#the rewrites feel like a netflix adaptation. if that makes sense. like a really bad netflix adaptation that adds things for the shock of it

[drifloonz]

The multiple miki thing might be because Miki could've been based on Charizard M and that thing is known for cloning itself.

Tbh i cant fault shadowmalerenamon for completely changing doors open when rewriting it. Having missingno be the main antagonist was miles better than how Steve was in the original.

( mention of suicide ig )

i respectfully disagree . i see where you're coming from but i think all of the rewritten strangled... duology i guess bc strangled red itself never got one

( thank fucking god to be honest. it needs No change. although at the same time its kind of funny it never got one bc its the most popular one and going more into him as a Person if smr didnt fuck it up would be nice ... but im too attached to my own interp based off of his canon implications to care about what smr kind of has to give. and he already did that in og strangled red, to a degree, although it focuses on the tragedy there is character stuff to be extrapolated from the implications of the story if youre very deeply ill. like me. )

- is a lot less character-focused, at least on steven specifically, and is focused on explaining or rewriting shit that never needed to be explained or rewritten. it is a revisit and reinterpretation of the story, that to me, is just purely kind of . Not good or fun to read. and the new shit it introduces is fucking stupid imo. steven being banished by the town instead of... fucking. killing himself ( especially specifically by cop. that's lame and way more boring + FUCK THE POLICE !!! + It feels out of character for steven he would just do it himself like actually. Also yk. hanging yourself is narratively thematic and ironic. ) or whatever goes so much harder .

guy who loves his town and home region and wanting to be a role model and wanting to be cool so badly being driven mad and then the entirety of kanto, his homeland, forsaking him and walling him off goes crazy . Also because it implies they're scared of him to some degree which also makes me go crazy as an implication.

[ more put below bc i love to fucking yap about strangled red and how much i dont like the rewrites ]

i Will not step down from 'the rewrites arent good' . Doors open is mostly bad because stevens characterization is garbage. even though its random and from left field ( why the fuck is he in sprout tower ) it couldve been handled well if it was written better characterization-wise.

also i supposed the 'M charizard makes sense. not. not really i don't actually think smr thought that through. if he did, which he couldve because she is named #'M# in Strangled Red, cool, but i still think it's just to make the "miki" name thing with 4 party members he has. which is cool admittedly. it's just that i hope it is never explained why he has 4. and it never has since, doors open rewrite didnt do anything with that thank god.

and bc he wouldnt have any other mon other than miki post-incident and afaik that thing only replaces existing partymembers, and steven canonically releases all his team in SR + pokemon avoid him. but yea. Doors open i treat as a 'spinoff' in a sense bc nothing from it really makes sense when properly thought through, and its basically there to make the lost silver crossover i feel. also, yk, he literally says "Never." in strangled red when you press switch on 'M / missingno/revived/whatever you want to call miki post revival. its kind of out of character for canon-compliant steven to have anything other than miki post-incident for these 3 reasons - i only made a team for him post incident bc im autistic about pokemon and pokemon teams so that was for fun.

basically it makes more plotholes and questions than not the more strangled reds plot stuff tries to be explained or added upon esp in the remakes which i think are not fun reads if you like steven as a character anyways. and also bc strangled and doors open in the ogs are easter eggs. trying to explain what is supposed to be an in universe easter egg in pokemon would obviously be kind of a lesson in futility. not. not exactly but at least in the way smr does it.

strangled makes sense, you just go to his fucking house and hes there. yea. doors open is like. Yea hes in johto now. dont ask. but its also easily explainable as... He just fucked off to johto. For what reason? idk. hates kanto bc theyve forsaken him and banished him to the Woods, just wanted fresh air i guess, or just for fun. these are all more plausible reasons.

iirc the rewrite doesnt even say why hes there and if it does the reason is convoluted and not needed. i think its just 'hes a ghost hallucination... thing??? following the mc which is the most boring route to go for with steven and the most uninspired thing ever, and missingno was not the antagonist just a plot device in the og story Why are we focusing on it so much.' and its still a plot device in the rewrites! it isnt explained ( good the explanation would be kind of awful ) and i cant see any good way to explain missingno other than the way i do as a fun idea. which is biased but the 'failed clone of mew number 3' is a fun idea.

this is an insane ramble from a deranged person. if you can't tell i fucking love steven as a character and smr does him dirty except in strangled red, really. strangled... is fine but bc he barely talks in that one and when he does its like. yea. that checks out.

no hate to you btw none of it was directed at you specifically just smr and strangled reds various canons. you just gave me an excuse to ramble about how much i dislike the remakes tbh. I fucking LOVE analyzing why i hate things esp involving steven bc hes not greatly written by his og creator and not often greatly written by the fandom either .

[yukinojou]

I already squeed quite a bit on Twitter, but turns out my Shadow and Bone thoughts demand longform. So that was a 40+ tweet thread or using my Tumblr for an original post for once.

I was wary about the Shadow and Bone adaptation the way I'm usually wary about good books being adapted onscreen. It was amplified because my actual favourites are the Six of Crows books, and because the American-based movie complex has a bad track record of doing anything based on Eastern Europe. 8 episodes in 3 days should tell you how much I loved it - the moment I finished, I wanted more.

First, the technical praise:

Damn but the plotting is tight. It took me a while to realised it's based on heist movie bones, where every little thing (The Freaking Bullet!) is important. The story fulfills its promises and manages not to bore at the same time - it delights by the way they're fulfilled. I called out a few plot developments moments before they happened, and I was happy about it. Such a joy after so many series where "not doing what viewers expect" led to plot holes and lack of sense. It might be an upside to the streaming model after all.

From a dramatic point of view I can tell all the reasons for all the changes, especially providing additional outsider points of view on Ravka (Crows) and letting viewers see Mal for themselves the way he only comes across in later books.

Speaking of which, this is a masterclass in rewriting a story draft. SaB was Bardugo's first, and having read later books you can really see where she didn't quite dare to break the YA rules yet, especially Single POV that necessitated a tight focus on Alina's often negative feelings rather than the big picture and a triangle that felt a bit forced. The world in the series is so much bigger, the way Bardugo could finally paint it when SaB success gave her more creative freedom, and some structural choices feel familiar too. It's a combination of various choices by crew and cast, but the end result meshes together so tightly and naturally.

Visuals! Especially the war parts because Every Soviet Movie Ever, but also the clothes (I would kill for Nina's blouse in the bar), the jewelry, the interiors. The stag was so very beautiful. And a deep commitment to a coherent aesthetic for each character and setting.

Look, you can do a serious fantasy series with colours! Both skin colours and bright sets and clothing! And all scenes were well lit enough to know what's going on, even in the Fold!

Representation (aka I Am Emotion)

To start with: I was born behind the Iron Curtain, in the last years of the Cold War. The Curtain was always permeable to some extent, and we have always been aware that while we have talented artists of our own, we never had the budgets and polish of the Anglosphere Entertainment Machine. So we watched a hell of a lot of American visual storytelling especially because yeah, you can tell we don't have the budgets. 90s and 2000s especially, it's getting better now.

In American stories, the BEST case scenario for Eastern European representation is the Big Dumb Pole, the ethnic stereotype Americans don't even notice they use, where the punchline is that his English is bad or that he grew up outside Anglo culture. Other than that, it's criminals, beggars, sex trafficking victims, refugees. Sure, we may look similar (except we really really don't, not if you're raised here and see the distinct lack of all those long-jawed Anglo faces), but we are not and have never been the West, never mind America. It's probably better for younger people now, but I was raised under rationing and passport bans. Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210 were exactly as foreign to me.

The first ever character I really identified with was Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 (written by J. Michael Straczynski, yay behind-camera representation). This was a Russian Jewish woman very much in charge, in the way of strong women I know so well, not taking any bullshit, not repressing her feminity. I recognised her bones, she could be my cousin. The sheer relief of it. There have been few such occasions since.

The reason I picked up Shadow and Bone in the first place was recommendations from other Polish people. I've had no problems finding representation in Eastern European books because wow our scene is strong in SFF especially, but it's always a treat to find a book in English that gets it. And Leigh gets it, the bones of our culture, and I could even look past the grammar issue (dear gods and Americans, Starkova for a woman, Morozov for a guy) that really irked me because of the love for the setting and the characters, the weaving in of religion/mysticism (we never laicisized the same way as the West, natch), the understanding of how deep are the scars left in a nation at war for centuries. The books are precious to me, they and Arden's Winternight and Novik's Spinning Silver.

To sum up: Shadow and Bone the Netflix series gets it. You can tell just how much they've immersed themselves in Eastern European culture and media, it comes across so well in visuals and writing and characters. Not just the obvious bits (though the WWII propaganda posters gave me a giggle), but the palaces, the additional plotlines and characters, the costumes, the attitudes. About the only thing missing in the soldier scenes was someone singing and/or quoting poetry.

I will blame the Apparat's lack of beard on filming in a non-Orthodox country. Poland's Catholic too, but I very much imagined him as an Orthodox patriarch, possibly because I read the books shortly after a visit to Pecherska Lavra in Kiev and the labyrinthine holy catacombs there. Small quibble, not my religion, not my place to speak.

(I've seen discussion on the issues with biracial representation in the show, which is visceral and apparently based on bad experiences of one of the show writers in a way that's caused pain to other Asian and biracial people. I'm not qualified to speak on those parts, other that Eastern Europe is... yeah. Racist in subtly different ways. If anything, the treatment of the Suli as explained in Six of Crows always read so very true of the way Roma are treated, and even sanitised.)

And now for the spoiler-filled bits:

Kaz and Inej. I mean... just THEM. So many props to the actors, the writers, the bloody goat.

I adore the fact the only people who get to have sex in the show are Jesper and a very lucky stablehand.

Ben Barnes needs either an award or a kick. The man's acting choices and puppy eyes are as epic as his hair.

So Much Love for Alina initiating the kiss. Her book characterisation makes sense, she's so trapped in her own head because she has no time to process everything that's happening, but grabbing life by the lapels is a much more active choice. Still not making the relationship equal, but closer to it.

Speaking of, Kaz's constant awareness of how unequal his relationship with Inej is, and attempts to give her agency. I'm really curious how his touch issues come across to someone who doesn't know the backstory there.

Feodor and his actor. He looks exactly like the pre-war heartthrob Adolf Dymsza, a specific upper-class Polish ethnic type that's much rarer now that, well, Nazis killed millions of Polish intellectuals in their attempt to reduce us to unskilled labour only. The faces he makes are the Best.

Nina!! Nina is perfect, those cheekbones, that cheek, I was giggling myself silly half the time. I cannot wait to see Danielle Galligan take on the challenge of Nina's plotline in Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, she'll kill us dead.

I already mentioned that the writers fixed Mal's absence from the first book, but Mal in general! The haircut gives him a kind of rugby charm, and Archie Renaux is outstanding at emoting without talking. Honestly, all the casting in this series is inspired, but him in particular.

Extra bonus: Howard Charles and Luke Pasqualino playing so very much against the type of the swaggering Musketeers I saw them play last. Arken dropping the mask at the end... Howard Charles is love.

I can't believe not only was Milo's bullet a plot point, but the fact Alina was wearing a particularly sparkly hair ornament in a long series of beautiful hair ornaments was a plot point.

In conclusion: so much love, and next three season NOW please. Okay, give me a week to reread the books, and an extra day because new Murderbot drops tomorrow...

[petelanemoviereviews-blog1]

Mute (2018) Review

Review Date: 3/20/18

“…………”

While there are some great aspects of the film including an ensemble cast, Duncan Jones’ dream project turns out to be a major downer.

Premise: Set in the future, an Amish boy named Leo is rendered unable to speak due to a boating accident. Years later Leo works as a bartender in Neo-Berlin. When his girlfriend goes missing, the technologically-illiterate man must journey into the bowels of the strange city to search for her.

From Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code, Warcraft) comes something that clearly started out as a great idea that became complicated due to the untimely death of his father, David Bowie. You can clearly see director’s pain over his dad’s passing as he continuously tries to pay homage to his dad. It’s sad to the point where now actually thinking about it brings me to the point of tears. I’m going to discuss many of the film’s faults, but I feel I should let many slide.

First off, I absolutely loved Jones’ directorial debut ‘Moon’, which this film happens to be set in the same universe as. The film blew me away with Sam Rockwell’s pretty much solo performance (it was just him and a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey. Still probably not the right time to mention that guy’s name) and a solid script with a fantastic twist. If you haven’t seen it, you’ll be expecting the twist now. Sorry. In Mute, there are a few quick references to the film. If you have a keen eye, you’ll spot them. I counted two or three, but there are probably more. The problem here is that there’s really no reason for the two films to be connected. They do nothing to strengthen each other, other than to show how strange a world Rockwell’s character comes from. It’s reminiscent of when Paul W.S. Anderson decided to put his 1998 film ‘Soldier’ starring Kurt Russell into the Blade Runner universe. In both cases, it’s kind of like a ‘So what?”. But, getting back to Moon. It showed me that Jones could stand on his own and not be known only as David Bowie’s son. He followed up this film with ‘Source Code’, which also received critical acclaim. At the time of this review, I’d only watched half of it and that was three or four years ago, but from what I saw, I really was impressed. Around that time, it was announced that Jones would be directing the movie adaptation of the hit video game series ‘Warcraft’. The film got huge buzz but was ultimately deemed a failure in critics’ eyes when it was released. I saw it when it hit the home market and somewhat enjoyed it for what it was despite knowing little of the lore behind the games. But it wasn’t the Duncan Jones I knew. And now, nearly two years later, here we are. I honestly thought this movie would hit theaters when I first heard about it. It sounded great…then I heard it was coming to Netflix. As much as I love Netflix, I will agree with what people are saying that it is a dumping ground for movies their studio think won’t do well in theaters. Take this year’s ‘Cloverfield Paradox’ for example; it would have bombed at the theaters and I would have been disappointed walking out of the theater after seeing it. I enjoyed it for a Netflix movie and am one of the few people who understand it and will defend it, yet I totally see why the studio sold it to the streaming media company. The same thing was done with David Ayer’s ‘Bright’ starring Will Smith a month earlier. I wasn’t too impressed with ‘Bright’ even for a Netflix movie. Mute falls right in the middle of that film and Cloverfield Paradox to me personally.

The film started to go downhill for when I realized Neo-Berlin looked eerily reminiscent of Blade Runner. A lot of futuristic movies coming out nowadays use this look to where it’s becoming more of a gimmick than a homage. I don’t necessarily call that a bad thing as I love futurism and the whole Cyberpunk genre. Netflix’s Altered Carbon did the exact same thing and to be honest that show and this film looks VERY similar. In both, you’re gonna see some pretty strange stuff. More so in this and that leads me to my first issue. This is where it seems like Jones’ is paying homage to his father but then it goes way too far and over-the-top. Robot Strippers? You got them. Wacky Japanese-inspired video games. Fine. A whole lot of Androgyny. OK… Seeing Robert Sheehan with breasts was a little jarring. Dominic Monaghan dressed as a geisha strongly implied to be having a threesome with robots. What the actual f**k?! These aren’t your robots that resemble humans like in Alien and Blade Runner. These are your robots that look like they’re straight out of ‘I, Robot’ (without the facial expressions) and Terminator. And we do get a lengthy shot of them really going at it. That’s an image I won’t be getting out of my head for quite some time. That was definitely something I never thought I’d see. The Androgyny thing I get. David Bowie was known for doing that of stuff. Like I’ve said before, Jones is clearly paying homage to him even if at times, it goes overboard. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m judging. The problem is, they don’t do anything to strengthen the story. It’s the ‘oooh hey look how bizarre the future is gonna be’ schtick. Another thing that seems out of place in this movie and before I say this, I love this actor. Prepare for your mind to be blown, because it blew mine when he first appeared on screen. Paul Rudd is in this movie sporting a porn-stache and he’s not a very nice guy nor is he that funny. It’s a serious role for him and he’s actually good, to be honest. Still, I wasn’t prepared to see him in that kind of role and it did throw me off a few times.

Another big issue is that there’s a very disturbing subplot. I honestly didn’t Jones would go that far, and I was surprised and even a little disgusted when it first came up. Jones makes it make some sense in the end, but the movie would have been just the same if not better without it. There were other ways to make this movie more dramatic. Worse, is the story kinda delves into that plotline in the third act, shifting to an almost horror-type tone. You’ll see what I’m talking about and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.

Another issue is the script. I’m serious when I say this is some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard come out of these (in my opinion) good actors’ mouths. I refuse to believe Jones wrote any of this dialogue. You’re left to wonder why most of these actors even signed onto this. I’d like to believe there were many pointless rewrites.

My final issue is this: How the heck has this Amish guy been living in the middle of a city so technologically advanced for so long? It’s stated that he ignores all the basic survival utilities but that really doesn’t make sense, because even today, it’s virtually impossible to escape modern technology. Even today’s Amish use some modern technology to a small extent. Maybe if he lived out in the country (if the world isn’t completely covered by vast cityscapes) that might work. A better idea would be to have him live outside the city with his girlfriend coming to visit him. But no, he lives in a soaring high-rise apartment. He’s a bartender at a robot/human strip club. I get that maybe he doesn’t use computers in that field taking money instead of credit cards or whatever they use in that time. Still, kind of a plot hole.

Now to get into the good things. The story and mystery at its core are actually pretty solid. Yeah, the mystery aspect is a bit confusing and feels a bit messy at times, but it comes together OK in the end. Not great but I was sort of satisfied…and kind of happy for this thing to end. I will say one more negative thing. The third act drags on for way too long. I kept checking how many minutes were left. This movie didn’t need to be as long as it is. The only reason for the long run time is that there’s so much unnecessary stuff forcefully crammed into it. But yes, in the end, I was surprised at how everything turned out. I feel kind of dumb for not catching on earlier as I’m usually very good at figuring out that kind of stuff. Another thing I enjoyed was the performances. Alexander Skarsgård, Paul Rudd, and even Justin Theroux are too good for this movie. I also loved and felt sympathy for the main character. For a guy who doesn’t say anything, he’s well written and Skarsgård does fine emoting through his face. A few of the action scenes are pretty cool and well done for the most part.

In final, this movie is a mess, but I feel this is one of the few cases where it’s justified. Jones had just lost his father and it’s clear he was going through a lot of grief, so I’m not gonna rag on him. I think this guy has talent and I believe one day we’ll see this guy on top with other films as great as Moon and Source Code. Score: 4.3/10

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/sundance-2018-day-7-national-lampoon-monsters-men-american-animals-hit/

Sundance 2018 Day 7: National Lampoon, 'Monsters and Men,' 'American Animals' hit

We're coming down to the end of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and NEON seems to be the shining light for several films including Assassination Nation ($10 million plus deal), Three Identical Strangers and Monsters and Men. See all of our coverage of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. As director David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, They Came Together) said, "No publication was more consequential to changing culture in the world as much as National Lampoon," and that's the subject of his A Futile and Stupid Gesture biopic. “To make a very popular comparison,” McHale said National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney was, “kind of like Hamilton in that nobody knew what he had done, but he really changed comedy.” Below are the highlights from Day 7 of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture

Doug Kenney, the unsung maverick comedy writer who co-founded National Lampoon and helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Bill Murray, gets exactly the sort of irreverent meta comedy biopic he’d likely have wanted in A Futile and Stupid Gesture. David Wain’s star-studded film adaptation of the book by Josh Karp premiered Wednesday night and will begin streaming on Netflix this Friday. Wain immediately establishes this as an unconventional biopic by employing an unusual framing device with 74-year-old Martin Mull as the imagined modern-day Kenney (though he actually died under mysterious circumstances at age 33). Always a welcome presence, Mull narrates the film on camera, selectively deciding which events to include. We’re soon introduced to young Kenney as an impertinent, whip-smart college student (portrayed by the always buoyant Will Forte) as he teams with pal Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson) to oversee the Harvard Lampoon just before it evolves into the iconic comedy mag National Lampoon. A radio show and live show spawned by that publication introduce a bevy of household names, including Chevy Chase (Joel McHale), and they go on to make Animal House. When the film becomes an unexpected blockbuster in 1978 (it was the highest-grossing comedy for many years), Kenney’s downward slide begins: his cocaine addiction escalates in an attempt to defeat the writer’s block that confronts him when he tries to create a follow-up. He eventually makes another comedy, Caddyshack, which, though underappreciated at the time of its release, does go on to inspire a devoted following. It’s a kick to see the behind-the-scenes making of these classic comedies, and whenever the film veers away from the comedic tone, a character will punctuate the drama with the Animal House battle cry “food fight!” The film also looks at Kenney’s strange passing during a hiking trip in Hawaii, when he either fell or leaped to his death, but it leaves his demise open to interpretation. It’s a challenge to think of a director better suited to this material than Wain, whose reputation was made with his own cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer, which premiered during the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. During the Q&A following the screening, Wain told the audience that, having watched Caddyshack “ten thousand times as a kid,” he wanted to make a film about “someone whose name we don’t know, but he really invented the comedy I grew up on.” A Futile and Stupid Gesture will undoubtedly keep Kenney’s name alive for years to come.

Monsters and Men

When director Reinaldo Marcus Green came to the 2015 Festival with his short film Stop, about a young black man who gets stopped by the police on his way home from baseball practice, he found himself in an intense conversation about the Eric Garner killing with a friend of his who appeared in the short. “We saw two totally different [sides]. I saw a guy that I thought shouldn’t have died, and he saw something a little different — that it was unfortunate that he was dead but that he was resisting arrest. One thing led to another, [and] it was a really, really heated discussion with my friend. We kind of hugged it out afterwards. … But it was just honest. We were just honestly missing each other.” Not only did that critical conversation inspire the idea for Green’s latest film, Monsters and Men, but that friend actually ended up appearing in the feature. The story follows the perspectives of three different men after a killing committed by the NYPD: that of a young father who recorded the act, a black police officer trying to make sense of the killing, and a high school athlete on the periphery who wonders whether he should get involved in speaking out. With a triptych structure that dives into each point of view, Green explores the nuances of each man’s character. “The idea of the title is that we all have a little bit of good and bad in us. … And we can choose to turn a blind eye to the things that are happening around us or we can do something about it. We’re [all] human, and we have choices to make, and we have to live with those choices.” However, Green admits that it’s not always easy to know what to do. “I think about my own personal life and how I can become more active or how I can become involved, and a lot of times it’s like, ‘Man, it’s such a big issue. I don’t know what to do.’ And the issue becomes so overwhelming that we end up doing nothing. And I just thought, that can’t be. Even the smallest thing, even just paying attention [can make a difference]. And that was really the start to [this film]. We’re not going to end racism with the film, but we could start a conversation.” NEON, which made a big splash at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival when they spent over $10 million for global distribution rights to Assassination Nation along with Three Identical Strangers and a slew of other films picked up domestic rights to Monsters and Men, but the terms were not disclosed.

American Animals

While the nimble, meticulously constructed heist film American Animals was presented as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Festival, hearing the filmmakers discuss their methods after its screening at the Library Center Theatre on Wednesday suggests that their unique creation also bears the heart and rigor of a documentary. It tells the true story of four middle-class suburban college kids in Lexington, Kentucky, who plot to steal rare and valuable books from their university library’s special collection and sell them on the black market. The protracted and, at times, shambling setup leads them to New York and Amsterdam, and ultimately to cross lines they’re both eager and horrified to traverse. The events in question are performed by four young actors and staged with the gusto and resources of an ambitious fictional film, but director Bart Layton also intersperses interviews with the real foursome throughout the feature. And rather than serve as a contrapuntal element or arch flourish within the story, these interviews actually serve to anchor the narrative. As the filmmakers described, in terms of editing construction, these interviews were put together first, and the rest of the film was built around them. Layton explained that the script changed in crucial ways because of new information introduced by the subjects of the story. The original version was based on correspondences with the foursome when they were in prison — letters, emails, and phone calls. But then when they were released, which was deep into the film’s production, they were able to be interviewed on camera and convey much more than they had expressed through correspondence. “A lot of things came out of it, not least [of which was] the depth of emotion that you see, and the remorse,” Layton said. “So I actually had to put a pause on production to go back and rewrite based on exactly what had been in there.” Though the actors do look very much like the real men they’re playing, Layton said he didn’t cast the actors to mimic their characters but instead sought an authentic dynamic between them, one that might resemble the dynamic between four young people with different, specific personalities and motivations for pursuing such a crime. Despite all four actors — Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, and Jared Abrahamson — wanting to spend time with the real protagonists, Layton said his feeling was that “it wouldn’t have been helpful. They were 10 years older than they were when this happened. And most of those 10 years they’d been in prison — they were different people,” he said. “I thought that what I had put on the page was what they needed.” Layton and producer Dimitri Doganis discussed the seemingly oxymoronic conditions for such an amateurish heist, and how this crime performed by these four young men potentially spoke to both larger societal issues and particular psychological ones. “Why would well-brought-up kids from quite good families end up committing a crime like this? They didn’t need the money. And did they even think they could get away with it? It didn’t really seem like it,” Layton said. In letters from prison, Spencer TK talked of being an aspiring artist who was frustrated by the dearth of experiences and tragedies to inform his work, and that piqued Layton’s interest. “Having a central character whose main fatal flaw is that he doesn’t have a flaw or a problem so he goes out to manufacture one” proved worth exploring, he said. “We felt that it was a way of telling a story about a very lost generation, a group of young people who feel a huge amount of pressure to have an identity, to be interesting. Fifty years ago, their dads would be the definition of success — food on the table, nice car in the driveway, all that. But for them that’s not a success, that’s mediocre.” “I met them just after they got out of prison for the first time, and we were sitting in this amazingly picturesque pub in Kentucky, which looked like to me a picture postcard of the American dream: detached homes, SUVs in the forecourt, basketball hoops, literally picket fences. And I was asking them about their time in prison,” Doganis said. “And they agreed that their first two years in jail were probably the best time of their lives.” Considering the surroundings for this conversation, an idyllic and non-incarcerated landscape, he wondered how that could be. “They said it’s probably a simplification, but in a way we freed ourselves from all the expectations of what we should do, and what our parents expected of us. They knew it was a naive feeling and one that certainly didn’t last, but the notion that somehow growing up in the bosom of the American dream and what looked like it should have been the perfect environment was stultifying, whereas being in a federal jail felt like quite an exciting dynamic.” “I wouldn’t recommend it, though,” said Layton. MoviePass Ventures and The Orchard partnered to buy North American distribution rights for $3 million, and most importantly, the distributors are putting up a significant P&A commitment. Most filmmakers know this is what can get a film out there as most distributors don’t commit and this can be the death of many great films.

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[kiarazuri]

Let’s Chat!

@bookavid I’m more of a writeblr but I used to check your blog every chance I got and loved it :)

Questions:

Who are your favorite authors? (i.e. who do I reread the most)

PC Cast; circa The Goddess Summoning Series (finité)(I like all but the last one, which definitely DID NOT get edited) and Divine By Mistake (Partholon Series, finité)

Sherrilyn Kenyon; circa The League (ongoing) books 6-11 (Silence-Legend) (MINUS Cloak & Silence because Maris deserved so much more than that tiny-ass book!)

Please note that NEITHER of the above authors can do YA. They’re both shit at it, it’s ridiculous - see House of Night and The Chronicles of Nick. They need to stop.

Also, The League Series has major issues with race.

Honestly I want others to join this fandom so that SOMEONE would rewrite the series without any of its blatant -isms.

Zoe Chant, circa the Fire & Rescue Series (which is still ongoing and which I received the newest book during finals and spent 12 hours reading it nonstop instead of studying 😬) as well as the Shifting Sands Resort Series (of which I don’t like the last (third) one and am having issues finishing it. Meanwhile, the second one had wayyyyy too much sex and yet, I finished it within 2 days. I DON’T KNOW why I dislike the last one.)

What’s your favorite book that you desperately want to yell to people about?

Born of Fury (The League Book 8) and Born of Legend (The League Book 11) by Sherrilyn Kenyon

I have HUGE issues with Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Andarions. And most of my issues come from her word choice and the fact that she doesn’t have dark-skinned humans aside from the Qillaq - who are also very problematic! Colorism ABOUNDS in this series. That said, I love the Andarion characters. I even love little Darice.

Born of Legend is one of the only time where I’m like HELL YES REDEMPTION ARC because IT ALL MAKES SENSE. (Sherrilyn Kenyon likes redemption arcs and uses them a lot in her other series Dark-Hunters, in which the only time I was like “oh this makes sense” was Valerius) Like - to me, at least - there are very few reaches in his book, and there are plenty of hints in earlier books that the main character in Born of Legend, Jullien, is gonna come back and surprise all of them by being their ally instead of their enemy. I have a friend who refuses to read Jullien’s book because she doesn’t think he deserved a redemption arc even tho in the book before his we haven’t actually seen him in like 10 years, everyone’s just been saying shit like “Is it Jullien?!” every time something bad happens and the inevitable answer is “Apparently not.”

The worst thing about Jullien’s character arc is his weight. Sherrilyn Kenyon is uses the fat = bad, fit = good metaphor for him a lot and literally EVERYONE around is fatphobic.

Which genius book do you think absolutely deserves a movie adaptation and why?

I think the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness would make a good short series. Not a movie but like a 10-part show or something. Like a mix of Practical Magic, Underworld (the sciency-aspects), Twilight, and Pride and Prejudice. Does that make any sense?

Have you made any cool original content lately? Fan art, selfies, book photography, any other kind of art? Share your favorite! (bonus point if you post a pic)

What’s your favorite fandom that you need more people to join? What do you love about it?

What’s a book you discovered in 2017 (doesn’t need to be a new release) and absolutely are obsessed with now? What is it about and why do you love it?

Zoe Chant’s Fire & Rescue Series

I discovered this series over summer. I have a habit of going on Romance novel sprees during finals and midterms (it’s ridiculous) and had downloaded the first one during my Amazon eBook spree. I especially like shape-shifter romance and downloaded it because it was a dragon-shapeshifter who’s a firefighter. I couldn’t not.

The series as a whole is about a team of mythical shapeshifters (dragons, pegasi, griffins, unicorns, etc) finding their true mates.

Why I fell in love with it: It doesn’t start out from the dragonshifter’s PoV, it starts out from his love interest’s. Who is an American Archaeologist named Virginia Jones. As an American Black woman majoring in Anthropology, I KNEW she was black immediately, and I was not disappointed.

Let me add that the fourth book is about a Sea-Dragon from Atlantis who goes by the name John Doe. He’s a tall, dark-skinned black man with indigo dreads whose true love is a tall, fat, dark-skinned black woman. I love them.

The fifth book intersects with a different series by her and isn’t actually about the Fire & Rescue team but it’s about a Shark-shifter whose love interest is an older (she’s already a grandmother by the start of the book) Latina woman.

It’s great. It just. It is.

My biggest issue is a healing bit in the last book but I have mixed feelings since he healed a poison that was slowly eating away at the character’s body and not an irreversible physical condition. I think they went a bit overboard but other than that I like it all.

Which upcoming book release are you the most excited for and why?

Smoke in the Sun by Renee Ahdieh

I’m actually more excited for the cover reveal than the actual book. I just wanna know! The first cover was gorgeous, even if the book was lacking much to be desired.

Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas Book 2) by Zoraida Cordova

I read Labyrinth Lost without realizing it was a series. I thought it was a standalone!

Born of Blood (The League Book 13) by Sherrilyn Kenyon

I’m always excited for a new League book, altho, the last one was . . . *cough cough* not good *cough cough.* Before the last book I thought Sherrilyn Kenyon’s most disliked baby was Maris since his book was TINY but damn, she did Bastien just as dirty.

Have you ever met an author you admired in real life? Who and how was it?

Have you discovered any new-to-you tv shows yet that people should probably ALL be talking about? Why do you love it?

Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon (on Netflix it’s titled Strong Girl Bong-Soon)

It’s a KDrama about a girl with supernatural strength. Usually I hate love-triangles but I actually didn’t mind this one. I looked at it more as Bong-Soon learning to grow out of her crush and realize what she really needs/wants in a partner.

I haven’t been THIS invested in a heterosexual relationship on TV since Westallen and Ichabbie.

How much Min-hyuk swoons over Bong-soon could literally give you a cavity. He thinks she hung the moon! He’s the most adorable puppy in the world!

The biggest issue I have with the show itself (there are some translation issues but that’s not the show’s fault . . . I don’t think) is a scene where Bong-soon’s dreaming and Min-hyuk appears in a dress to seduce Guk-doo. It’s pretty cissexist/transphobic. That’s the worst of it. And there’s a gay character in the second half of the show that I at first was super worried about but apart from a bit of them going overboard swooning over Min-hyuk I grew to really like their character. Especially their relationship with Min-hyuk’s assistant, which is really cute and I ship them (as does their whole office I’m pretty sure.)

Has something awesome happened to you lately that you’ve been dying to share with somebody? Tell me!

Do you want to rant about something annoying that has happened to you lately? Tell me!

HOW IS YOUR PET SHOW ME YOUR PET

Tag your favorite active blogs that post bookish stuff, who’s still active? Let’s all follow each other!

This may have gotten a little out of hand. 😳