#the york theatre company

[spooky1980]

"Romeo And Juliet" Opening Night - Arrivals

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 23: Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton attend the opening night of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Duke Of York’s Theatre on May 23, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images)

[ilovekbranagh]

[captainshazamerica]

Had a blast at the Broadway museum the other day, if you couldn't tell xD

[image-junkie]

LARGE HANDPAINTED PHOTOS FOR PROJECTIONS

Only the negatives. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1970.

[sheltiechicago]

New York, US

Momix dancer Seah Hagan performs a scene from Aqua Flora during a performance of Back to Momix at the Queens Theatre. Momix, a dance company based in Washington, Connecticut, was founded in 1981 by choreographer Moses Pendleton

Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

[playbillionaire]

Down in the Cheap Seats

How to get more affordable theatre tickets in New York City. Here’s the same post on my Substack!

I’m not a professional, but I have been lucky enough to be attending theatre in the tri-state area my whole life, so here’s everything I know to help anyone who wants to get into seeing theatre without spending too much.

The trick of seeing great theatre without skipping a meal is to look beyond Broadway. Theatre tends to be more fluid than its marketing- almost all of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in the 21st century have premiered in smaller (more accessible) venues. Staying informed and being willingly to go outside of the usual Broadway houses is the best way to see theatre at affordable prices, and possibly catch new shows before they head to Broadway.

Here’s a couple of link that are good to know:

Playbill Weekly Schedule of Broadway Shows- A current schedule of the showtimes of every show currently running on Broadway. Shows are typically dark on Monday, but since the pandemic, schedules have changed and matinees have been added during the weekends, so it’s good to check which matinees are 2pm and which are 3pm, in case you want to try multiple lottos each day.

Playbill Broadway Rush, Lottery, and Standing Room Only Policies- Alphabetical list of all the discount ticket options for Broadway shows

Playbill Off-Broadway Rush and Inexpensive Ticket Policies- Alphabetical list of all the discount ticket options for off-Broadway shows.

Lotteries

When it comes to theatre, I feel that scheduling flexibility saves money. If you can go any time or day, you can snag cheaper tickets. I recommend entering as many lotteries as possible, as frequently as possible. When I was working at my desk job, I tried to make a habit of entering the lotteries every morning after checking my emails. Here’s all of the links to the digital lotteries- they usually email winners around 2, and give them an hour to purchase the tickets, so keep an eye on your email! (I’m not exactly sure why these shows are split up across these lotteries, rather than in one place, but it’s best to just go through all 3). As much as I love in-person rush, anyone with a full time job and commute is probably going to have a tough time getting to the box office when it opens at 10 or hanging around the theatre district hoping to snag a cheap ticket.

Broadway Direct Lottery

Telecharge Lottery and Rush- This requires signing into a social media account (very annoying), but also let’s you submit a lottery for more than one performance at a time

Lucky Seat- This one offers lotteries in several different cities, so make sure you are submitting for the New York performances

Today Tix- Need the app to get tickets, but some really great lotteries if you submit every day, especially for hot ticket Off-Broadway shows.

Discount Ticket Programs

A lot are mentioned in the Playbill article, but to keep everything together, below are my favorite ones that I’ve personally used. When a recent show I had tickets to was cancelled, I was able to check with these programs to get a last minute cheap ticket, so making/maintaining an account ahead of time is a good idea.

LincTix- Lincoln Center Theatre’s program for discount tickets for people between the ages of 21 and 35. With fees, tickets are $35.50 for any show at the 3 Broadway theatres at Lincoln Center. You can also purchase tickets for anyone else with a LincTix account in the same order. Don’t delete the email with your account number in it, you will need it to sign in every time you purchase tickets. Also, seats purchased with LincTix are always great, these are not partial view seats.

Playwrights Horizons Young Membership Discount Tickets- $20 tickets for any show for anyone under 35. You can also purchase $35 tickets for a guest to accompany you. There is also a $10 alternative for full-time students, at the same link. To sign up, you need to create an account and “purchase” a free membership, which will allow you to purchase the discounted tickets from your account. Remember to renew this every season, as it does expire.

2nd Stage Theater 30 Under 30 Discount Tickets- $30 tickets for any show for anyone under 30. When looking at performance dates, enter “30UNDER30” in the promo code window, and eligible seats will show up on the seating chart.

Manhattan Theatre Club 30 Under 35 Discount Tickets- $30 tickets for any show. Registering online allows anyone under 35 to buy 2 tickets per show. The best part is that you can bring a guest of any age- just make sure whoever purchased the ticket picks up the ticket at the box office.

Roundabout Theatre Company HipTix Program- $30 tickets for any show for anyone between the ages of 18 and 40. This program also allows you to purchase 2 tickets for any show, and your guest can be of any age. You’ll receive a promo code in an email that will let you purchase the tickets, and whoever purchased the tickets must pick them up at the box office.

Theatre For a New Audience New Deal Tickets- $20 tickets for any show for anyone under 30, or any full-time student. Enter the promo code NEWDEAL when purchasing tickets and the discount will be applied. Ticket must be picked up at the box office, so bring proof of ID.

Ultimately, it is possible to see theatre in New York City for less than a nice dinner! Having a flexible schedule, entering lotteries, and looking outside Broadway is the best way to do it (also, be under 30 I guess??). Good luck!

[daphnedauphinoise]

Full Length Ballet Performances

Cinderella

Instituto Nacional De Las Bellas Artes 🩰 Russian National Ballet

Coppelia

Paris Opera Ballet 🩰 Bolshoi Ballet Theatre

Don Quixote

The National Ballet Theatre of Ukraine 🩰Teatro alla Scala di Milano Marrinsky Theatre

Giselle

Bolshoi Ballet Theatre 🩰 Polish National Ballet 🩰 The Royal Danish Ballet 🩰 National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Mari El

La Bayadère

National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Mari El.🩰 Bolshoi Ballet Theatre

La Fille Mal Gardée

Serbian National Ballet

La Sylphide

The Royal Danish Ballet

Marguerite & Armand

The Royal Ballet

Mayerling

Stainslavsky Ballet

Nutcracker

The New York City Ballet 🩰Marrinsky Theatre 🩰 National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Marie.El

Romeo and Juliet

Ural Opera Ballet🩰 Bolshoi Ballet Theatre

Swan Lake

Kirkov Ballet 🩰 St Petersburg Ballet Theatre 🩰 American Ballet Theatre 🩰 Bolshoi Ballet Theatre

The Sleeping Beauty

Staatsballett Berlin 🩰 National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Mari El 🩰 Marrinsky Theatre 🩰 l'Opéra Bastille 🩰Teatro alla Scala 🩰 Bolshoi Ballet Act 1 Bolshoi Ballet Act 2

The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du printemps)

Marrinsky Theatre

I was born in the correct generation because I loved those photos so much, I decided to look up the ballet so I could watch it and there it was ! I have added other full length performances as well and for most of the pieces I have added different ballet companies (if I could find) just because different ballet companies means different choreography ( not always but certain companies are reowned for their distinct style)

Enjoy!

xo Daphne

[sleepynegress]

Black actor who faced abuse over role in Romeo & Juliet calls for industry-wide action

Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who played Juliet alongside Tom Holland’s Romeo, says racist abuse went on for months

The actor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who received a barrage of online racial abuse after being cast in a production of Romeo & Juliet this year, has called for industry-wide action to protect black and brown actors.

The abuse aimed at Amewudah-Rivers began after the Jamie Lloyd Company theatre group announced the cast of its production in April, with Amewudah-Rivers to play Juliet and the Spider-Man star Tom Holland playing Romeo.

Amewudah-Rivers has revealed she also received hate mail, and that she did not feel safe while working on the play, her West End stage debut, at the Duke of York’s theatre.

“There were many days where I didn’t know how I was going to get through it,” she told the Stage. “The flurry of abuse was sustained throughout the whole job. I received death threats, hate mail sent to the theatre. I didn’t feel safe at work.”

‘Too much to bear’: Black actors condemn racial abuse of Romeo & Juliet starRead more

The 26-year-old, who was nominated at this year’s Black British theatre awards, said the minimal set and closeup camerawork of the production made her feel “very exposed” on stage. “Off the back of the abuse, having to stare down the camera lens and have my face be blown up in this theatre was really tough mentally,” she said.

Amewudah-Rivers said the harassment also affected her family and friends, as well as the show’s cast, crew and producers at the Jamie Lloyd Company, who condemned the initial abuse in a statement on social media at the time and said further harassment would be reported.

The incident led to an open letter of solidarity with Amewudah-Rivers being signed by more than 800 predominantly black female and non-binary actors – including Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Lolly Adefope, Freema Agyeman, Wunmi Mosaku and Tamara Lawrance.

Amewudah-Rivers described her experience as an “incredibly tough” induction into the West End. She said: “I know what it means to move through life in a black body. Racism is something we have to navigate every day, so I was very aware of the potential for something like this to happen.

“I think what I was unprepared for was how long it went on for, and also having to navigate it while doing the job. It was four months of battling against this energy, and it’s something I still have to deal with. I really had to reckon whether it was worth it, this sustained feeling of duress.”

The actor called for “broader conversations industry-wide” about the protection of global-majority actors and said it was “not enough to represent our communities on stage, there also needs to be an infrastructure of support”.

“Safety has to be at the forefront. We can’t do our best work if we don’t feel safe, if we don’t feel held, if we don’t feel understood,” she said. “I think more needs to be done, especially because I know I’m not alone. I know other actors who have had similar experiences, more recently, too.”

According to Amewudah-Rivers, the response to her casting showed how the UK theatre sector was still lagging behind in terms of onstage racial diversity.

“For it to cause such outrage that I was cast in this role means we have a long way to go. Theatre has a legacy of community, it should represent society. Especially in London – there’s a big black British community here and in the UK. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Our histories as black people have been erased. It’s about re-education. I’m not the first black Juliet, and I won’t be the last.”

[doraminatook]

We're About To Get Playfully Blasphemous Here (or...The Metaphorical Death and Resurrection of Me)

2023 was the year I turned 33, and in case you didn’t know, many religious scholars cite that as the age Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.  Now, within literature there’s a trope called the Christ-like figure in which a character sacrifices themself and from that death, something happens in order to advance the plot.  Usually that something is either the “dead” character rising from the ashes and obtaining new powers (think Gandalf the Grey battling the Balrog and then coming back as Gandalf the White) or the protagonist being so moved by the death of this secondary character that they are reborn in some way (think Red Badge of Courage’s Jim Conklin (JC…get it?) whose death changes Henry’s opinion on war.)

Because I’m a storyteller and have a dark sense of humor, I began to wonder if I would somehow have a Christ-like-figure-moment within my thirty-third year of life.  (Not long after my birthday, I told my mom that I just had to make it to 34 and then I would have “beaten” Jesus; being a good Lutheran woman, she did not appreciate this joke.)

Now, I may be reaching or forcing figurative imagery into the literal world (isn’t that what artists do?), but I think I did have a “death” and consequential “resurrection”.  

I’m at a strange place in my writing career in that I am not famous (by any means) but I’m also not considered emerging.  Recently, I was told by a theater that I should “sit this contest out” and give someone else a chance but at the same time my work has not been produced enough to catch an agent’s eye.  (It doesn’t help that theatre companies have an intense fixation on world premieres.  They want to be the first one to do the show, apparently assuming that as soon as a piece gets produced once, that means it’s finished.  But that’s a rant for another day.) 

Currently I live in Milwaukee and for a long time I thought (or at least hoped) that I could maybe just make it work here; it is technically a theater town.  Add to that the fact that my whole family lives in Wisconsin, my financial situation was not ideal, and my best friend (platonic soulmate) had made it fairly clear to me that she did not wish to move away from Milwaukee.  When I was honest with myself, I knew that I wanted to get out, but there were so many things holding me back from making the jump.  

As soon as the thought of moving away entered my head, Anxiety would perk up.  Always eager to be the backseat driver, it would shout things like, “Isn’t life here good enough for you?  You’ve got a roof over your head, a job that allows you to pursue your passion, and you’re perfectly healthy.  Be grateful for what you have and stop expecting something more!” 

I attended a workshop for other playwrights from the area and, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I didn’t have a lot in common with many of them.  Discussions and questions whirled around about how we find time to write, where we get inspiration, and how we format a script properly.  Some of the writers present had never even finished a full script.  I certainly am not bringing this up in order to shame anyone, but it was an eye-opening experience for me.  Was I a proverbial big fish in a little pond?

My anxiety had an opinion for that, too.  

“Wow!  Way to be egotistical, D!  You think you’re so much better than everyone here?  Get over yourself!  You’re not special.  You’re just another ‘artist’ who thinks they’ve got something special to say!”

A few weeks later I was at my cousin’s wedding and after the ceremony, he approached me to offer congratulations for all the success I’ve had…only to then immediately cut me off guard with the question, “So when are you moving to New York?”  As the groom, he was quickly called away for photographs and I never really got to answer his question.  

If this moment had been in a play, the spotlight would have hit me right then and there and I would have begun some contemplative soliloquy where I openly pondered, “New York, eh?  Maybe I should go to New York!”

Obviously, as a theatre person, the idea of moving to New York had crossed my mind; it’s the theatre capital of the US for obvious reasons.  But, at the same time, New York just didn’t feel like me.  (I have a lot of opinions on NYC, especially when it comes to the outrageous ticket prices.  When it costs a small fortune to see a Broadway show, art becomes a luxury rather than a necessity.  But that’s a rant for another day.)  It certainly seemed daunting, and every good dream should be at least a little daunting.  But New York was daunting without being exciting.  It felt like something I should do…something that was expected of me.

LA didn’t do it for me, either.  Nor Seattle.  I considered many locations, but nothing really made me sit up and take notice.  I wasn’t about to dive headfirst into debt and throw away a good thing unless it was something that truly excited me…something that was enticing enough to spark a change.  

Again, Anxiety spoke up, “Calm the fuck down, D!  New York?  Even if that is what you wanted, they’d eat you alive there!  You’re a soft midwestern girl who can’t take criticism and cries at the drop of a hat!  You really think you could handle New York or LA?  Also, the cost of living in any of those places is way more than you will ever hope to make!  Stick with Submission Helper.  Stick with the contests and the festivals.  Go back to dreaming only as big as The Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.  Sit down and shut up!”

It may have gone on like this…if not for the summer of 2023.

Close your eyes and picture it: WGA strike, Barbenheimer, The Eras Tour, OceanGate, the Grimace Birthday shake…and in the midst of it all, I was having an epiphany.  

A favorite television show of mine dropped its latest season and I eagerly pulled out the Chardonnay and the popcorn to binge it all.  The vast majority of the show takes place in London and features several actors whom I admire greatly.  Between the giggles, sobs, and various twists and turns of the emotional rollercoaster that was Season 2, something all at once occurred to me.

This is what I want.  

That’s where I want to be.  

I want to move to the United Kingdom.

Was it daunting?  Hell yeah, it was daunting.  

And it was exciting.  

It was a dream that excited me.  

It burned inside me.  

It raged.

It burned so hot that I didn’t know what to do with it.  I paced around my tiny apartment, simply stunned by the prospect of it all.  

Anxiety was in the process of drinking a quad shot espresso con panna and promptly did a spit take upon hearing this new idea.  In a frenzied panic, it bellowed, “Are you nuts?  What the hell do you think you’re doing?  YOU can’t move to the UK!  It would be so difficult!  You’d need to apply for a Visa…or something like that!  Do you even know how to apply for a Visa!”  

“No,” I metaphorically replied, “but I could learn.”

“I bet it’s super difficult!” Anxiety shot back, trembling in fear, “I bet it’s expensive and complicated and you’ll never figure it out!  I bet your sense of humor wouldn’t translate!  I bet you’d end up broke and living under a bridge and crying because you threw away this good thing you had!”

For a split second, Anxiety almost won…but somehow, prompted by the promise of this new dream, I dared to ask, “But what if it worked out?  What if I could figure it out?  What if I somehow scraped up the money and did the research and filed the paperwork and just made it work?”

If it were a play, I would have been standing center stage, staring out into the audience like some kind of dramatic hero and whispering hopefully, “Yes…what if…?”  

It has been a long road to get here, but, despite what Anxiety likes to tell me, I did figure it out.  The process has been stressful enough to induce atypical Shingles and a few anxiety attacks, but it’s happening.  It’s actually happening!

This October I’m going to grad school at the University of Essex where I’ll pursue my masters degree in Scriptwriting.  I’ll hone my skills as a playwright while learning the ins and out of writing for film, television, and radio.  I’ll take the train into London on the weekends and see every show I can at the National Theatre.  I’ll get new life experiences.  I’ll do my best to explore every inch of that beautiful island.  I’m going to do something new because it’s scary and, most importantly, it’s exciting.  

(To add to the awesomeness of this new adventure, my best friend (platonic soul mate) is moving with me and pursuing her own dreams of studying acting…also at the University of Essex.)

My “death” was not as dramatic or world-changing as Jesus’s, but it gave way to a new life for me.  The power of storytelling combined with a newfound confidence was enough to catapult me into something new, something different.    

And I know you’re wondering what show I was watching that prompted this sudden change; if you know anything about me, you’ve probably guessed it already.  

Along with seeing as much theatre as I can on my visits to London, I also plan to have surreptitious meetings at The Bandstand, feed ducks some frozen peas at St. James’s Park, and maybe help avert an apocalypse (or two).  My birthday is in January and it just so happens that Season 3 is scheduled to begin filming around that time; perhaps on my winter holiday, I’ll put myself onto a train and take myself up to Edinburgh.  I have so many thoughts on what could possibly happen next to my favorite angel and demon…but that’s a rant for another day.

(Fun fact: I say this line at least once a week...if only to myself.)

[staticsnowfall]

the famous fouettés of swan lake

🦢༉

featured above is chloe misseldine, prima ballerina of american ballet theatre, as odile in ���swan lake’.

the thirty-two fouettés in swan lake, and the embodiment of odette and odile as a whole are considered a stepping stone into a ballerina’s career as a prima. a debut is ultimately a test, a deciding factor in whether a company decides to promote a dancer or leave her alone. the fouettés of odile are difficult, requiring much strength, stamina, and training, performed during the coda after a lengthy pas de deux and variation. the legendary pierina legnani was the first ballerina to accomplish this feat in 1895, the fouettés being added just for her by choreographer marius petipa.

misseldine is the most recent ballerina to join the ranks of principal in the company: her promotion was on july 3rd, 2024, after her performance of odette/odile at the metropolitan opera house in manhattan, new york.

🦢༉

footage sourced from @juliette_2626’s story on instagram, july 3rd, 2024, the met opera.

[audreycritter]

HELLO?!?

[nutonmydraco]

✶ 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧. . . 📜 .ᐟ

📂 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ includes: matt sturniolo, chris sturniolo, and more. . .

🪞fluff / 🧚🏻 smut / 🧷 angst / 🐇 a wattpad original

𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗢𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗦 ‧₊˚ 🎞️ | short series

🎟️ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ in which i write a few short series based on iconic romance and rom-com movies we all know and love <3

i. the proposal ✷ matt sturniolo x fem!reader

y/n is an executive editor for a book company in manhattan, new york. while she may be a powerful woman, many of her workers despise her. when y/n learns that she’s going to face deportation and has to return to canada, she does the unthinkable. she lies through her teeth and reveals to her boss that she’s getting married to her assistant, matt sturniolo.

🪞 / 🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon in theatres.

ii. 10 things i hate about you ✷ chris sturniolo x fem!reader

on the first day of school, finn instantly falls for the most popular girl in school; cassie. his plan to ask cassie out is destroyed when he learns that she’s forbidden to date until her ill-tempered, hates-all-men, un-dateable older sister, y/n, does. desperate, finn finds a possible match all over the school for y/n until he comes across the perfect one—the ‘bad boy’ with a bad reputation, chris sturniolo.

🪞 / 🧚🏻 / 🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon in theatres.

iii. to all the boys i’ve loved before ✷ conrad fisher x fem!reader

five times. that’s how many times y/n has fallen in love and for each guy, she’s written a love letter that she keeps hidden in an old box. the letters remain a secret until y/n’s little sister sent all five letters to each guy it was addressed to. y/n was unaware of it until conrad fisher walked up to her one day, the folded paper in his hand. in an attempt to get his ex-girlfriend back, conrad proposes an idea that they should date. well, pretend to.

🪞 / 🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon in theatres.

iv. roman holiday ✷ matt sturniolo x fem!reader

it’s 1953 and princess y/n has arrived in rome, italy. overwhelmed by her suffocating schedule, princess y/n escapes from the palace in the middle of the night and into the cobblestoned streets of rome. lost and frightened, she runs into an american freelance journalist, matt sturniolo, who shows her what it’s like to live a normal life.

🪞 / 🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon in theatres.

v. the parent trap ✷ harry styles x fem!reader

divorced parents. two daughters—twins. after meeting at summer camp, anya and juliette devise a plan to switch identities to give each other a chance to spend time with the parent they’ve missed. if their scheme goes well, they have a chance to bring their mom, y/n, and dad, harry, back together and become a family again.

🪞 / 🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon in theatres.

+ more. . . <3 soon.

𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗧 𝗣𝗘𝗣𝗦𝗜 ‧₊˚ ⛪️ | one shots

🪽₊˚⊹ ━━ in which i write one shots for you! my inbox is open, so if you want to leave a request, feel free to let me know!

NOTE . . . .ᐟ requests that include certain kinks (e.g., piss kink), incest, anal, threesomes, and any other topics i find uncomfortable will be ignored.

i. little black dress ✷ chris sturniolo x fem!reader

❛❛ i wanna see the way you move for me, baby. . . ❞

in an attempt to move on from a brutal breakup with her piece-of-shit boyfriend, y/n gets dolled up for a frat party her friend had begged her to come to. hoping to just forget about it all by getting wasted, y/n is taken by surprise when she meets a frat boy, chris sturniolo, who had his eyes on her and her little black dress from the moment she walked in.

🧚🏻 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

one night stand, fratboy!chris, nsfw

ii. only angel ✷ harry styles x fem!reader

❛❛ it turns out she’s a devil in between the sheets. . . ❞

famous popstar, harry styles, is performing at the 2017 victoria’s secret fashion show and he’s more ready than ever. while performing ‘only angel’, harry is captivated when an angel herself, y/n, steps out to walk down the runway. after the show, harry takes it upon himself to ask if he could take her out for dinner—only to end up stumbling into harry’s hotel room to do more french kissing than talking.

🧚🏻 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

famous!harry, model!y/n, nsfw

iii. juno ✷ chris sturniolo x fem!reader

❛❛ give me more than just some butterflies. . . ❞

rumors have been going around that famous popstar, y/n, and nfl player, chris sturniolo, are dating after months of being spotted together by fans and paparazzis. attending y/n’s show for the first time, chris is taken by surprise by the ‘freaky position’ she does on stage, all while looking at him. of course, fans go insane.

🪞⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

singer!y/n, nflplayer!chris, fluff

iv. i can see you ✷ matt sturniolo x fem!reader

❛❛ and i could see you up against the wall with me. . . ❞

y/n has been thinking about this guy in her english class—his hair, his face, his glasses. they’ve never spoken before, but y/n can’t help but develop feelings for him. maybe it’s the way he talks, or walks, or maybe it’s just his face. y/n finally gets the courage to talk to him, lying that she needs help with an assignment but he sees right through her. the only problem is that he’s her professor.

🧚🏻 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

professor!matt, student!y/n, older!matt, both are consenting adults, y/n is 21+, nsfw

+ more. . . <3 soon.

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗟𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗠𝗬 ‧₊˚ 📰 | series

☁ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ in which i write multiple series filled with angst, fluff, and smut!

i. don’t blame me ✷ chris sturniolo x fem!reader

❛❛ lord, save me, my drug is my baby. . . ❞

y/n has had a secret admirer for months. every morning is the same thing—a note falls out from her locker, talking about her smile, her beauty, her everything. she throws each note away, and never thinks about it again. after being partnered up with chris, the quiet boy, in chemistry class, she forms a genuine bond with him. things begin to change when boys she has ever dated and her enemies were found in the woods, lifeless.

🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

obsessed!chris, killer!chris, quiet!chris, nsfw, angst, thriller

ii. sweet relief ✷ matt sturniolo x fem!reader

❛❛ it’s just something only we know. . . ❞

y/n has despised her brother’s best friend for years, but no one seems to know why. every time matt comes over to their house, y/n’s mood turns sour. growing tired of it, her brother, jax, forces y/n and matt to spend time together by leaving them at their family’s beach house. with no choice, the two spend the night together, learning to get along. as unexpected feelings surface, both agree to keep their new understanding a secret from jax—for now.

🪞 / 🧚🏻 / 🧷 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

brother’s best friend, enemies to lovers, nsfw, angst

+ more. . . <3 soon.

𝗦𝗟𝗜𝗣𝗙𝗔𝗦𝗧 ‧₊˚ 🩹 | fics

⛓️‍💥 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ in which i incorporate my wattpad fics on tumblr and continue them <3 and also make new fics with designated names for oc’s instead of ‘y/n’ !

i. fool’s gold ✷ chris sturniolo x fem!oc

❛❛ i know your love’s not real. . . ❞

bianca sinclair is the new girl in somerville high school. this being her senior year, she vows to not let boys distract her. that is until she meets chris sturniolo, the football player who’s known for also being a player outside of the field. things take a turn when bianca is asked to tutor chris in spanish and they spend more time together outside of school. in attempt to make his ex-girlfriend jealous and hide the fact that he has a tutor, he asks bianca the unthinkable—for her to be his fake girlfriend.

🪞 / 🧷 / 🐇 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

fake dating, footballplayer!chris, madison beer fc

ii. the great war ✷ matt sturniolo x fem!oc

❛❛ my hand was the one you reached for. . . ❞

ellsworth, maine became a silent town days after the sturniolo brothers moved in across the street from adelaide westwood. adelaide can’t help but become more curious about the enigmatic boy who smoked more than he talked, matt sturniolo. fear hovers over the town when a series of murder is reported, and she suspects that matt is the killer. surely, he’s hiding something, right? adelaide makes it her mission to unravel the truth matt seems to be secretive about, that is if he is hiding anything at all, before the whole town drowns in a bloodbath. or worse, before she’s next.

🧷 / 🐇 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ━━ coming soon.

thriller, biker!matt, cindy kimberly fc

© . . . all rights reserved. no part of this publication is allowed to be reproduced or copied. i put a lot of my time, effort, and energy into making all of these possible and the last thing i want is for someone to take my hard work, copy it, and claim it as theirs. in other words, plagiarism isn't tolerated.

💌 below are clickable tags i’ve included to make it easier for you to navigate through my page when i start posting more!

ᥫ᭡.

gian <3

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

EWAN MITCHELL IN CONVERSATION WITH EMMA D'ARCY FOR HERO MAGAZINE.

EMMA D'ARCY: — WHERE ARE YOU? ARE YOU IN AMERICA?

EWAN MITCHELL: NO, BUT I WAS SHOOT IN NEW YORK. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN?

ED: YEAH, I DID THE CRUCIBLE THERE [AT THE YARD THEATRE IN 2019] AND WE GOT A GREYHOUND TO SALEM, THEY'RE REALLY INTO THE OCCULT THERE. — WHAT ARE YOU UP TO AT THE MOMENT?

EM: I'M SUFFERING SEVERE JET LAG FROM NEW YORK, BUT I LOVED IT. I LIKE THE AMBIENCE, THE PEOPLE, THE FOOD. I LOVE HOW EVERYONE SAYS, 'I GOT YA.' — WHAT ABOUT YOU?

ED: I'VE JUST DONE A WEEK OF REHEARSALS BUT I'VE HAD A NICE BIT OF TIME NOT DOING ANYTHING PRIOR TO THAT.

EM: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM.

ED: I'D BE QUITE HAPPY TO DO NOTHING FOR A REALLY LONG TIME. I FIND IT INCREDIBLY INTERESTING TO DO ALMOST NOTHING AT ALL. I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH OF A PROBLEM THAT'S GOING TO BE FOR MY CAREER GOING FORWARD, BUT IT'S BEEN NICE. [LAUGHS]

EM: I HAVE TO STAY BUSY WHEN I'M NOT WORKING.

ED: YEAH BUT YOU'RE YOUNG, I'VE CROSSED THE BOUNDARY INTO A DIFFERENT TYPE OF LIFE.

EM: NO WAY.

ED: I DON'T MEAN IT IN A BAD WAT EITHER, IT'S ACTUALLY SO CRAZY. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER I'M QUESTIONING, 'WHAT DO I WANT MY LIFE TO LOOK LIKE?' IT'S NOT A QUESTION I HAD EVER ASKED BEFORE — IT'S COOL. I THINK MAYBE IT COMES WITH A REALISATION THAT THIS IS IN FACT YOUR LIFE.

EM: OH WOW, WHAT AGE WILL IT HIT ME?

ED: HOW OLD ARE YOU?

EM: I'M 26.

ED: YOU'VE PROBABLY GOT FOUR OR FIVE YEARS. [LAUGHS]

EM: WHEN I'M NOT WORKING I DO HAVE TO KEEP BUSY. I DON'T KNOW HOW IT IS FOR YOU, BUT I HAVE TO ADOPT A KIND OF SLEEPER AGENT LIFESTYLE, I HAVE CREATE A ROUTINE. I BOX EVERY OTHER DAY AND KEEP MY MIND BUSY. I THINK MY MATES KNOW I COME WITH A DISCLAIMER THAT IF ANYTHING COMES UP, THEN I'M DROPPING EVERYTHING FOR WORK — I JUST LOVE IT.

ED: WHAT YOU DESCRIBE IS A STATE OF PERPETUALLY LEAVING.

EM: EVERYTHING I DO ALWAYS RELATES TO ACTING WEIRDLY, IT HAS TO INFORM MY PROCESS IN SOME WAY, SHAPE OR FORM AND IF IT DOESN'T, IT SWITCHES ME OFF.

ED: — WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS?

EM: I NEVER WENT TO DRAMA SCHOOL SO EVERY JOB I DO IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO HONE IT AND TRY NEW THINGS.

BRUCE LEE SAID, 'ABSORB WHAT IS USEFUL AND DISCARD WHAT IS NOT,' HE WOULD CHERRY-PICK FROM DIFFERENT COMBAT DISCIPLINES AND IN DOING SO FORMED HIS OWN MARTIAL ART.

SIMILAR TO ME, I'M TRYING IT ON THE FLY AND SEEING WHAT STICKS, WHAT DOESN'T, MIXING IT UP FOR DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. AND SO FAR, SO GOOD. — WHAT ABOUT YOU?

ED: I ALSO DIDN'T GO TO DRAMA SCHOOL AND STRUGGLE WHEN DIRECTORS VERY KINDLY ASK, 'HOW CAN I BEST SUPPORT YOUR PROCESS?' I DON'T FEEL PARTICULARLY CLEAR ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS.

EM: — SO YOU'RE QUITE INSTINCTUAL?

ED: I THINK I'M PART COMPLETELY PRE-MEDITATED AND PART NOT.

I WOULD SAY THAT I HAVE A CONFIDENCE PROBLEM SO I DO A LOT OF PREPARATION, BUT FOR ME PREPARATION IS CONFIDENCE, WHICH ALLOWS ME TO LET GO OF THE PREPARATION ON THE DAY.

WHEREAS, IF I WERE TO COME IN EMPTY-HANDED, MY CONFIDENCE PROBLEM WOULD FLARE UP.

EM: I HAVE TO CONGRATULATE YOU ON YOUR SHORT FILM 'THE TALENT' [EMMA CO-PRODUCED AND STARRED IN THE 2023 BIFA-NOMINATED SHORT], I LOVED IT.

ED: THANK YOU, IT WAS A JOY.

EM: WAS THAT THE FIRST THING YOU'VE PRODUCED?

ED: YEAH, I CO-PRODUCED IT. I WOULDN'T HAVE MANAGED IT ON MY OWN.

EM: I'D LOVE TO DO THAT ONE DAY, IT'S SO COOL.

ED: I'VE LOVED GOING TO FILM FESTIVALS WITH IT BECAUSE IT'S NOT SOMETHING I'D DONE BEFORE, IT'S SUCH A NICE PROCESS. — WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIRECT?

EM: I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE NOT YET. I STILL FEEL LIKE I WANT TO ACT. I LOOK AT WHAT MARGOT ROBBIE HAS DONE WITH LUCKYCHAP [ENTERTAINMENT, ROBBIE'S PRODUCTION COMPANY] AND HOW SHE'S PRODUCED FILMS SHE'S REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT, FILMS YOU THINK CAN CHANGE THE INDUSTRY IN SOME WAY. I'D LOVE TO DO THAT. GROWING UP, THERE WERE THE FILMS I REALLY ENJOYED, NOT THE NORMAL LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT ONES, BUT THAT EXPANDED MY UNDERSTANDING AND CHALLENGED ME. THOSE FILMS ARE THE ONES I WANT TO BE A PART OF IN SOME WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. IF NOT ACTING, I GUESS IT WOULD PRODUCING. — HOW LONG WAS THE PROCESS FROM START TO FINISH?

ED: PROBABLY AROUND A YEAR FROM THE SCRIPT NOT EXISTING, BUT IN A MORE STRUCTURED WAY, MAYBE A PRE-PRODUCTION OF FIVE MONTHS. I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHY I ASKED YOU IF YOU WANTED TO DIRECT BECAUSE EVERYONE ALWAYS SAYS THAT AND I FEEL LIKE INHERENT IN THE QUESTION IS THAT CULTURALLY, WE PRIVILEGE THE IDEA OF THE PRIMARY ARTIST. IF YOU'RE AN INTERPRETATIVE SECONDARY ARTIST, WE DON'T CREDIT THAT IN QUITE THE SAME WAY, BUT I DON'T AGREE WITH THAT VIEW. I DON'T WANT TO DIRECT BUT REALLY LIKE PRODUCING AND FEEL VERY CONFIDENT IN MY SECONDARY ARTIST STATUS.

EM: I FEEL LIKE THAT WITH BOXING, IF I EVER WENT INTO AMATEUR THERE ARE A LOT OF OTHER HUNGRY UP-AND-COMING BOXERS AND IT'S JUST NOT MY GAME, I'M NOT AS INSPIRED BY THAT AS I AM BY ACTING. I DON'T WANT TO BREAK MY NOSE AND GET KNOCKED OUT.

ED: IF YOU'RE BOXING A LOT, HOW DO YOU ENSURE THAT YOUR NOSE DOESN'T GET BROKEN?

EM: WE KEEP IT LIGHT AND IT'S USUALLY JUST PADS, IF I HAVE TO WEAR A HEAD GUARD I WILL DO, BUT SAFETY PRECAUTIONS ARE IN PLACE. [LAUGHS] — DO YOU BOX?

ED: I DON'T, BUT A FRIEND OF MINE TOOK PART IN A QUEER CHARITY BOXING EVENT AND I WAS SURPRISED BY HOW VISCERALLY TERRIBLE I FOUND IT TO WATCH THEM FIGHT.

EM: DID YOU NOT WANT TO GET IN THERE AND JOIN THEM?

ED: I SUDDENLY FELT SO WILDLY HELPLESS AND ALL I COULD DO WAS SCREAM FROM A PLACE OF WANTING TO PROTECT AND SUPPORT BUT ALSO FROM A PLACE OF FEAR. MY FRIEND DID BEAUTIFULLY AND THEY'RE AMAZING, BUT I'D NEVER BEEN IN THAT ENVIRONMENT BEFORE AND WHEN IT CAME TO IT I COULDN'T HANDLE IT. — HOW DID YOU GET INTO ACTING?

EM: I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO IT BUT I'M NOT TOO SURE WHERE IT CAME FROM. I HEARD ABOUT THE TELEVISION WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM AND APPLIED THE FIRST YEAR BUT DIDN'T GET IN. FOR THE SECOND YEAR, I HAD THIS LITTLE NOTEBOOK THAT I WOULD JOT DOWN IN BECAUSE I KNEW THE STRUCTURE OF THE PROCESS OF THE AUDITION. I CAME UP WITH ALL OF THESE NEAT LITTLE QUIPS I COULD USE. I GOT IN THE SECOND TIME, THEN FROM THE WORKSHOP I DID A SHORT FILM CALLED 'FIRE' DIRECTED BY CHRIS ANDREWS. I GOT IT BURNT ONTO CDs AND I GOT ALL THE NAMES OF THE AGENCIES I KNEW OF IN LONDON. I WENT DOWN [TO LONDON] ON THE TRAIN AND POSTED THEM TO ALL OF THE AGENTS.

ED: SIDE NOTE, ARE YOU UNCONSCIOUS YET? I'D SAY I'M STILL SELF-CONSCIOUS IN INTERVIEWS.

EM: I ALWAYS WANT TO FLIP IT ON ITS HEAD AND ASK THE INTERVIEWER QUESTIONS, JUST BECAUSE OF THAT INNATE FEAR THAT IT MIGHT BORDER INTO THERAPY AND YOU MIGHT BE ROBIN WILLIAMS AND I'LL BE MATT DAMON SITTING ON A PARK BENCH IN BOSTON SOMEWHERE AND IT'S GOOD WILL HUNTING.

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MYSTERY AS WELL, AND ONCE YOU LOSE THAT MYSTERY YOU CAN'T REALLY GET IT BACK. IF PEOPLE GET TO KNOW THE REAL ME, I DO BELIEVE IT'LL DETRACT FROM WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO AS AN ACTOR. I WANT YOU TO ESCAPE INTO MY CHARACTERS, I DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE EWAN. — HOW ARE YOU WITH INTERVIEWS? I'M SUPER GRATEFUL YOU'VE DONE THIS.

ED: I'VE GOT BETTER, I DON'T MEAN BETTER AS A QUALITY JUDGEMENT, BUT I HAVE BECOME MORE COMFORTABLE. I WAS VERY BAD AT THE BEGINNING, I HAD THIS 'GOOD SCHOOLBOY' WHO CAME OUT AND ACTUALLY, HE COMPLETELY WIPED MY PERSONALITY. HE FEELS THAT IT'S A TEST AND THERE IS A RIGHT ANSWER. I HAVE TO BANISH MY GOOD BOY OTHERWISE I AM VIOLENTLY DULL.

EM: AND THAT'S ME RIGHT NOW, RIGHT? [BOTH LAUGH]

ED: EWAN, GET ON THE CHAISE LONGUE, WE'RE GOING TO TALK. [BOTH LAUGH]

IT IS FRIGHTENING AT THE BEGINNING; I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU FEEL BUT I'M ONLY JUST AT A POINT NOW SINCE THE SHOW CAME OUT THAT I FEEL OK.

EM: REALLY? DID YOU NOT FEEL YOURSELF GETTING WARMED UP THE MORE YOU WERE DOING THAT MASSIVE PRESS RUN FOR SEASON ONE?

ED: NO. [LAUGHS]

I THINK MY GOOD BOY CAME OUT, BUT YOU CAN'T PREDICT THE PARAMETERS OF A CHANGE LIKE THAT IN YOUR LIFE UNTIL IT HAPPENS AND YOU'VE SAT IN IT FOR A WHILE. I FOUND IT QUITE FRIGHTENING [AT FIRST].

EM: YOU'RE WORKING WITH BEN WHISHAW AT THE MOMENT RIGHT?

ED: YEAH.

EM: I READ THAT WHEN HE'S OFF STAGE HE HAS THAT ANXIETY TOO, WATCHING HIS WORK YOU'D NEVER EVEN THINK OF IT. IN 'PASSAGES,' HE'S AMAZING AND EVEN IN THE SMALLER SUPPORTING CHARACTERS TOO.

HE JUST KILLS IT IN ANYTHING HE DOES. I FOUND IT INTERESTING BECAUSE YOU DON'T SEE [ANXIETY] IN HIS PERFORMANCES, WHICH IS INSPIRING.

I DID A COMIC CON IN BRAZIL AND IT WAS SUPER FUN BUT AT THE SAME TIME, I HAD TO BE SOMEONE ELSE. I HAD THIS LEATHER SUIT ON AND IT WAS SO EMPOWERING. I FELT UNSTOPPABLE AND IN THE END I ADOPTED THIS CONFIDENT CHARACTER.

I RECOGNISE I NEED TO BE MORE MYSELF IN THESE SITUATIONS, FOR SURE.

ED: I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW IF THAT'S TRUE, IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO GIVE AWAY.

EM: I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU AT ALL WHILE SHOOTING SEASON TWO.

ED: — HOW DID THIS SEASON FEEL?

EM: I LOVED IT. I LIKE THAT SEPARATION BETWEEN OUR TWO SIDES OF THE FAMILY BECAUSE WHEN WE DO MEET AGAIN IT'S GOING TO BE SEISMIC. THE FIRST SEASON IT WAS GREAT TO FINALLY SEE THAT CRESCENDO AND NOW SEASON TWO IS THE FALLOUT.

I REALLY CAN'T WAIT FOR YOUR PERFORMANCE, IT'S QUITE NICE NOT KNOWING WHAT'S GOING ON.

ED: I AGREE, AND IT'S NICE HAVING SO MUCH TO WATCH THAT YOU HAVEN'T SEEN. I HAVE A WHOLE HALF OF THE SHOW THAT I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. — DO YOU WATCH YOURSELF?

EM: I DO, IT TAKES A GOOD TWELVE OR THIRTEEN TIMES BEFORE I CAN APPRECIATE IT. I FIND IT REALLY DIFFICULT BUT I ALSO RECOGNISE THAT I WANT TO KNOW WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T. — DO YOU?

ED: YES, BUT QUITE MINIMALLY. — DO YOU WATCH PLAYBACK ON SET?

EM: — I CAN'T LOOK AT MYSELF, DO YOU?

ED: NO, BUT I GENUINELY THINK IT WOULD BE HELPFUL IF I COULD STOMACH IT. SO MUCH ON SCREEN IS SO TECHNICAL AND BECAUSE SO MANY FACTORS MEDIATE YOUR PERFORMANCE, IT'S REASONABLE THAT THINGS MIGHT NOT COMMUNICATE AS YOU'RE IMAGINING.

BUT THEN I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THAT WOULD BE A DEGREE OF CONTROL THAT IS JUST NOT REAL BECAUSE WE HAVE SO LITTLE CONTROL AND FUNDAMENTALLY THE NARRATIVE WILL BE IN THE EDIT.

EM: — WHAT IS IT LIKE WORKING WITH MATT SMITH?

ED: IT'S GREAT, I LOVE HIM AN EXTRAORDINARY AMOUNT AND FEEL PRIVILEGED WHEN I GET TO WORK WITH HIM. IT'S SO NICE TO KNOW WHAT LIGHTS SOMEONE UP, HE'S SO REACTIVE AND HE RESPONDS BEAUTIFULLY TO NEWNESS, IT'S SUCH A DELIGHTFUL GAME.

EM: I REMEMBER THAT MOMENT IN SEASON ONE EPISODE EIGHT AROUND THE BANQUET TABKE AND AEMOND AND DAEMON HAVE A FACE-OFF, AND IN ONE OF THE TAKES MATT SPOKE IN A MURMUR BUT IT WAS HIGH VALYRIAN. I DID NOTICE THAT QUALITY IN THE LIMITED TIMES I WORKED WITH HIM. THERE IS SOMETHING SPICY ABOUT MIXING IT UP, KEEPING YOU ON YOUR TOES AND IN TURN, YOU PICK UP A FEW MOVES IN THE PROCESS.

ED: IT'S REALLY GOOD. THE GUY'S GOT GREAT TASTE AS WELL, SOMETIMES HE HAS LOVELY IDEAS ABOUT HOW A THING MIGHT PLAY BEST AND AT WHAT SIZE. I GET THE SENSE HE HAS A REALLY VIVID PICTURE IN HIS MIND'S EYE AND THAT'S SO HELPFUL BECAUSE IT REFERS TO THE TECHNICAL PART OF OUR JOB. IT'S A PRIVILEGE TO BE 'LOST IN THE CHARACTER' BUT THERE IS A SPECIFIC TECHNICAL PART OF HOW SOMETHING COMMUNICATES AND I THINK HE IS REALLY GOOD AT THAT.

EM: THAT'S SO INTERESTING. I DO TRY TO TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WITH FRAME SIZES AND WHAT TO PLAY UP AND PLAY DOWN. IT'S ALL A BIG LEARNING CURVE, ISN'T IT?

[whileiamdying]

All the Films in Competition at Cannes, Ranked from Best to Worst

The twenty-two films that premièred in the 2024 festival’s main program offered much to savor and revile.

By Justin Chang May 26, 2024

The seventy-seventh annual Cannes Film Festival came to a startling and joyous conclusion on Saturday night, when the competition jury, chaired by Greta Gerwig, awarded the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest honor, to “Anora,” a funny, harrowing, and finally quite moving portrait of a sex worker’s madcap New York misadventures. It was startling because the movie, though one of the best-received in the competition, had not been widely tipped for the top prize, which seldom goes to a U.S. film; with “Anora,” Sean Baker becomes the first American director to win the Palme since Terrence Malick did, for “The Tree of Life” (2011), thirteen years ago. And it was joyous not only because the award was bestowed on a worthy and remarkable film but because Baker used the occasion to deliver the best, most eloquent and impassioned acceptance speech I’ve ever heard a Palme winner give.

Reading from prepared remarks, Baker singled out two other filmmakers in the competition, Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, as among his personal heroes. He dedicated the award to sex workers everywhere, a fitting tribute from a filmmaker who has put their lives front and center, with drama, humor, and empathy, in movies like “Starlet” (2012), “Tangerine” (2015), and “Red Rocket” (2021). He tossed some exquisite shade in the direction of the “tech companies” behind the so-called streaming revolution—including, presumably, Netflix, which came away as one of the night’s big winners; its major acquisition of the festival, Jacques Audiard’s musical “Emilia Pérez,” won two prizes. And, in a moment that drew rapturous applause, Baker delivered a plea on behalf of theatrical films, declaring, “The future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theatre.”

I was fortunate to see all twenty-two films in the Cannes competition on the big screen, projected under superior conditions in houses packed with fellow movie lovers. It’s my hope that, when these movies are released in the U.S., as the great majority of them likely will be, you will seize the chance to see them on the big screen as well—even “Emilia Pérez,” which Netflix may not keep in theatres for long, but whose bold dramatic and stylistic risks have the best chance of winning you over if they have your undivided, wide-awake attention.

I have ranked the movies in order of preference, from best to worst. Here they are:

1. “Caught by the Tides”

Jia Zhangke, a Cannes competition veteran, has long been the cinema’s preëminent chronicler of modern China (“Mountains May Depart,” “Ash Is Purest White”), mapping its social, cultural, and geographical complexities with great formal acumen, and also with the longtime collaboration of his wife, the superb actress Zhao Tao. Jia’s latest work, drawing on an archive of footage shot in the course of roughly two decades, unfurls a story in fragments, about a woman (Zhao) and a man (Li Zhubin) who fall in love, bitterly separate, and have a melancholy reunion years later. It’s an achievement by turns fleeting and monumental: a series of interlocking time capsules, a wrenching feat of self-reflection, and a stealth musical, in which Zhao dances and dances, standing in for millions who have learned to sway and bend to history’s tumultuous beat.

2. “All We Imagine as Light”

As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début (after her 2021 documentary, “A Night of Knowing Nothing”) would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration. Winner of the festival’s Grand Prix, or second place, it tells the story of two roommates, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), who work as nurses at a Mumbai hospital. It teases out their personal circumstances—Prabha’s estrangement from her unseen husband, Anu’s frowned-upon romance with a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon)—with a quiet truthfulness that, like the glittering lights of the city, lingers expansively in the memory. (A forthcoming Sideshow/Janus Films release.)

3. “Grand Tour”

The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (“Tabu,” “Arabian Nights”) delivered some of the most virtuosic filmmaking in the competition—as the jury recognized by giving him the Best Director prize—with this characteristically yet extraordinarily playful colonial-era travelogue. Shifting between color and black-and-white, set in 1917 but full of fourth-wall-breaking anachronisms, the movie tells a story of sorts about a roving British diplomat (Gonçalo Waddington) and a fiancée (Crista Alfaiate) he’s in no hurry to marry. But its true fascination lies in the humid atmosphere and wanderlust-inspiring splendor of its East and Southeast Asian locations, ranging from Singapore and Bangkok to Shanghai and Rangoon. It’s a movie to get lost in.

4. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

It’s impossible to absorb this blistering domestic drama without thinking of its dissident director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who recently fled Iran after being sentenced to prison and a flogging. (His appearance at his film’s première made for one of the most emotional moments in recent Cannes memory.) Shot entirely in secret, the story follows a Tehran-based husband (Missagh Zareh) and wife (Soheila Golestani) who are increasingly at war with their progressive-minded young-adult daughters (Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki) during nationwide political protests led by women. The result is a thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

5. “Anora”

The director Sean Baker is near the height of his storytelling powers with this dazzling (and now Palme d’Or-winning) portrait of a Manhattan strip-club dancer (a revelatory Mikey Madison) who impulsively marries the ultra-spoiled son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a Russian oligarch. Much comic chaos ensues, some of it pushed past the brink of plausibility, but Baker’s multifaceted love for his characters proves infectious and sustaining, as does his belief that acts of unexpected kindness can redeem even the darkest nights of the soul. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

6. “The Shrouds”

Early on in this elegantly sombre yet mordantly funny new movie, which stars Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and Guy Pearce, the director David Cronenberg, a master of cerebral horror, unveils his latest invention: a technologically advanced burial shroud that allows people to watch a loved one’s body decomposing in the grave. So begins a drolly fluid inspection of classic Cronenberg themes—the deterioration of the flesh, the instability of the image, the paranoia-inducing incursions of technology into every aspect of life—but imbued with a nakedly personal dimension that the director has noted in interviews; the story was inspired by his wife’s death, in 2017, from cancer.

7. “Megalopolis”

In this legendarily long-gestating passion project, which I’ve written about at length, Francis Ford Coppola posits that our fragile, battered civilization is headed the way of the Roman Empire. The grimness of that prospect is unsurprising from a director accustomed to peering deep into the heart of American darkness (the “Godfather” movies, “The Conversation,” “Apocalypse Now”). For all that, the filmmaking here glows with a particularly hard-won optimism, even a welcome sense of play—borne out by an ensemble of actors, including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and especially Aubrey Plaza, who fully embrace Coppola’s rhetorical and conceptual flights of fancy.

8. “The Substance”

Sympathetic or sadistic? Feminist or misogynist? Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror bonanza, which won the festival’s award for Best Screenplay, has been one of the competition’s more polarizing hits, which is unsurprising; divisiveness should be expected from a story about an aging actress and TV fitness guru who, desperate to regain her youthful bod of yesteryear, effectively splits herself in two. Whether the outlandish premise (think “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by way of “Death Becomes Her”) and its blood-gushing fallout withstand intellectual scrutiny, there’s no doubting the ferocity of the two leads, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, or Fargeat’s sheer filmmaking verve as she pushes her ideas to their sanguinary conclusions.

9. “Motel Destino”

Just a year after the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz appeared in competition with a surprisingly stiff-corseted English period drama, “Firebrand,” it was bracing to watch him rebound with the competition’s most sexually uninhibited and flagrantly horny title; corsets don’t apply here, and even underwear proves blissfully optional. Set at a seedy roadside motel where the clientele never stops moaning, it’s a feverishly shambling erotic thriller starring three very game actors (Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, and Fábio Assunção) in a romantic triangle that plays like James M. Cain with sex toys—“The Postman Always Cock Rings Twice,” as it were.

10. “Emilia Pérez”

A trans-empowerment musical set against the backdrop of Mexico’s drug cartels might sound like a dubious proposition on paper, and, for the many detractors of this genre-melding big swing from the French director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet,” “The Sisters Brothers”), what actually made it onto the screen was no better. But I was disarmed from the start by Audiard’s quasi-Almodóvarian vibes, his touchingly imperfect embrace of song-and-dance stylization, and, most of all, his three leads: the remarkable discovery Karla Sofía Gascón, a scene-stealing Selena Gomez, and a never-better Zoe Saldaña. All three (along with Adriana Paz) were recognized with the festival’s Best Actress prize, awarded collectively to the movie’s ensemble of actresses; Audiard also won the Jury Prize. (A forthcoming Netflix release.)

11. “Oh, Canada”

After a tense trilogy of dramas about male redemption through violence (“First Reformed,” “The Card Counter,” “Master Gardener”), the writer and director Paul Schrader has taken a gentler turn with an adaptation of “Foregone,” a 2021 novel by the late Russell Banks. (It’s his second Banks adaptation, after the 1997 drama “Affliction.”) In exploring the fragmented consciousness of an aging documentary filmmaker (played at different ages by Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi), Schrader bravely forsakes the narrative fastidiousness of his recent work and takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning, to formally ragged but sincerely moving effect.

12. “The Girl with the Needle”

This stark and terrifying black-and-white drama from the Swedish-born, Polish-based director Magnus von Horn (“Sweat”) was perhaps the competition’s bleakest entry. Set in Copenhagen immediately after the First World War, it pins us so mercilessly to the hard-bitten perspective of Karoline (an excellent Vic Carmen Sonne), a factory seamstress who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, that we scarcely notice her story shifting in a different, more sinister direction. It’s a bitterly hard-to-stomach brew of a movie, at once hideous and beautifully made, with a chilling supporting turn by Trine Dyrholm as a friend whose interventions turn out to be anything but benign.

13. “Three Kilometres to the End of the World”

The setting of this well-observed but emotionally opaque drama, from the Romanian actor turned director Emanuel Pârvu, is a small rural village where a closeted teen-age boy, Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea), is brutally beaten after being caught in an intimate moment with a male traveller. Pârvu teases out the legal, psychological, and moral fallout with the pitch-perfect performances and laserlike formal focus that have become hallmarks of new Romanian cinema. But, though the movie is persuasive enough as an indictment of small-town religious fundamentalism and homophobia, it proves curiously incurious about Adi’s perspective, to the detriment of its own human pulse.

14. “Kinds of Kindness”

After his Oscar-winning period romps “The Favourite” (2018) and “Poor Things” (2023), the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos scales back—but goes long—with a sprawling, increasingly tedious compendium of comic cruelty. My favorite of the film’s three disconnected stories, all featuring the same actors, is the one where Jesse Plemons (the ensemble M.V.P., as the jury recognized with its Best Actor award) plays Willem Dafoe’s Manchurian candidate; my least favorite is the one where Emma Stone joins a sweat-worshipping sex cult. The one where Stone slices off her finger and cooks it for Plemons falls—much like the movie in Lanthimos’s over-all œuvre—somewhere in the middle. (A Searchlight Pictures release, opening June 21st in theatres.)

15. “Bird”

My admiration for the English filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”) is such that I’m eager to revisit her latest rough-and-tumble coming-of-age story and find that I undervalued it. Arnold is certainly skilled at integrating recognizable actors, which in this case includes Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, into her grottily realist frames, and she has an appealing lead performer in Nykiya Adams, as a twelve-year-old girl who overcomes persistent abuse and neglect. But the story may lose you—as it lost me—with a magical-realist turn that magnifies, rather than minimizes, the tortured-animal symbolism that has often dogged Arnold’s work.

16. “Beating Hearts”

An exchange of insults at a high-school bus stop provides a saucy meet-cute for a good girl (Mallory Wanecque) and a ne’er-do-well boy (Malik Frikah); so begins a raucous and endearing love story for the ages, in which the director Gilles Lellouche, with outsized glee and little discipline, merrily appropriates the conventions of classic Hollywood musicals and gangster flicks. The result is much too long at nearly three hours—the story spans several years, with Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil playing older versions of the two leads—but I can’t say I didn’t warm to its rambunctious cornball charm.

17. “Limonov: The Ballad”

Why make a film about Eduard Limonov, the globe-trotting Russian dissident poet and punk provocateur reviled for his pro-fascist sympathies? The filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov never musters a satisfying answer in this muddled English-language bio-pic, despite an energetically uninhibited central performance by Ben Whishaw and a cheeky panoply of filmmaking techniques—jittery camerawork, lengthy tracking shots—meant to catch us up in the épater-la-bourgeoisie exuberance of Limonov’s revolt. Considering his earlier work, I prefer the rebel-youth vibes of “Leto” (2018) and the dazzling cinematic assaults of “Petrov’s Flu” (2021), both of which also screened in competition here.

18. “Parthenope”

Nearly every new picture from the Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino could be reasonably called “The Great Beauty,” the title of his gorgeous 2013 cinematic tour of Rome. (It left that year’s Cannes empty-handed, but won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.) His latest work remains most intriguing for its ambivalent but still sensually overpowering vision of the director’s home town, Naples, from which springs a modern-day goddess, named after Parthenope, a Siren from Greek mythology. She’s played by Celeste Dalla Porta, a great beauty indeed and an empathetic screen presence, though only fitfully does her character seem worthy of this movie’s epic enshrinement.

19. “Wild Diamond”

Another disquisition on beauty and its discontents, this time from the débuting French writer and director Agathe Riedinger. She hurls us the life and busy social-media feed of a nineteen-year-old, Liane (a terrific Malou Khebizi), who has nipped, tucked, and tailored every part of herself to realize her dream of being selected for a hot new reality-TV series. Part influencer-culture cautionary tale, part bad-girl Cinderella story, the movie glancingly suggests the soul-rotting effects of beauty worship, but it falls victim to the trap that Liane is trying to avoid: in a sea of worthy candidates, it doesn’t especially stand out.

20. “The Apprentice”

Donald Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action to block the release of this drama about his early rise to fame and wealth under the mentorship of the attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). It speaks to the useless proficiency of Ali Abbasi’s movie that the prospect of such censorship provokes more indifference than outrage. Shot to evoke cruddy nineteen-eighties VHS playback, the movie is well acted by Strong, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, and an increasingly makeup-buried Sebastian Stan as Trump himself, depicted from the start as a sack of shit that gets progressively shittier. It’s not dismissible, but it’s hardly the stuff of revelation, either.

21. “Marcello Mio”

In this trifling meta-comedy from the French filmmaker Christophe Honoré (previously in the 2018 Cannes competition with the lovely “Sorry Angel”), the actress Chiara Mastroianni embarks on a strainedly whimsical personal odyssey to examine the legacy of her late father, the legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, and her own conflicted place therein. To that end, she spends much of this overstretched movie in “8½” and “La Dolce Vita” black-suited drag as she navigates a roundelay of industry in-jokes; among the French cinema luminaries making appearances are Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, and, most welcome, Chiara’s mother, Catherine Deneuve.

22. “The Most Precious of Cargoes”

The French director Michel Hazanavicius continues his uneven post-“The Artist” run with this animated Second World War fable, adapted from a 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg (and narrated by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant). It has an affecting opening stretch, in which a baby girl, thrown by her desperate father from an Auschwitz-bound train, is rescued and raised in secret by a woodcutter’s kindhearted wife. But when the child’s provenance is discovered, stoking local antisemitism, the movie becomes a bathetic wallow in Holocaust imagery, drowned in an Alexandre Desplat score whose every surge turned my heart increasingly to stone. ♦

[useless-catalanfacts]

Did you know that the Catalan vault can be found in many buildings of the United States of America?

Here's some examples:

Grand Central Terminal, New York City. Photo from Getty.

Boston Public Library. Photo by Michael Freeman/Boston Public Library.

Ellis Island Registry Room, New York. Photo by Mike Ward on Flickr.

City Hall station of the New York subway. Photo by Michael Freeman.

The Catalan vault is a brick arch that is widely used in traditional Catalan architecture. It's also present in other parts of the Mediterranean, but not as common. Its main characteristic is that it's built with the longest side of the brick facing down (usually, ceilings are made with the shortest side facing down) and with a very gentle curve, resulting in a strong self-supporting vault that allows covering a whole room without needing columns or pillars in a way that would be impossible with other kinds of masonry, and also makes it possible to build it quickly and without needing centering (the wooden structure used to support the vault or arch while it's being built, and which is removed once it's made).

So how did it make its way to the USA?

It was brought by the Valencian architect Rafael Guastavino i Moreno (1842-1908). He had already designed important industrial buildings in Catalonia, including the factory that later became the Industrial School in Barcelona and La Massa theatre in Vilassar de Dalt, among others. At the time, in Catalonia, the Catalan vault was being widely used to cover ceilings in factories.

In 1881, Guastavino moved to New York City (USA), where he used the Catalan vault to cover big ceilings, which made him gain some fame for it. He patented the vault in the USA with the name "Guastavino system".

At the time, Americans were very worried about buildings catching fire, because it often happened and had caused a huge destruction in the Chicago 1871 fire. As a response, in 1883 Guastavino bought a patch of land in Connecticut, built two houses in it using the Catalan vault, and set them on fire. He took photos of the whole process to document it and prove how this architecture style is efficient in the case of fire. He wrote about it in the magazine Decorator and Furnisher and soon won the contest to design the Progress Club's building in New York City, which made him famous among architects in the area.

He created his own company (Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company) which was focused on building the Catalan vault. He was hired for many buildings and this architectural element spread. Most churches with stone vaults built between 1890 and 1940 in the USA were designed by Guastavino's firm, as well as many other buildings across the country, particularly New York and Massachusetts.

He's buried in the St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville (North Carolina, USA), a building he designed.

[myfreakingawesomeworld]

So I needed a couple of days to recover, but witnessing Merrily's closing show on Sunday was simply amazing and so special.

The entire week people had gasped when they heard I was seeing the closing show haha, and even when queueing at the theatre, there were multiple people still looking for tickets. I felt so fortunate to be holding on to one - as well as that I bought it before the Tony's because those prices skyrocketed.

As soon as the overture started, people started applauding loudly, and once more before the overture had ended. Everyone clearly felt lucky to be in the room where it happens 😉. Jonathan obviously got a loud applause as he entered the stage, and so did Daniel and Lindsay, Katie Rose and honestly all cast members (as they deserve!)

After Franklin Shepard Inc Daniel got a standing ovation that lasted minutes, and completely broke down in tears. Throughout the show there were many standing ovations, after which the cast had to clearly wait to continue. The show without speeches lasted about 3 hours because of that. Jonathan kept it together quite well throughout the show and was mostly in tears during It's a hit, for which someone at the stage door airdropped me those pictures above. And having to start singing " our time" Jonathan was clearly in tears and kept looking upstage at Daniel. When he finally got his words out, Daniel's voice kept cracking and so also he got emotional.

After the official bows everyone got on stage including Sonia and Maria Friedman, stage management, musicians, dressers etc. You can find the speeches online, they mostly focused on the authentic love in the company and how they were never going to experience something as good again. Both everyone on stage as everyone in the audience was in tears. Especially when Sonia Friedman told Maria Friedman that their parents who are no longer with them, would be so proud of her. And that the last thing Stephan Sondheim did was cast Daniel for this show. Jonathan, Daniel and Lindsay were holding on to each other tightly the entire time and Jon placed some kisses atop of Daniels head which just looked to cute. It was clear they were taking a lot of comfort in one another.

During the speeches they also mentioned that it wouldn't take to long to watch this company do this show again, but in a different format, alluding to the proshot.

The next day I walked by the Hudson theatre and they were already clearing it out. I filmed walking by, but it is mostly tech and a small glimpse of the inside of the theatre that you can see.

All in all, it was an incredible experience to have witnessed this closing show and have gotten to see it at the new york theatre workshop from only a couple of meters away! Obviously the show is amazing! And it is such a joy and privilege to get to see Jonathan exude his happy theatre kid-energy live on stage.