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livin-in-mementos · 5 years ago

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After Some Time (...and a break or two)

Ugh... okay, its here. The big one. Let me preface this by saying I wont be doing a count by count story of what happened, it’s too many hour and headaches that I don’t need to be fair. But I said I’d get to it... and boy howdy has it been swirling in my head since.

The Slazo Situation Revisited

So small backstory for those who haven’t boarded this crazy train of bullshit and migraines, this story is about a fairly large commentary youtuber by the name of Slazo (Or Micheal) who was caught in a controversy when his ‘Ex-Girlfriend’ exposed him in a Twitlonger for being a manipulative, sexual harasser. DM’s and screenshots of chat logs were shown and it made Slazo look pretty scummy. A few days later Slazo releases his defence video outlining the parts that were true and a lot of points that were fabricated to make him look evil in the eyes of the internet, with added proof and conveniently missing parts of his exes proof that would have exonerated him on the spot in the eyes of the internet courtroom. For opinions sake, yes I do think Slazo is innocent of the more damning accusations that were put against him, no I do not think he was 100% innocent. Of what he was guilty of? maybe being a pretty shitty boyfriend.... though at the age of 15-16... its slap on the back of the head material... not cancellation worthy.

Slazo was pretty much cleared of it all and everybody went on with their day... heck it shouldn’t even be called the Slazo situation, because while his name was brought up a lot, he wasn’t really all that key to what happened next...

Commentary youtubers from all corners of the internet had an opinion on what Slazo had done and how guilty he was (again, I will not be doing a play by play of every accusation) which boiled down to two camps

1. “Slazo is guilty and here is why... Oh and have a bunch of off-cuff situations I witnessed where Slazo was really creepy that I only just now remember and want to bring up.”

2. “Lotta commentary youtubers being liars, snakes or hypocrites up in here.”

Which in turn brought two youtubers under the microscope themselves, ImAlexx and Hyojin.

Alex first as it’s easier and is the least weird of the two. Alex jumped on the Slazo hate bandwagon pretty quickly and started accusing Slazo of a bunch of things that couldn’t easily be proven, while also completely backing up the story that Chey (the ex) has given in her Twitlonger, despite the fact it had been blown open with so many holes that not even a brain dead goldfish could find logic in it. Alex would later admit he had a part in writing the Twitlonger, as did many other prominent commentary youtubers and friends,outing the Twitlonger as more of a team effort rather than just Chey writing it herself.

After this Alex was accused of a bunch of stuff himself including being a social climber to get more popular since he was a pretty good friend to Slazo before all of this happened, as well as a snake since he supported Chey and the Twitlonger until it was criticised as untrue.... and Alex said the same to cover for himself.

To this day there hasn’t been a clear end point to this, Alex has tried to brush away from it all and has taken the bumps of being called controversial, hoping for it to all die down eventually. (While writing this Alex appeared on the Happy Hour Podcast to give a rundown of the situation to the hosts who admitted they knew nothing of the situation. What’s worse Alex seems to have glazed over many of his own wrongdoings that only escalated the drama further.) Opinion? To be honest, I don’t know... Alex obviously tried to ride the controversy to boost himself, that much is sure, yet when it came back to bite him he tried to hide and wait for it to blow over. It’s sad, It IS snakeworthy and since a proper apology hasn’t been issued... it’s not a good look for him at all.

Hyojin to me was the worst of the two to me. While she didn’t say as much publicly, it was was was happening behind the scenes that just frustrated me.

(Be aware, if you like Hyojin and think she can do no wrong, DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT. A lot of hot-takes will be thrown out there and a lot of criticism will be put out there too. I WILL be talking about the aftermath at length which is where the support poured in for Hyojin. I will being ripping that apart just as much, if not more for the bullshit that it was.)

Hyojin sucks, and I mean she really sucks. A lot of what was thrown out about Slazo in the Twitlonger allegedly was orchestrated and was the idea of Hyojin herself, taking what Chey was saying and embellishing it with the rest of their friend group. It’s alleged however and won’t be part of the criticism thrown at her.

While the incident was being investigated, Hyojin was too, including her colourful hot takes on Slazo and how creepy he was. Hyojin would never publicly call out Slazo since at the time, anybody who did was getting rinsed by the internet very quickly. So instead she hid on her discord and talked in DM’s about destroying Slazo’s career so he would never recover and deleting messages that challenged how Chey publicly omitted any evidence that made Slazo look like less of a monster. Shady.

During the internet investigations, it was discovered that Hyojin had an old art Twitter where her fictional character was drawn fucking her friends in several positions. The problem was, several of these friends were underage and despite her defence that none of these friends minded.... it was still there for public viewing as was still wrong. One instance even had another youtuber by the name of Kavos in one of these pictures even though he was never asked, nor gave his permission. The irony of all this being that much of what Hyojin criticised Slazo for, she was guilty of herself. Creepy.

Here’s where it gets controversial... probably more for me. Dog dropping rumours aside. (trust me, it was stupid)

Hyojin was getting major flak for everything that was found out about her and it seemed to get too much for her, which is understandable. Her response to all of this was a tweet telling everyone she was going to kill herself. The public response actually became something that confused me, because in the blink of an eye everyone retracted their criticisms and gave out well wishes instead. To make the trend even more sympathetic the youtubers involved in writing the Twitlonger started urging people to give her space and lay off on the nasty comments.

I for one, did not care. Heartless of me? Maybe. But it was all backed up by reasoning. Here was a girl ready to throw the life of a person under the bus for being a slightly shitty boyfriend and lying to make it sound worse. Helping to write up a statement that grossly exaggerated things to such a degree that Slazo was the most hated person on the internet and was blasted by everyone left, right and centre. After he proved to everyone he wasn’t like that, the attention turned on Chey and the friends that helped her and when their dirty laundry was put out there and they were being criticised.... now it was unacceptable? Now it was too much?

YOU TRIED TO OUT A GUY FOR BEING A SEX PEST! Shit that will follow him for life. But people calling out racist remarks you made? the underage porn you had drawn? The toxic behaviour you exhibited to anyone who questioned you?

....yeah that was too much and the line had to be drawn right?

But hey, it’s okay, you can just back to twitter the second the drama blows over and everything is all good now right?

Now this is where I direct it to the people who think that Hyojin is infallible, that she can do no wrong. She messed up bad, real bad. If anything she’s the true villain behind all of this and it’s shocking the lengths people were going to just to defend her. If every racist, abuser or sex pest threatened their life to be let off, this world would be screwed, but the second a darling Tumblr artist with links to popular youtubers does it, it’s a crime to list the irony that she attempted to cancel a guy with far worse repercussions that would lead to life long damage.

The worst part of all of this was that an apology would have cleared all of this. They knew they were wrong but an apology was impossible for them, so instead it’s made bigger, uglier and dirty laundry is shown. If anything, I’m happy it got to where it did since it showed the ugly side of Hyojin for everyone to see. So my opinion of Hyojin?

Fuck Hyojin.

#hyojin #slazo #Drama #offmychest #slazo drama

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femslashrevolution · 8 years ago

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Why I Love Strangeness, Smut & Fic with Lots of Feelings

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

TW: non-graphic references to kink, taboo fantasies, abuse, and eating disorders.

I’ve started this piece about a dozen times, trying to figure out what it wants to be. As a writer, words are important to me, but as a human I want the content to say something true, to be provocative and unflinching. I want the things I write to be a sledgehammer that breaks down the walls of shame that isolate us. Shame wants to stop us from connecting, because if we do, we’ll find out we’re actually not broken or twisted or strange, or that we are but it’s okay. We’ll compare notes and realize none of us have any reason to hide who we are, because we’re all perfectly flawed.

I write femslash to make connections. I’ve made friends, real friends, in the comments section on AO3. I help other writers, and I have other writers who help me. They’re art midwives; like a baby, sometimes a fic needs a little assistance to be born. Little international virtual villages pop up around characters or ships and we bond with each other over shared fandom. We are different ages, races, nationalities and orientations, but there are parts of us that are the same.

It goes deeper, to the things that scare us, turn us on or make us blush. I’ve compared notes and realized that society’s “sick and wrong” is often someone’s vibrant fantasy. When I write something that feels “too weird,” either because it’s dark or kinky or too emotionally naked, I force myself to post it. I always expect the comments to say “you’re a sicko” or “how can you write about this?” but usually they’re “I thought I was the only one who was into this” and “This is the fic I’ve been searching for.” We connect over the things that isolate us, that whisper “You’re strange.”

Maybe we are strange, but we are also the same. Isolate us, make us feel bad about who we are or what we want, and we’re powerless. When we find each other, we learn to stop apologizing for our strangeness and we become unstoppable.

I write graphic sex that’s filthy but full of feelings. I write little heartwarming drabbles about romantic misunderstandings or murderers who find kittens in the trash. I write fills for the weirdest kinkmeme prompts I can find, for pairings that make me think, “That can’t work.” I make it my mission to find a way. I kill off beloved characters, I break their hearts, I build them up, I toss them into bed together, I dissect the worst moments of their lives, I put them in sexual situations that push them too far, I make them lash out at each other, I turn them upside down and shake them until the confessions of love fall out.

There is not always a happy ending. There doesn’t need to always be a happy ending. My best friend says she reads fic to escape the terrible state of the world. She wants a distraction, and that’s valid, but it’s not the purpose fic serves for me.

I read (and write) to feel things. Grief, rage, discomfort, joy, anxiety, arousal, heartbreak, hope. I process my life by chucking the pieces of it into a cement mixer and flipping the switch until it’s something I can build on. My triumphs and tragedies join up with the things that delight me and the ones that confuse me and the ones that scare me, and then it’s all ground down and shaken up until it’s something solid.

I wrote the kitten!fic soon after my beloved tortie compatriot died. I used to joke she was so evil she’d live forever, but I guess even cats made of razor blades eventually need a rest. I decided to funnel my grief into something worthwhile by writing something heartrending and sad. Once I started it, the fic wrote itself into something gentle and bursting with hope.

I wrote a dark fic in the usually-light Ghostbusters fandom; a lot of readers didn’t like it, but there were a few who connected with it in powerful ways. I often write the shades of grey, the complicated parts, the “won’t tie up neatly at the end of our hour-long episode” stories.

I wrote an intimate fic about taboo fantasies, in which one partner had to admit to the other that she had a rape fantasy. The partner didn’t consider herself kinky, but she listened, didn’t judge and was willing to talk about helping the woman she loved explore that desire. That fic exists because in six years I was never completely honest with my ex-partner about my own fantasies, because I knew she wouldn’t have been that caring and supportive.

I wrote a story about a lesbian whose bisexual girlfriend wanted to watch interact sexually with a man. She agreed and it was a disaster. The story struck a nerve, because a lot of queer women have had sex with men that felt “wrong” like that. I’d intended it to be a one-shot about the ways we disregard our own safety for the people we care about, but the readers’ reactions were so powerful, it prompted me to write more chapters. It grew into something much bigger about trauma, friendship and understanding.

I wrote a fill for the Ghostbusters kinkmeme prompt “anorexic Holtzmann,” because the mere idea of writing it scared me. I explored her childhood, the difficulty of being much younger than her academic peers, the way she discovered her sexuality, and the people who shaped her along the way. I dug deep into my feelings of otherness and my lifelong complicated relationship with food and body image. Someone commented that she’d been looking for an ED fic in the Ghostbusters fandom, because she struggles and reading about it helps. “As a smart, chubby girl with an eating disorder, well done and thank you,” she wrote. It resonated with her, because we share something that makes us feel different.

I’ve written more than thirty fics centered around How to Get Away With Murder’s Bonnie Winterbottom. I’ve paired her with half a dozen different characters. Some of the Bonnies I write are fragile and sad; others are voraciously sexual, unapologetic queer dynamos. I love writing characters standing up for themselves and fighting for what they want, and Bonnie? Canon Bonnie? She wants, so desperately it sometimes makes me uncomfortable.

Before I discovered HTGAWM, I’d taken a two year hiatus from writing fic. I’d never been prolific in the first place. But there was something about Bonnie, and her complicated, imbalanced, maybe-not-sexual-but-still-intensely-passionate relationship with her boss Annalise that cut through me. It made me want to write again, made me NEED to write again.

In Bonnie and Annalise, I saw a dynamic I’d never before seen represented on television, one that I’d lived myself. As more of Bonnie’s tragic backstory unfolded, our stories didn’t align so perfectly, but the moment she knelt weeping at her magnetic, brilliant boss’s feet still lives inside me. It resonates. I saw my past reflected in Bonnie’s devotion, her barely-concealed feelings, her tragically low self-esteem. I saw the truth of one of my own complicated relationships in the way Annalise manipulated her. I watched her give Bonnie exactly enough affection to keep her hopelessly entangled, and just enough praise to make her work until she dropped, and it made my guts ache.

And yet, I knew Annalise Keating wasn’t a monster, because I’d loved a woman who had walls like that. I knew what could happen once the lights were out. I’d seen the teflon shield come down, exposing the sort of wraith that lives inside powerful, beautiful, charismatic women who have learned to be those things to survive. The kind of woman who needs to drink most of a bottle of wine before she can let herself be vulnerable, and who wants nothing more than a moment to be soft.

Femslash is a small corner of the wider fic world. The HTGAWM femslash community is very small. This year I discovered the Ghostbusters fandom, which offered me another character who reflected parts of myself I never thought I’d see on screen. It was bigger, more active, and the kudos and comments were addictive, but I keep coming back to Bonnie. In my stories, she faces the things I’m scared of and she says the things I wish I’d said. Life tears her apart; she collapses, but then she rises again and rebuilds herself from the ground up. And she’s so very strange. Like I am. Like we are.

I write fanfic because I’m strange, and by putting my own strangeness on a page, I connect with other people who are like me. I write the stories I need to read, because I know there are other people out there who need to read them too. I write the kinks that shouldn’t turn me on and the confrontations that hurt my heart and the sweeping strangeness because it scares me, but it also starts a conversation.

Hey. I understand that. I’m the same way. You’re not the only one. And we’re both okay.

—

About the author

I’m Audrey, I’m an artist in my thirties, I live in Los Angeles and I write smutty literature. On some level, every story I tell is a love story. I like writing deep, complicated feelings into filthy smut, filthy smut into angst fic, angsty arcs into love stories, and profound epic love into fic about kittens. I’m drawn to characters who are broken but persist. My ask box is open and I am always up for a conversation about femslash, “extreme” fic, writing sex, kittens, and any character played by Liza Weil. We are all strange and weird is wonderful.

Tumblr: audreyimpossible.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreyV/works

#audreyimpossible #TYpe: Meta #I Am Femslash #Femslash February 2017 #Femslash February #submission

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micaramel · 5 years ago

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Artist: Davide Stucchi

Venue: Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich

Exhibition Title: Light switch (Entrance)

Date: November 23, 2019 – January 25, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich

Press Release:

Anna Franceschini: Your title reminds me of a message left to a stranger, an instruction. Is it intended to be functional?

Davide Stucchi: Yes, the title waits to be activated. Like a light bulb connected to the light switch, which sits in a room waiting for a remote control. The switches ask for a presence, a body moving between the domestic environment.

A: Turn me on, turn me on, says the blind bulb…

D: Desiring to be lit…

A: Yes, but also not understanding the power which it already carries inside itself, the power of a thing, the potential of thinginess. What about the life behind/inside a switch? Is that an electric body?

D: Have you read “The Power” by Naomi Alderman? It sits on my bedside table for a while now. On the cover is a red background with a hand made by electric flows. A friend recommended it to me, because it has an interesting point of view on body awareness. Basically, its central premise is women developing the ability to release electrical jolts from their fingers, thus leading them to become the dominant gender. I am not saying that you can get a shock if you touch my switch… still, be careful!

A: Glad you said that! Inside the light switches I see hands arranging hair; can they turn on the kitchen lights while doing that?

D: You make me laugh, because I imagine you switching on the lights with your nose while arranging your hair! Often you make fun of me, because I rearrange common phrases or formulas, maybe here, too it is not about the gesture, but the interference while transmitting them?

A: Where do the images come from?

D: I ripped these images flipping through books, magazines and catalogues of my library. Actually, it’s not 100% mine, since I have to somehow agree with my ex-partner on how to use the library together, or how we will divide it. It’s weird how this idea manifested, it was just a joke I made while me and some friends were at a bar talking about revenge on our ex-boyfriends.

A: Does he know about these ripped pages?

D: Now that we talked about it, yes. I trust art as an infrathin language and he does, too. So he somehow knows it, I guess!

A: Instead of gently touching a flat smooth and anonymous surface, your switches invite one to put your fingers deep inside the electric, beyond which is filled up with gestures…

D: These movements I chose has been directed, they belong to models, performers, actors. Bodies that have been guided, asked or chosen. More and more often on (theatre, fashion, movie) sets you find the figure of the “movement director”, a person who specialises in movements, interested in body and physicality. Someone able to create a movement-scape, and look after the actors, which are like the instrument who carry the move- ment. We love to direct objects, don’t we?

A: Objects invite one to direction, while kindly but assertively obtaining the action they require. Is that what we call feticism? Are we objectifying performers when asking to do such and such a posture or movement on a set? Are we abusing a door when we ask the actress to open it one hundred times to find the perfect choreography for the drama we want to stage? What about that glass full of gin tonic thrown against the wall? And the window that crashes against the body of the fugitive? Are objects a majority treated as a minority?

D: This question is so subtle and relevant. It really pushes me in a corner. I try to concentrate by isolating myself from the outside and look straight to the digits of my computer, then my hands move to write my actions. When are we free or more easily apt to consider them as a majority? Looks like where you use them the most you free them the better, like theatre, cinema, asvertising, commercial, art? You and me have sometimes felt like being in a landscape where we want to serve objects as artists.

A: Minimalist intimacy, monumental solitudes that are episodically switched on by a scroll on a flat enlighted surface. What is it about domestic sentimentality?

D: I love to interrogate domesticity. There is so much work about queer space that always deals with exteriority, a cruising urbanity, publicness as transgressive act… So much of queer life happens at home – bourgeouis relationships, hiding from public, simulating the heteros… Very IKEA!

A: You refllect on IKEA minimalism while casting a Dada spell on it. What is the result? Animation of the inanimate? For example “La Linea” by Osvaldo Cavandoli?

D: I wish you were here, I would have let you step on the doormat and enter by the Donald Juddish-bookcase. You can see this intervention in space as a critique on minimalism, or more in the realm of what you suggested as a comic strip, or as a frame, a tv screen. I love “La Linea”, its obstacle, its difficult relationship with the hand of the cartoonist and its gibberish language. If you look at ankles height in the space, there are also “plugs” you can put chargers in. Other lines. And behind another bookcase hides a fallen curtain – or are all the lines drawn by Cavandoli?

A: I wish I woule be there, too. I wish I was a line and you could direct me in the empty, senseless space. I wish I was the hanger and the joint, the fisher and the switch. I wish I will always will be the gentle tool to play with and will make you feel at home.

D: Which tool?

Davide Stucchi (b. 1988, Italy) is an artist living and working in Milan. His recent shows include Davide Stucchi con Corrado Levi at zazà Naples (2019), 2546/9728 at Sundogs Paris (2019) and Davide Stucchi at Deborah Schamoni, Munich (2017). He and Anna Franceschini meet on set where Davide worked as scenographer for Anna’s film, like Bustrofedico 2019, a commission from the Italian Pavillion at La biennale di Venezia intended as a film-display, or Polaroids 2018, a Carlo Mollino’s room adaptation on screen.

Anna Franceschini (b. 1979, Italy) is an artist, filmmaker and researcher living and working in Milan.

Link: Davide Stucchi at Galerie Gregor Staiger

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2OsiKs7

#micaramel

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/movie-reviews-the-happytime-murders-least-funny-comedy-this-year/

Movie reviews: 'The Happytime Murders' least funny comedy this year

THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS: 1 STAR

Make no mistake, “The Happytime Murders” is not a Muppet movie. Sure, the puppets look like they just wandered in from “Sesame Street,” but the latest Melissa McCarthy film takes place a few blocks away in a much worse part of town.

Set in a Los Angeles where humans and puppets co-exist—imagine “Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s” Toontown with hand puppets—“The Happytime Murders” is an R-rated comedy that sees the felt cast members of ’80s children’s TV show “The Happytime Gang” systematically murdered by a mysterious killer.

Next on the hit list is Jenny (Elizabeth Banks), a burlesque dancer who was the “The Happytime Gang’s” sole human cast member. She’s also the ex-girlfriend of Phil Philips (Bill Barretta), the first puppet to join the LAPD.

After a scandal pushed him off the force he became a private investigator but when his older brother and “The Happytime Gang” actor, Larry (Victor Yerrid), is offed, and with Jenny in danger, he teams up with his former partner Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) to find the puppet serial killer. “If it gets crazy,” he says, “I’m going to get crazy.”

Repeat after me, “The Happytime Murders” is not a movie for kids.

With the first F-bomb less than thirty seconds in, the tone is set early. By the time we get to the puppet porn shoot and McCarthy snorting ecstasy with down-on their-luck puppets it’s abundantly clear this isn’t your father’s Muppet movie.

Trouble is, I’m not sure who it is for. The idea of a raunchy puppet flick isn’t new, “Meet the Feebles,” “Team America” and others have put the ‘R’ in marionette with great success but they did it with wit as well as in-your-face vulgarity.

In “The Happytime Murders,” easily the least funny comedy to hit screens this year, the laugh lines mostly get laughs because we’re not used to seeing puppets in… er… ahhh… compromising positions. Watching McCarthy and Maya Rudolph, who plays Phil’s love struck secretary Bubbles, flounder in a sea of felt and unfunny “gags,” is almost as sad as seeing the vaunted Henson name in the opening credits.

You know when someone constantly swears just for the sake of swearing? That’s shock value. “The Happytime Murders” is all shock, very little value.

PAPILLON: 2 ½ STARS

The remounted “Papillon,” starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek in the roles made famous by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffmann in the original, maintains the brutality of the 1973 film but plays more like a buddy flick than the resilience-of-the-human-spirit epic it should have been.

Based on the “75 percent true” tale of Henri Charrière, a safecracker nicknamed Papillon, the 1930’s era story sees him sent to a hellhole jungle penal colony in French Guyana for a crime he didn’t commit. Sentenced to life in prison with hard labour on Devil’s Island, he begins to plot his escape as soon as he arrives, despite the fact that no one has ever successfully fled the island.

To assist and finance his plan he offers protection to Louis Dega (Malek), a spindly, wealthy, white-collar criminal with a relative fortune hidden in a place where the sun don’t shine. Faced with abominable conditions and dictatorial prison guards the pair, along with a couple of others, stages a daring run at freedom.

Leaner and meaner than the original the reboot nonetheless hews fairly closely to the 1973 screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Dalton Trumbo. Some grisly scenes featuring crocodiles and lepers have been blue-pencilled but the basic idea of the bond between the two men in the face of unimaginable adversity remains.

Hunnam and Malek make a good team—with Malek even giving the Degas character more inner life than Hoffmann managed—but the movie itself doesn’t contain the same sense of struggle. Certainly there is violence, Hunnam is frequently covered in blood, mud or worse, but the previous film was grittier, less refined. Dialogue was sparse—in the new one Hunnam and Malek chatter like school kids throughout—and there was a sense of hopelessness that fuelled the need for escape. Here their mission feels pat, like a typical prison drama. It’s less meaningful, simply a run from the violence and horrors of their incarceration, and not a spiritual journey.

“Papillon” gets much right and features nice performances from the leads but feels like an unnecessary revamping of the story.

LITTLE ITALY: 1 STAR

“Little Italy,” a new rom com starring Hayden Christensen and Emma Roberts, is good hearted enough but feels like it arrived via a marinara sauce splattered time capsule from 1985.

Leo Campo (Christensen) and Nikki Angioli (Roberts) were inseparable while growing up in Toronto’s Little Italy. “To us Little Italy wasn’t just a few blocks, it was our whole world.” Their families were tight, working side by side at the Napoli Pizza Parlour until the Great Pizza War erupted, causing a split that saw the pizza place sliced down the middle, cleaved into two separate businesses. Years pass. “It’s Little Italy’s oldest food fight.” Nikki moves to England to study the culinary arts while Leo stays home, working with his father.

Five years later Nikki returns home to renew her English work visa and is drawn back into the world she thought she had left behind. My Nikki is coming home today,” says mother Dora (Alyssa Milano). “Now we have to find her a husband so she’ll stay.” Will there be amore? Will the moon hit her eye like a big pizza pie or will she return to her cooking career in London?

“Little Italy” is an “I’m not yelling I’m Italian” style rom com. Desperate to establish the flavour of Little Italy it parades stereotypes across the screen speaking in loud exaggerated Italian accents. It’s annoying but it is all played for laughs, tempered with the easy sentimentality of the most rote of rom coms.

Director Donald Petrie, whose “Mystic Pizza” made a superstar out of Roberts’s Aunt Julia, never finds the balance between the slapstick, romance and cliché. Sometimes it feels like sketch comedy, other times like every rom com you’ve ever seen. Either way, it never feels original or particularly likeable. Top it off with a been-there-done-that run to the airport climax that would likely get everyone involved, if this is anything like real life, arrested and you have a movie that is all about love that is anything but loveable.

CROWN AND ANCHOR: 3 ½ STARS

“Crown and Anchor,” co-written by and starring “Arrow” actor Michael Rowe, is billing itself as a “punk rock drama.” Shot on location in St. John’s Newfoundland, the crime drama embodies punk’s DIY ethic but don’t expect thrash and trash.

To stretch the musical analogy one step further, this well measured movie has more to do with the introspective stripped-down sounds of a band like Television than the loud ‘n fast rush of The Ramones. In other words, it’s like punk with guitar solos.

Rowe plays police officer James Downey, a disciplined man who fled Newfoundland years before to get away from his abusive alcoholic father Gus (Stephen McHattie). Returning for his mother’s funeral he must confront the past he left behind. Gus is safely tucked away behind bars but cousin Danny (Matt Wells) is loose, desperate for money and wallowing in booze and drugs. He’s also involved with some very bad people. Thrown back into the kind of family drama that forced him to leave the island years before, Downey stays put confront the past and present.

Don’t expect a tourism board approved view of Newfoundland and Labrador. “Crown and Anchor” is all about the dark corners. The echoes of the grief, tragedy and violence of James and Danny’s lives reverberate throughout. Director Andrew Rowe is unflinching and uncompromising in his presentation of the underbelly of St. John’s life.

Shot in long takes, often in uninterrupted close ups, “Crown and Anchor” showcases its strong performances. The leads, along with Natalie Brown as Danny’s wife Jessica and Robert Joy, bring authenticity to roles that could have veered into caricature.

“Crown and Anchor” is a slow burn. It takes its time getting where it is going, building tension with long scenes. Rowe gives his scenes room, allowing them to marinade. It’s old school indie, but in our era of frenetic editing it feels fresh and new.

BREATH: 3 ½ STARS

“Breath,” directed by “The Mentalist” star Simon Baker in his helming debut, is a coming-of-age tale about two boys who learn about life and love through surfing is specific in its subject but universal in its themes.

Bruce and Ivan, a.k.a. Pikelet and Loonie (Samson Coulter and Ben Spence) are teenagers growing up in remote 1970s western Australian. Desperate for adventure they form an unlikely friendship with Sando (Baker), a former surfing star who now mentors young athletes. Sando is spiritual surfer who not only teaches the kids about how to glide across the water but also how to live their lives. Their idyllic life lessons are threatened when Pikelet has a brief affair with Sando’s wife, Eva (Elizabeth Debicki).

“Breath” is an enjoyably but languidly paced film that captures the slower pace of life in 1970s Australia. Baker displays a connection to the material, allowing the story to play out in its own time. The affair subplot dips into melodrama but the rest of the film is an evocative portrait of the time and place.

On a technical note, the cinematography—credited to “water cinematographer” Rick Rifici—adds much visual flair to the storytelling.

MADELINE’S MADELINE: 2 ½ STARS

“Madeline’s Madeline” begins with a nursed telling the audience, “What you are experiencing is just a metaphor.” That sets up the tone for what is to come, a boldly dissociative study of creativity and identity told through the lens of a sixteen year old girl.

The film essays the main people in Madeline’s (Helena Howard) life, with her mother Regina (Miranda July), acting teacher and maternal figure Evangeline (Molly Parker) and, finally, herself as she prepares to be part of an avant grade theatre production.

“Madeline’s Madeline” is a bold film. Madeline’s experiences, both real and imagined, merge creating a dreamy, unsettling pastiche of real life. She is a complicated character, beautifully played by newcomer Howard, with a multi-faceted personality that may be the result of mental illness or in expression of her creative spirit or her troubled relationship with Regina. Director Josephine Decker sets the stage, employing frenetic editing, overwhelming sound design and other experimental film techniques to place the viewer in Madeline’s headspace.

“Madeline’s Madeline” may prove too challenging, too psychedelic for casual viewing. Howard is a powerhouse, careening through the film untethered to the realities of narrative form but the oblique storytelling does the viewer no favours.

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/movie-reviews-the-happytime-murders-least-funny-comedy-this-year-1.4065143

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wellmeaningshutin · 7 years ago

Text

Short Story #125: Cold Coffee.

Written: 8/1/2017 Surrealism Week

In front of me is some sort of chocolate French pastry, it’s tall, cylindrical, and tiered, which makes me somewhat confused as to where I’m supposed to start eating it, but its also colorful and well presented, which causes me to only stare at it, fork in hand, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with it while getting lost in the beauty of it. Do I even need a fork to eat this? Am I supposed to pick it up with my hands, am I supposed to eat every individual tier? No, probably not, that would probably cause my hands to be covered in chocolate, and whatever is on the inside of this thing. Am I supposed to cut into it like a cake? Confused, I look over to my sister, to see how she decided to eat her pastry, but her plate is only covered in crumbs, and her eyes are hungrily focused on my own plate. This is the coffee all over again. I can see words beginning to form on her lips, I look away, I look at the birds only several feet away from our table, maybe they would figure out how to eat anything like this. “Are you actually going to eat that, or did I just pay for your lunch so that you would stare at it the whole time?” “Its just, I don’t know. How do they expect anyone to eat this? I can’t figure out how to eat this without ruining it.” “Ruining it?” “The presentation of it, its just so appealing to-”, and there she goes, she’s already pulling my plate towards her, already rolling her eyes at me. Carefully picking up the petite for with two fingers, thumb and index, in order to minimize the mess, “Girl, you have to get over the look of it all. This is food, this was meant to be ruined and eaten. The presentation isn’t supposed to last forever, its just something to lure you into destroying it, into putting it inside of yourself and turning it into something disgusting.” Taking a bite, lips drawn back to protect her lipstick, then, “This is what food is for, its like an art form.” “Yeah, exactly, that’s why I’m not sure how to eat any of it. Why would I want to destroy something so appealing looking? Its easier to deal with cheap food because of this, because its all so-” “No, you’re not listening to me. This is just like when you kept staring at that flower in your coffee, the one made with milk or whatever they use. You need to get over the appeal of it all anyways, because you’ve already made me eat two lunches in one sitting, and I’m supposed to be on a diet.” “I didn’t know you were on a diet.” “I’m not on one, I said I’m supposed to be on one. Anyways, you keep getting confused about the purpose of all this. Sure, it may all be aesthetically pleasing, but its meant to be temporary. This shit doesn’t last forever, and you have to get your teeth in there and tear it to pieces before it stops being appealing on its own. Its like that cup of coffee that you were so impressed by. By the time that the flower finally went away on its own, the cup was cold and gross and you did not enjoy drinking it. You took too long to destroy it, so it was destroyed on its own and you were left unsatisfied, because you weren’t the one who did it.” “I don’t think that’s the-” “Okay, let me try to put it in terms that you understand. Think about this like dating, maybe. Its like when you see a really cute guy, and you’re able to start talking with him, and you know that if you don’t do something, some other girl is going to come in and enjoy him, so you gotta make sure that it never happens. So you know that you have to ruin him so that other girls wont want him, you have to take away whatever makes him appealing. So you start berating him or whatever, you know, really tearing into his insecurities, abusing everything he confided to you when you cuddle after sex, until he becomes an emotional wreck. Then, of course, you start to get disgusted yourself, because who even wants somebody who can’t get their shit together, who still cries about their dead grandmother’s disapproval from, like, forever ago, and then you move on to the next beautiful thing.” “That’s not what datings like, I think you’re just abusing those guys.” “You’re just not mature enough to understand what adult relationships are. Things get messy, things get real.” “But, you’re intentionally making them-” “Yeah, but that’s what adult relationships are: poisoning the other person until they’re ruined for everyone else. Its like, you that discomfort you feel when you run into an ex, and they’re with somebody else and seem genuinely happy? So you have to look at this happy hunk that you could’ve had? Well, that only exists in the world of teenagers and twenty year olds. When you get older, you’ll realize that its easier to avoid that feeling by making sure that your exes will never date, will never be happy again, so that you know that you were the last to enjoy what made them beautiful. Just like eating these pastries.” “I’ve literally never heard of that until now. I think this is just you.” “No, its not, you just don’t recognize it when you see it. Everyone does it, they just never try to make it obvious. Like, look at mom and dad. Before they got divorced, she kept encouraging him to get into all of that geology nonsense, so after the divorce nobody wanted to touch him because he keeps talking about minerals or whatever.” “Oh god, I can hardly even pay attention to him when he gets excited about that stuff. I just have to tune him out.” “Exactly, and because of that he’s going to be alone while mom takes her new boyfriend to Europe, and has a wonderful time.” “Ugh, I went to high school with that guy.” “And, anyways, there’s a lot of other examples of this out in the wild. Look at those guys who always claim that their girlfriends were crazy, no matter how nice and rational the girl was. Those are just people who are angry at themselves, because they were dumb enough to convince themselves that the relationship would last, so they never put in an actual plan to ruin their girlfriends. Then there are the guys who just beat their girlfriends so that they naturally become afraid of men in general, which also keeps them out of the dating pool. There’s also marriage-” “How is marriage-” “Marriage is the true way of ruining another person for others. Its basically a contract that says that the couple will never have sex with each other, but will also have to go through a lot of trouble to get out of it, its like a trap. And the whole time is spent making the other person boring, turning them into somebody who spends most of their time working, then comes home to watch some mind numbingly terrible television show for hours until they fall asleep, only to do it again the next day. It is a way of creating a routine to trap another person in, so even if they did consider doing something else, something good, like getting a divorce or pursuing one of their passions, they just keep putting it off without realizing where the time is going, so, next thing they know, they’ve become out of touch and hardly even know how to live life outside of the trap that they were dumb enough to walk into, thinking that knowing it was a trap would make them prepared for it all. They have everything that was interesting about themselves get sucked out of them, especially if they have kids. Kids are fucked up. With kids, you lose 18 years of your life, just for one of them. So, some couples fall into the trap of staying together for their children, then by the time they are free to divorce, they’re also old and boring and have little idea of how to function outside of their styrofoam lives.” “Styrofoam?” “Its about as interesting as they become. Who gives a shit about styrofoam? So, anyways, life is about destroying things that are beautiful, and you need to get over whatever reservations you had in the first place. To get ahead in this world you need to ruin everything that you love, everything that’s beautiful, because love and beauty only exist in the moment, and when you don’t take advantage of that moment, then there’s only pain and unhappiness down the road. All you get is cold coffee. You-” Before she could continue, a man ran out of the cafe and collided with our table, causing the plates and glasses to fall to the floor, shattering, while the man disappeared around the corner. Looking down the street, I ask, “What do you think that was about?” “Who cares? He’s probably just some asshole. What really matters is that we can tell the people inside that he knocked over our deserts, and we could probably get some free ones for the road. Oh, maybe if we cut ourselves with some of the glass, we-” “Okay, I’ll go in and try to get free food or whatever. Just, don’t-” “Fine, whatever, just make sure that you eat this time. You have to accept that the appeal of art and beauty is destroying it, and-”, I didn’t catch the rest because I had gone inside of the cafe while she was talking. Inside some chanson was playing from speakers on the walls, but there was an unmistakable silence to the room, as if the music was only existing on top of this sonic emptiness. Looking around, there is nobody in the cafe except for the man at the counter, and when I lock eyes with him I can see panic inside of him, I can see his fear, as if he’s shouting at me with his eyes, his emotions become infectious, they The silence is broken. I can hear the roaring for only a second, it only gets replaced by a faint ringing, that’s all I can hear. My other senses are equally unreliable, especially my sense of sight, because I can only see white. I try to close my eyes but the only thing that I can see is white. Eventually my sense of smell comes to, and I can smell smoke, lots of it. Nothing but smoke. Slow fade from white and I can see the sky, the beautiful, clear sky. Its all I can see, so I figure that I must be on my back. I try to move my body, I try to get up, but I start to feel an intense amount of pain, so I give up on that. I try to move my neck, and its not as bad, so the sky slowly gets replaced by the tops of buildings, then their windows, moving down down down, until I can see the street, the side walk, the rubble, the man rolling around on the ground frantically. Is he on fire? Is that what happened? No, he is holding his left leg, or, the place where his left leg should be. His mouth seems to be screaming, but he can’t scream louder than the ringing. Maybe if my ears weren’t so wet I could hear him. Maybe if my throat and face didn’t feel like hell I could scream too. Should I be screaming? Do I still have all of my limbs? I can’t feel my body, I can only feel pain. All that I’m confident in is my head and my neck. Everything becomes faint, it starts to get blurry, maybe this is what dying is like. I thought that it would feel more special than this. ——————————————————————————————————— I come to, I see friends and family members standing around my casket. They seem sad, they’re crying, but they don’t seem like they’re grieving over me. I suddenly become afraid, I start to worry that my funeral has just become an opportunity for people to pretend to be sad, just to benefit themselves socially. Nobody's there for me, they’re only attending to make a show for everyone else, and probably to get laid. My corpse is nothing more than a tool for people to use for their own benefit, something that they’ll bury and forget about when it stops being useful to them. Dying wasn’t enough, they had to ruin my memory too. Then, my father says, “Wait, I think she’s conscious. Can you hear me, dear?” And I realize that I’m not dead, so I drift off again. Maybe I’ll actually die this time, maybe I’ll actually get a good funeral. But I wake up again later, with my sister sitting by the bed, her neck is bandaged up and I can’t help myself, I have to stare at it, then she notices that I’m awake, that I’m looking at her, and where I’m looking, “Oh, yeah, this. After the bomb went off I was cut by, like, a billion shards of glass. It was as if the window itself attacked me, and who knew that windows could be so deadly? I got this big shard in my neck, about this big,” she holds her hands up to show the size of it, a gesture that she frequently used when talking about her battered boyfriends, “and I thought that it was going to be the end for me, but the doctors said that it actually prevented me from bleeding to death, so I got lucky in the end. Other than that I also have a lot of smaller cuts all over my body, I couldn’t even use my hands for a week because it just hurt to pick anything up, but I’m a lot better now.” I try to ask, ‘A week?’, but when I try to talk the words don’t seem like they’re my own, they don’t even sound like words, I just sound the same way my cat sounded when it had its jaw ripped off by a stray dog, and tried to yowl for help. “Oh, god, you sound like Sunday when he was dying. I can’t even guess what you’re trying to say to me right now. The doctors said that it would probably be difficult for you to talk, but in a couple weeks you’ll probably be fine, like, it didn’t take to long for my throat to heal well enough for me to start talking again, even if my voice is a little rough now.” I try to use my eyebrows to communicate, “Oh, girl, I have no idea what you’re doing right now. I’m going to have to talk to you the way we used to talk to grandpa, to see if he had to use the bathroom. So, are you asking if I’m okay?” One blink. “Oh, do you want to know how long you’ve been in here?” Two blinks. “Oh, its been a little while. You were unresponsive for a couple days, and mom wanted to pull the plug after day one, but it didn’t make sense because you weren’t on life support. I think its been, a month? Yeah, about a month. You’ve regained consciousness plenty of times, but the doctors said that you didn’t understand what was happening around you, you were only able to process the pain, so whenever you would wake up they would have to fill you with pain killers and you’d just knock out again. It was really messed up for the first two weeks, because you’re eyes were still damaged and you had to have this bandage around them, so you were blind and moving around and trying to scream, it was all nightmare inducing. Literally. Four nights in a row I had nightmares that I was in your position, it was horrible, you don’t even know. “But, hey, if you want good news I can give you some. I finally quit smoking! I mean, I really had no choice since the smoke would only further damage my throat so,” I begin to rapidly start blinking to shut her up, but then I realize that she’s looking through me, not looking at me, so I have to listen to this speech of hers. I try to keep my eyebrows at an angry angle, just so that she’ll see my frustration when she snaps out of her self absorption, but she only asks me, “What are you even trying to do with your face? Whatever you’re trying to convey with,” holding up her hand in the direction of my face, then moving it in a circular motion, “all that, but its not working.” I relax my face, but I still stare at her. “Okay, if you don’t believe me, then I’ll show you.” She pulls out her makeup mirror, looks into it for a couple seconds to make sure that she still looks ruinable, not ruined, then she gets up and holds it in front of my face. I’m ruined. My face is covered in bandages and some tubes, and whatever isn’t is just burnt and hideous. Apparently my eyebrows were burnt off and never grew back, so that probably explains why she couldn’t understand me. I blink twice, wait three seconds, then I blink again, and I repeat this several times until she realizes what I’m trying to say, and she moves the mirror away. I feel like crying, but I’m not sure if I’m physically capable. “Yeah, I know, it must be horrible to realize that you look like that, but I have just the think to cheer you up!” She turns towards her purse and pulls something out of it, and at first I think that its a puppy or a kitten, something that would love me unconditionally and show me that my looks aren’t everything, but instead I realize that, “Its a wig!” And before I can blink in response, she places it on my head. “I know what you’re thinking, ‘I don’t look good as a blond’, but you’re face is so unique because it doesn’t matter what you do with it, because anything will look better than your bare face. And, if you’re still not convinced, its just like Marilyn's hair! She could be a role model for you, you know. She was really bland, but then she became so beautiful that she ruined herself! And, don’t worry, I made sure to tell the nurses to take it off at night.” ———————————————————————————————————\ It wasn’t long until I was able to leave the hospital, only four days had passed until my insurance no longer covered my stay there, they put a bottle of pain killers in my hand, and sent me out into the real world, confused, mute, and bandaged. My sister drove me home, where there was an eviction notice waiting for me on the door, apparently the place was still mine for a week. When I was inside, alone, and just sat in the living room, in the dark, staring at the black mirror of the television, wearing that surprisingly comfortable wig, I realized that I was probably out of a job too, since there was no way for me to do PR when I can’t talk. However, there was something calming about all of this, even though my life had been completely ruined. I realized that it probably wouldn’t have gotten better than it already had been, I was mostly just coasting by, and now that it was awful I was at least aware of the fact that it was awful. It was at least something. I thought about cold coffee for a little while, and then I drifted off to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to pain, nothing but pain and darkness. It felt like how wood must feel when a swarm of termites start chewing and burrowing into it. I took some painkillers, then I fell back asleep. I dreamed that I was in a store and that nobody was going to buy me. I would wait and wait for somebody to come in and free me, while a woman would constantly threaten to turn me into hair extensions if nobody bought me. A lot of the dream was just spent waiting, terrified that nobody would come. When I wake up something is off. I blink and look around the room, but it doesn’t feel as if I’m the one who is doing it, its as if I’m just an observer, not a participant, but I tell myself that its probably just the pain killers. I’m probably just high. A couple memories flash in front of my face, all taking place in this apartment. I get up, unsteadily, even though I never told myself to do so. I walk to the wall and try to turn on a light switch, but the room remains dark, my electric bill had gone unpaid while I was in the hospital. I look around the room for something, I’m not sure what, then I finally find my cell phone, which I use for the flashlight. I make my way down the hall, to the bathroom, apparently, then I see myself in the mirror. The first thing I notice is the dried blood that was running down my leathery forehead, apparently I had been bleeding in the night, from the top of my head. The wig is still on, so I can’t see where the bleeding started, and its not my decision to take it off. I begin to make faces in the mirror, some of them seeming to be for basic emotions, smiling for happiness, frowning for sadness, and one that may have been for indigestion or anger. I tell myself again that its probably just the drugs that are causing this disconnect. I awkwardly sit down on the ground, and I start looking through my phone. At first I don’t know what the pass code is, several tries still keep me locked out, but then a memory of me putting in the code flashes in front of my face, and I’m able to get access to the phone. I go straight to my pictures, and the first one there is a picture that my sister and I took at the cafe, before the incident, and the memory of that lunch flashes in front of my face. I stare at the wall for a while, flashes of that lunch keep coming back. What the fuck did they give me? I look back at my phone, I go to the next picture, its one of my celebrity crush. My first instinct is to touch the picture, apparently, and then memories of the actor appear, briefly, and when they dissipate I realize that I am smashing my phone into the tile floor of my bathroom. Now there is nothing but darkness. I can feel myself feeling my way out of there, and it takes a long while since I keep going in circles. One corner in particular confuses me, and I get frustrated because I can’t stop myself from feeling that corner in confusion. A memory flashes in front of my face, but its unfamiliar to me, its one of being stuck inside of some container, in the dark, it feels like my current situation. Eventually I crawled out of that bathroom, and was able to go outside. It was a bright, beautiful day, which made me angry, for some reason. Although, it was as if I was angry, but the anger wasn’t my own. I looked around the apartment complex and saw a bush of flowers nearby, they were bright, colorful, beautiful, and I walked over to them. For a second I thought that I was going to smell them, but instead I start ripping them out, and crushing them under my heel, one by one, patiently destroying this flower bed. I can hear somebody ask what the hell I’m doing, but when I turn to look at them and make some god awful warning noise, they just walk away, talking about how its not their problem anyways. Halfway through the bush, I start to eat the flowers, but only a couple, since its seems that I’ve forgotten how to eat, but that makes sense because wigs aren’t used to eating. Why did I think that? When I’m almost finished destroying the bush, I start to hear some dog yapping at me nearby. I look over at it, and its the adorable little dog that keeps my elderly neighbor company, its the dog that I’ve always been curious to see what it would look like when it gets old and lazy, like its owner, since I have trouble seeing it as anything other than the young and adorable thing that it is now. I thought that I was going to pet it, but then I notice that I’m grabbing it and picking it up. Its held up at my face so that I can get a good look at it, and it begins licking me in the nose, which is one of my weaknesses. I open my mouth, I put the dog’s head inside of that space, I clamp my teeth down, hard and sudden, and I pull its body back, while moving my neck back, until the poor little thing’s head and body are two separate items. The taste, the sight, the texture of its blood and severed spine between my teeth, the whole act on its own makes me want to vomit, but I can’t, I’m not in control. I accept this for the first time: I am not in control. I can’t scream but the dog’s owner is able to do that for me, and better than I could have done in the first place. My eyes move towards her, but I don’t seem to be interested in that old, frail woman. A commotion is being made, something wet and thick and warm is sliding down my chin, my throat, and is starting to soak into my shirt. I start moving, but I don’t know where I’m. I try to resist but there is no way to resist it. My legs begin to hurt, I’m still not well, I’m not supposed to running, but I keep going, I can’t stop. The apartment complex fades behind me and general houses start to race by, I’m in some neighborhoods that I don’t recognize at all, but I keep going. The pain I feel from my legs are too much, and the pain in my scalp returns. I begin to think but they don’t feel like my own thoughts. I think, why is any of this worth resisting, isn’t this being human? I think, how is this not better than the rest of your life, which was spent dealing with other people’s problems, which was spent being passive? I try to tell myself that it was a better life than whatever this is, but I think, no, no it wasn’t. The difference between now, and your previous life, is that you were never living, you were never alive. This is living, this is existing. You are leaving your mark on the world, you are finally enjoying the beauty that life has to offer, you are enjoying the moment. Eventually I stopped running, and I was hoping that I had become tired, that my legs had hurt too much, and that's why I had begun to rest against the chain-link fence, but I soon realized that I was at the high school, that I wasn’t tired, that the people I was watching were only temporary, their happiness only temporary, and that I may as well take in that scene while it was still there.

#Free Write #Short Story #Writing #Cafe #Moment

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