#totally unexpected triptych

[janetkwallace]

So close, yet so distant.

[triptychexe]

◌ genre: fluff ◌ pairing: asa x yen ◌ word count: 0.3k ◌ warnings: none!

JANUARY 26TH, 2015

The meeting ended and the trainees filed out in a mixture of excitement and mild confusion. The concept of the new debut group, Triptych, was explained in detail, but the subunit concept still threw off some of the trainees. The information that B.A.D would be one of these subunits for the super group made some eyebrows shoot up. It was all very unexpected, but based off how much detail had gone into the plan, this had been thought out for some time now by the company. 

Asahiko found Micha in the wave of trainees that were now making their way to the locker rooms and pulled her aside.

“Are you okay?” He asked her.

“Huh?” Micha questioned, the smile that was previously on her face was fading. “I mean, this new group concept is kinda stealing your thunder, isn’t it? You’re not going to be just a three membered group now, you’re going to be just one part of a huge group.” Asahiko reasoned. He figured his friend wouldn’t be too pleased about having to share her spotlight with a bunch of other people, but to his surprise she was laughing. “Don’t be silly, this is the best news we could have ever gotten! ” She chuckled, turning around and heading to her locker. Asahiko followed her, unsure if his friend was totally sane right now.

“But like… You worked so hard just to find out you’re in a subunit.” Asahiko said slowly.

“Koko, the debut group is going to have male members.” She grinned, grabbing her bag. Asahiko huffed out a laugh. “They’ll be your groupmates, not your boyfriends, Micha.” “Asahiko… are you seriously not getting what I’m saying? It’s a good thing you’re cute.” Micha teased, closing her locker and grabbing his shoulders, looking him in the eye.

“The new group can have male members. You are a boy.” She said slowly.

Realization crossed over Asahiko’s face. “We could be in a group together.” He realized. Micha nodded, her smile spreading even wider. 

“I gotta go practice.” Asahiko said hastily, grabbing his stuff out of his locker. “We will debut together, Micha! I promise!” He called as he slung his bag out of his locker and slung it over his shoulder.

[kayla200111]

‘No mistakes, only happy accidents!’~ B.R - Entry3

This week’s creative prompt is: From Mess To Miracle (Week 3)

This week I am reacting to the prompt: From Mess To Miracle. Above are some visuals of how I executed this prompt regarding my creative project. Often I struggle to understand, how a mess can possibly be art. The way that this prompt was worded was an excellent way to state how art can start off as a mess and become a miracle. It may look like a mess to some people, while others will simply look at it like it is a creative masterpiece. Just like Bob Ross always said, ‘There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.’ and I kept reminding myself of this while I was busy with my triptych.

The way I implemented the prompt that I chose for this week, was to create splatters that looked messy and to be honest it didn’t become the ‘beautiful’ almost planned mess that I wanted to become. But somehow I really liked the texture the rough dry brush created. The project is starting to look more whole as it is slowly starting to develop into my own creative masterpiece with various textures. The result of this week was something totally unexpected for me, because I expected my mess to turn into a certain type of mess to miracle. Yet it turned out into a happy little accident that will become a creative miracle. I am really proud with the outcome of my triptych so far, never have I thought that I would be able to do something as challenging as this!

[clearinnewyork]

i i i

Why is the third time a charm?

This feels like a magical question that can’t quite be answered. I’m so deeply drawn to questions like this.

I’ve returned to this space once again. This makes the third time that I’ve come back to do this work. 

How do we explain why we’re called to certain places, people or things? Do we even need to explain it? The curiosity in me so badly wants to. Some other part of me just says, “Just shut up and show up.” (That could sound harsh, but I say it in the perfect tone that snaps me out of the dreamworld I so often get lost in.) I guess it’s the showing up and listening that an answer could be revealed to us if there is one at all. 

Here I am. Answering a call. 

I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell speak about writing. He emphasized that the way we think about things and the way we talk about things ought to be understood as two very different things. That in conversing with others, generally speaking (no pun intended), we can’t talk about a thing the same as we think about it. He goes on to explain that through thinking on a thing it illuminates how we can talk about it (and thus write about it), and how we talk about a thing will leave us with something new to think about. 

I’m sitting here in Pennsylvania, visiting my old family home of the last decade, a place I’ve been to countless times. Each time I return, it’s like reopening a line of conversation I can only have when I’m here. Simultaneously I’ve left NYC and have temporarily closed a door - a conversation put on pause. 

Each time I come here, I see this place anew. I notice ways in which I’ve changed, and also ways in which this place has changed and the new ways of relating that come as a result of these changes. Sometimes I see things that I may have overlooked in the past (Driving down a familiar street with my father asking, “Has that always been there??”). Every single thing comes renewed to the pot of conversation and thought, mixing in all their flavors and morsels to taste at the dining table of aliveness.

What is that thing about three?

The One is like the whole, the beginning, the all-encompassing. 

Two is like the partner to one - a relationship, literally the coupling and union. 

Through the union of two comes the potential for a third - the birth and life force that comes from the relationship between two ones. This possibility lends itself to the possibility of all things, like going from a 2-D image into a 3-D world, in Three there is literally a whole new dimension and space for depth. Three’s a party.

But, there’s also some magical rhythm of things enumerated in threes, like we witness in so many sayings - “Past, Present, Future.” “Thoughts, Words, Deeds.” Beginning, Middle and End.” There’s some sense of totality in these phrases, the way they just roll of the tongue. They’re like short form ways of explaining infinite ideas. 

“Me, myself and I” is another triptych of an expression that adds more dimension to this investigation, pointing to the idea of there being three dimensions to one being. Three different parts of a one greater thing. And we don’t break the one down for no reason. The three parts are like the different sides of a triangle, they’re obvious segments with marked transition points where our senses naturally spot the “different” elements within a whole. But, it is vital that we do not mistake the parts for the whole. 

“The point is that the Buddha, in some of his teachings which should be interpreted rather than taken literally, said that there were there different vehicles or ways. These three though are really one, from the viewpoint of the ultimate end to which they lead. in a similar sense, all the high teachings of the Victors were enunciated as a means to produce the ultimate renunciation - the Buddhas knowledge -  within the minds of disciples. And renunciation is what, at the very beginning, urges one to develop a disgust for the cycle of life and set his mind on reaching freedom. This is why the attitude of renunciation is taught here first, in the first line.”

Unlike Mr. Gladwell’s suggestion, I oftentimes find myself trying to speak through the web of my thoughts in conversation (and writings, if that hasn’t been made entirely obvious by this very entry). It’s as if I’m speaking, knowing that there’s a great likelihood that something unknown will emerge - something that was hidden around the corner of my being, waiting to leap out. What a wild thought to think about how much of myself I know nothing of - the person I’ve spent every single second of my life with.

My understanding is only growing ever more firm in the assertion that, the showing up and taking action is the only way we can learn anything - about ourselves, about this life. It’s in the act of doing, a prerequisite of which is effort, that the learning process unfolds. And so, maybe now we can begin to get back to our initial question, why three is charmed? 

Maybe it’s that each time we genuinely show up to a place, and ask questions (that we truly want answers to), we get more information, and literally, we become more informed - there is actually more to us than there was previously. 

“Failure is the pillar to success.”

To know success we must know failure even more intimately. Success is granted to us after we’ve not just failed, but after we’ve failed honorably. Within a failure can be the smaller victory of learning something which will allow us to fail less horribly the next time we try. And if we do try again, we can wear that newly earned knowledge like a plate of armor. It becomes a part of our being that can only be lost if we forget. And one genius of failure is that it’s very often embarrassing, which so conveniently helps in our remembering.  

Three feels charmed because it is well down the road of commitment and sincere attention. We go a place and make some effort, return to try again, and then come back yet another time. This cannot happen on accident. Either we like the pain, or we’re determined to see this something through.

Clear in New York is but a means of making simple what has the appearance of the being most chaotic. "Taming a mind in the most thought-provoking of places,” I wrote some entry ago. I created this and then left it, returned again, and like the seasons, I seem unable to stay away. My return here feels inevitable and deeply charged with meaning. 

I’m now prepared to admit that this entry is my prayer for a charm - a wish that this third attempt be blessed with whatever is needed to complete the work. 

With a wish that this journey be minded by a faith that I can always remember and that will mind me in my darkest of hours. May I remember, to the best of my ability, all of the lessons learned from my honorable attempts of the past and that I may weave their wisdom into the braid of the present. I pray that I may open my arms to the awkward and unexpected shapes of the unknown, that I can offer kindness and compassion to the void that lives within my heart and to all the parts of myself that holds these contradictions. I pray that I may be kind and generous with everybody during this time and that I may remember to take full responsibility of all my experiences, emotions and feelings. I pray that I may forge and maintain a beautiful and attainable image of the task before me, so that I can continue with a composed dignity and grace as I take each step, and as I’m taken by every breath. I pray that I may keep the very aliveness of this great mystery always tucked in close to my heart. I pray for the courage to confront any and every fear I have with a creative and kind eye. 

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

13 Brazilian Films Feature in Berlin’s Main Sections

Competition “All the Dead Ones” Caetano Godardo, Marco Dutra Following up on their Locarno-prized “Good Manners,” genre auteur Dutra and Gotardo deliver a lushly turned-out family drama that converts ghostliness into political metaphor, conflating 1899 Sao Paulo with its high-rise present, asking if the uneasy relationship between Brazil’s white elite and black majority has essentially changed. Sales: Indie Sales

Encounters “Los Conductos” Camilo Restrepo Pinky, on the run from a sect, takes to squatting, making T-shirts for a living, taking drugs and spinning images of the Apocalypse, damnation, revenge. A spectral, crazed allegory of Colombian post-civil conflict reinsertion that won Mar del Plata’s 2019 Works in Progress. Sales: Best Friend Forever

Panorama “A Common Crime” Francisco Márquez Set in class-riven Argentina and packing, reportedly, a great finale and commanding performance from lead Elisa Carricajo as an Argentine university teacher who fails to help her maid’s son, with literally haunting consequences. Sales: Cercamon

“Dry Wind” Daniel Nolasco A seemingly straight-arrow, stylish and candid LGBTQ erotic drama set in Brazil’s sticks discovers hidden depths and finally a good-humored humanism as a stolid, bottled-up loner develops a sexual obsession for a statuesque factory co-worker. “Brazilian queer cinema has a sense of urgency, which ‘Dry Wind’ captures,” says Panorama head Michael Stütz. Sales: The Open Reel

“Shine Your Eyes” Matías Mariani “A big surprise,” says Carlos Chatrian, artistic director of the Berlin Film Festival, a dreamlike psychological thriller, tracking Amidi searching for older brother Ikenna in Sao Paulo’s African community in a world of fluid identity, nostalgia for ancestral culture, labyrinthine architecture and moments of happiness. Sales: MPM Premium

Panorama Dokumente “Amazon Mirror” Federico Segtowick A documentary that peels away layers of corruption, media manipulation, ecological and human disaster behind the construction of the Amazon’s Tupurí hydroelectric plant under military dictatorship. “Urgent, very contemporary and beautifully shot in black-and-white with very high contrast,” says Stütz. Sales: ELO Co.

“Nardjes A.” Karim Aïnouz The latest from Aïnouz, following 2019 Cannes Critics’ Week winner “Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão,” this is a documentary shot on the fly capturing the empowerment, exhilaration and illusions of Algeria’s Revolution of Smiles. Sales: MPM Premium

Forum “Divinely Evil” Gustavo Vinagre From a lavish, salmon-colored sitting room adorned with Victorian furniture and leather-clad mannequins, Wilma Azevedo, 74, Brazil’s “queen of sadomasochistic literature” tells her vibrant, sprawling life story.

“Light in the Tropics” Paula Gaitán “Brazilian films exceed traditional notions of self-reflective auteurs, talking from personal viewpoints about big questions for society,” says Chatrian. One case in point, and “totally unexpected,” he adds, is “Light in the Tropics,” merging ethnographic documentary and fiction to rediscover Brazil’s indigenous communities in a 255-minute triptych feature.

“Window Boy Wants to Have a Submarine” Alex Piperno A singular title for a singular film from Uruguay’s Piperno, a low-fi sci-fi relationship drama with social and ecological overtones as a deckhand on a Patagonia cruise ship discovers a portal to a lonely young woman’s apartment in Montevideo. Sales: Square Eyes

Generation 14plus “Alice Junior” Gil Baroni Chatrian calls it a breath of fresh air. The world of a transgender teenage YouTuber is flipped upside down when she moves to a conservative rural town with her always-supportive single father. Sales: Moro Filmes

“My Name Is Baghdad” Caru Alves de Souza Seventeen-year-old female skater Baghdad lives in a São Paulo working-class neighborhood, skates with male friends until she happens upon a group of female skaters who change everything. Sales: Reel Suspects

“Sisters in the End of the World” Vinícius Lopes, Luciana Mazeto Their mother is dying, father’s never cared, but Ana and Ju find solidarity in one other, even as the world around them collapses.

Source.

[turnt-pages-blog]

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

"Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on."

Synopsis:  A collection of short stories written by Neil Gaiman about everything from an old  woman buying the Holy Grail at a thrift store to a re-imagining of the classic tale of Snow White.

Rating: 10/10 

Read If You Liked:  American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Wilderness Lessons by Margaret Atwood

My Opinion: 

*I’ll post this as a read more so not everyone has to suffer through my lengthy ramblings! 

So, this was my first time reading any of Neil Gaiman's short stories and, although I read The Ocean at the End of the Lane and loved it, I didn't know quite what to expect. I'm a bit nervous about taking  the leap into the wild universes of Gaiman's larger novels, because I just don't have the time to devote to them properly, so I figured his short stories was a good place to start. I have to say, I am so glad I decided to do this and will soon be trying to read anything of his I can get my hands on! When reviewing anthologies or collections of stories, I usually have something to say about almost every entry so I like to talk about each one individually. Meaning, this will be rather long but feel free to skip around!

Also, at the beginning of the novel, Gaiman wrote a little background information on each story which I read after I finished each one. You'll see later in the reviews how this affected my understanding of them.

"Chivalry" - Chivalry is a story about an old woman buying the Holy Grail at a thrift store. This story really started off the book strongly and made me immediately realize that I was going to thoroughly enjoy this collection. It was so sweet, a story you'd read if you wanted a warm, fuzzy feeling afterwards. The two completely different characters and their unlikely friendship was done in a way that was familiar but not cliched. The end actually left me in a bit of a melancholic mood, but not in a bad way. In the way that you know something has to end, but you're still going to miss it.

Throughout the book there were multiple 1-2 page stories and most of them didn't leave much (if any) of an impression on me. "Nicholas Was" was too short for me to feel any connection at all to it, "Virus" felt like it was written by a crotchety elderly person complaining about kids and technology these days, and "Daughter of Owls" and "Cold Colors" were so deep in verse and old language that they were very hard to understand.

"The Price" & "Troll Bridge" - Both of these stories were nice (and well-written, of course) but really had no effect on me either way. "Troll Bridge" had a little too much fantasy and folklore for my taste and made it difficult for me to fully enjoy it. I liked "The Price" a lot more but I always find animal stories a bit sappy and tend to avoid them. They were nice, and that's all I can really say about them!

Other 1-2 page stories like "Don't Ask Jack," "The Sweeper of Dreams," and "Babycakes" had enough detail and depth to get under my skin, but I wanted more! I love short stories, but there is such a thing in my mind as too short.

"The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" - I loved this story, it's one of my favorites in the book! I love old Hollywood and the era of the birth of cinema, which is what this story kind of centers around. The characters were also fantastic. Pious, one of the main characters, reminded me of William from the TV show This Is Us which made me love him even more! The whole atmosphere this story had had a timeless, magical quality to it and it will stick with me for quite a while.

"The White Road" & "Queen of Knives" - So, apparently these stories are two parts of a triptych but I don't personally see the connection between them. "Queen of Knives" was good, a mysterious and unsettling story revolving around disappearances and magic, but "The White Road" is clearly superior. I think it may be one of my favorite short stories that I've ever read. It was creepy, disturbing, had a Hans Christian Andersen-style fantasy element, and a twist I didn't see coming at all. I loved everything about it!

"Changes" - This story gave a unique sci-fi twist to the process of sex changes, the cultures they involve, and the lives of those affected by them. I couldn't personally connect to it but I really appreciate the unique take on the subject.

"Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" & "Looking for the Girl" - If you want the intoxicating feeling of chasing after something frustratingly elusive, then these two stories are for you! Unfortunately, I was not in the market for this feeling. I wish I was better acquainted with H.G. Well's work, because then I think I could've enjoyed the mist-filled world of "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" a lot more than I did since it largely focused on his stories and the monsters within them. "Looking for the Girl" has a completely different setting with a gritty 1970's feel to it that gets under your skin. This story made me feel weirdly dirty after reading it, though it wasn't because of the subject matter despite it being about a porn star.

"Only the End of the World Again" & "Bay Wolf" - I really liked both of these stories, but I totally didn't realize they were connected until I read Gaiman's background information on them. (Of course now it seems painfully obvious...) Even without that knowledge, I loved the concept of a werewolf detective. I actually preferred "Only the End of the World Again" because it had this dark noir atmosphere to it that really added nicely to the story. They were both a little hard to follow at times though.

"We Can Get Them for You Wholesale" - I thought the concept for this piece was so interesting, the idea that someone would purchase literally anything if it was on sale. Honestly, I know some people like this! It was very unsettling and the open-ending only added to this feeling. It makes you wonder how far you'd be willing to go if there were no repercussions to your actions.

"One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock" - This one had a lot of fantasy talk in it and, as I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me say, fantasy is a difficult genre for me to digest. I was far more interested in the dark backstory of the piece of the boys' life at boarding school. Though, I think the backstory of normalized abuse is made even more disturbing and effective by the way it's simply passed over and barely mentioned.

"Foreign Parts" - The fear of STD's is not as strong as it was 20 years ago, but I think this story could bring it back! It was grotesque in its details and, though not one of my favorites, I've found myself thinking about it long after I've finished the book. Strangely enough, it ended on a rather positive note which is not what I was expecting at all. While I appreciate the unexpected turn it took, I do wish it was a little scarier.

"Mouse" - This was another story that gave me feelings which I couldn't easily describe, nor whose sources I could easily identify. Everything about this story, though not exceptionally disturbing or dark, was pretty depressing. The botched abortion, the clearly cheating husband, and the grey, heavy atmosphere throughout all added to this. In the end, it gives you a rather empty feeling inside.

"When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11 1/4" - This is another example of a story in which the underlying action was much more powerful and interesting than the primary action. The end of the world seemed like a beautiful and terrifying place, but what really bothered me and stuck with me was the parents' abusive, toxic relationship. Gaiman did a great job of making it sound like it was really written by an 11 year old though.

"Tastings" - Honestly, I couldn't read this story in public because I was blushing too much! In his background information, Gaiman claimed that he didn't find it erotic, but I think I disagree. As embarrassingly blunt it was, I do love the idea of sex-related "superpowers" - like in the graphic novel, Sex Criminals - which I think is an incredibly underutilized concept.

"Murder Mysteries" - The universe created in this story was so beautiful and intricate, I couldn't believe it was only 33 pages long. I wanted to step inside it a completely immerse myself in that world. Being a Catholic, I loved seeing different perspectives and theories about stories I've been hearing my whole life.

"Snow, Glass, Apples" - This was one of the best fairy tale retellings I've read recently. Re-imagining the villain as being simply misunderstood isn't exactly groundbreaking, but the detail Gaiman put into it and the character he made Snow White into is what really sets the story apart. It made me wonder how this couldn't be the original tale all along because it all fits together so perfectly.

Clearly, I really loved this book and even the stories that weren't my favorites were fantastically written. I knew Gaiman was a popular and experienced author, but I never truly realized how good he actually was until I read this book. I highly recommend it, no matter if you're just now getting into his work or if you've been a fan of his for years.

[patrickjones-blog]

Peter Guttman is an award-winning photographer and author who has traveled on assignment through over 230 countries and seven continents (source: wikipedia). What is unusual about his work is that, in a largely digital era, he still uses film to capture stunning shots of cultural and geographical landscapes. Peter is also a long-time ScanCafe customer. Many of the images he shared for this interview, as well as others in his portfolio, were converted to digital by Scancafe’s photo scanning team.

SC: Tell us a little bit about your approach and focus as a photographer.

PG: My photographic passion stems from my interest in trying to depict the pre-digital world of isolated people and indigenous workers. The goal is to utilize the cultural iconography of their locale to distil the mystique of their distant locations. I’ve funneled my artistic impulses into exploration of cultural identity, and carefully select anthropologically telling backdrops to provide cinematic staging. I’ve attempted to develop a narrative that explores our global universality, despite the many diverse threads of our human existence.

I’m particularly passionate about exploring ways of visually depicting my travel discoveries and experiences from unexpected angles.

SC: What are some of your favorites from your portfolio and why?

PG: I’m most drawn to images that were created only after particularly intrepid adventures or demanding challenges. Shooting landscapes, I’ve canyoneered on fifty mile journeys through boot-sucking quicksand, then slithered through a geological casserole of sandstone slot canyons, and trekked across volcanic methane gas death zones wafting across Kilauea’s smoldering lava fields.  Photographing wildlife has sometimes involved hiking through Antarctic blizzards in minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit temperatures to explore the southernmost animals on earth, the emperor penguins; other times it has meant camping alone for a week on a remote Aleutian island with five thousand grunting and snorting walruses, keeping me awake in my tent at night. While documenting indigenous groups, I’ve spent time in Bedouin encampments deep in the Sahara with the sand-blasted Touareg people, and rode horseback in Mongolia to locate the remote Tsataan reindeer herders. One of my all time favorite images is a surreal pastel-colored landscape. It has a snowman I created in front of a rural North Dakota farm scene with a total solar eclipse hovering above. That image landed me my first meeting at National Geographic.

SC: Do you still shoot with film at times? Any thoughts on digital vs film as a professional photographer?

PG: I shoot film at all times. Avoiding digital, I have stubbornly insisted on rendering these vignettes on film. As a result of my time spent painting and drawing, I’m particularly sensitive about the concept of a canvas. In spite of infinite advances in digital resolution, I remain absolutely convinced that when painting with light onto a canvas of film, there is an ineffable quality of atmosphere, saturated richness and sculptural depth engraved across the blended grains that can never quite be captured by the mathematically discrete pixels displayed upon the cold light of a computer screen.

SC: Do you have any broad insights on people and places that you can share – based on your travels and taking pictures around the world?

PG: Across the astonishing array of earth’s homo sapien population, I’ve found that despite the incredibly stark diversity of environmental and experiential diversity, there is at its essence a common humanity that bridges all these distinctions. Nurturing a personal curiosity, and tossing aside fear and apprehensions, I’ve managed to project an openness to new experiences and willingness to share in whatever unfolding opportunities present themselves.

Photography has provided me a passport to enter into the inner recesses of so many intriguing societies and cultural experiences.

SC: What’s your preferred way of displaying/sharing your work?

PG: I love the brilliance of images displayed on an iPad screen, and I created the iPad’s very first number one bestselling travel app, Beautiful Planet HD (named one of “eight outstanding apps” by NBC News and one of “five sweet apps” by Wired.com), which has been adopted by school systems and classrooms all around the world to inspire a new generation about the kaleidoscopic wonders of earth’s cultural tapestry. I’ve also enjoyed seeing my work printed for display in gallery and museum exhibitions. I’ve had my work displayed at the American Film Festival in Deauville, France, the lobby of the United Nations, Sotheby’s, and the Binghamton University Art Museum, among other places. Finally, I’ve found a great deal of satisfaction sharing my work on Instagram, where I’ve attempted to create a seamless, triptych-inspired, gradually morphing exploration of visual themes to showcase our planet’s amazing diversity. I hope you’ll follow me on my visual journey @peterguttman.

This interview is part of an effort to highlight unusual photography and memory preservation projects around the globe.

The post How This Travel Photographer Captures “Our Planet’s Amazing Diversity” appeared first on ScanCafe.

via ScanCafe

[movietvtechgeeks]

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

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

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

A Futile and Stupid Gesture

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

Monsters and Men

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

American Animals

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

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