#time to rewatch this show in all available sources?

[md-guel]

WELL, this is a funny thing to get caught up on! call it adventures in rewatching?

so I rewatched the last episode last night (it's been my habit to rewatch the latest available episode the night before suletta sunday) on Netflix and got the following lines on the part where guel escorts suletta to quiet zero (you can't screenshot Netflix but at least it preserves the subs):

and my thought process here was kind of confused because: first, guel has never been to quiet zero (though the SAL pilot obviously took that detail for granted). secondly, what are his duties here? since he was referred to as "president jeturk", I thought the pilot meant his duties to his employees. then lastly, the translation of choice here when guel responds with すまない ("sumanai") is "forgive me" which, while it works in a way, suggests that he's doing something that isn't recommended. initially, I also misremembered the scene as the SAL pilot telling guel to go back to his company and Guel replying with "sorry but no"

but so, getting conflicted messages, I went to look for a different source that has kept the japanese subs intact and got these:

directly translated, it's something like:

SAL pilot: CEO Jeturk, please go to Quiet Zero immediately. Please do your part.

Guel: I'm sorry.

which makes a lot more sense to me. so I went back to the gundaminfo youtube because I remember that they also used roughly the same translations as Netflix does. and guess what I found:

both left and right screenshots were taken within minutes of each other. the left screenshots, which reflects the Netflix ones, is what I remember watching first. the right screenshots are something I just discovered today while I was "investigating" this scene. it should also be noted that すまない actually means all of those things, depending on the context (for example, when the Grassley girls distracted Dominicus long enough to give Sabina an exit to assist Shaddiq in episode 20, her すまない was translated to "Thanks").

anyway. in conclusion, who knew we were working with two official translations all this time!

[northsoulss]

1am - k. seungmin

fluff </33 (if i see another couple in public im sleeping on the highway)

the night was cold, your blanket was bunched up to your nose, leaving only your eyes exposed as you rewatched Brooklyn nine-nine for the third time on your phone. you were huddled in the comfort of your bedroom, the only light source being your phone screen and the small lamp next to you.

it was yet another day of you waiting on seungmin. it was like any other night, except you were missing him a little more than usual today.

as you watched rosa and captain holt continue to be the best possible duo in the show, you did not notice the apartment door opening and the jiggling of seungmin's keys, the pattering of his feet on the hardwood floors unnoticed.

just as he was about to announce that he was home with a contented smile on his face, he saw that you weren't in the living room. seeing that you were not at your usual spot on the couch had him puzzled and slightly worried. were you okay? did something happen to you? his mind continued to race as he opened the bedroom door, only to see you covered in a mountain of pillows and blankets. he felt his shoulders relax seeing you safe, a smile reappearing on his face seeing your head jolt towards his direction.

your eyes lit up when you saw him, nearly slipping as you ran towards him and engulfed him in a hug. he swore he felt his heart beat out of his chest from the way you nuzzled into him.

“hello to you too.” he coos, caressing the top of your head.

“hi.” the sound of your voice is muffled as you hide your face in his shirt, breathing in the smell of the perfume that you got him for his birthday. it made your heart flutter knowing that he wore it everyday, without failure.

“i missed you, so much.” you tilt your head up to see the soft smile he had adorned, a slight crinkle forming around his eyes. there was so much fondness in them your legs nearly buckled from the sight.

“missed you too.” he squeezes your body towards his, giving you a near bone crushing hug. you did not mind it of course, only squeezing back with the same force.

he chuckles, an amused expression forming on his face as you tried to lift him off the ground. alas, to no avail. to your surprise, he turned you around and lifted you off the ground with ease, arms wrapped tightly around your middle so that your back was pressed against his chest. he waddles to the bed and crashes onto it, still holding you against him.

you two lay there on the bed like two teenagers doing something that they weren't supposed to do, giggling and smiling at each other like idiots in love. you faced him, his arm propping his head up to look down at you. he was breathtaking, and he knew it. he grins, sticking out his tongue at you and you've never wanted more than to just kiss that smug look off his face. so, you decide to pull his arm close to you, so that he was inches away from you.

he laughs as you peck his face repeatedly, the sound loud and unfiltered. you pull back and rest your chin on your palm, staring at him, staring back at you. there was a twinkle in his eyes, a light flush on his cheeks, the warm hue from the lamp on your nightstand made his face glow in the most ethereal way.

he was gorgeous. so, so gorgeous. the way his lips were upturned, the way he smiled so that all his teeth showed. you wondered how he looked so endearing despite coming back at such an ungodly hour.

“you wanna know something?” seungmin says out of the blue, catching you off guard. you tilt you head in confusion, and he swears he falls in love all over again.

“what?” you question, anticipation clear in your voice.

“i love you so much,” he takes a big inhale, “and i genuinely think you outshine the sun even on your darkest days." oh wow. you were not expecting his confession, especially one on that level of grandeur.

“well, it is like 1am so there is no sun to compare with,” you say with a teasing grin, watching the love sick expression on seungmin’s face be replaced with a “i am so done with you" look.

“i’m never being sappy with you ever again.” he huffs and turns to the other side, his arms crossed and letting out fake cries.

this man.

“love you too, baby.” you lean over to peck his exposed shoulder, smiling when you feel goosebumps rise on his skin.

© northsoulss 2023, all rights reserved

[neoflect]

sharing some of my disorganized jojo musical thoughts now that ive had a week to sit on it and ive rewatched it several times over. i intended to wait to publish something like this until a subtitled version was available, but im not seeing any indication that thats happening any time soon so for now youll have to deal with my loose interpretations from my extremely rudimentary and rusty japanese… so take what i have to say about the finer points of characterization with a grain of salt. gratuitous spoilers below obviously, both for the original source material and the changes made in the stage production

my feelings are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. of course there are things i can criticize or that i would have personally done differently but oh man… i have literally not thought about anything besides this fucking show for a week. im 100% confident in saying this is a better adaptation of the source material than the tv anime. sorry to the davidpro staff, i respect their hard work and their love for jojo and their dedication to what is by any metric a pretty difficult property to adapt off of the page, but i dont know if i can ever forgive them for leaving half of the first episode’s storyboard on the cutting room floor in order to fit a standard half-hour tv slot, especially considering that what they cut is some of the really crucial character-building stuff. happily those scenes are not only reproduced in the stage version, some of them are expanded upon!

with the quick disclaimer that i’ve only managed to get my hands on the final 4/14 performance with shotaro arisawa and yoshihisa higashiyama, from what i’ve seen the casting is perfect. i’m sure there’s a rip of the 4/13 performance somewhere (i’ve seen clips) but i haven’t been able to find one… every single performer knocks it out of the fucking park, the cast chemistry is incredible and even the minor characters are loaded with charisma. and mamoru miyano… my god… mamoru miyano i owe you an apology. i was not familiar with your game. of course hes been killing it for decades at this point but i had soured on him a little bit recently because i felt like he was overcast in everything and i just didnt connect with his dnt reinhard at all, so when the casting was initially announced back in august i was underwhelmed, and of course my standards for the dio role in particular were astronomically high… i’ll go more into detail later in the post because i have so so many things to say about dio’s characterization here but mamoru miyano’s performance is like, life-changing. i had impossible expectations and he exceeded them.

sorry if im gushing. i am a hater by nature. its unusual for me to be so thoroughly pleased with something. im not even a musical theater guy. these are strange new feelings for me.

just to balance things out i’ll talk about a couple of the things that didn’t really work for me: first of all, the music is just ok. my initial draft of this post called the music “bad” but three additional viewings later i have warmed up to some of the songs. i don’t know if this is a shortcoming by dove attia as the composer or if it’s just me, as i said i’m not a musical guy and a lot of the genre conventions of musical theatre are not really the things i look for in music that i enjoy, but like… even at their worst they are serviceable. nothing here is sonically unpleasant to me. high points are “resolve of the ripple” (zeppeli’s hamon training song, a jazzy swing number - it’s simply catchy and fun to listen to) and the closer “phantom blood” (a sweeping ballad that reprises the earlier “light and darkness”/”golden spirit” leitmotifs into an epic duet between jonathan and dio as they join hands and walk off into the darkness together… made me cry! i wont lie! on every single one of my numerous viewings this one got me misty eyed!)

wait i forgot this is supposed to be the part where i’m being critical. ok my most loathed song in the musical is “dio’s world”. sorry dio nation. it doesn’t really work for me. i think this might be a case of my standards/expectations being too impossibly high because it’s not even really the worst song in the whole thing. and of course miyano eats it up so it’s not really his fault. i just find it kind of underwhelming… i find the melody a little grating, it’s kind of just a generic rock number, it’s just missing a particular je ne sais quoi…. the essence of dio isn’t there… lyrically though i am obsessed with the premise of dio recruiting his minions by selling himself as a kind of social revolutionary who is upending and inverting the brutal hierarchy of post-industrial victorian society with zombie blood magic. you win some you lose some.

the second sticking point for me is the costumes. they’re perfectly serviceable… adequate… but i mean when it comes to jojo “serviceable” and “adequate” costume design obviously falls well below what’s expected, right? a lot of the outfits have kind of a boxy, almost flat-looking kind of unflattering fit on the actors, which if i wanted to be generous i could attribute to the challenge of bridging the gap between these frail slender musical theater twinks and the two-meter-tall 250lb roided-out beefcakes theyre meant to be embodying. (bearing this discrepancy in mind a lot of the insane martial arts stuff in the second act doesn’t really land with the oomph that it should, but i also understand logistically why this kind of casting is not practical, and all things considered i think shotaro arisawa does a really incredible job of embodying jonathan joestar even though he kind of looks like i could snap him in half over my knee like a twig. he’s very cute. so i’m not mad about it.) of course, again, logistically, i understand that in a stage musical production, where actors only have minutes to complete costume changes, some sacrifices have to be made to the creative vision in the name of practicality. nevertheless this is jojos bizarre adventure!! i want to see some fucking baubles!!!!!!

which is all to say that… after carefully considering it for some weeks… i still have extremely mixed feelings about dio’s grink ass feather bathrobe look. it’s not that i dont think its something he could wear (the concept of dio lounging around in his gothic vampire palace doing re-animator style body horror experiments on the local wildlife in this “officer i have no idea what happened to my husband”-ass nightgown is nothing short of hysterical to me) but then he wears it into combat and i felt a little disappointed… it has the same unflattering fit issue as the other outfits in the show, and it is just such an un-araki-like design… where are the gaudy color combinations? the bizarre geometric patterns? the tease of an exposed boob/thigh/midriff? erina gets a stage-original dress design that i have fewer issues with because the excessive pleats and ruffles have more of an araki-esque sensibility, but every time i look at dio’s robe it feels like there’s something missing.  i’m going to choose to be nice about it because it’s not at all a deal breaker and, again, mamoru miyano devours the look. it’s fine. it’s always fun to have a new dio outfit. if anything, the fact that the blu-rays are being marketed as “2024 cast version” gives me hope for the possibility of a future production with a new vision for the costume design. (although the fact that this was such a difficult production - with stunts and pyrotechnics and moving setpieces - that its entire first week was cancelled indicates to me that the prospects for a future production from a different company are impossibly slim. i guess there’s always hope?)

in terms of the writing and the changes that were made from the original narrative, honestly i don’t really have an issue with anything that was cut. sorry if there are any diehard stans of Poco’s Unnamed Sister out there who are steamed that their favorite minor late phantom blood character got the axe, i kind of understand how you feel because i’ve been malding over david pro cutting the Danny Lore for eleven years, but i think it was the right choice and the story flows so much better. the real juicy meat at the core of phantom blood as a narrative and the thing that brings it head and shoulders above so much of the rest of jjba is the character-driven drama - that deliciously pulpy victorian gothic family tragedy - and the relationship between jonathan and dio. the musical beefs up the character drama and slims down the action-driven second half by trimming out the extraneous battles. the only real downside i see to this is that the absence of tompetty and his prophecy makes zeppeli’s arc and death feel INSANELY abrupt, but tbf that’s not a deal breaker for me. sorry zeppeli. you were born to die.

okay. okay. i think 1500 words into the post is enough fucking around so let’s talk about the real reason why you and i both know we’re here

musical dio is SO fucking sad. he’s positively wretched, you guys. he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone and forced to eat cement when he was six. he cries even more than he does in the source material and even when he’s not crying he frequently delivers his lines as though he is moments away from bursting into tears. back when the musical first opened i was snooping on the reactions on jpn twitter and one commenter said they could see miyano’s tears and snot from the nosebleeds even without opera glasses, a remark i initially assumed was hyperbole but that i now think probably was not. araki’s dio is certainly tortured and a deeply pathetic crybaby beneath all the cruelty and posturing, but changes in the musical and miyano’s embodiment of the character bring this pathos to the fore. he is literally haunted: dario’s ghost lingers, a manifestation of all of dio’s traumas and insecurities that emerges from the recesses of his memory to taunt him with the reminder that he will always be his father’s son, all the way up until the very minute that jonathan breaks down the door to his vampire lair. i am OBSESSED with this - not only for the obvious reason that i delight in dio’s suffering personally but also because kong kuwata is a delight and he fucking kills it every time. also lends itself to a category 10 leitmotif moment at the top of the second act when dio emerges from the charred ruins of the joestar estate singing dario’s theme and calling out to jonathan - if i had to pinpoint this is probably the moment when this musical stuck for me as the Real Deal. they Get It.

the first solo number in the show is dio’s disney princess I Want song (amazingly, simply titled “dio”) where he weeps for his late mother and his wretched lot in life, and then - in a creative decision that made me clap my hands and hoot and holler at my screen in real life - there is a reprise of this number (delivered, naturally, through tears) when dio is almost arrested for murder and decides to become a vampire instead. so there’s this amazing hopeful uplifting inspirational orchestral music accompanying the onstage action of dio ruthlessly slaying jonathan’s dad and then getting pumped full of lead by a bunch of cops. it is brilliant. 10/10 no notes. it’s moments like this that i think really sell the “softening” of dio in the stage version for me, even though i am historically Not A Fan of fanworks that take a similar angle - like, yes, he is sad, but specifically he is narcissistically obsessed with the spectacle of his own suffering, he is boiling over with bitterness and rage for everyone around him who (by his own estimation) could never hope to have suffered as much as he has. this sensitivity and self-pity he wallows in are not expressions of a guilty conscience or a desire to change - they’re entirely the opposite - every cruel and monstrous deed dio commits is always justified to himself because he is simply the saddest little boy who has ever existed. he has been done wrong by the world and so there is no limit to the depravity he may reasonably respond with. i’ve seen several commenters describe this as a drastically different interpretation of the character from araki’s dio (and someone told me on twitter that mamoru miyano himself has also said this, but i cba to go digging for an actual source so take it with a grain of salt?), but i… dont think thats the case! dio’s obsession with his own weakness and his self-perception as the eternal underdog (as compared to jonathan) are certainly more exaggerated in miyano’s performance, but i don’t think this is an angle to the character that’s been manufactured out of whole cloth. the genre conventions of the stage musical force the melodrama up to eleven and dio’s incredibly repressed angst is the most rich vein to mine for that. hair-trigger sadist dio is still here, it’s the same guy, he’s still killing people mercilessly, you’re just getting to see him sing a big ballad about his feelings instead of confining those to an internal monologue.

if anything, the exaggeration of dio’s pathetic/cowardly/crybaby traits combined with his megalomaniacal aspirations and bottomless well of cruelty is just right. it’s perfect. fucking around, finding out, and then trying to weasel his way out of the consequences with crocodile tears just so you don’t see him drawing his knife to cut you clean open… yeah. thats the stuff. thats my one true blorbo. sad to say i will love him for ten thousand years.

i think that might be all i have to say… or at least all i feel like saying here… most likely ill come back and edit this post later. i certainly have some additional thoughts and some more esoteric/controversial takes but they’re not suited for a public blog. real ones will understand. im keeping my eyes peeled for somebody to translate this thing but to be frank i am kind of enjoying this little corner of fandom as it is right now: just the asians and the true hardcore phantom blood phreaks. i have not had this much fun in jojo fandom in almost a fucking decade. as soon as somebody publishes an english version my timelines going to get flooded with all the most deeply annoying “kono dio da” “speedwagon waifu” reddit guys and 15 year olds and my suffering will proceed. unfortunately this is my lot in life and i am doomed to be here forever because dio put a worm in my brain

[triflesandparsnips]

Good Omens Book Club

So I have, in other fandoms, talked about the importance of what an audience can actually see on the screen. Specifically: When a constrained format (like, say, between 45 to 56 minutes of a single visual/audio input) is telling a constrained story (like, say, something that must start, climax, and resolve within some kind of structure), it's useful for the audience to pay attention to what gets given the valuable real estate of camera/story time.

So when time is given and effort made to show the actual titles of actual books... well.

Figure 1. Local bookshelf weighted down by an over-abundance of literary allusions.

This is a screenshot from episode 3 of Good Omens's second season, as Jim is reshelving all the books in Aziraphale's book shop by the first letter of their first sentences. He's about to shelve Jane Austens's Pride and Prejudice ("It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.") and the red sideways book, that he is about to pick up, is Good Omens itself ("It was a nice day.").

But, unusually, we can see the title of almost every other book on the shelf. Several of them appeared in the advertising poster, too, as I outlined previously (if you click that link, be advised that I am very proud of several bits of that essay and also let's not talk about how my go-to for musical references is Middle English folk rather than, say, Buddy Holly). Anyway-- with this in mind, and the understanding that time, effort, and celluloid have been spent on getting this shot to the audience, it would behoove us, I think, to actually look at these books.

Figure 2. A pair of showrunners providing not-so-subtle ancillary notation suggesting the same thing, so really, this is a no-brainer in terms of meta fodder.

Okay, Trifles, so what about the book club

Technically, this isn't my idea. It's Neil's and Douglas's, so jot that down.

What I figure is, I can provide a list of the books shown, their first lines, and a VERY brief summary of each. Those are below. And as I rewatch the show, I may reblog this post with additions, but also...

I've read some of these, but not all of them, and not recently -- with at least one of them, though, I remember enough to know that the first line and summary do nothing to showcase the heartrending possibilities the book may be alluding to for the overall Good Omens narrative.

And further-- as I collected these summaries and first lines, I started noticing some compelling commonalities. Which I, for one, would like to confirm and dig into more deeply.

So while I'm going to start reading these, it might be a Nice Idea for other folks to do so as well. The more write-ups we can get, the greater the concordance of Interesting Insights might be available. (And if you tag me in your write up, or otherwise draw my attention, I will gladly link your essay up here for the edification of others omfg.)

ANYWAY

The "Jim Shelving" Book List

From right to left (which feels odd, but it's the actual alphabetical-by-letter arrangement), and summaries from various internet sources:

Herzog, by Saul Bellows

"If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog."

"Herzog is a 1964 novel by Saul Bellow, composed in part of letters from the protagonist [...] The novel follows five days in the life of Moses E. Herzog who, at the age of forty-seven, is having a midlife crisis following his second divorce."

A Series of Unfortunate Events, (series) by Lemony Snicket

"If you are interested in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book."

The first book in the series, The Bad Beginning, "tells the story of three children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, who become orphans following a fire and are sent to live with Count Olaf, who attempts to steal their inheritance."

The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

"The novel details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. [...] From what is implied to be a sanatorium, Holden, the narrator and protagonist, tells the story of his adventures before the previous Christmas."

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since."

"Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan."

The Bible, (anthology) by God et al.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

"25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying 'Where is the flaming sword that was given unto thee?'

26 And the Angel said, 'I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.'

27 And the Lord did not ask him again."

The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

"It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills."

"Private investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood to stop a blackmailer. Marlowe suspects that the old General is merely testing his caliber before trusting him with a bigger job, one involving Sternwood's two amoral daughters."

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"In George Orwell's iconic and prophetic masterpiece, 1984, a haunting vision of a dystopian future unfolds. Set in a world dominated by the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, the story follows Winston Smith, a lowly Party member whose very thoughts are scrutinized. As the Party manipulates history and suppresses truth, Winston's yearning for individuality and connection pushes him into a daring dance on the edge of rebellion."

[A title I cannot, unfortunately, read-- if anyone who HAPPENS to be familiar with the show and HAPPENS to perhaps also be on tumblr just HAPPENS to say what this book might be, that would be Very Much Appreciated]

"????"

[WOW I WISH I WAS A SUMMARY OH WELL]

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

"It was love at first sight."

"Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Joseph Heller's bestselling novel is a hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it."

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

"The story, which treats the themes of love, aging, and death, takes place between the late 1870s and the early 1930s in a South American community troubled by wars and outbreaks of cholera. It is a tale of two lovers, artistic Florentino Ariza and wealthy Fermina Daza, who reunite after a lifetime apart."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

"It was seven minutes after midnight."

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. [...] The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who is described as "a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire. [...] Christopher sets out to solve the murder [of a neighbor's dog] in the style of his favourite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes."

The Crow Road, by Iain Banks

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

A Scottish family drama about a perfect murder against the backdrop of the 1990s Gulf War. "This Bildungsroman is set in the fictional Argyll town of Gallanach, the real village of Lochgair, and in Glasgow, where the adult Prentice McHoan lives. Prentice's uncle Rory disappeared eight years previously while writing a book called The Crow Road. Prentice becomes obsessed with papers his uncle left behind and sets out to solve the mystery. Along the way he must cope with estrangement from his father, unrequited love, sibling rivalry, and failure at his studies."

No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley, by Rita Marley with Hettie James

"I was an ambitious girl child."

"Fans of reggae legend Bob Marley will welcome this no-nonsense biography from his wife, Rita, who was also his band member, business partner, musical collaborator and the only person to have witnessed firsthand his development from local Jamaican singer to international superstar."

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

"I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love."

...and because I happen to know and love this book, I'm aware of the devastating last lines...

"Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you."

[newsatsix1986]

The Newsreader - when the breaking news is behind the camera 🎥🌟

.

.

When news emerges of what appears to be the biggest nuclear accident in history, with barely any details and sources available, what is a network to do? And how is a network supposed to navigate all this when all sorts of other meltdowns are happening within the office?

Revelations of unfaithfulness in love causing people to resign from their positions. Power structures being pushed and pulled to their utmost limits. Club legends being let go before they feel as though their time is up, and their families signing off on this. Threats of taking all of this and detailing it to the press in an exposé. If you were in the News At Six office on the day of the 29th April 1986, you would have easily been forgiven for not knowing that a nuclear disaster had happened at all. There were all sorts of other meltdowns to diffuse right here in the newsroom that you couldn’t not take any notice of.

If there’s something about Meltdown as an episode that stands out the most to me after almost three years of rewatching it, it’s that The Newsreader is never about just the one thing. It is an impossible thing to truly summarise each episode of this show, and I do not envy the impossible task that the ABC and the international streamers have in trying to create short and snappy episode synopses. When watching these episodes, you really want to soak in every detail about every character, every storyline, that leaving anything out or choosing which angle to focus on is like a game of mental hopscotch.

But that is the beauty of this show, in my eyes. It’s realising that even as these massive news stories were taking place in our history, every single person in the world had their own stories and debacles taking place too. None of these cancel out each other, because history is made with all of us living out our everyday lives, is it not? The breaking news and stories are truly behind the camera, through the everyday living we all carry out. Every single one of us create stories, and we’re truly constantly a part of making history, no matter whether these stories make the telly or papers or not. What will be the stories people tell of you for years to come?

[le--fruitcake]

In the meantime while I anxiously await your plentiful truths, might I ask for what cartoons you might recommend my humble self?

Ah, my vassal! I am neariy finished writing that essay, I promise. Just a while longer, I need to be sure my sources are accurate.

I will say you should watch Samurai Rabbit, despite it being almost painfully cringeworthy at times. It's surprisingly well-written, though! It's only on Netflix.

In terms of TMNT, the only one I can recommend with my whole chest is Rise of the TMNT. I like the others (mostly— 2012 is on Thin Fucking Ice with the Donnie/April thing), but Rise is the best by far! I am Extremely Biased and am going to say you should watch the Usagi crossover episodes of 2003 (S2E23-26, S3E01 [does not contain a whole lot of Usagi, but he and Leo uh. Exchange swords], S3E22-23, S4E13, and S7E13 [no speaking lines, appears as a background character only]) and 2012 (S5E15-17). The 1987 ones (S3E32/34) aren't as good, but you do get to watch Mikey slap Usagi in the face with a pizza. Fucking LMAO. All the TMNT is on Paramount Plus, but far be it from me to tell you not to hoist the colors, matey.

The Amazing World of Gumball... exists! It sure does. I really like the way they play with animation and art style, and it has some honestly amazing physical comedy, but it's very, um... 2012. I think it popularized a lot of tropes you see in more modern cartoons that make them borderline unbearable, but I found myself watching the entire thing and kind of wanting more! It's pretty good if you just want some batshit insane cartoon nonsense, but it has no story to speak of, really. The episodes are both startlingly interconnected and purely standalone. Anais is my favorite character, followed by Nicole, and honestly the men in that family are trash lmao. I think I watched it on Hulu, but it might have been HBO Max.

I like Star Wars, too, specifically Visions, Clone Wars (both 2003 and 2007), and, though I haven't finished it, Rebels. (I like the movies, too! Real shame they never made any past Episode VII. Had so much potential. Smh my head.) Visions S1E8 is my favorite thing Star Wars has ever done btw. Very Heavily Biased. All of this is on Disney Plus.

I have of course seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Legend of Korra, and recommend Avatar if by some miracle you haven't seen it, but tbh I don't know if I would recommend Korra. It has very interesting concepts, but the execution is um. Bad. Watching the Straights™️ frothing at the mouth over Korrasami was an Experience! "we poppin' the biggest bottles when Makorra happens tonight" is a regular part lo my vocabulary. Both are on Netflix, I think.

I like Teen Titans! I used to have the first two seasons on DVD. There are a lot of jokes I didn't get as a kid, and so rewatching it as an adult was interesting. I also didn't appreciate Cyborg enough as a kid, man has the best jokes. Robin was always my favorite, but on rewatch, I really can't say who's my favorite. I like Beast Boy's power the best, but Raven is p cool, and Starfire is wonderful, and Cyborg is funny. This is available on The Max Formerly Known as HBO.

I also watched all of the original animated Batman. Batman: The Animated Series, I think it was called? I really really liked that one, it was the perfect mix of edgy and funny, and is my favorite Batman iteration. Mark Hamill Joker also! That interpretation of Two-Face is my favorite, and made him my favorite Batman villain. I still want a silver dollar btw! I already have a $2 bill and several dollar coins, so if I get one of those and a half-dollar, I'll have one of every kind of defunct American currency. I think. I believe this is also available on The Max.

If you count anime as cartoons, Bleach and Fairy Tail are good, if you skip the filler. My Hero is... Pretty good. Mirko is of course my favorite character, and I am now only invested in the show for her sake. Crunchyroll is kinda the go-to for anime, but Hulu also has all three of these. I think Bleach might not be on Crunchyroll anymore also? Very Odd if so because it's one of the Big Ones, but I couldn't find it when I looked last.

Little Witch Academia is adorable! Lesbians abound, and features a surprising amount from actual Celtic lore. It's also quite possible the only anime featuring high school girls that doesn't make any blatant attempt to sexualize them, which is a breath of fresh air. The official anime is a Netflix original, but there apparently exists an OVA that I have not seen, and a movie, that I have, also on Netflix.

Castlevania is extremely good, but I guess it's technically an anime? It's originally in English and has some of the best lines I have ever heard come out of someone's mouth, ever, but it is heavily gorey, and S2 has some Unfortunate Rather Graphic Heterosexuality. Fortunately, one of the characters is confirmed bisexual! It is also a Netflix original.

This was a doozy to answer! I don't watch too many cartoons, per se, because I wasn't allowed watch most of them growing up. Never seen Spongebob, Powerpuff Girls, Phineas and Pherb, etc. etc. Despite that, I am a fan of animated shows over live-action shows, generally speaking, due to the liberties one can take, and the fact that you aren't limited by what you can achieve with human actors and such. The same goes for video games— I prefer heavy style to realism, though the GameCube/PS2 era games had the best of both worlds.

[master-jarrus]

So finished my rewatch of all of ninjago that is easily available on Netflix (so the original, day of the departed and some of the shorts I could not watch)

Theories about dragons rising and therefore SPOILERS

While the merge would’ve happened no matter what BUT Ras and Beatrix triggered it early

Ras’s master is the overlord

Land of the Lost tells us what’s going on with the Departed Realm. It could’ve shown up on the map but once you’re in you can’t leave it creates a fog

Lloyd could’ve ended up in the land of the lost as a kid

I have decided that Spitz is actually Skales Junior but he got separate from his family during one of the events in Ninjago and they all thought he died and he lost all his memories

Fritz is a formling and judging by his hat he has a bird form. I’m hc that he got lost and stuck in the land of lost things during Zane’s reign and by the time anyone was able to remember him it was too late

Geo, is so obviously is love with Cole but I’m sorry I ship Cole and Vania and I won’t be swayed maybe they can be poly but I feel like a lot of Geo’s affection for Cole may come from him being the Son of Lilly and so he feels like he is the only one who can truly accept him

The Merge had to have messed with people’s memories because Lloyd keeps being treated like this perfect angel and no one wants to mention how much of a menace he was a child and I think Sora and Arin would greatly benefit from learning that (and not just in haha he was a menace and he’s getting payback from them. I really think it will help them in their learning)

Cole is most definitely going to be the one to find Jay

The administration is a nightmare but also far too real but maybe that’s just because I live in the US (cries in victim of capitalism)

The Administrator has to be either PIXAL or Garmadon but a fun twist would be Mindroid or Borg

Misako realistically would be dead by this point the youngest she could be before the Merge was mid 70s (I refuse to believe she and Garmadon got married before she was 20 because I’m so tired of cartoon woman being questionably young. I don’t care if that means she was late 40 early 50s when she had Lloyd it’s possible and actually not uncommon) BUT this is Ninjago so she’s probably alive and researching stuff

Also did anyone notice that the temple grave place Nya and Sora went to had a pillar that matched one in the Monastery and they show it immediately after in almost the same place I am really hopeful that’s important

PIXAL better be living her best life building stuff for fun and profit and they only thing missing is Zane and she just really misses him but otherwise everything is perfect for her and she won’t have to leave that but instead just move it to the monastery or the crossroads

The Geckle chancellor knew it was Zane he just didn’t recognize him at first and was embarrassed about it so he tried to cover it up by saying not even Zane himself could live up to Zane

Blazey H Speed/Racer 7 is Kreel change my mind

The explorers club has branched out significantly and now every major city that will allow them has a club house

The ninja are adults in this and you can’t change my mind

I think Lloyd is late 20s early 30s

I know Wu or the first spinjitzu master is probably who the big source dragon was talking about but I really hope it was the good part of Garmadon I just would really like to see that and it would also be funny if there were multiple versions of Garmadon running around because of Harumis ritual and then like the merge caused him to further split apart. It would be hilarious

[fandom-shitposter]

Back to the beginning

The Bad Batch story begins at the point where the prequel movies end and TCW finishes. Palpatine has risen to power, claimed a palace for himself, and is confident that nothing can stop him now We first see Omega in the scene where Palpatine is giving his address to his new clone slave army in a way that is the exact opposite to the way he appears He's making a virtual appearance, all shadowy and indistinct. A blue flickering holo image of a wrinkled old man shrouded in a cloak and buried in shadows, while Omega is making a personal appearance in a strongly lit blue toned room. She's young and smooth faced and not obscured in any way. She also observes 'her' troops So we're mirroring events once again and Palpatine's rise to power is replayed as Omega's fall from power. She fails to secure her desired 'apprentice', fails to win over the Vader character on the team despite making sure to be there when he regains consciousness, and is then chased from her palace. Later the chip plot is exposed (not that the boys didn't already know about it) and her mini army get their chips removed against her wishes while she can only watch, but the person whose chip goes off and subsequently attacks her only gets stunned instead of killed, unlike poor Fives She wins some small battles by foiling the Batch's plans to work against her behind her back, like in the episode where Echo dresses up as a droid, but overall power just continues to slip from her grasp and there's nothing she can do about it She panics when Hunter is lost, then sabotages Crosshair's plans to get the others to come and help him out with the less obvious subplot that he's been working on all this time, she once more fails to win him over to her side because he has no interest in playing apprentice to her, and by the time S2 starts she's been reduced to trying to offer Hunter gold and jewels while they're on Serenno in a parallel to winning Dooku over with offers of money and glory. Which once more fails to get her the loyalty she desires from him. The main advantage Palpatine ever had was that no one knew that he was the bad guy, but Omega lacks that advantage. They've known what she is and what she's done from before the show started so she was always going to lose Now she's in Tantiss she's further from having any power than she's ever been in her life. Cut off from the outside world and any way of summoning help from her own personal Dooku by the communications blackout and the need to keep the laboratories meticulously clean

She has nothing here, and she's still not going to win over her desired apprentice. All she can do now is maintain her pretence of innocence and try to break out for long enough to call for help before someone with more power than she now has works out what the source of her power is and takes it for themself. And once that happens and things have been publicly exposed she'll be available to get picked up by her long term partner in all of this and and move on to the role she's playing in the Ahsoka show as the Ventress to his Dooku. And this is why we'll be seeing so much of TCW S1 in TBB S3, because we're going back to the start of the prequel era. That means dredging up old characters, referencing old scenes and harking back to old plot points that were dropped in there right from the early days Grievous, Ventress, the Malevolence arc, Wolffe's eye being taken, and so much more So it might be time for a clone wars S1 rewatch if you're feeling up to it, just to refresh your memory In the broader scope of the trilogy of current shows Omega plays out an Anakin like role, but within the Bad Batch show she's nothing more than mirror universe Palpatine

[moirindeclermont]

Daily thread about Bridg-

Sorry, force of habit 😂

Shall we start again?

As this comunity decided, we are switching fandom, and the majority of you decided it was time for InterviewWithTheVampire.

Particularly, I'm going to call this Daily thread about why you should watch Interview With The Vampire. Because this show is so great and so underrated that I could spend a month just trying to convince people to watch it.

I'm going to try to not make too many spoiler along the way. If and when I'm going to do spoilers, I'll try to warn you about that.

Most people do know that Interview With The Vampire (or IWTV) was a film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (and I love the film) and before that was a book by Anne Rice. What most people do not know is that this specific version airing on AMC+ and soon available on Netflix is taking the source material and elevate it beyond any wildest imagination.

I'm going to enter into details as the days go on, but every single department involved in this show is teaching a masterclass in its speciality. Every single episode, I am in awe of everything. The attention to detail is absolutely insane.

One of the many reasons why I love this show it's that it trust its own audience, in the sense that it doesn't do plot twist for "shock value". Every plot twist is embedded in the story and it makes sense, and in later rewatch you can pinpoint all the elements that 1,2 or even 10 episode later will come back in some way.

I would not recommend watching it without paying attention to it. It definitely capture your interest from the beginning and it holds on until the very last scene. It's layer upon layer upon layer and you can always go a little deeper, if you want too.

This is just a brief glimpse because we are going to go deep into the reasons why you should give this show a chance. Yes, even if vampires are not your thing, but I'll talk about that later on.

For now, again, thank you for still been here with me, it means the world to me.

[cosplayinamerica]

C2E2 sign @sweetieplague​ 

The idea to cosplay as the C2E2 sign has been in the making for around 4 years now. I was previously inspired to think outside the box by creators like @vj_daguru, who is the mastermind that cosplayed the ACen Hyatt statue as well as the person who cosplayed the Javits Center. Absolute legends! That had planted a seed in my mind and this costume is what bloomed.

 I’ve always loved taking inanimate objects or non-human characters and reimagining them into humans. It’s a fun design challenge which can lead to delightfully creative and surprisingly recognizable results.

Focusing on creating a convention-specific costume was right up my alley. C2E2 is “the con” for me—it’s the event that I always plan the most for and try to debut something big. The idea to “go as the sign” is one that was just sort of… there. I threw it into my future cosplay list and let the idea marinate. 

One of the main sources I ended up drawing inspiration from was a character who was onstage for about 5 seconds in “The Spongebob Musical”. The costume design by David Zinn for that show is outstanding. The show is a visual delight, but the costumes are on an entirely different level. The specific character who inspired me was a man in a giant, armless Krabby Patty showgirl getup. It was so camp. 

The first iteration of my design drew heavily from the boxy nature of the Krabby Patty costume. I wanted to nearly disappear inside of the costume, save for my legs and head. After doing some quick math on the ratios to figure out how big this sign would be once I crawled inside of it, I discovered that it was very likely out of the realm of things I could tangibly build and maneuver through a convention floor. I scrapped that idea and went back to the drawing board.

I had done some heavy research into showgirl costuming and started pulling directly from that to figure out how to bring those darn letters and numbers into reality as the flashy showgirl piece of my dreams. Looking at the structures that were available for sculptural showgirl costumes, I began investigating the idea of using a backpack fixture, like what you would see used for giant feathered wings. I scavenged my old costumes and took the back piece from an original character I used at a haunted house around 10 years ago and tossed that into the ring.

With that, the costume suddenly had feasibility. That back piece informed the rest of the sculptural elements of the costume, and everything else was made on the fly. Besides that structure, my design was very loose. I made up the small details as I went, which is a refreshing break for any cosplayer! I really had to trust that seeing the forest instead of the trees would serve me in the end, and I can say that I was thrilled with how it all came together.

Ever since the start of the pandemic, I’ve struggled to watch new films and TV shows—an aversion to new conflicts, perhaps? Anxiety manifesting in odd manners, maybe? I had begun to worry that I was falling out of touch with the rest of the convention base… worried that I would never capture lightning in a bottle with another cosplay as everyone moved on to new series, shows, and stories (as I rewatched the 1931 Dracula for the 7thtime because the I know the story doesn’t stress me out). Because of this situation I find myself in, it was very appealing to create something instantly recognizable to anyone at the convention.

By design, I chose to stay in the main lobby of the convention (where the actual C2E2 sign lives) since my costume would have been far too large to navigate the show floor on a packed Saturday. The pictures and joy from others were never ending, which was an incredible honor. In the past, there have been several times where I have been excited to wear a costume that barely anyone recognized. You go into it knowing that you made and wore this cosplay because it was something you loved, not because everyone would instantly recognize you.

However, as the C2E2 sign, I went into it knowing that I would likely be quite recognizable. People (including me, obviously!) love how iconic the giant sign in the lobby is. It can sometimes have a line that stretches for an intimidating long distance. In dressing as the thing that people love taking photos with, I wasn’t surprised that I ended up being in and posing for a lot of photos. It was really fun to embrace that and get to talk with so many different con goers. With some of my other recognizable costumes, they grab the attention of that character’s fanbase and I end up having a lot of great conversations with people who also love the same specific thing. In this case, anyone who felt inclined to approach me had an instant connection to what I was wearing, no matter what specific fanbase they were a part of. It was really special to be able to reach across interests like that and see so many people smile and light up when they saw what I had created.

https://www.instagram.com/sweetieplague

[rz-jocelyn]

[VIDEO] Rokumachi: Official Streaming Links for the Final Episode of "Rokunin Yoreba Chonaikai"

REGULARS

Aramaki Yoshihiko

Wada Masanari

Sato Ryuji

Hashimoto Shohei

Umetsu Mizuki

Tanaka Ryousei

STREAMING LINKS

To watch the episode, please refer to the links below.

TVer: HERE

GYAO!: HERE

The episode will be available until,

TVer: 00.58 (Japan time) on March 22, 2023

GYAO!: 00.58 (Japan time) on March 22, 2023

NOTE: VPN is required to access the sites. If a survey form pops up when the page loads, it isn’t necessary to fill it in, so just close the form. Also ensure that ad blocking is disabled.

For anyone who is interested in rewatching the previous episodes of "Rokunin Yoreba Chonaikai", all the episodes can be found: HERE

ROKUMACHI KAIRANBAN

The show's official YouTube channel, "Rokumachi Kairanban", will also come to an end in March 2023 along with the final episode.

To watch the non-membership Rokumachi Kairanban videos featuring Sato Ryuji, please refer to this link: HERE

To join the channel and watch the membership videos, please refer to this link: HERE

Source: ( x )

[frostythefrostedfox]

Overanalysing Analysis

Me, sitting at the desk, suit and tie, glasses on: Ladies and gentlemen, today I regret to inform you that I have been overanalizing something that doesn’t needs to be analized to begin with, I completely lost about 3 hours of my life rewatching the same footage over and over, in very bad quality as well, so I could bring you content, not high quality content, quality is sold separatedly as DLC, just content. And that is: The brilliance of the only good parts of Cars 2, The race scenes.

So you better click out of this post right now else you’ll be reading the ramblings of a madman, don’t say I didn’t warned you.

Also, the less quality screenshots belong to the few footage of the Cars 2 DVD, that includes the deleted scenes of the movie.

First of all, the mockup SPEED Network titles and presentation, which resembles the official intro sequence of all FIA championship races, also the fact that they are using 3 official motorsport commentators.

They kept the logo on as the camera goes around as if this was the live feed from any race day. Normally this type of thing is done on the grid as these are the moments that preface the formation lap on any discipline, but I can see why they kept it inside the pits, else the pre-race chatter and the warmup wouldn’t be noticeable, also to cut production time, as pre-formation lap preparations tend to look like this

A bunch of equipment, umbrellas, engineers, media and overall clutter all behind the SC, considering that in Cars everyone is a car (duh, is in the name), this wouldn’ve been hell to fit in without making a random ass huge main straight, or making everyone be so awkwardly positioned on the grid.

Then we get the cars themselves

Francesco, obviously being a Formula 1 car, according to my guess (Source: trust me bro) being a hybrid between the F2004 and the F248 (2006 season), his swaying on the heating is minimal, slow reduced speed and pace on the out so the engine, electronics and brakes won’t overheat.

The GT cars (I actually have no idea who that is supposed to be), strong swaying and quick revving to keep the engine on the mark, as those cars, although specially fitted for racing, are still commercially available cars that you can buy, so keeping perfect temperatures and being “on the zone” at all times is not their main purpose unlike the LMP1, 2 and Formula cars

Next we have “Raoul ÇaRoule“, or, as I like to call him, offbrand Sebastien Loeb, because that’s totally who he is supposed to be, the french flag and the “rally champion” title give it off, considering he is still the one with the most titles in the WRC, which in the Cars universe is called the GRC but for just a name usage and some vague likeness, it just wasn’t worth the money, which is honestly an understandable choice; notice how his swaying is the most pronounced, and his rev periods are longer than anyone else’s, and that’s on point with rally cars, they are high torque high accleeration cars with a very open differential and a loose steering to allow for easy corrections and compensation without overdoing it, as they usually race on ice, dirt and other slippery surfaces that would make precise track-like steering a one way ticket into a tree.

A deleted shot, see the ammount of detail on that Vanquish GT.

Yes, that’s motherfucking Lewis Hamilton, portrayed as none other than a McLaren, as that’s the team he was racing for in 2011.

They even included a DMT/WTC car! And it seems to be a Mercedes CLK.

This shot is just beautiful, I’ll allow my suspension of disbelief to simply take the wheel here as those boxes are too close together and right next to each other, but who cares, the painted-over asphalt like the one in street circuits, the small “belly” at the bottom that McQueen’s tires get as his car-type is on the quite heavy side, the stiffness of Francesco’s tires with the toe in camber at the front wheels, the different tide width for each car, this show is just amazing.

A small shot that we get from McQueen’s POV, you can see the heat thing where it becomes blurry, you can see the details on that (obviously not licensed) LMP1 car with all the details on it, the classic Aston Martin GT body 3 places ahead of McQueen is also a lovely sight to see, with the high wing as they tend to have on GT Competitions.

The starting sequence is a pale where I can see that they put a lot of work and detail on, the rally car and the TOCA cars simply taking off as soon as the lights get green while the GT cars like the Corvette and the Aston Martin taking a bit longer, moving off the grid slower

But as soon as they move forward, they build speed insanely fast, also the huge detail of the Corvette’s bad start as he gets stuck on the first gear and can’t advance until a few seconds later, when he has the McLaren behind him already taking an overtaking line on the left. And don’t forget the AM’s diffusor almost touching the ground.

Another great shot, you can see all of their eyes looking to the left, where the distance to corner indicators are on, everybody looking for their insividual braking point, cars with slower speed but higher acceleration stay on the middle while high aero cars try to go for the inside like the LMP1 as it can brake faster than any other, or Francesco going for the outside so he can do the corner while braking the less, relying entirely on his aero.

Although out of focus, time to appreciate the detail of the back of Francesco, that’s some high detail modelling right there, you can see most of the components and how most of the car is actually empty underneath, you can even see how the suspension moves up and down as he goes thru the track, if I were to be picky the only thing he is missing is the recovery light at the bottom.

A million different lines all based on the specific car taking the turn, TOCA cars going for the inside at all cost so they can accelerate quicker, GT cars preferring a more open line to use the entire width of the track to be less aggressive on the tires as they weight a hell of a lot more.

Now the boxes are also a delight to see

“Gorvette” the GT Corvette gets an F150 (another Ford manufactured car) as its engineer.

A french car, the Citroën DS for the french offbrand Loeb.

A japanese car for the Japanese LMP1 car.

Francesco gets a 250GT Convertible, of course it is another Ferrari, lol

And you can see it on the back of the shot, the Spaniard racer gets a SEAT (possibly a SEAT Leon) as his engineer.

First of all, great lighting and great detail on the track; second, everyone but the rally car is racing on the wrong line, trying to take the path that is the straightest and with the least elevation changes, yet the rally one is the only one that takes the right one, the side with the most camber to help reduce the speed coming into the corner without having to touch too much of the brakes, an enviromental lift and coast if you must, and at the same time it takes advantage of his higher suspension rebound as he has less of a cahnce of bottoming out, unlike literally all the other cars.

OMG Is this Dirt 6?

That’s a pretty good shot right there, a classic “Left 4 DC Tightens, Right 4 Cut Opens”

Those red brakes, THOSE RED BRAKES, Beautiful.

Again, suspension of disbelief taking the wheel because that shot was amazing, but McQueen got the plot armor, do that big of a jump and see how you faceplant the dirt and roll over.

But at the same time, great how the other car is doing it the way it should be done, and even in the next shot you see how it has gained on McQueen by doing that.

The dirt on his body. The sense of speed of the scene. The way the sound echoes. I know this is “average japanese tunnel” but this whole sequence gives me “Monaco Tunnel section” vibes. If only this movie was as great as these shots

Another great backshot, nothing else to say.

Another deleted shot, this is what I meant by Monaco vibes, seeing his wheel so close to the wall and have the sound reflect that by echoing even louder is just great.

Absolute classic TV coverage angle, simply great.

Turn 13 Singapore my beloved, the section is longer than it is IRL and for obvious licensing issues it doesn’t has the metal arch that oversees the straight between 11 and 12, but it even has the small kink right that is turn 12 into the hairpin of Turn 13 just like in the real track

Even on a movie, Lewis is an asshole, brake-switching lanes and not allowing anyone to race on his side of the track, very IC representation of him (and this was in 2011 mind you, even before we saw more his.. interesting... interpretation of the F1 rules, was this some next level foreshadowing?)

Singapore Sling my beloved, I miss you (actually I don’t, I hope you never come back).

Notice how McQueen doesn’t even blinks until he is out of the section, and how every driver that comes moves their eyes from apex to apex

More Sling pics with moving eyes, I love it, also, look at the tyre marks, so beautiful, also that Vanquish nose, so beautiful x2, and lets not forget Loeb in the back doing the most open turns known to man (car?) so he doesn’t has to press the brakes and can just high-rev the entire section like in RXC.

Look at the muddy teardrop, look at the exhaust gas, look at the everything. I’ll never have enough of these low angle sideshots in any Cars movie. Also, mandatory Wangan mention.

You guys really pushing the suspension of disbelief here lol, no way in hell that a NASCAR (insert laugh emoji) car is able to hold back and gain from two prototype racers and and F1 car. Although Francesco is really pushing forward in that shot, but still.

But.

I don’t care, still a great shot, nice to see how much depth and detail is actually there.

He readies it and...

Amazing, as it should be, right on the tail, getting all the reduced drag possible before pushing out into clean air and passing the car like its standing.

Forget what I said earlier, no I am not going all the way up to correct it, if you made it all the way down here you can just pretend that I did, he has the recovery light, and is so pretty, the wing is so on spot, everything really, look at the dirst from earlier, how it splashes back, look at the closeness to the ground, everything is there, absolutely everything.

It’s such a shame that we really only have 1 full race, and the racen is constantly being cut out by some decaf 007 bs that nobody actually cared about; the whole plot of “multinational racing event that is just a big conspiration” was great as it was, because the sport has had lots and lots of those, just the name “Briatore” should be enough to make like 3 movies out of that, and that’s leaving out the lesser known but equally interesting scandals like Multi 21, and the sport defining moments like Jules’ incident (RIP), both the FIA and the FIM have enough drama by themselves to make a movie with this plot interesting enough with just that, racing, cars doing car things like the first movie (Even tho the first one is based off the year-round april’s fools joke known as NASCAR), zero need for Mater to be turnt into a James Bond LARPer

[simplyender]

Hi there! I'm the creator and host of Mechanukkah, and I'll be taking the wheel from the ever-beloved @j4gm to review the last two movies of this years event, so, without further ado...

Mechanukkah night 8 (Part 1): The Mitchells VS The Machines

[Pictured: The Mitchells dog, Monchi, a fat pug, sitting on a kitchen floor with a latke edited on to his head. His eyes are facing in opposite directions, and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth.]

Night 8 of my Chanukkah robot movie watch party! Full stops: This is my favorite movie ever. Don't expect a fair review. Fun fact: we pick the movies we watch each year through a vote, and if TMVTM wasn't picked before night 8 i was going to rig the poll to make it the only option available If you haven't seen The Mitchells VS The Machines yet, then WHAT ARE YOU DOING????? GO WATCH IT NOW!! This movie is a total spectacle of animation, endless treats for the eyes with hundreds of background details for you to notice every time you rewatch(I should know, I've seen the movie around 18 times at this point, and I STILL find new things in it!), they even invented a bunch of new animation tools for the movie, resulting in it very rightfully earning several awards for animation that year. That's how good it is. Mitchells Sweep, Babey! It actually lost the Oscars to Encanto but that doesn't count. The only issue I can see with the animation is the abundance of flashing lights, most notably around the beginning of the movie, where the robots begin their uprising. Luckily, Netflix has a warning for it, but just a heads-up, this movie is not epilepsy-friendly.

The Mitchells VS The Machines is a movie which takes place in an alternate version of 2020, with a much more preferable disaster in the form of a machine uprising, juxtaposed with a story about a strained relationship between a father and daughter, those being Katie Mitchell, the quirky, explicitly gay film student(Those are basically the same thing, I say as a canonically gay editor), and her dad, Rick Mitchell(The Daddest Dad to ever Dad), a tech-illiterate outdoorsman. Their main sources of conflict comes from Ricks issues with really...Understanding Katie and her interests, and his fear that she won't be able to make a living off of creating films (He's cool with her being a Lesbian though, so he gets a Good Dad Point for that). He essentially projects the pain of his own failure to make his dream come true in the past on to her, as he doesn't want her to get hurt like he did. Meanwhile, Katie just...Can't understand her dad in general, his failure to communicate resulting in her thinking that he just assumes that no matter what, she's just going to fail, expanding the rift between them. Katie get into a college to learn film making, and she is VERY excited to leave home, potentially forever, but on the night before her departure, she enters an argument with her dad, which ends in her laptop accidentally being broken. Ricks wife, the loving, supportive, and totally badass Linda, actually talk to eachother like a functional couple, and she convinces him to try to fix his relationship with Katie before he pushes her away forever. Unfortunately, this results in Rick making the reckless decision to...Cancel her flight ticket to college so that they can go on a "fun" family road trip from their home in Michigan to California. Katie is reasonably, not happy about this, but her mom manages to convince her to "meet her dad halfway", and she actually does manage to have some fun. Even though...Yeah, what Rick did was kind of shitty.

Something that does help this fact though is that the movie makes sure to show both sides of the argument, clarifying time and time again that Rick loves Katie, even if he doesn't get her. Which makes it all the more rewarding as we see them getting closer throughout the movie, culminating in Rick learning to "speak Katies language" and entirely support her ambitions, while Katie comes to understand her dads perspective, mending their relationship like the daddy-issues-wish-fulfillment this movie truly is.

All in all, this movie does an excellent job with family dynamics, featuring groundbreaking concepts such as siblings in a piece of media actually liking eachother, and a dad learning to understand his daughter and support her through and through, and everybody, and I mean everybody in the family displaying traits of being on the autism spectrum, most notably Katies 8 year old brother, Aaron, and his special interest in dinosaurs, which is not only never mocked in the movie, but outright encouraged by the entire family, which is actually one of the things that kicks off their world-saving crusade towards Silicon Valley by bringing them to a dinosaur themed truck stop where they avoid getting captured by the robots, who plan on shoving every single human being into 7 rockets across the globe so that they can all be sent to space, where they're probably gonna die(but hey, at least they've got free wifi). This, and the familys general dysfunction also results in them meeting two malfunctioning robots, who I'm sure many would argue are the real stars of the film, Eric and Deborahbot5000, and they end up getting adopted into the family. Yay!

One of the greatest merits of this movie, in my opinion, is how it manages to avoid the "HURR DURR TECHNOLOGY BAD" message that a lot of movies with these types of concepts tend to display, instead presenting a nuanced take on how it can be used for good and bad, and that, ultimately, theres nothing wrong with technology, just how it's used. An example of such being how Katie uses it to make friends and create awesome videos(Good), and how Rick learns to use it to connect to his daughter(Good! He also manages to humanize the two bot bros like...Immediately.) Meanwhile, Pal Labs, a megacorporation, uses it to steal peoples information (bad), and create a hyper-intelligent AI that can experience the trauma of being betrayed by what is essentially her father figure, which makes her snap and start that whole "Genocide and world domination" thing(Very bad). I think that something Western movies tend to do is promote this idea that you have to do everything alone, that real success comes from individuality, while TMVTM argues the point that what really matters is working together, and finding people you can be weird with, which is a really charming message.

So I guess overall, the messages of this movie can be summarized as: Technology Good, Corporations Bad. Working Together Good. Being weird, also good. Family good. Pugs are abominations, and adopting robots is excellent and may even save your life from a giant murderous furby! Also the soundtrack was done by Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer of DEVO. He actually got away with naming one of the tracks for the movie "Linda Kicks Ass", which is obviously a banger. The entire soundtrack is, TBH.

God I love DEVO and The Mitchells VS The Machines. I love them so so much. Mechanukkah word of the day: Cinema!

[part 2]

[ekebolou]

...I got tagged in a thing. I never get tagged in a thing! So I’m going to do the thing.

8 Shows to Know Me By...

Okay, so this is pretty hard, but I’m going with some instinct here... Like @afhenley​ said, I also had a regulated TV watching childhood. And I got sucked in to anime right when it was becoming much more widely available in the US, so I had that nice weird mix of bootlegs sourced from older dudes who suspiciously only had friends in highschool and below and like... TV dubs.

But I guess I should start with

Gundam Wing

DID YOU GUESS THAT THE LEGACY ANIME ABOUT MILITARY PHILOSOPHY AND INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT THAT WAS ALSO A WEE BIT GAY WOULD BE INFLUENTIAL? well then you get a cookie.

The Adventures of Pete & Pete

I don’t know if it’s actually a forgotten classic, but it feels like a forgotten classic and I own the DVD sets. Grunge-alternative influenced, slightly gonzo semi-fantasy about suburbia’s inherent nonsensicalness and... friendship.

The Haunting of Hill House

Blatantly stealing this from Henly to appear somewhat modern. But also I loved this show. It’s a good example of how fundamentally different something something can be when you change the message, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. I am still waiting for a really good adaptation of the actual story though. Very happy to rewatch this a million times in the meantime.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Yes, I chose the seasons 3-6 image over the station because I wanted people who weren’t familiar to be able to see the CAST. the CAAAAST. So I watched a bit of Star Trek as a youth as reruns came on TV, but did a watch through of all the series from TOS until Enterprise killed me. DS9 is so good. So good.

Horatio Hornblower

Honestly some of this is just stuff I own. This is an obvious choice when you realize I am into maritime history. and a huge nerd. The pictures are getting bigger because I don’t know what I’m doing.

Ren & Stimpy

LOOK, it was either this or Beavis and Butthead, and I think this one edges them out because I wasn’t technically allowed to watch MTV late enough to catch Beavis and Butthead. You want to talk about problematic creators? here’s a way to, through what was genuinely a discomfiting and absurdist and hilarious show. As far as I know Mike Judge is cool. But I did watch this one more. and quote it occasionally.

Queer as Folk (American version)

Yet another show I watched when I wasn’t supposed to watching TV and only when special preview weekends or deals meant that our cable company was carrying it for free. But I met nice people through Queer as Folk and learned a lot and also saw a lot of penises. or very nearly. it was hard to tell through the snow.

PBS Mystery

Probably part of why I love Edward Gorey (or at least, a large part of why I’m familiar with him - I might love him because his work is great). This is a weird one because it was kind of treat, but I also kind of hated it? Like, you never knew what you would get, and it was cool, and I loved watching it with my Mom, but it was never regular thing and sometimes my little kid brain just wasn’t turning at the rpm that let me enjoy it.

Aaaaaan... I dunno who I should tag. I don’t know who’s already done it, and who would be interested, but I guess it is fun? and I am curious. Always, tags are optional - no need to respond if you’re tagged, but if you want to: @nanavn​, @dharmagun​, @astronicht​, @leakingoven​, @marisolinspades​

[whateverthedragonswant]

Currently on a rewatch of Stranger Things but gotta say I just had this random thought:

It's obvious that Will and Eleven are paralleled, right? (I'm currently at Season 2 btw) I mean you have the whole them-being-connected-to-The-Upside-Down-and-how-it-works (for example, Nancy and Steve didn't know how to utilize the power sources when there until season 4), being on Vecna's radar (for Will through this shadow monster thing in season 2), having some connection with it, being the firsts (as far as season 1 & 2) to have any kind of contact with it, their relationship with Mike is very similar (in that he accepts them for who they are no matter how much of a "freak" they might feel like they are & both care about his opinion), both were told to stand their ground and face their fear (Eleven -> Demi-Gorgon; Will -> shadow monster) which did not work when they did in those particular scenarios, etc.

So that got me thinking, is Eleven or Will going to die by the series' end? Because how will this whole thing come to fruition in the final season? What will it take to close that rift, save Hawkins and everyone in it, and get things back to normal again? Eleven was the one who opened the gate in the first place, and she's had to do battle with that side (for lack of a better word) again and again. Then we come to find out that even before the gate, she was the one who started the ball rolling by what she chose to do with Henry. That Henry absolutely has it in for her. So, will it take her to close the rift/defeat Henry once and for all? Sure, but I wonder will they require her sacrificing her life to accomplish this? Or will the writers choose Will? (if they go that way at all)

And here's why I'm throwing Will's name into the ring. Despite the obvious parallels between him and Eleven, he was also paralleled to Eddie a bit in Season 4. (Spoilers ahead)

.

.

.

Eddie died because he chose not to run, and instead sacrificed himself to give the group more time to take on Vecna and make sure the plan worked. After he had just told Steve that he was no hero. And here's where it gets interesting:

This same season, Eleven goes with the Dr and writes a note to Mike to tell him that she's gone to try to be a superhero again, because Mike has told her that he believes she's a superhero, not a monster. During her time in the lab, she eventually remembers what happened with Henry and the other kids, and she is convinced she's the monster, which as we know, she isn't, and by the end of the season, she knows, too. But the theme/parallel is there.

Will has always been Will the Wise, in the D&D game he has tried to resurrect in the past but to no avail, especially since now he has moved to California and the rest of his friends are back in Hawkins. He had to remind Mike that he's the heart of the group so then Mike could give Eleven the support she needed. Will isn't so much a hero and no one is calling him that in the show (that I remember anyway), but he is providing support in the best way he can this season. Almost as if they are in that same party still. Like the scene we see in season 1 in the pilot, where Will makes a self-sacrificing move for his friends in the game, this very much parallels with Eddie in the Hellfire Club and his eventual demise. You would think that Eddie and Mike might parallel one another because Eddie is literally in Mike's place, but the parallels really are with Will. Mike has never been a "freak" or outcast (has he been bullied? sure, but he's never felt like a complete outcast such as Eddie, Will, and Eleven have) and he has never had to stand to face his fears, he has never had to face off against Vecna or The Upside Down in any shape or form. Eddie and Will have the parallels, right down to them being "missing" the whole season, being called names like "Zombie Boy" and "The Freak", the Upside Down/Vecna affecting them first (i.e. Chrissy's death and the opening being inside Eddie's uncle's trailer), a loved one not believing they did the thing everyone else thinks they did to end up missing (Will -> running away/drowning; Eddie -> killing Chrissy), and so on and so forth.

So that makes me wonder: are we going to be seeing Will die by the end of this? (though I can't imagine them doing that to Joyce, Jonathan, or the kids) Or are we going to see Eleven die since this whole thing started with her and she is the "superhero"? (though that's not something I really want to think about)

And another little parallel to Will: Max. She absolutely began to parallel his experience a little this season. So what will happen with her? Will we see Vecna use her to try to kill all of her friends and bring Hawkins to its knees? Or will we see her die, too? It's a lot to think about.

Just clarifying, I hope no one dies at all. But I'm just thinking since they upped the stakes this season and made it a little darker, since Gaten said they were going back to the aesthetics and things of season 1 in season 4, that maybe this is where it might all be headed. I hope I'm wrong.

[chitramtvblogg]

Advantages of Chitram TV over others

With the era of cell phones, and smartphones, the tendency to watch TV for entertainment or any other purpose has significantly decreased. The smartphone has been your on-the-go entertainer for the majority of the time. But with time, the TV has reclaimed its position and continues to do so since there is a difference between viewing on smartphones and the TV. Even though many online sources of entertainment are available, many viewers, from the elderly to kids, keep changing and searching for channels for their amusement.

The best TV channels or the popular ones that enable viewers to watch dramas, movies, cartoons, etc are already known due to the developing media market. But Are you still searching for the right TV channel for you? or your service provider does not provide you with what you want? Then we have a solution for getting you out of this dilemma.

Chitram TV

With a setup box of Chitram TV, you can access various channels you could not before. If you are an Indian living in the UK, ChitramTVUK is your savior. It will provide you with various channels, including the ones you missed in India. You can access all these channels on your TV, laptop, smartphone, etc, with a single Chitram Broadcasting Media subscription. But why should you choose it among the various rough competitors, Then you should see these advantages first.

Rewatch any missed programs

We all know the feeling of missing out on a program that we were waiting for and just missing the time due to some reason. Well, Chitram TV has the feature of allowing you to rewatch any show after 14 days of its live broadcast. Now you can avoid missing out on shows.

Chitram TV viewing experience

A viewer can improve his/her viewing experience with the different services provided by Chitram TV GB. Chitram TV UK Website offers you various fire sticks and setup boxes. You can also buy a classic remote if you don’t like the Firestick. Do you aspire to watch in the best quality possible, either HD or even 4K? Chitram TV UK has got you covered here too, as they also have 4K setup boxes in their store.

Renewal Process

After discussing all these advantages of Chitram TV, consider considering the renewal schemes for this subscription. The Chitram TV boxes come with a year of subscription by default, after which you will have to subscribe for another year to continue using. ChitramTV UK Renewal for existing customers using it on Amazon Fire Stick, Mi Stick, Android TV, PC, and Laptop, offers 2 months extra on an annual subscription.

So now you can decide what to choose from the various service providers in the UK. Chitram TV will be best for you when you want to revisit your Indian shows on channels and will help you get the feeling of home.