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straightupgeek · 1 year ago

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Fanfic: Dream Girl

One-Shot

By: straight_up_geek_

A/n- This is my headcanon about what prompted Heather to read Gwen's diary out loud in "Not Quite Famous."

*~*~*~*~*

Heather's entire body ached from yesterday's dodgeball tournament, and her head still pounded from the "awake-a-thon." She was relieved they had two days off so she could finally catch up on some well-needed beauty rest.

During dinner, Lindsay sat next to her and tried to follow her around afterward. Heather wasn't having it. She only needed that dumb blonde for challenges, after all. At least Beth was more tolerable. But not by much.

Now, Heather was in desperate need of a long, hot shower. It was only the beginning of the second week at camp, and she had already had enough of the rusty bathroom floors and stained walls. And that wasn't even the worst part—nothing but a thin curtain separated her and whoever happened to be standing in the bathroom right next to the shower at the time. If only she had her phone to contact her parents and tell them to rescue her from this hellhole.

As Heather passed the 'Killer Bass's' cabin on her way to the communal restrooms, she heard a faint melody coming from the dock. She furrowed her eyebrows and tiptoed towards the music.

There, she spotted Trent strumming on his guitar next to the moonlit lake. Heather absentmindedly smiled. If any guy had caught her eye on the island, it was him.

Heather thought Trent was cute from day one. Maybe it was his dark hair and green eyes that captured her attention—or his smooth voice. Something about him hit a soft spot deep inside of her. Trent made her want to be noticed by a guy. And no, not in the same way Duncan "noticed" her the second she arrived at Camp Wawanakwa. Heather was used to that behavior from the boys at her high school. Their infatuation with her made it too easy to use them for homework or lunch money.

Heather had all the confidence in the world. She was the most popular girl at school. She could walk up to Trent, compliment him a few times, and they'd be dating by tomorrow. She was Heather Wilson. She could get any guy she wanted. Tonight, she wanted the cute and mysterious guitar boy.

"Hey," Heather said as she walked up behind him.

Trent jumped, his playing coming to an abrupt stop. "Oh god, you scared me," he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Sorry," she cringed, sitting next to him. "I just heard you playing, and I thought you sounded really good."

"Really?" He carefully sat his guitar to the side.

"Duh," Heather laughed. She slipped off her flip-flops and swung her feet over the lake water. "I doubt anyone else here can play guitar like that."

A smile formed on Trent's face. "Thanks. I've never really played in front of anyone but my family, so I'm glad you liked it," he chuckled.

"What song was that? You one you were just playing."

"Well," Trent laughed bashfully, "it's an original. I'm planning on playing it once I muster up enough courage."

Heather puckered her lips in thought. If she could gain Trent's trust, she could have a reliable alliance and get the guy. "Want a second opinion before you show everyone else?" She twirled her hair.

"Oh, uh, I'm not sure if you'll like it. I haven't finished it yet."

"Hey, a good song is a good song," said Heather. "And I think you have the perfect amount of talent to pull anything off."

Trent took a deep breath. "Alright, I'll play it. But don't say I didn't want you." He picked up his guitar.

"I won't even need to," Heather giggled.

Trent laughed, his cheeks turning red as he started playing:

"They say that we've only got summer,

And I say that's really a bummer.

But we'll swim in the sun and have lots of fun..."

"...Yeah, that's all I got," Trent cringed. "I was just messing around with some chords and lyrics."

Heather blinked, surprised by the song's content. If anything, she thought his music would be about how badly he wanted to go home. That's what she would've written about, anyway. "Wow, that was really good. It sounds like you have someone special in mind."

Trent covered his burning face. "Crap, is it that obvious?"

"Kinda," Heather teased, flicking a lone pebble into the water. "Who's the lucky girl?"

"Well—argh, I'm not too comfortable telling anyone right now."

Heather felt her heart pound like a drum in her chest. "Is she at this camp?"

"Yeah," Trent admitted, scratching his neck. "That's the only clue you get, though," he smiled coyly.

Heather was an expert at reading body language—or at least she was pretty sure she was. And Trent's body language right now told her that he was sitting right next to his crush and felt too nervous to confess. "Well, I'm sure that girl feels the same way about you. If she doesn't, she must be crazy."

"I don't know." He looked up at the stars. "I'm just afraid I'll do something to screw it up, and I'll totally turn her off."

"Wanna hear my opinion?" She asked, crossing her legs.

"—Maybe?" Trent flinched.

"Don't worry, it's a compliment," Heather laughed as she gazed at him. She studied his facial features up close. He had a smooth, defined jawline, and the dimples on his cheeks looked like moon craters. "I think the guitar is a turn-on. Any guy with a talent like that would never get rejected."

"You think I should go for it?"

"It would be stupid not to."

"Ok," Trent nodded. "Oh man, I'm really gonna do this, huh? All I have to do now is finish the song. Thanks for all the compliments, Heather," he gently touched her shoulder. "You made me feel so much better about this."

Shivers danced up Heather's spine at the touch of his hand. She wished he would just admit that he liked her right now. "Of course. It was no problem," she replied. "I guarantee it'll go well."

"I hope you're right," he swallowed nervously. "I think she might actually be my dream girl. I've never met anyone like her."

Biting her lip, Heather scooted a little closer to him. "Wow, it must feel like a movie to meet her in the most non-romantic place ever."

"Oh yeah," Trent laughed. "It's so bizarre. It's like I've been waiting for her all my life." He smacked his hand on his forehead. "Why am I telling you this? I'm sure you don't wanna hear it."

"No, it's fine. I do," said Heather. This must've been his way of subtly telling her.

"Yeah?" He grinned sheepishly. "It's a little embarrassing, but it's nice to have someone here to talk to about this. I don't trust most of the guys to keep quiet about this. Especially Owen. I love the dude, but man, he can be a loudmouth sometimes."

Heather fought hard not to roll her eyes to the back of her head at the mention of the big guy. Owen was one of the biggest banes of her existence on the island, but she knew she wouldn't have any luck trying to vote him off. He was already ridiculously popular. "I agree with you," she told him. "None of those losers knows how to keep their mouths shut."

Trent gave her an awkward, crooked smile. "I wouldn't call them losers, but I get what you mean. I can't have any alone time during the day with them around."

"Oh? Was I bothering you, then?" Heather feigned guilt, slightly moving away.

"No!" Trent blurted, frantically shaking his head. "You weren't bothering me at all! It's just the guys. I'm happy you showed interest in my music. Don't worry about it."

Heather smiled as her plan to evoke sympathy worked. "Ok. Thanks. But I totally get why you need alone time. The people here are just—getting on my last nerve. Except you." She made her way back next to him, inching even closer this time.

"Well, ha, that's a relief," he said, flustered.

Heather knew she had to make the first move. Maybe he hasn't had his first kiss yet. Luckily, she had plenty of experience. Slowly leaning in, she placed her hand on top of his. Trent followed her lead, almost in a trance.

Heather shut her eyes and connected their lips. She felt Trent thread his fingers through her long hair and pressed herself further onto him. His other hand rested on her waist as they continued kissing, forgetting the world around them.

Trent suddenly pulled away after a moment or two. Heather blinked, knocked out of her daze. He ashamedly turned away from her and grabbed the neck of his guitar. "Um," he cleared his throat, "I better get back to the cabin. It's getting late."

"—Ok," Heather nodded, a frown forming on her face. Trent gave her a curt smile before speed-walking back to the boy's side of the Screaming Gopher's cabin.

Heather didn't know how to react. No guy had ever run off like that after he kissed her. She touched her lips. Did her breath smell bad? Was he just nervous? She figured it was the latter.

After a few more minutes of listening to the frogs and crickets, Heather showered and got ready for bed. The sucky thing was she couldn't sleep. She was thankful their kiss wasn't on live tv with the rest of the show. She couldn't imagine how embarrassing that would be. Everyone at school would make fun of her for the next two years until they graduated.

But Trent's reaction didn't mean that he didn't like her, right? It had to be nerves. He obviously wanted her. Why else would he play her that romantic song? Who else could be pretty enough to be his dream girl?

*~*~*~*~*

The following day, Heather sat down next to Lindsay and Beth with a tray of what Chef Hatchet called "pancakes." Grimacing, she poked and prodded at her food.

"What do you think tomorrow's challenge is gonna be?" Beth asked with her mouth full.

"Oooh, I think it should be a makeup contest!" Lindsay squealed.

"That would be so cool!"

As usual, Heather wasn't paying any attention to their chattering. She did, however, have her eye on Trent, who was carrying his plate to the seat at the other end of the table.

Heather held her breath, hoping he'd notice her and ask her to talk somewhere in private after breakfast. Then he would confess, and they'd start an unstoppable couples' alliance. Heather also thought having a boyfriend would gain the audience's attention and favor. And if she and Trent didn't work out, she could always start relying on Lindsay and Beth again.

Trent didn't even look at Heather. Instead, he sat next to Gwen and offered her a muffin. "Look what I got you," he playfully told her.

Gwen's cheeks flushed pink. "Thanks, Trent. But I thought this would be a one-time thing. Can't you get in trouble for that?"

"I have no idea, but I don't care. It's worth it for you," he smiled dreamily at her.

"Well, thanks again." Gwen took the muffin, her eyes locked on his.

Heather watched their interaction and knew. She knew she wasn't the dream girl he spoke of last night. She knew he ran off after kissing her because he regretted it. She knew the guy she liked didn't like her back.

"Heather?" Lindsay's voice took her out of her thoughts. "Do you think sparkly lipgloss or bumble gum pink lipstick goes better with my skin tone? Beth told me her opinion, but she thinks I should get another."

Outraged and embarrassed, Heather shot daggers at the girls next to her. "Do you two ever shut up?!"

Lindsay and Beth cowered, and everyone else in the cafeteria stared at Heather, startled. Heather saw the concern painted on Trent's face, so she faked a laugh. "Sorry, I'm just SO tired today. I should get some more sleep before tomorrow's challenge!"

The campers awkwardly went back to their conversations. Heather sighed in relief. That was a close one. Trent almost hated her. She wondered why she cared so much about his opinion of her when he clearly liked the weird goth girl.

"Heather, do you need Lindsay's special spa treatment?" Beth gently asked.

"No," she scoffed. "I'm not hungry. I'm going back to the cabin."

"Alright," Beth gave her an overly broad, submissive grin.

Heather stormed out of the cafeteria. She slammed the cabin door, climbed up her bunk, and angrily screamed into her pillow. Uncontrollable tears streamed down her face.

It wasn't fair. Was Gwen just better than her? Heather couldn't understand why Gwen was an outcast but could easily make friends and attract boys. Heather remembered being completely friendless from age eleven to fourteen, back when she was the outcast. Why did Gwen get to be herself and have friends when she had to change so much just to fit in?

Eventually, Heather stopped crying. The girls would be back from breakfast any minute, and she needed to wash her face—STAT! The last thing Heather wanted was for them to see her at her weakest point. That wasn't good for winning reality shows or making people like you.

While Heather splashed cold water onto her face, she devised a plan. They'd be live tomorrow, and whatever challenge Chris made them do, she'd figure out how to ensure that Gwen felt embarrassed. And maybe, just maybe, she could get Trent to like her.

#total drama #td heather #tdi #total drama trent #total drama gwen #fanfic #wattapad #headcanon #td gwen #heather #gwent #oneshot #total drama fanfic #total drama island #total drama heather #total drama headcanons

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hxhhasmysoul · 11 months ago

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13, 14 and 47 for the writing ask please :)

Thank you for the ask <3

13. Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what have you been listening to recently?

I often do listen to music. I usually listen to the Naked and Famous, Chvrches, Bats for Lashes, Sevdaliza, Susumu Hirasawa, Kate Bush (my default smut writing music), Everything Everything, iamamiwhoami or Annie Lennox. I'm surely forgetting some others XD. But I sometimes just listen to some other song that catches my attention. I like basic pop music.

14. What is your favorite location and position to write in?

When I commuted a for long distances in one bus/train, I liked to write there. Being stuck there was kind of motivating to distract myself. Now that I don't do that anymore I just write at my desk on my PC. I don't know if I particularly like it but writing on the bed on a laptop or phone doesn't really work well, I switch to reading then way too fast.

47. Is there a trope that you’ve written before but are now sick of?

Considering how few stories I've written, not really. I tend to write long stories that don't really depend on a trope that much. Like they have tropes in them, obviously, it's just that I feel that shot one shot fics are usually more trope dependent. Like the conceit is often a trope. While longer stories are more plot heavy and the tropes don't dominate them as much. Actually most of my stories tend to lose readership over time because even if I incorporate tropes and list them in the tags, they often are just bits of a larger whole, or jumping off points and it's very clear that in the fanifc space, where many people come for the trope dopamine shots, it's not what they are looking for. And I'm very much a wherever the story takes me kinda writer. I wrote a story with an incubus for one hxh fandom event and my beta at the time said: "there's going to be a sextra to this one", when I explained the idea to her. Initially I agreed with her but as I was writing it, both of the characters felt very ace to me. So obviously there wasn't a sextra to it. And actually I had the decency not to tag it with an incubus au tag because it's not even based on the pop cultural and traditional mythos for that kind of creature, but something I made up because I actually don't exactly like the mythos... It's funny that I've done it twice already, took a trope I don't actually like and twisted it so that I would like it... But that's for my own enjoyment, for readers it's very hit and miss. XD

___________

Fanfiction Writing Asks

#answering asks #my trash writing #writing

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willowfolksong · 3 years ago

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helloooo i just saw your post about accepting requests and can i have a daichi fic inspired from new years' day by taylor swift if that's okay? i have seen you like taylor too and she is my #1 fave artists out there. have a nice dayyy!

I will hold on to you

- Sawamura Daichi x Reader

- SFW

a/n: hey dear anon! I loved your request. Taylor is also my favorite artist ever, and I actually think this song fits our Daichi perfectly, since his birthday is the day before New Year's Day!! I hope you like this little thing, but if you don't, don't hesitate in contacting me and I'll write something else for you. I'm not sure how a request from an anon person works and if you'll see this with no problem, so let me know when you read it! Have a day as lovely as your beautiful request ❤

Love,

Willow 🍂

p.s: yes, I had fun linking this one shot with the one I wrote about Atsumu modeling for a magazine and falling in love at first sight with a very shy Reader, in a request for the lovely @julfdm . You can read it here!

Requests are open! 🍂

The party floor is a shiny beautiful mess, and like little twinkling stars, clouds of glitter cover the white marble all the way from the entrance to the huge stairs in the middle of the living room. Its looks like the stars that you can't see in the city sky, came to gather in one room.

Daichi would rather be watching them outside instead.

You turn around and smile apologetically at him, and he lifts the cup he's had glued to his hand since you arrived to assure you that he's fine. Really. He is.

He will always wait for you.

Lev comes barreling down towards him in that moment, champagne glass almost empty and hair a wild mess. He looks happy, and free, and totally in his own element. Everything that Daichi isn't.

"Hey! Did you had fun? Cool party, huh?" he asks, words a bit slurred.

Daichi chuckles, still keeping an eye on you "Maybe you should lay down on the alcohol already"

Lev snorts, loosening his tie a bit, and drinking what's left of his gkass "It was a party! I was just having fun!" he explains, maybe a bit louder than what he should, eyeing Daichi suspiciously "Did you?"

You laugh at something one of your coworkers is saying, and Daichi thinks that smile is enough to light up the already glittering room.

"It was fun, yeah"

"You don't seem like you had a good time tho"

Daichi sighs. Lev is looking at him with his eyebrows furrowed, and he remembers that this man that is now one of the most famous models in all Japan is also one of his high school friends, so it's not right lying to him.

At least not much.

"I did had a good time. It's just that this is not my kind of place"

"You still came tho"

"That I did, yes"

He looks back at you. He met you a long time ago, also in high school, and also around the time he met Lev. All his friends realized he had a crush on you sooner than him, who actually believed the 'we're just very good friends' lie until you went on a date with a guy from another school, and the possibility of you looking at someone that wasn't him became unbearable. From then on, you two had been inseparable, even while he went to become a Police Officer, and you decided to pursue your dream of modeling. It didn't matter. Your love was strong enough to endure any distance, any differences, any decision. It was enough. The laughs, the smiles, all the little moments when there was nothing else but the two of you.

Those were the important things.

"She'll probably be having a lot of this all the time" Lev says, snapping him out of his thoughts "She's getting more and more famous with each passing day. Parties and fancy reunions are important for this work too"

"I know that"

"And you won't care?"

"I won't "

Lev smiles drunkenly, patting Daichi's shoulder "You're a good boyfriend"

"I'm so sorry it took me so long to say goodbye to everyone" you apologize to Daichi in the car, burying your face in his chest, your arms loosely around him.

He holds you closer still, giving you a kiss on the top of your hair "It's okay, I understand"

"You would think that people would talk about something that's not work after a party like that, but no" you complain, playing with the buttons of his shirt while he gently rubs your bare arms "They all wanted to discuss the details of my next photoshoot. For that magazine... I don't remember the name, but one of your friends appeared in one of its last issues"

"One of my friends?"

"I think he plays for the MSBY Jackals" you say, yawning "I also think he has a twin or something, if I recall correctly"

"Oh, yeah. Atsumu Miya"

"That's the one"

The car turns around the corner, and Daichi takes one of your hand in his much bigger one, interlacing his fingers with yours. You hum against his chest.

"I have to tell you something else" you add, your voice a whisper, and he looks down at you, worried.

"What is it?"

You bite your bottom lip, looking up at him through your lashes "I have another party tomorrow"

"Tomorrow? But it's New Year's eve..."

And his birthday, he wants to say; but you already look miserable enough about it, and so he settles for kissing your left temple.

"I'm so sorry, Daichi. I know you don't particularly like this kind of things... not that I love them either" you wet your lips and look down to where he's holding your hand "You don't have to come if you don't want to"

"Please" he says, squeezing your hand "I would never leave you alone"

He wakes up with you gone, your side of the bed empty— and so he buries his face in your pillow and goes back to sleep, lulled by the smell you left behind. He wakes up again around noon, to a phone filled to the brim with texts from his friends and family, wishing him happy birthday and asking what are his plans for the day.

You, that's his plan. It has been since he can remember.

He tries to ignore the twinge of sadness that threteanes to fully bloom in his heart at the absence of any message from you, and instead decides to accept Sugawara's invitation to take a stroll around the park.

"You're getting old, Daichi" his friend teases him, and he rolls his eyes, smiling, and allows him to make fun of him, since they see each other so little lately.

"How's your work?"

Sugawara smiles brightly, bringing his hands together "It's actually so fulfilling! The kids and I made Christmas cards and New Year's Day ones too before they went home for the holidays. Some of them are really good"

"Well, they do have a good teacher"

Sugawara laughs, cheeks pink, and waves a hand at him "Let's not talk about work and all that boring stuff anyway. What are you and your girl doing today? Something special planned?"

Daichi thinks about party dresses and cocktails he wont drink, and about strange men talking in your ear and pictures being taken from every angle, and about that text he never got.

Smile tense, he shakes his head "Not really"

Sugawara frowns, coming to a stop "Don't tell me you're having trouble in paradise. You're my favorite couple ever! First place, even on top of Ryūnosuke and Kiyoko!"

"We're not, dont worry"

"Then what is it?"

Daichi shrugs, eyes on the bare cup of the trees around them, branches covered in snow "It's nothing"

"Daichi..."

He manages to distract Sugawara long enough to make him forget about what they were talking, and after checking his phone for the third time and still not finding any trace of you, he says yes to have a couple of drinks with his friend.

They laugh and catch up properly, and even call some of their old friends from high school— Nishinoya sings him happy birthday; Asahi promises to stop by soon to give him a present.

He goes back home when the sun is already setting on the horizon, eyes on his shoes and this thoughts filled with you and only you.

What he refused to tell Sugawara was that he was scared. How could he not? He's just a policeman, and you're a rising superstar. He's afraid, constantly— and he becomes that guy from high school that was terrified of losing the girl he had finally realized he liked all over again.

He's afraid of one day only being able to see you on the cover of some magazine.

The door opens to a bunch of black and red and gold— and he thinks he can even spot a blue one on the corner— balloons covering the floor. You're waiting for him the middle of the living room, dressed on the dress you wore on your first date together. It's nothing fancy, nothing made to wear in front of the most important people in town.

You bought it just for him.

"What's this?" he asks, already smiling, and you open your arms and he has to navigate the sea of balloons to reach you and hug you.

"Happy birthday!" you tell him, letting him spin you around, and peppering kisses all over his face "Are you surprised?"

"After not hearing anything from you the whole day, I think so yeah!" he confesses, and you lightly punch his arm and pout.

"Please tell me Suga didn't gave anything away"

"He knew that you were doing all this?"

"Yeah! He offered to keep you busy while I blowed up the balloons and bought the cake and the drinks"

"Someone is coming?"

You shake your head, this time kissing him on the lips. "It's just you and me. For your birthday, and to wait the new year together too. We can bundle up in front of the TV and watch those midnight shows with the loud music"

"But your party..."

You laugh, actually doing a little jump "Of course I never planned to go, silly! It's my boyfriend's birthday!"

That night, you dance around more balloons than Daichi has ever seen, eat cake on the floor and laugh when your friends call again— Sugawara anxiously wanting to know if everything worked out in the end.

Daichi would have spent the beginning of his New Year's Day with you in one of those big parties, smiling and watching you shine, and he would have been happy like that.

Because it's you, and he made the promise to stay by your side.

But he can't help but feel better like this, just you and him and all the love you have for each other, waiting for a new year to arrive.

Maybe this will be the one where he'll use the ring he has on one of his drawers, to make word of his promise.

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kimhargreeves · 3 years ago

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Night To Remember-Danny Elfman x Reader (Oingo boingo)

Summary: After spending an amazing night at the Coachella festival, you a long time friend and fan of Danny are about to have a memorable night when you both decide to release all the tension you've been building.

(Been a big fan of Elfman for many years but seeing him recently in the Coachella event made me feel things. So here came this sinful one shot.)

(Warnings: this is smut, degradation, choking, age gap the reader will be around 30'stheir . Reader is on the alternative side with dyed hair, tattoos,etc.)

I was never a fan of these sort of festivals, thousands of people being all mushed up in the hot days of summer. I wasn't planning on coming at first but was surprised when one of my best friends presenter me with an extra ticket just for me.

It was early in the morning and the place already filled with people, celebrities and influencers taking pictures of some of their ridiculous outfits, who would wear those sort of things at s hot ass day?!

Paying not much mind to them or anyone else, I began to tune a guitar at the rather quiet room I was in. "Everything alright, (Y/N)?"

I smiled looking up at the familiar red head, the leader of Oingo Boingo. "Of course!" I replied fast but looked down at the electric I was still tuning up.

"Well, you're oddly quiet today." So he noticed, of course he would.

Danny had always been the only one to notice when something is up with me, wether good or bad. He's been really good at reading me, i don't have many friends but he's one of the few that genuinely cares about me. Whenever I'd get depressed and not wanting to leave my apartment he would come over and spend a bit of time with me.

The thing is that I've recently been growing feelings towards him, i always had a slight of crush him but the more he's been hanging out with me the more I care for him.

I was always used to seeing him almost as the nerdy type with his glasses but recently he's been even more involved with changing his looks, he's grown his hair out and got plenty of tattoos. I was with when he got a few but haven't been able to see the rest, said it would be surprise.

I'm in my thirties and he's in his sixties.

People would most certainly talk and pick at us. I should just put my feelings to the side and enjoy that I at least know this man so many love and look up to.

I've had the pleasure of working with him in so many projects, he even got me a few small roles in films particularly from Tim Burton who's now like family to me. Every Halloween Danny would play his most famous songs or the score from Nightmare Before Christmas, so he would always invite me to play with the band and orchestra.

I would always play the guitar. Nothing interesting ever happened in my life until I met him due to a family member attending an event and introducing to us.

"I know when you're lying. Something is bothering you." He insisted and took a seat next to me, he gently took the guitar out of my grasp and he held it instead.

"Nothing's wrong, I'm just nervous about playing tonight." I continued to lie to him. Thankfully he he bought it.

"That's odd I haven't seen you nervous before about playing."

"Well, you know how people can be at these sort of events. The guitars are all tuned!" I quickly exclaimed and handed him his black guitar which he took and placed my purple colored one to the side.

He started testing the guitar and smiled up at me, "What would I do without you?" He teased which made me chuckle back.

"I'm nothing special, only learned from the best." I complimented and saw him also standing up. My heart skipped a beat when I felt his hand run through my dyed colored hair.

"You're very special, (Y/N) and don't say otherwise." He scolded me which only made me blush.

I heard footsteps approaching and quickly looked over and saw one of my friends, Sam who also plays in the band as a violinist waved at me. "Wanna come and buy a couple of drinks with me?"

"I'll be seeing you later today." Danny said when he noticed me unsure on wether to stay or go with my friend. He gave me a wink before walking over to hid other friends.

Sam and I walked outside where the crowd were and noticed many people selling drinks, food and alcohol. "Soo I noticed you and Danny.." Sam began with the teasing.

Out of everyone into Sam is the one who knows of my crush. "You know you should just go for it, lady time to girlfriend noticed you both and said you looked cute together."

"Glad to know you and her agree on that. Not many people would agree if our relationship were to go further."

I was stopped by Sam her dark eyes staring into my own, she moved a few strands of her short black hair and shook her head. "Do what you feel is right, quit worrying on what others might think of you. You think it was easy on my case?"

Sam and her partner have been dating for around two years and got engaged about five months ago. She isn't much on decorating or planning things up ahead,but she asked me to help her out in a couple of weeks since they are planning on getting married at the end of the year.

"I know what you went through and i admire you for it."

We continued to talk while we made a line to buy a few things, we almost tripped over a crowd and almost got lost on the way back. I noticed many celebrities with bodyguards surrounding them and noticed some other artists who would be singing throughout the day.

The both of us made it back and placed the items on a table and entered a quiet to practice for later tonight.

"Alright! so this is what we'll be playing. This is gonna be a night to remember." Sam smirks to herself while reading the set list sheet in her hands. I peeked over and read all the songs.

Spiderman Theme, The Simpsons Theme, Edward Scissorhands, Sorry, Insects, Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself), Just Another Day, Jack's Lament, This Is Halloween and What's This?. That's a few of what we're gonna perform.

A few familiar people who would be playing with us are We Borderland, Nili Brosh, drummer Josh Freese drummer, bassist Stu Brooks, and the complete orchestra and choir coordinator, Steven Bartek.

Few hours went by and I changed myself into a black dress with fishnets under it for my tattoo to be visible, i also wore black almost knee high boots, i braided my hair to the side and applied a bit more of heavy makeup.

I stepped out of the changing area placed my belongings in a backpack and quickly began to run through the back stage to fetch my guitar and followed everyone on the stage. "I know you'll do great!" Danny said walking to my side while we stopped in front of the stage.

We noticed many fans eagerly waiting for us to perform, many people were standing right up front just to watch us. It makes me proud everytime.

Danny stepped forward in the middle while I stayed on the left side and strapped my guitar right and slowly started to strum it along with the second guitarist. The sky was already getting darker and the bright lights on the stage were complimented the now dark atmosphere.

Slowly we started to get into it the instruments got louder and the orchestra behind us were giving their all playing beautifully.

This Is Halloween was playing and the rest in front let the orchestra do their magic along with Danny singing along with a few scenes from the movie playing in the back screen, i noticed he was also wearing a black and white striped coat like Jack.

Many people in the crowd started singing the familiar song while I silently sang it and held onto my guitar and looked over to see the other guitarist doing the same.

Later on we started playing the song True. I started shredding the guitar and having the time of my life jumping up and down while easily playing the strings. The other guitarist started playing perfectly as well as we watched towards the crowd and looked back at Danny singing.

Next thing I know I looked over and saw him take his shirt off. If I weren't up on stage I probably would've freaked out, "He has awesome tattoos!" I thought as I continued to play.

I definitely didn't expected him to be all tattooed, the crowd went wild seeing him and the band continue to play the songs. I felt ashamed at myself for beginning to feel that familiar sensation I gelt when Danny and I were alone once as he held my hand while I myself got a tattoo back then.

But this feeling I'm afraid was already turning to lust. I would for sure be getting hated on if people were to know about my crush on him, I mean people would for sure be checking out on the age gap we both have. Fuck that I should listen to what my friend said.

I eagerly continued to play and walked forward on stage when Danny made me step closer to the crowd, i felt myself getting flustered when I felt his hand on my shoulder and singing close to me.

We continued to play through out the night and I couldn't stop admiring him, finally we finished the last song and waved at the crowd. Each of us tiredly walking backstage and high giving each other.

"You were amazing!" Both Danny and I said when we located each other.

"The crowd went wild and your tattoos! I love them." I smiled and tried to not blush in front of him.

Sam stepped between us along with his other band mates. "Let's go and celebrate with a couple of drinks." Most of us went over to have a few drinks and I felt myself getting just a bit drink.

"I think I should head back to the hotel!" I yelled at Sam since the music was once again loud on stage. She gave me a thumbs up, she knew of how tired how was so I wanted some rest.

"I'll go with you then!" Danny quickly offered and grabbed my hand so I wouldn't lose him through the crowd of people.

The both of us started to walk ahead until we were a bit far from the venue, in just a few minutes we arrived at the hotel and I opened the door to my hotel room. "I'm so tired." I groaned landing on my bed and heard the door lock itself up.

"Tired? The night is just starting." He joked making his way to sit next to me.

"Well, my adrenaline isn't as high as yours then." I shrugged but found myself getting bolder when I rested my hand on his leg.

"How about we do something else…? Are you up for it?" His voice sounded deeper and his eyes seemed to get darker.

I knew exactly what he meant the tension in the room has changed. I nodded my head and felt his hand behind my neck, making me lean towards him when he pressed hid lips against mine. The kiss got rougher until he gripped my waist and made me sit on his lap.

I figured the urge to moan when I felt him growing under me, his hands tightened around me until I felt one of his hands around my neck when he moved down to kiss and bite my neck to leave a few bruises.

Danny's hand wandered down to my ass, massaging the flesh there with me grinding on his lap. I can feel himself getting hard.

Both his hands take hold of my hips until he started to lower my top part of the dress revealing my breasts. Danny's hands wander to them right away, so did his lips. Danny placed delicate kisses on my chest before moving down to my breasts and catching a nipple in his mouth, his tongue playing with the piercings I had secretly gotten a while back.

Soft gasping noise fell from my lips as he continued to bite and suck, slowly he lowered me down the bed and took my dress off. His rough, calloused palm parted my legs a bit while he knelt between them. Holding me in place while he began to palm me through my underwear, already soaking them.

“You’re already so wet for me, (Y/N), I've barely touched you my dear.” The word rolled off his tongue and sent a shiver down my spine. I could feel his bulge rubbing suggestively against my thigh. He was as needy as I was.

He applied more pressure naming me release a soft whimper. I could feel my slick dampening the cotton material inciting a jolt of pleasure right through me. My body reacted to his touch instantaneously and found myself rolling my hips to meet his. "Let's get you a bit more comfortable." He hurriedly got rid of my boots and fishnets, he then slid his hands down my legs to my thighs, the only remaining clothes I had on was my underwear and the knee high socks.

"Please do something." I begged wanting him to touch me. I've been waiting so long for this moment to happen.

"As you wish my dear." He smirked and didn't wait. Without much restraint Danny ripped my off right and threw the shredded thing right over his shoulder. He hooked his strong tattooed arms around my thighs and pulled me towards him while he sat on the edge.

I didn't feel shame or embarrassment only excitement over what was about to come.

Danny spreaded my legs wide open, his eyes stared down at my wetness dripping down the white sheets. "Looks like you've been hiding this from me."

I shivered when he placed a single finger on the other secret piercing I had done. Without hesitation, his mouth hungrily went down on me, licking and slurping, drinking me up like it was the sweetest thing he has ever tasted.

"O-Oh God!" I moaned loudly and reached down to grip onto his set of red hair. He moaned against me the more I gripped his hair, his tongue plunged into my slit while his hand groped up my breast. His long fingers twisted and pinched at my stiff bud till cried out.

I could feel him grinning against my cunt as he continued to eat me out. His nose would occasionally brush against my clit, causing my body to twitch and strain against him. Danny's other hand continued to thrust his fingers inside me while he pressed his thumb against my nub.

"Danny…” I moaned again. My hand continuing to grab his curl, tugging at it slightly, causing him to growl right into my cunt again. "I'm gonna-" I squeezed my eyes shut when he thrusted his fingers faster for me to come.

I felt a familiar knot in me when I began to get closer. The room was filled with the sounds of my moans as I came, when I opened my eyes I saw the sheets and my thighs wet, he withdrew his slick fingers and wiped them against the sheets.My cheeks flushed when I realized that it was the first time I squirted.

Danny wiped his mouth and reached up to hungrily kiss me. I moaned at the way I could taste my own essence on his tongue.

"You're such a good girl." He smiled wide and played with my hair and placed his fingers under my chin.

I reached my hand out towards his trousers and pulled the elastic down along with his boxers. He was definitely big. Danny leaned down again to wrap his hand around my neck while kissing me furiously. I moaned out when I reached down and began to stroke him, also noticing the many tattoos he had lower down.

"Tonight's all about you my love." He slowly released me and laid me down on the bed. He also laid down next to me and grabbed my hips from behind in a spooning position.

I closed my eyes and felt his kisses on my neck and one of his hands running up my stomach and to my breasts again. I squirmed when I felt his fingers playing with me again, moaning once again when he began to dirty talk me. "Do you want me to fill your pussy?" I bit my lip and nodded my head.

"Please fill me up. I need you inside me, Danny." He smirked and I felt him rub the head of his cock against my slit first, coating it with my juices before he pushed himself right to the hilt. "Fuck!" I panted.

Wasting no time Danny began to thrust into me. His gripped the side of my waist and watched me in pleasure. "It feels so good." I moan leaning my head back onto his chest and feeling him going in and out of me.

I clenched around him when I felt his hand on my stomach down to my pussy again rubbing my clit. This made him grunt and go even faster.

“Oh my God, Danny." I gasped out loud. I felt so overwhelmed by everything all at once. "Oh God!" I cried out and felt fusing out slick down my thighs when I came around him. My second orgasm hit me harder but Danny wasn't done.

Without pulling out he moved us so I was laying my back on the bed and he was now above me. He spread my leg further and resting one over his shoulder making him hit my deeper.

He looked like a god above me. His tattoos complimenting his body while holding me down.

I wasn't going to last again through the overstimulation was beginning to tire me out. Tears were also beginning to run down my face when he began to roughly fuck me. Danny again connected his lips to my nipples, panting heavily on my chest when I felt him getting closer.

I reached forward and pulled Danny up to kiss me again, my legs instinctively wrapped around his waist.

"(Y/N)" I heard him say my name. A warning that's he's close.

His dark eyes met mine and I felt myself blushing again. "Come inside of me." I beg and watched him pulling my hips to his faster.

He proceeded to push forward till he filled me up to the brim. The motion knocked all of the air right out of my lungs as he continued his assault. He wasn’t being gentle with me as he began to pick up his pace.

"Danny!!" I fell down on the pillow again we i came hard and squeezed around him.

A string of swear words fell from his lips. Danny came with a low grunt as he shot his load in me. But still, he continued to thrust into me. I cried out when I could feel the warm, sticky fluid dripped right out of me when he pulled out.

Danny fell on my chest and held me close to him. I tiredly running my hands down his hair. The hotel room was now filled with the sound of heavy breathing. I felt my body extremely tired and well spent.

Slowly Danny probed himself up with his arm and looked at me lovingly. He stroked my cheek with the back of his hands. Soft whispers of praises fell from his lips.

“You're so beautiful, (Y/N). You don't regret this do you?"

I smiled back and shook my head. "Not at all. I've loved you for so long. Do you feel the same?" I ask afraid if this would be a one time thing.

Before I could ask anymore Danny shuts me up with a hot kiss. Without a word I wrapped my arms around him and enjoyed my time here with him.

This night surely will be one I'll forever remember.

#oingo boingo #danny elfman #danny elfman x reader #coachella 2022 #oingo boingo band #punk rock #forbidden zone

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innuendostudios · 3 years ago

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Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

#film noir #neo-noir #criterion channel

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say-narry · 4 years ago

Text

The Tonight Show

>> Versão em PT-BR

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Sorry, english isn't my first language! Hope you all like!

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"Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for our friend and singer Harry Styles and his friend and new Marvel's actress, Y/N Y/LN!" Jimmy raised his arms pointing to the stage entrance and Harry and Y/N entered side by side.

They smiled and waved to the audience, who returned the whistling and clapping.

Harry greeted Jimmy with a brief hug and Y/N did the same, giving kisses.

Jimmy pointed to the two dark armchairs next to his table and Y/N sat down next to Jimmy and Harry next to him.

The whistling and clapping ceased. They were both smiling for the cameras and sure enough, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon was scoring very high ratings.

"Great to have you here, everybody! " Jimmy started "We've been on this marathon interviewing friends in the business world and you're closing with a bang!" there was some applause "How long have you been friends?"

Y/N and Harry looked at each other and posed as if they were thinking.

"About three years, right?" Y/N looked at his friend, who agreed. "I wasn't so well known yet, I was participating as a co-star in This is Family, Harry was very nice to send invitations to everyone to his show. From that moment on, we started our partnership."

"Very nice that! And you must hear this question a lot..." a chill went through their stomachs, they knew what it was going to be "Nothing ever happened between you?" Jimmy let out a chuckle and their cheeks flushed.

It was more the discomfort of the question than the act that never happened. They were very close friends, nothing more than a tight hug and kisses on the cheek.

On social media, it was clear that Harry was the friend every woman would want to have, and to S/N fans, there was nothing going on between them since she had a few quick flings with Chris Evans, but only one person knew how much Harry was in love with his best friend, ever since he saw her in the sitcom she acted in, it motivated him to give input to the cast. He himself was that person. He wanted to see if the energy she conveyed on the small screen was the same, but it wasn't. It was simply much better. Y/N was Harry's fit, he had known that since they had spoken in person and Harry had already pulled strings to keep her around.

"No, we never had anything." Harry answered.

"Okay!" Jimmy joked making a funny face. "Kidding guys, it's uncomfortable this kind of question, but I think that just like me, your fans also think that you would make a cute couple."

"We see this a lot on twitter, I often take screenshots and send them to Harry, we laugh a lot, but we have a mutual respect. " Y/N tried to close the subject.

"And about your new song, Harry..."

"We are back with our guests, guys, and they agree to play our "hit the target" game!" Jimmy pointed to three dolls with the picture of himself, Y/N and Harry. There were scores written on part of each one's body.

"It's just a game, but we want to test your aim!" Jimmy continued "As you can see, there are points on every part of our body. Whoever manages to get the five arrows with the most points can choose a charity to donate 50 thousand dollars!" Harry and Y/N clapped side by side again "The loser will have to answer a question from our little box." Jimmy waved a dark red cube and his friends agreed.

The game began with Jimmy aiming at the head height of his paper doll. He fired all five plexiglas and accumulated 100 points.

The next player was Y/N, who ended up taking off her heels to make her move firmer, being assisted by Harry, who made the audience gasp for the act of affection when he held her to take off her shoes.

Y/N shot the first one, hitting the heart of her dummy, starting with 300 points. The next two missed, and the last one hit his dummy's forehead, adding another 100 points.

Harry just looked at her amused. She was good at this, sometimes you guys played this at his parties, it was a game that got on his nerves, because he wasn't good at it.

"Come on, Harry!" The host handed the little arrows to Harry and he positioned himself as Y/N did, maybe if he followed her way, he would be able to hit more points.

Big mistake.

The first arrow hit his wrist, starting with ten points. He made a snapping motion of his neck, drawing a few laughs from the audience. Harry shot two more arrows, one of which hit his arm, and the other fell before it hit the dummy.

"I think it's those rings." He complained loudly and took them off, giving them to Y/N who put them on, showing his fingers to the cameras, making a joke to the home audience.

Harry pointed to the heart of his dummy. If he got it right, he wouldn't have to answer the question.

And he shot. The arrow made a turn and unfortunately stopped in his arm, giving him another 50 points.

Harry would have to answer the damn question.

He groaned in despair as Jimmy and Y/N celebrated their victory.

The announcer walked away and picked up the red box and waved it at Harry. Who pouted in disappointment, sure all his fanclubs would be commenting on his cute expression.

"Take a little paper and read it to us, Harry." Jimmy held out the box and Harry put his hand inside, feeling some papers on his fingers.

He moved his hand a little and brushed at a piece of paper. He unfolded it and read.

His breathing had suddenly become heavier. It seemed as if he was out of breath, his fingers holding the small paper trembled.

"Er... Your challenge is: declare yourself to your crush!" The audience let out a few shouts and Y/N, always very expressive, opened her mouth and her eyes widened. Harry denied it with his head, laughing sideways, trying not to show his nervousness.

As close as they were, Harry didn't mention his girlfriends. She followed his fans that were also Harry's fans and sometimes she saw news about him dating some woman, but if he didn't say anything, it could be just his friends and if it was, she wouldn't invade his intimacy, she would wait for him to say something. Nothing had to be heavy in that friendship, she was aware of that, sometimes they would rather spend their time talking about random things like constellations and signs than their boyfriends and that was fine with her.

"Is this really necessary?" Harry asked in a playful tone.

Jimmy laughed and nodded positively.

They had formed a sort of open wheel on the stage.

"Come on, H! You can do it, because that's what I want to know too!" Y/N teased him.

He looked at her, closing his eyes as if she had failed in some secret plan of theirs.

"Okay... The person I like is very special..." He took a breath, playing with the paper in his hand "I won't say the name, but I will tell the situation we lived."

Y/N squatted down next to Jimmy, who hugged him in a friendly way while they listened to Harry.

"We were at a party among friends. We drank a lot, which we never did. It was on our friend's yacht, it was really an exciting day. I remember that we drank so much that this person... vomited a green liquid on my feet." Jimmy made a face of disgust and the audience murmured with disgust as well, Y/N remained static, because she knew this story. She had been there. She had vomited on him, which got a good laugh when she sobered up. "It's disgusting, I almost followed this person, but seeing this person so vulnerable, so sensitive in my arms... It made me see how much she was the perfect person for me, showed me how completely in love I was with her."

Y/N's heart soared, but as an actress who had conquered Hollywood, she made the best expression of curiosity, pretending not to know what it was all about.

"Do you have any idea who it is, Y/N?" Jimmy asked.

"I have no idea, I wish I could use my mind reading powers right now." She joked, referring to her character.

On the other side of the stage, there was an embarrassed Harry. His heart was tight, because he knew his best friend wasn't stupid and hadn't forgotten that day on the boat, when he took care of her, so much so that she slept on his lap and thanked him for it. He knew how spontaneous she was, he was dying for her to run out of Jimmy's side and jump on his lap and kiss him in front of everyone.

On the social networks, there was no other talk. Both of their names were at the top of the world trends topics, and in the news of the famous as well.

Y/N had donated the amount to the institution that cared for homeless people in New York. In a game of scenes, she returned the rings to Harry and didn't look at him, just went along with Jimmy's antics, leaving her friend completely out in the cold.

She didn't want to even think about it. Harry had never given the slightest sign of interest, he had gone out with a woman in the last few days... She was just another friend, no?

Jimmy thanked them both for their presence. They posed for some pictures with the host and the fans in the audience, both of them swallowing dryly and not looking at each other.

Soon the Y/N's accessory called her over and they left. She couldn't look at Harry, couldn't imagine that her favorite teenage singer, her current best friend, was in love with her, a foreigner new to show business.

It had been 15 days since the show had aired. There was still some murmuring on the social networks, Harry and Y/N had come in to check what they were talking about and most had picked up on Harry's words, they had even gotten pictures of them both from the day of the party on the yacht. It was clear from the whole thing.

But they hadn't exchanged a word, their friendship was shaken and Y/N couldn't stand it anymore.

On her day off in London, she took a coat since it was autumn and considerably cold in the late afternoon. She had always been a person who liked to dot the i's and cross the t's. Why was she running away this time? It was Harry there. It was Harry declaring that he was in love with her. What was the problem? She had been in love with him since she was a teenager, the Hollywood world was attractive and fantastic, but to whom could she be sincere, be herself, be the Y/N who left Brazil in search of opportunity and conquered the world? Except for her family, Harry was the only person fit for the job. Him. Only him.

Harry lived a few blocks away, she closed the apartment door and left the condo, there were no paparazzi, not that she had seen.

She pulled up her black hoodie and put her hair over her face, walking quickly through the cold streets of the chic neighborhood.

Braving some closed pedestrian signals, she arrived after a few minutes at the brown stone wall and black gate.

She had the key, they were so close at that point. They trusted each other.

Entering and closing it quickly, she saw some lights on. Y/N hadn't wondered if Harry was accompanied by someone else, his producers or his family.

Her finger slid between the detailed gold knob and opened the door, the wind and the smell of Harry's perfume went straight to her nostrils, filling her lungs.

She stepped inside and took a deep breath. Her heart seemed to throb close to her throat, and as cold as it was, she was sweating.

"Harry?" She called out. "H?"

No sound, no "I'm here!" The alarms hadn't gone off, he could be in the shower or in the studio composing something.

"Harry! It's Y/N, we need to talk!" She said a little louder "If you're with someone, I'm leaving..."

She walked to the center of the huge decorated room, there were some golden items, it was Harry's face. Y/N smiled as she touched a beautiful vase on the table. She couldn't lose him. She loved him, loved his way, his voice, his everything.

"Y/N." She heard Harry's husky voice, behind her between two sliding doors. It was his home office.

Harry was wearing a robe, his face had a sad, tired expression. His hair was not as she was used to seeing it. It was just the way it was. His nose was red, as if he had just cried.

That was it.

"Hazza!" Y/n murmured, walking slowly over to him, who bowed his head in shame.

"What was it?" Without denying his Aquarius side, Harry answered short.

The woman took a breath of air, until she walked more quickly in front of her best friend, stretching her hands until she held his face and joined their lips.

If you could see their stomachs, it would be something similar to fireworks in Copacabana on New Year's Eve.

Harry pushed the doors aside and took his best friend by the waist, pressing her against him.

How much he had dreamed of this. How much he wished it would happen. Their lips were warm, their tongues met, caressing each other, the sighs were audible, Harry couldn't help but smile at that.

"Forgive me." Y/N pulled away minimally whimpering, stroking between his best friend's jaw and neck. "I'm not afraid when I'm the superhero, but in real life... I'm a coward."

Harry shook his head negatively.

"I shouldn't have exposed us like that." Harry passed his hand over his girl's face "But I had to tell the truth."

Y/N agreed, putting her arms around her best friend's neck, hugging him tightly.

"I'm glad you came." Harry murmured. "I couldn't stand another day without talking to you."

"Not anymore, babe. I'm yours from now on."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any suggestions?

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To @leeroysdancer ;)

#harry styles #imagine harry styles #harry styles fluff #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles fanfic #fanfic #imagine #harry styles writing #harry styles one shot

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siriushxney · 4 years ago

Text

* . PAPER RINGS !

pairing — lando norris x reader

rating — fluff

wordcount — 2.3k

warnings — cursing (it's me who are we kidding)

song — taylor swift | paper rings

note ! — before y'all jump down my throat about "what the hell is a toque” — it's a hat. us canadians call it a toque. also this is long overdue, but I hope you like it!

when the light of day melted into the dark of night, and long, tiring shifts slowly came to an end, it wasn't an odd sight to see large groups of people piling into bars for a drink or several. with an extra hour and a half added onto your normal shift time due to your bosses inability to do what he was supposed to do — leaving stacks of paperwork you had to go through, along with a few of your other colleagues.

now walking into the packed bar — bags long forgotten in your cars, you couldn't find it in yourself to cringe at the strong smell of alcohol that burned your nose as you walked through the door, nor did you care for the way the heels of your feet stuck to the ground with every step you took.

after a day like today, you weren't sure if you'd mind anything.

sheila — one of your colleagues raised a stiff hand and slammed it down on the counter, gaining the attention of the bartender. “we need like, fifteen shots stat!” the bartender immediately got to work, pouring glass after glass — sliding them in front of the five of you, before turning to serve another guest.

“that asshole gonna get my foot down his throat if he dumps that much paperwork on us again,” she downed her first shot and reached for another one, “all of that should have been sorted out in the morning, not thrown onto us as we were packing up,” the rest of you agreed, downing a shot quickly as you tried to keep up with the loud mouthed girl.

you turned your head away from the conversation that had started between the others, choosing to stare curiously at the screen in the corner displaying reruns of a race that took place today.

feeling a body skim yours as a group of men slid into the barspace to the left of you — a majority of them sporting an orange and blue item of clothing, something you had connected quickly to the orange and blue car that had been on screen moments earlier.

looking back to the tv hanging from the ceiling, you tried to wrap your head around what all the numbers meant — a small bump caused you to look down, a younger man of the bunch staring at the tv proudly, “do you watch f1?” he turned his head to look at you as he finished asking his question.

f1... Is that what this was called?

“no, but I'd rather watch that then the football game that's on,” the boy looked at you with wide eyes, slightly in awe of how blunt you were. he nodded slightly before turning his attention back to the tv. “ I assume you do. you're wearing the colours of one of the cars,” you felt bad as you watched the boy curl into himself slightly.

ha looked over to you once again — “you can say that,” his eyes glinted a little bit as he spoke, a proud smirk coming across his face as he leaned in closer, not close enough to make you uncomfortable, but close enough that he could speak without the bar hearing. ��I race for them — see that orange and blue mclaren? thats me.”

that was definitely more interesting than the news.

“so what might that mclaren driver's name be?” his head turned back to you, a slight red tint covering his cheeks, and climbing to the tips of his ears.

with a single hand outstretched to you, he introduced himself, “I’m lando norris — and who might you be?”

“Y/N.”

—

that day had happened a few months ago — and in that time, your friendship with the young driver had only progressed.

days you used to spend simply reading in the comfort of your own home, was now spent bouncing from bookshop from book shop — lando recommending you all the books that he had been in love with at the moment.

you had to refrain from telling him you had already read them, having looked him up on instagram a day or two after the initial meet — the photo of him cozy and comfortable in his bed with the stack of books perfectly visible to his side.

the types of books a person read could tell you a lot about their character — and with lando, it was all good things.

“okay, and then this one is semi based on a true story — like half true but has a lot of action and drama sprinkled in there-” he rambled on about the book he held in his hands, his eyes darting between you and it as his hands ran over the spine and pages of the book.

even knowing the writer, plot, and ending — you couldn't bring yourself to put an end to his ramblings. instead, you stood to his side and nodded eagerly as he spoke words with such excitement.

for any other person, you would have cut them off and told them that you had read it — but for some reason, cutting lando off was the last thing you wanted to do. he wasn't the famous young driver for mclaren who was always eager for a challenge on the track. he was just lando.

the boy who had a mini library growing in his room, filled with books from every genre. he was the boy with the odd affinity for milk. he was just normal.

and for the first time in your life — normal felt nice.

—

“lando, you're insane.”

“maybe a little bit, but insane is fun sometimes.”

when lando said he had something fun in mind for the two of you to do, the last place you expected to end up was on the shore of an ice cold lake — the wind blowing harshly against your body, making it sway slightly with the force.

lando had already taken off his jacket, now standing in just his shirt and bottoms.

“I’m not going in that,” you backed away from the boy as he stripped more and more of his clothes off, dropping them in a neat pile on the ground.

he shrugged, pausing in his action of removing his jeans, “are you not going in because its cold, or are you not going in because you don't have a swim suit?” while the lake technically was still warm enough for swimming, the thought of the water 's temperature that was lowering daily paired with the strong winds, didn’t exactly spark excitement in you.

“both.”

“it’s either your coming in by your own will, or I’m dragging you in.”

“you touch me and I’ll hurt you — that’s a promise.”

a mischievous glint appears in lando’s eyes — he knew what he was about to do was going to get him in trouble, and most likely hurt in the end, but the thought of doing it overpowered his thoughts about what would happen after.

there was no going back.

in a split second lando had his arms wrapped around your waist as he dragged you closer to the lake — despite the heels of your feet digging into the ground, he had still succeeded in getting you close enough that if he threw his body weight towards the water, you would soon follow.

and that’s exactly what he did.

a laugh from lando, a squeal from you, and the whooshing of the air rushing past your ears was all you could hear before you found yourself submerged under the cold water.

you clawed your way back to the surface with the help of lando’s arms, which were still wrapped around your waist — as soon as you felt the coldness of the air reach your face, you were turning in his arms and swinging.

“I’m fully clothed you asshole!” you brought a fist down lightly on the top of his head — the water squishing out at the action.

“stop- don’t- stop hitting me!” lando laughed as he let you go, swimming backwards slightly as a way to get away from your violent swings. “I know that you're fully clothed- that's what makes it so funny,” the curly haired boy couldn't contain his laughter at the end — his voice railing into the squeaky laugher that you had come to love.

without the support of lando, paired with the additional weight of your heavy winter coat and soaked wool toque and mittens, you began to struggle slightly to stay afloat. “lando-” the water climbed its way up your face before washing back down as you kicked harder.

his laugher stopped as he kicked his way over to you — grabbing around your waist once more and holding you to his body.

with the distance closed between the two of you, the feeling of his warm breath against your face was unavoidable — as well as the feeling of the heat radiating from his body, even through the layers you had on. neither of you spoke, both trying not to move — for every movement brought a wave of discomfort with your muscles tensed up from the cold. but as time started to tick slower, and all you could feel was the other — the last thing on both of your minds was the temperature of the water.

“you’re turning blue, lando,” as much as you wished you would've stayed in that position forever, the sight of lando’s cheeks and lips draining of its naturally pink colour concerned you. even with layers upon layers of clothes on, you found yourself shivering — and with lando in nothing but his boxers, you doubted he was doing much better than you. “I think right now is a good time to get out,” lando didnt reply, only bringing the two of you closer to the shore.

with chattering teeth, bodies curled in, and fast feet, lando and you made your way to his car — both jumping in the minute you could get your hands on the door handle. neither of you cared for the seats wetting as you sat down.

“I think I have some towels in the back from my training — can you grab them? I’ll get the heat and everything going,” you leaned into the back of the car to the best of your ability, pulling two towels out of an orange gym bag, and bringing them to the front where lando and you sat.

lando wrapped the towel around his shoulders — the shaking constant and harsh, rocking his body violently.

“I would say I told you so, but I feel too bad to even insult you,” with your jacket, toque, and mittens stippped off and thrown onto the floor, you wrapped your towel around your shoulders much like lando had.

“awe, youre so considerate — I didn’t think it through.”

“trust me — I can tell.”

the sound of the heaters on blast and the clattering of teeth was all that filled the car. lando had seemed aggravated at your comment — the way his body turned slightly away from your own, his eyes never meeting yours, and the fact that there was no laugh following or during his words.

what had you said or done that pissed him off?

“are you mad at me?”

lando turned slowly, his eyes still not fully meeting yours — but he looked like he was less angry and more conflicted. “I’m not mad, I’m just- just,” the words were on the tip of his tongue, but for some reason he couldn't bring himself to say them. “forget it.”

“no, I wanna know what's wrong — please tell me?”

he angled his body to face yours after a few moments of no response, making it so him and you looked at eachother with ease. “back out there on the lake- did you… did you feel anything?” your body tensed at his question — it was the last thing that you thought would come out of his mouth, so it took you by surprise. “because I know I did — and that scares me.”

you struggled to find a string of words that made sense to you, “I mean, yeah I guess I did — what did you feel? just so I can make sure that I felt the same thing.”

“I felt like I wanted to stay in that position forever — like I wanted to kiss you,” the words he spoke were soft and genuine. “all I felt was you.”

it had taken months for you to put a name to the feelings you had when you were around the british boy, but now, more than ever, did you finally know what they were.

they were love.

“I felt the same thing — all that I could feel was you and your stupidly perfect body against mine,” both of you giggled slightly at that. “and all that was running through my head was that if you had asked me to do anything with you, I would have done it — hell you could have asked me to marry you with paper rings and I would’ve said yes.”

lando stared at you with a calm look on his face — his eyes drinking you and all of your features in. “I’m glad — because I was thinking the same thing,” his hand fell on top of yours, bringing a warmth to the back of it. “and no need for paper rings when I can promise you the real deal when the time comes.”

“like I said before, I would marry you with paper rings lando,” you leaned in slightly, your voice barely above a whisper. “now kiss me you goof.”

he didn’t have to be asked twice.

#formula 1 x reader #formula 1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #::lando norris #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine

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atsunflower · 4 years ago

Text

Rated: SFW

Author notes: *sigh* for the third time the damned app ate up the tags. This one took me too long and I'm excited for write about my man suna again. This is also pretty different from what I'm used to write, but why not? Please enjoy your reading.

Warnings: cursing, substance usage/mentions, break-ups and me trynna be funny.

I – Cancel me.

Previous || Next

He looked at them with expectation as the beats smoothly faded, indicating the song's ending.

If he were to be honest, the pair before him was a pain in the ass, but their opinion was that important because, when it came to music, they were the best at it. He felt no shame nor jealousy in admitting it.

"Dunno, the hook sounds like a Vice headline ta me." The bleach-haired male said, hearring the song's outro blaring through the studio speakers.

"Isn't it a Kid Milli reference, tho?" The other asked while munching a chip. He frowned at them, not understanding their point.

"Whatever. You two are no help anyways." Hearring their bullshit, the brunette already regretted this collab. He paused the queued song, turning to the other two with a blank stare.

The twins before him snickered, knowing they successfully hit a nerve. They couldn't help it, provoking Suna was one of their favorite hobbies.

"The song is good, but I gotta tell ya this butt hurt phase of yers is pretty lame." The faux-blond opened his mouth again, spinning around the studio with the desk chair.

"Fuck you, Atsumu" He snapped, almost giving in to the desire of decking them both on the face.

"Tsumu's right, ya Lil Peep wannabe. Can't believe this break up ended up that bad." Osamu said in mockery, throwing the empty Lay's wrapper at him. He scoffed, disposing the wrapper on the bin before getting back at the screen to look at the FL studio interface.

"It's not that I have a broken heart. I just wanna know what's wrong with my life" He shrugged, blindly tacting over the desk in search of his Juul.

"Yeah Samu, he's just grieving over those fancy ass Dior Jordans. Sunarin is incapable of mundane things like a broken heart." His blond friend was partially right.

Suna Rintaro was many things: alt model, music producer, cloud artist and a decent volleyball player that almost went pro. But if there was something he could never be, it was a lucky man on love matters.

With his fair share of failed relationships, the artist could never pinpoint when things went wrong. It would always be the same: he would meet a girl, they would have a good time and then, the chick would turn out demanding as fuck.

In the end, every single one of them would slap him across the face and leave his life banging the front door shut like crazy — last week, it was Mika who broke things off, but not before setting his limited edition pair of jordans on fire. He would never get over those sneakers.

"Good for him, those kicks were kinda ugly." Osamu said in a bored manner. Suna felt his soul leaving his body.

"The hell, Osamu?" He was ready to fight, deeply offended by the attack at his taste in fashion.

"Yo, you two." Atsumu butted in, checking something on his phone "Y'all are drifting away from our problem."

"That is?" The other brother asked.

"Cheer up Sunarin before he fucks up with the Album." If Suna had the energy, he would kick both Miyas out of his studio "And I gotta the perfect thing. Let's hang out at Akagi's tonight, he just invited us." The already distressed musician felt the soul leaving his body for the second time that afternoon. He was sure both twins wished his death.

"Not a fucking chance. Last time I went there I almost died because of that weird stuff we smoked."

"Aw, Sunarin, Kita'll be there too." The faux-blonde tried to persuade. The mention of their older, responsible and straight edge friend made Suna look at them with interest. But he needed more, though. Based on the last experience, he didn't have the will to risk his life going to Akagi's house once again. A shiver descended his spine as the male recalled how much he threw up that night.

"Suna, man, I gotta agree with Tsumu. Yer feelings are showing in your music." Osamu said as if he was some kind of genius.

"Isn't art about it, tho?" He deadpanned "Expressing feelings and shit?" He asked, staring them dead in the eye. The males before him shivered because of its intensity. Suna snickered.

"Man says art, but most of his songs are about the Nikes on his feet and the Tesla in his garage." Atsumu mocked "What the fuck?" The blonde barely dodged the moleskine thrown at him.

"Don't chew on me when you do the same, asshat. This is called character development." As unnerving the twins were, he felt a whole lot better in their company "Just lemme produce my sad stuff in peace."

"Cut us some slack, ya dumbfuck. We're just worried about ya." Osamu protested " 'Sides, no wonder no girl sticks by yer side. You know what the chicks find sexy? Seizing the means of production, not yer dumb car."

"You two are so la—" The musician was interrupted mid sentence, startled by the blond figure clutching his phone with enthusiasm.

"Oi Samu," Atsumu's loud voice startled the other two, as he excitedly fisted the air.

"What the fuck?" Suna asked, dropping the Juul on the floor.

"She'll be there tonight." The blond said, looking at his brother with a new wave of joy.

"The fuck? She who?" The brunette frowned.

"Ya gotta go and find out, man." The gray haired twin said with a knowing smile, matching his brother's excitement.

The night out felt somewhat draining. The booze, the music and the company were great, but his lack of energy was a mood killer.

Cheer me up my ass, Suna cursed internally as he observed everyone getting wasted all over the place. He grimaced at the sight, realizing the meeting with the twins was enough social interaction for the day.

He didn't know what's gotten into him. The male knew it wasn't necessarily caused by the break up, but he couldn't help the feeling down.

Right now, life just felt lowkey suffocating.

Being a public figure meant being under the spotlights the most of time.

People talked.

People assumed.

Media was all over him, ready to catch a scandall.

And of fucking course his name was on gossip headlines. It even occupied a spot on twitter trending topics for a day or so.

"Fuck me." He said before the lukewarm beer went down his throat.

"Sunarin!" He heard Atsumu shouting from his right "I want you to meet someone!" And only now he noticed the blond had his left arm over a girl's shoulders.

Oh, that's the one they were talking about, maybe? the brunette realized. What's the hype, tho? He asked himself, eyeing your figure.

"[Name], this is Suna. Sunarin, this is [Name], best girl ever and the mastermind behind the visuals of mine and Samu's last album" The bleach-haired male said with a proud smirk, ruffling your hair. You were obviously shy.

How cute, the brunette thought.

"Dumbass, don't embarrass me in front of others!" You nudged the Miya with your elbow "Nice to meet you, I saw your name on TMZ last week—" You said beaming and he grunted.

I take it back. Not cute at all, the man internally screamed, not ready to talk about the recent events. He didn't even want to listen to the rest of your speech, your cheery voice went through his ears in a white noise.

"And this makes me really excited for your album. The interview about the collab with dumb and dumber was lit." You continued, the words were genuine and you seemed really interested "And I also relate on a spiritual level because I know working with them is hell."

Oh, she's talking about the album. He realized in relief.

"Yo, I heard good things about you too. The design of their album was hella sick, even though they two suck ass." Suna snickered when he heard Atsumu protesting. You only left out a giggle, joining him on the teasing.

The blond kept ranting about how bad of friends the two of you were.

"I didn't introduce y'all ta gang up on me. Bye, I'm finding another company. Ya two suck." The blonde Miya said, leaving only you and Suna in the sofa area.

"Uh, so…" He drifted off, trying to start some small talk

"Yeah..." You both giggled at the awkwardness "Not enjoying the night?"

"Too much happening right now. Lots of people talking shit 'bout me." He sipped the beer, grimacing at the stale taste of the drink "Hope they cancel me already. So all this shit dies down." Suna looked away, suddenly shy for opening up to a stranger.

"You're a famous guy and the break-up wasn't that scandalous. It'll be over eventually, just beware the sneaker cult." Your amusement was comfort enough. You didn't make intrusive questions about the events and merely joked it off. He felt so worn out by the situation but, at least, your presence wasn't overbearring.

"How is it everyone knows about the jordans?" You shrugged it off, laughing at the distressed face he mocked. Sighing in relief, Suna couldn't deny how refreshing your presence was. Not to be a jerk, but usually, the girls either were all over him or judged every single move he made. You were just that easygoing.

"Well, I don't think you came here to sulk on the sofa all night long. Why don't we join them by the pool and down some shots?" You hopped off of your seat, pointing to the glass doors. All the boys were waving at you two and suddenly, Suna felt a wave of joy run down his body.

Atsumu was right. Best girl ever.

At some point of the night, everything became about you.

All he could hear was the sound of your voice and all the time, his eyes were drawn to your figure. He couldn't figure out a reason for it, but the rapper wasn't complaining either.

A sharp pang at the side of Suna's head broke the trance he was in. Osamu had a shit eating grin on his face, eyeing the ravenette with amusement.

"We told ya so." The younger twin mused whilst he handed a long neck of vodka to the other.

"Stop. This is dumb."

"Yer dumb. But you ain't that dumb ta dare ta mess with her." The gray-haired Miya squinted at him, menacingly pointing the bottle in his hand at the brunette. The latter shrugged it off, opening his drink.

"Nah, I'm good." And he meant it.

But how could he explain the situation he was in?

Lips and hands wandered over the expanse of his skin. Everything was too hot and too good at the same time. Overwhelming, even.

He wanted more, more and more. There wasn't enough of you.

And if it wasn't unfair enough, his body felt lethargic. He was desperate, but couldn't keep up with the rhythm you imposed. Be it the alcohol or the stress, his body gave up and blacked out, even before you could undress each other.

In the morning after, a pounding headache woke him up. Suna didn't dare to open his eyes, but the morning breath fanning over his face was unbearable.

"I can't believe a cutie like you have a stinky breath like this." The complaint came out in a raspy voice, accompanied by an annoyed grunt.

Someone snickered on the other side of the room.

"Man, I didn't know you had the hots fer Samu." Atsumu was somewhere across the room, laughing at him.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Hearing the other, Suna's body jolted, dizziness made his head spin in the process. He felt sick in the stomach and the morning light made his eyes sting. "When did I get back here?" The male looked around, realizing he was sprawled over Akagi's floor, right beside Osamu, who didn't even squirm at the loud voices in the room.

"What do ya mean? We never left" Atsumu frowned, uncaping a water bottle he was holding "Ya puked on Kita and passed out. The boys were too wasted ta drag yer sorry ass back home so we all crashed here." The blonde was dumbfounded, trying to figure out how wasted Suna got last night.

Suna wanted to know too. After all, there was no way the events envolving you were a product of his drunk mind.

facts:

• Suna's artist name is yosemite.

• He has a Tesla Model S because of Frank Ocean.

• He takes his Nikes very seriously.

• No, not all of his songs are about the car and the kicks.

• He and the Miya twins got a sports scholarship because of volleyball, but they dropped out of school to make music.

• The three of them created Inarizaki, the label they're making music under. Kita and Aran manage it.

• Both Miya twins are beatmakers and music producers. They recently debuted as artists and now are making a collab EP with Suna, thus Atsumu's concern about the album.

#suna x reader #suna rintaro x reader #suna scenarios #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu imagines

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who-am-i-no-one · 4 years ago

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Emma. (2020)

I watched this movie in late January. After multiple viewings and re-reading the book, I have a lot of thoughts about this adaptation.

It seems rather strange, given that Emma is part of my holy trinity of Austen novels, that I didn't watched the most recent adaptation earlier. I think it was mostly due to my initial impression that Anya Taylor-Joy's otherworldly looks didn't quite match what I had in mind for the titular character. I decided to give this version a try after watching Queen's Gambit. Not sure that Anya's looks will ever grow on me, but she did impress me as a young actress who seemed to have a maturity beyond her years.

Long story short: really wished I had seen this movie earlier! It is absurd and heartfelt at the same time, imo, the version that best imbues Austen's humor. It is now my favorite adaption, with the possible exception of Clueless, and I'm not quite sure how much of that is just nostalgia.

From the casting to the direction to the script to the costumes to the set to the soundtrack, I could tell the creative team really put a lot of love into this project. It's always a joy to watch something that's made with love and made well.

Direction

Autumn de Wilde's directing is quite good. I would never have thought this was her first feature. She certainly has a unique and colorful style, which is probably to be expected for such a famous photographer.

Funnily, while watching the movie I kept thinking it reminded me of early Hollywood romantic comedies like Bringing Up Baby (incidentally one of my favorites) or The Philadelphia Story, and then reading interviews and seeing that she had tried to bring in some of that style of humor made me feel rather validated. Also the servants' reactions were awesome!

Absolutely loved the fact that they decided to show that Knightley and Emma were in love with each other very early on in the story, with Knightley more aware of it. I've read some people complaining about the surprise of Emma's being in love being ruined. But come on, did anyone reading two chapters into the book think it wasn't going to be the two of them together in the end?

Loved how much of Knightley's point of view we got in this movie. This is one repressed pinning man. I can totally see this Knightley riding ventre a terre from London in the rain because he thought Emma was heartbroken.

The only gripe I had was the lack of Frank and Jane's subplot. As it seems they shot some scenes for that, I assume it was the director's discretion to take them out. I remember thinking while watching the movie that they must have expected the audience to be familiar with the story because some things just didn't really get explained or extrapolated on a lot. If you hadn't read the book it'd be 30 minutes or more into the movie before you put two and two together and figured out why Mr. Knightley is always at Hartfield.

Script

The script takes most of the dialogue directly from the book, which is awesome. I love Austen's writing because there is a certain musicality to it and retaining that in large part for the movie really made it better for me. The deftness with which Eleanor Catton moved dialogue from one scene in the book to a totally different one in the movie was quite brilliant. Everything flowed so well.

The scenes that differed from the book were also excellent - namely, I really loved the Jane/Knightley duet, the infamous nosebleed and first kiss scenes. 💖 I thought the screenwriter used those changes to quickly establish plot points and character arcs well.

Costume/Hair

Not a Recency expert so can't say much about the costumes and hair as far as period correctness but from reading other reviews it seemed like they were very true to the period. Obviously appreciated them taking the time to show the audience how men got dressed in that time (purely for research purposes obviously 😜).

Emma's dresses were all quite beautiful. I especially loved the black evening dress, the pink one with the roses and the proposal dress. Also loved the little pop of red shoes that went with the proposal dress. As someone who wore red shoes with her wedding gown I heartily approve.

Absolutely loved how Emma's curls unwound as her life unravels. Similarly think they must have done the same for Knightley to a lesser extent. His hair during the card playing scene at the Westons was quite terrible.

Set

I! Loved! Hartfield! It looked just like a doll house. Really most of the sets looked good enough to eat. So much pastel. Reminded me of French macarons.

I liked how everything in Donwell Abbey was shrouded in Holland covers. Makes a good point that Knightley barely lives there at all, that his home has been with the Woodhouses for quite a while now. Which, of course, makes his sacrifice at the end just a little bit less of a sacrifice?

Soundtrack

Isabella Waller-Bridge's music really meshed well with the tone of the entire film. The male and female opera singers, sometimes sounding as if they are bickering with each other and other times seeming to be in duet, was a brilliant touch. The folk music was a little jarring at first but really grew on me.

Johnny Flynn's end credits song "Queen Bee" is amazing. I love that we get Knightley's perspective at the end with a song written and sung by Knightley. It's a lovely coda to the movie. And now, if the next Austen hero doesn't write one for his SO I'm going to think him a very poor sort of lover.

Cast

Anya's Emma was really great. I'm glad they allowed Emma to be her bitchy self. Lol. I haven't watched the 1996 and 2009 versions in a while but I distinctly remember them making Emma too nice. I recall writing after watching the Garai version that Emma was actually mean and they should have let her be mean! If she's not a brat in the beginning, how will we see her change for the better later on? I love what a snob and how manipulative this Emma was and so assured of her place in her little society but still had the vulnerability of almost an imposter's syndrome which I feel most people can relate to.

Her chemistry with Johnny Flynn's Knightley was off the charts. Pretty much every scene they had together I half expected them to reenact the library scene from Atonement lol.

Mia Goth was a wonderful Harriet. She really captured Harriet's inexperience, naivete and diffidence. The orgasmic sounds she was making during the gypsies attack scene were awesome. Although, I could probably have forgone a few of Harriet's scenes for more Frank and Jane.

Not sure why they made Mia go brunette since the book specifically mentioned Harriet was fair? Perhaps having all three leads as blondes was just a bit too much. I'm also not sure if I liked Harriet's ending as I really don't think Emma, even in her most contrite mood, would invite further friendship from a tradesman's daughter and soon-to-be her husband's tenant farmer's wife. This seems a piece of modern day wishful thinking on the part of the creative team.

Bill Nighy was so good as Mr. Woodhouse. He made it so believable why everyone would do everything in their power to accommodate his whims. The gag with the screens was too funny. He was able to sketch out a lonely quirky old man who is afraid to lose those close to him in very limited screen time. Absolutely loved the scene where Emma was heaping blame on herself and he just sat with her in sympathetic silence.

Miranda Hart's Miss Bates was excellent as well. She has long been one of my favorite British comedic actresses but she can also do drama well. Her reaction to Emma's teasing on Box Hill and her forgiveness of Emma later brought me to tears.

Josh O'Connor's Mr. Elton was deliciously creepy. The carriage proposal scene was at once a little scary and hilarious. I actually liked the portrait scenes a little less because I found the acting there slightly affected and veering into 1995 Mr. Collins territory. But as Austen described Elton as having "a sort of parade in his speeches", this was much more forgivable. Really loved Mr. Elton's determination to eat cake during the Eltons' visit to Hartfield.

Tanya Reynolds was an excellent Mrs. Elton and in very little screen time was able to bring to life this meddlesome nouveau riche. Adored her little shimmy during the ball.

Amber Anderson's Jane really looked as if she were in a decline. Callum Turner did a good job as a slightly restless, mischievous and immature Frank Churchill. I did feel his looks were a bit too modern but that's just my personal view.

Given how many scenes they had I thought they used the time they had pretty well with furtive glances and sly smiles at each other to establish the relationship.

Connor Swindells was such a love sick puppy as Robert Martin. Did this role ever get cast in other adaptations? I don't seem to recall at all.

Special shoutout to Oliver Chris's John Knightley. Absolutely had me in stitches.

And last but never the least, Johnny Flynn's Mr. Knightley:

To preface, I will never not fall for Mr. Knightley in any version that I watch. And really, get yourself a good looking enough actor with good enough chemistry with Emma and good enough acting chops and you should have a fairly successful Knightley.

I judge all my Knightleys by the Box Hill scene. And up to that point in the movie, I really liked Johnny Flynn's Knightley. He was playful and sexy and jealous and slightly bitchy as well. The duet scene was lovely because I always appreciate a man who can play instruments and sing well. The sexiness and chemistry of the dance scene was off the charts. That's all well and good. And like I said before, given any well cast actor, I probably would have liked them in those scenes as well, just as I've liked Northam's and Miller's Knightleys.

But, the Box Hill scene absolutely blew me away. To make sure I was not just biased towards the last Knightley I saw on screen, I did go back and compare each version's Box Hill scene and I am, actually, even more blown away. Some of it is a credit to the directing and script, but a large part of it is Johnny Flynn's acting in that scene.

As far a script and directing, the set up to the fight scene was fantastic. Loved Anya's expression changes after she makes the joke. Loved Miranda Hart's Miss Bates as she realizes what Emma meant. The silence that followed. Knightley's shocked face and how sympathetic he was to Miss Bates. Can probably write a whole thing just about this scene alone.

I loved the fact that Knightley had an internal struggle as to whether or not to approach Emma and reproach her for her behavior. I know the book has him tell Emma about his struggle but that just doesn't work as well for me on screen.

During the scene you can just tell how frustrated and disappointed in her he is even though he tries to keep his voice low. But the way he reprimands her does not at all feel lecture-y and I feel like part of it is because it seems like he starts to lose control a little bit as well. His voice starts to crescendo as she stubbornly refuses to admit she was in the wrong and culminates in "badly done, indeed!" with actual fingerpointing. Yikes.

Then he losses steam and looked regretful, almost devastatingly so, at his own outburst and perhaps felt that he was losing her by giving this speech and looked as if he would have said something more - an apology or some words of comfort to soften the blow? - but didn't.

This remorse and the struggle at the beginning really bookended the scene for me.

Absolutely loved his Knightley, and, really, him as an actor after that.

The proposal scene as well was very good. His delivery was just really good. The way he said "If I loved you less then I might be able to talk about it more." with some regret and then closing his eyes as if he can't believe what he just said. Soooo good. Also, he cries very pretty, lol.

The delivery of the three "yes" during the kiss scene as Emma asked for confirmation that he really was ok with giving up his house to come live with them was also brilliant. It just kept getting softer and softer but he never breaks eye contact. Absolute chef's kiss. His closed eyed little smile of content after Emma kisses him just made me melt into a puddle.

Yup, overall I'd say I rather liked his interpretation of Mr. George Knightley. 😜

I did wish they hadn't giving him such sideburns but after watching some Emma interviews I can totally understand. If he didn't have the sideburns there'd be more complaints about how young this Knightley was. He's got such a baby face.

...I seemed to have written an entire essay on this movie...yeah, I just have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this version...

#Emma #emma 2020 #jane austen #movie review #austen adaptations

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