeous music of Kalafina and of course the absolutely brilliant Jan Švankmajer-influenced [Animation Night 50] collage animation of the incredibly talented duo Gekidan Inu Curry [see sakugablog for a nice retrospective of them].

The Madoka series excels in choreography and storyboarding - the classic austere, geometric SHAFT environments and striking camera angles, and the abstracted dance-like action sequences in which aesthetic elements and symbols flow into each other. And then they kick that up another notch or several in the movie, which indulges fully in Inu Curry's style. I still consider it some of the most beautiful sequences of animation set to music I've ever seen.

Anyway, I've only seen a bit of the SHAFT oeuvre (alongside Madoka, that's Bake- and Kizumonogatari), although the story of the studio is fascinating, like something out of a play - the charismatic Akiyuki Shinbo and his friends reorganising a fairly minor studio into one of the most distinctive of its time. Let me quote kVin (who else?):

The task Shinbo received at SHAFT wasn’t simple: he wasn’t going to direct a new series, but rather the whole studio. He became an overall supervisor of their entire output, while also guiding younger artists to make sure this style would live on. This marked the beginning of his unusual moonlighting, juggling jobs in a way that didn’t really allow him to do as much classic directorial work. To date, Shinbo has never been the sole director of a SHAFT series because he can’t. But he didn’t face this crazy challenge all by himself, of course. With his good pals Tatsuya Oishi and Shin Oonuma they formed the appropriately nicknamed Team Shinbo; a group of artists with compatible sensibilities, who had worked together in the past, and shared the desire to construct a new SHAFT.

kVin notes that the SHAFT style is an heir, through the influence of artist Nobuyuki Takeuchi who had had a significant role on Utena, to an incredibly influential director I've still yet to give a proper discussion on Animation Night, Osamu Dezaki, by way of - of course - the master of symbolism-dense, technically avant-garde anime, Kunihiko Ikuhara. I'll save a full discussion of that for another time, though. In any case, this was successful - perhaps too successful. Many of their best animators got caught up for years in the sprawling Kizumonogatari project, while kVin and other commenters more familiar with their work say the SHAFT style, once bold and innovative, became frozen in and lost its original contextual meaning, and some years later many SHAFT staff ended up leaving the studio for less overbearing work environment.

Madoka came just two years after Bakemonogatari, though, so the Team Shinbo style was still plenty fresh. Not surprisingly, it was quickly a huge hit. In Western fandom, it kind of became that meme show, where the magical girls have guns and being meguca is suffering. There's a bunch of extremely bad misreadings out there (it's grimdark! it's a 'deconstruction'! and the backlash to that - didn't you hear, gen urobuchi wants little girls to not have hope!) but that's just how anime fandom is I guess. It's certainly in dialogue with other magical girl shows, but to me it seems in a clearly appreciative way. Thematically, it's frankly not too far afield from something like Sailor Moon.

But you've asked for me to answer an ask meme, so let me do that instead :p

don’t watch period | drop if not interested within 2-3 episodes | give it a go, could be your thing | 5 star recommendation

fav characters: Homura - more on that when we get to 'unpopular opinion'! - and Kyōko, I generally really like the concept of a burned out cynical traumatised magical girl lol

least fav characters: is it too easy to say Sayaka's cardboard violin-playing boyfriend with nonspecific anime disease whose name I can't even be bothered to look up? I guess that's the whole tragedy of her character, she wants to save this boy who just resents her for it, but you can do so much better Sayaka!

fav relationship: haha well Homura/Madoka is obviously the central framing one innit, but actually there are dynamics I really like here, especially in Rebellion. again, more on that in 'unpopular opinions'. outside of that, I think you could write pretty good fic of just about any pair of girls. They hint a bit at Sayaka/Kyōko during the last big fight sequence in Rebellion (possibly more earlier? it's been a while?) and that's cute. I admit I'm not much of a shipper these days.

fav moment: There's many I could name, but one I keep coming back to is the sequence in Rebellion when the magical girl squad deploys and each of the girls gets a brief abstract sequence illustrating their vibe. The music and imagery is sooo good here. I also love the gunfight later in the film with the time-frozen bullet trails. And the incredible climactic battle when the whole world breaks down around Homura as she realises the truth of what's going on and becomes a witch again. Am I just naming the whole of Rebellion at this rate? OK, I admit it, years on in which I've watched literally hundreds more animated films, I still think this one's great.

headcanons/theories: This is clearly a redemptive headcanon that's not especially well signalled by the text, but the reason for all the nonsensical stuff about entropy and ancient aliens is that Kyubey is a low-level functionary who doesn't understand anything half as well as it pretends. The Incubators didn't cultivate human civilisation over the centuries and give us technologies, that's just a convenient lie in the moment, and Kyubey doesn't really understand what it is that they're harvesting from the magical girls very well at all. But because the girls are like, what, middle schoolers, they don't have the background to pull Kyubey up on his misunderstanding of thermodynamics lol.

unpopular opinion: OK. oKAY. let's do this again shall we. strap in. I went over this some time previously when I first watched Rebellion (good god that was hard to find, tumblr's search functions are a travesty) but my comments amounted mostly to *gestures at Stirner, who I hadn't read and still haven't*, so let's have another shot at justifying this Take...

Here we go: I still don't think Homura is the bad guy at the end of Rebellion. Which seems to be the shared opinion of every girl I know who's seen the film but in wider fandom is basically nonexistent as a take. I don't necessarily think Homura has the answer, but I don't think Madoka permanently sacrificing herself for the sake of every hurting person in the universe was a happy ending in the first place - Homura's insistence on being the one to save Madoka and her lack of imagination in trying to reconstruct the pantomime of a 'normal' life is surely an unhealthy fixation, but she's right that the situation was intolerable and something did have to be done about it. The tension between Madoka's agency and Homura's, and whether their desires and self-sacrificing impulses can be reconciled, is a productive one.

Now, the end of Madoka is something that produces endless interpretations. Back in May last year there was a fascinating discussion on here between @azdoine, @businesstiramisu and @anarcha-catgirlism getting into the characters' various saviour complexes and the possible religious readings of their arcs in the series's broadly Buddhist cosmology.

Visually, the film pulls out all the symbols in the SHAFT toolkit to suggest that Homura is as evil as she makes out - the mouth closeups, the headtilts, the cadence and tone of the dialogue. But it also gives us quite a few lines of evidence that Homura is onto something. Notably, it makes clear that Homura has not saved Madoka at the expense of all the other Magical Girls - outside her pocket universe, the Law of the Cycle still exists. Whether Madoka can truly be happy there is another question. It also gives us a very blatant image that Madoka as 'Madokami' is still suffering with an arm covered in self-harm scars:

Admittedly this film is about as visually dense as an Ikuhara anime and I don't blame anyone for not reading the implications in this very brief cut but it's fairly important, I think. Madokami may be taking the girls up to heaven, but it's a very impersonal heaven, and the strain it's placing on her is evident. Because I've increasingly caught on that a universal self-sacrificing impulse to save everyone, however understandable, isn't actually a great thing.

Even if you can't sympathise with Homura - and I admit, a lot of my sympathy comes for her rhetoric (desire over rules) more than her actions, and you could make an argument that trapping Madoka in a false pocket universe after struggling to escape one made by the Incubators and herself across the whole film is deeply ironic - overall, in any case, I feel that the ending of Rebellion is at least a very apt extension of the tragic arcs of the two characters. Not to mention a fascinating discussion point and far richer than the happy ending that was, I believe I read at one point, originally planned before Shinbo requested a darker ending.

Yeah, it is very sudden, probably too much so - that presentation does make it seem like a 'shocking twist! Homura's bad now' which is perhaps one reason why a lot of people reacted badly to it. I'm not exactly sure where they should have foreshadowed it; at least it's not like they don't spend a lot of time on it afterwards showing you just where Homura is coming from.

how’d you find it: Without Rebellion, I feel like Madoka is 'merely' a very good magical girl anime with excellent art direction, some creative twists on the format, and a darker tone than usual... with Rebellion, it's something fascinating that has completely hooked me.

So I really can't wait to see if they can keep the ball rolling in the Rebellion sequel, whenever that lands. Although the breakup of Kalafina will be a tragic blow. I don't know how you do Madoka without Kalafina.

random thoughts: More a bit of trivia than anything, but as far as one of the lasting influences of Madoka, Yoko Taro asked Kimihiko Fujisaka to think of the series when designing the Intoners for Drakengard 3. Which proved to be a great decision.

I admit, there's a whole side of Madoka which I am not familiar with. I tried starting Magia Record once but bounced off what seemed to be a simple recap of the opening beats of the series - I need to give it another shot some time because there are some spectacular clips from season 2. Per some of @azdoine's posts which I only vaguely recall, it sounds like they've been monkeying around a bit with retconning some of the themes and logic of the series which would be a shame but whatever, I don't believe in 'canon'.

Hope that satisfies you as an answer, anon!

#puella magi madoka magica #anime #madoka rebellion spoilers #solicit bryn's anime opinions

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athrivingpadawan · 3 years ago

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This episode was so good!

First off, it’s crazy to think I’ve got followers on this account now--I originally joined Tumblr just to reblog a few things here and there, enjoy all the cool recipes and aesthetic posts, have my own little corner of the internet...then my inner nerd kicked in this past year and now I’m addicted! It’s been fun to join in with the rest of the Star Wars community on here, especially as The Bad Batch has come out and everyone’s put on their tinfoil hats to speculate about where it’s going. I’m grateful for all of you who have followed me, and for the discussions I’ve had with some of you about TBB. ^^

Now, heads up for spoilers if you haven’t seen the latest episode, because I do want to share my thoughts about it. And forgive me in advance, I’m a little tired, so a few of my thoughts might be messy:

Alright, where do I even begin with War Mantle...like, jeez louise, that was insane. Like, Republic Commandos?? My dude Gregor??? I was not expecting them at all, and both were happy surprises! And getting to see Echo have more emotional moments--even leading the squad into taking on the mission to rescue Gregor--was wonderful. Especially when he reminds the guys that they stuck out their necks to rescue him on Skako Minor...He had so many great moments this episode, and I hope in the next one, we get to see him step up as a leader in place of Hunter, and possibly even have another reunion with Rex.

Then there’s Kamino. Enough time has passed that project War Mantle has effectively taken over, and the clones are being successfully phased out. I just want to know where all the clones are going? Nala Se is evacuating a lot of them, but I’m honestly getting weird vibes about their future. After all, we only see three clones in Rebels, and there’s no hint that there are others out there. I’m definitely curious about where that is going, and how the writers will reveal what happened to the clones who make it off Kamino. And speaking of Nala Se, she’s always been a mysterious character, and I used to think she was on the side of the Empire, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve seen people on Reddit talking about how she really did care for the clones, but was protective of the inhibitor chip, because it was there as a failsafe. That she never really knew the true purpose of them. In this episode, she really does seem to care about what happens to the clones, even if she only sees them as projects, and wants nothing to do with Lama Su and his future plans. I have so many more thoughts on Nala Se, but I do think we’re leading up to her either sacrificing herself in some way, or even leading an uprising against the Empire. Because she did not seem excited about Rampart’s offer to her, and hasn’t said anything to agree with the Empire’s opinions against clones that I remember...

At the end of the episode, with Hunter, don’t get me started on how sad that was. One of the codes he lives by is not leaving any of the Batch behind. He followed it for Omega after finding out who she was. He’s been struggling the whole season with the guilt of leaving Crosshair to the Empire, to the point he’s been shoving it down and trying to avoid it. He broke his code, and that’s broken him. Then he gets captured, and orders his brothers to leave him. The code is shattered again, and it is gut wrenching. Then you’ve got that scene with Omega begging the others to not leave him, and for once, her desire to help falls flat on everyone’s ears. They have to follow their sergeant’s orders even though they don’t want to; they have to stay safe, for his sake. It goes back to the arguments on here about leaving Crosshair...how can you rescue your brother, if you die in the process of trying to save him?

As sad as this scene was, as a writer, I have to say how proud of it I am too. The writing team did a fantastic job, in my opinion, setting up Omega specifically, to fail here. Even though Echo was the primary reason the group took on this mission, Omega’s altruism played a role in it. The past two episodes, her beautiful selflessness has led to success, securing the Batch a true ally in Cid, and possibly one in Roland down the road, because she stood up for him. However, while her selflessness (and to an extent, the purity of her young heart) is noble, it can easily be turned against her, resulting in her or others getting into trouble. At some point, it was bound to lead to a loss of some capacity for the group. Yes, she has helped the Batch to see things from a different perspective. After all, they haven’t exactly been all that altruistic since the fall of the Republic, so there was a good purpose in her pushing them in that way. She’s been giving them a purpose outside of simple survival. But now, Omega is getting a necessary dose of harsh, cold reality that will humble and mature her moving forward. I can imagine that next episode, she’s going to be feeling guilty, or angry in some way. The light in her eyes is going to be dimmer, and Omega is going to start becoming a different character, if the writers execute this well.

It all reminds me of Ahsoka, in the early seasons of TCW. Y’all remember when she was super cocky and headstrong, and that was the most annoying part about her? Then it caused an entire fighter squadron’s deaths, because she wanted to do things her way? It led to her developing into a more collected, rational person, maturing her in ways lectures from Anakin never would have. Omega is luckily not this extreme, but her big flaw has been her naivety, her heroic little heart, and unfortunately, despite what Hunter and the others have been trying to tell her, she’s been determined to help as many people as she can. It’s overridden her ability to properly strategize, and see situations for what they really are. She has now learned, the hard way, what Hunter has been saying all along.

Finally, the animation in this episode. I watch this show with my dad, and we’re both always in awe of how realistic it is. And this episode, is it even possible to say it’s been better than the others? Like the trees around Hunter when he’s fallen to the forest floor are so real, I thought they had tweaked a real photo. The sun shining through the leaves, the particle effects of the dirt, and the shadow effects are all perfect. It made me feel like I was watching a movie, and I hope that the animators get nominated for an award for it. They’ve done such a fantastic job this season, and continue to knock it out of the park each week.

I’m sorry this was long...there was so much to love about this episode, and even more to think about. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the end of the season, and I’m excited to see what you guys thought of this episode!

#TBB #the bad batch #writing discussion #a little analysis?#this is all to say how much I've loved the show so far for all its flaws and perfections #I'm not looking forward to the end of it but hopefully more's on the way with a second season

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life-observed · 3 years ago

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How To Keep TV Real The Anthony Bourdain Way

How To Keep TV Real The Anthony Bourdain Way Anthony Bourdain didn’t start out developing TV shows. But seven seasons later, his No Reservations is going strong and, together with production partners Zero Point Zero, he’s launched a second show, The Layover and is working on a range of new projects. Here, the author/chef/restaurateur/TV show creator and star and Zero Point Zero principals talk about keeping TV real. BY ZACH DIONNE7 MINUTE READ Seven seasons deep, Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations is doing something right. The show, which revolves around the brash chef/author/all-round personality indulging in transformative stints of eating, drinking, and traveling, airs on the Travel Channel and is a product of Bourdain and Zero Point Zero Productions, the same company that just helmed a successful first season of a Bourdain offshoot, The Layover. Co.Create sat down with Bourdain, Zero Point Zero executive producers Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia, and managing director Joe Caterini to dig into why Bourdain’s shows stay afloat in a sea of programming, how multi-hyphenate creative types are working to adapt to new content paradigms, and why comedian Louis C.K. should be emulated in all things. Co.Create: You’re filming No Reservations’ eighth season. What’s the first trick to keeping the show fresh? Tenaglia: We understood very early on that if you’re really going to get to know a location well, it’s got to be through the characters that live there. Many scenes live or die by a good sidekick. Bourdain: Fixer selection is huge. Do they know the area as well as they say? Are they capable of doing all the logistical shit a fixer’s gotta do? But also, do they have a sense of humor? Are they fun? Do they drink? We’re not looking for the best of a place or everything you need to know about a place; we’re looking to have as close to a local experience as we can get, and have a good time and do something interesting that hasn’t been done before.

With Anthony’s writing background, are you doing much scripting ahead of time? Bourdain: We don’t script. We never do any writing beforehand. The Queens of the Stone Age show, it was like, let’s go to the desert and see what Josh Homme wants to do. All we really know for sure is he’s going to provide music for the show and we’re gonna be in the desert. If you think you’ve already figured out what the show’s going to be about or what you expect out of the scene, that’s a lethal impulse.

Does it get tricky to stay away from a fixed template? Tenaglia: Each year the show keeps evolving. Tony has an inimitable style and strong point of view that informs the creative, and we have an incredible creative team, very multi-platform, from animation to incredible graphics to unbelievable shooting and cinematography that informs the show. It truly evolves out of this process of intense collaboration, and then having these incredible creative tools to basically tell a story in any way, shape, or form. Bourdain: Let’s face it, ordinarily this is a very restrictive format. The story is always the same: Guy goes somewhere, eats a bunch of stuff, and goes home, presumably having learned something. The core of whatever we do is to fuck with the format as much as we can. Let’s find a way to tell what is basically the same story, different setting, in as disturbing-to-the-network fashion as possible. Why? Bourdain: Because television, if it’s a success, if it works, they wanna replicate it. That’s the death of creativity. Then we’ve settled into a groove, then I become bored, the people I work with become bored…it’s a mortifying process. If this isn’t fun and interesting to us, there’s no point doing it. Collins: We continually want to push further in the storytelling. We understand that with television you’ve got to work within certain parameters, but within those 42 minutes and 30 seconds, how can we play with this thing?

One way you did that was with an entirely different show, The Layover. Bourdain: That’s an even more restrictive concept–this is a format that’s been done a million times. Everybody loves the damn thing, but it took me a few episodes to figure out how to do it. No Reservations is about me, me, me–they’re basically essays. The idea of going to major cities and doing a “useful” show really goes against the grain.

What are the driving principles behind Zero Point Zero as a content production company? Caterini: The heart comes from a true vérité documentary filmmaking tradition. Bourdain: You don’t want people saying, “Could you say that again?” We’d rather miss the scene than fuck up the scene you have. That dynamic is absolutely essential to why our show is different from all the other travel shows. The show looks slick, it’s beautifully photographed, beautifully edited, but you’re never going to get those transforming human moments out of a character reenacting them for you. You’re never going to get real generosity, any kind of chemistry or any kind of fun, for that matter, if you’re muscling and you keep hammering home the theme. Caterini: Our primary goal is to be able to work on projects in the way we want to. We are looking to learn about digital technology and distribution and other ways of making content that don’t have to fit into the TV business formula. TV, being advertiser-driven, is all based on predictability and consistency. Predictability means you can’t take risks and consistency means it’s dreadfully boring. We’re fortunate we can bust those two barriers down, but it’s really hard to sell new TV shows when that’s your launch pitch. Why does it work with No Reservations? Caterini: The creative process is executed very well. We create situations that optimize that. We feel lucky we got greenlit and got on the air. Now we’ve proven that it works.

How do you take it forward? Caterini: We had a big eye-opening moment when we launched into social media, and looking at it as simply another medium in content and storytelling; truthful storytelling in different size bites with a different arc of time. We’re connecting directly with who really matters, which is the audience, the people who want to enjoy what we’re creating. That really did open up the doors for us to think about ways to go straight to them. For a lot of content creators that’s extremely exciting, and the revolution really hasn’t even happened yet.

📷You must be familiar with how Louis C.K. sold his latest stand-up special directly to fans for $5 via PayPal. Bourdain: A heroic pioneer. It was a huge, tectonic moment. Tenaglia: What’s really fantastic about him, and I think it mirrors a lot of what we do here, is he’s the producer of the piece, the writer, the editor, behind the scenes, in front of the camera–he’s extremely multifaceted and nimble and flexible and self-contained. I think we have a lot of those same qualities. We don’t go out with big, bloated crews of 25 people. We can create something pretty extraordinary with a team of one or two. What’s the key to getting content made, and seen, with these new paradigms? Bourdain: People in the television business have a vested interested in keeping it as close to the way it was as possible. You don’t want to cut the ground out from under your own feet. We’re in a more luxurious position to adapt to the situation on the ground. I like making television. But I definitely have both eyes on what’s next. Caterini: The creative people have to shift the content paradigm. We look at social media as a big medium in and of itself, and we’ve successfully developed and in fact exploded growth in an audience. So it’s working. Then unfortunately we have to say, “Is that a business or not?” But that has to come second. I think we’d ideally like someone to build the perfect platform for creators to work off of. There are bits of it. No one’s actually figured out how to turn it into money right for the creator, though. I think either the platform will come along or we’ll have to do some of the business a network does–market our own stuff, sell our own stuff. Bourdain: A person with a television show generally lives or dies by the Nielsen numbers. I don’t really understand why anyone would care. I care how many people over time see and like the show and are interested in seeing more stuff. That’s the only number that counts.

What about your personality as a brand, Tony? How does it factor into all this? Bourdain: I’m happy to use the word “brand,” but listen, I’m doing a lot of things: I’m doing a comic book, I’m writing for Treme, I’m making two television shows, publishing books. I do these things because they’re fun, and interesting, and because 12 years ago I had no opportunities to do anything. It bothers me when people say I’m “expanding the brand.” You expand the brand so you can land a Pepsi-Cola commercial. You haven’t seen me endorsing any products yet, though I am asked. I’m doing it ’cause it’s fun. What happens when things become not interesting? Then it’s a job. I had a job for years, I know what it’s like to show up every day and do the same thing the same way. I don’t know how Howie Mandel gets up in the morning. I don’t ever want to be that.

#anthony bourdain #interview

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