#trey ratcliff

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Trey Ratcliff

[travelbinge]

By Trey Ratcliff

Venice, Veneto, Italy 

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Gondolas from Above by Trey Ratcliff Via Flickr: Venetian Gondolas at rest... I heard during lockdown that the Venice canals were so clean that you could see fish, octopi, even dolphins. I don't know if that dolphin thing is true, but I want to believe it.

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Chinatown, London before New Year by Trey Ratcliff via Flickr : Chinatown in London around midnight. It was the evening before the Chinese New Year and everyone was getting pretty excited. The next night was to be absolute chaos, but this night things still had a nice electricity in the air. I also made a little video here of what things looked and felt like… sometimes I record little videos here and there to remind myself. I don’t usually publish them because the editing takes so long! So I just kind of save them for myself. It helps when I edit the photo later to remind me of how things felt at the time.

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4000 places by Trey Ratcliff Via Flickr: There are approximately 4,000 places to stop on the drive from Te Anau to Milford, and this is one of them. It’s kind of a must-stop! The scene is crazy-powerful, and it changes throughout the day. I’ve noticed sometimes in the morning it is foggy and hard to see, but it’s still interesting even then. When planning car-trips in New Zealand, it’s best just to add a few extra hours into the experience!

[whateverbringsyouthroughthenight]

In Every Lifetime | Sculpture by Michael Benisty | 📷 Trey Ratcliff | Burning Man 2018

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Have you ever looked up at the night sky to find a view like this? Aurora, also known as the Northern or Southern Lights, are most often seen in high-latitude regions around the Arctic and Antarctic. These spectacular displays are caused by collisions between charged particles from solar wind and oxygen and nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere. As the oxygen and nitrogen molecules revert to their normal state, they release photons, or small bursts of energy in the form of light—which is what we see on the ground below. The color of these hypnotizing displays is determined by what’s colliding: oxygen produces yellows and greens, while nitrogen is responsible for reds, violets, and blues. Photo 1: Beverly & Pack, CC BY 2.0, flickr (Northern Lights) Photo 2: Ben, CC BY-ND 2.0, flickr (Southern Lights) Photo 3: Jukka Hernetkoski, CC BY-NC 2.0, flickr (Northern Lights) Photo 4: Trey Ratcliff, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr (Southern Lights) #world #amazingplanet #space #northernlights #southernlights https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm2S-murGoy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Trey Ratcliff: Heart of Satan

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Clayton

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Tarzan is a film that has aged pretty well in the eyes of the internet. The action, the animation, the epic Phil Collins soundtrack that goes unnecessarily hard—Nearly every aspect of this film is looked on with a lot of fondness these days, a far cry from that time Trey Parker and Matt Stone had a hissy fit that they lost an Oscar to Phil Collins and made an entire episode of South Park insulting him over it. But there is one aspect of this film that you don’t really see come up very often in discussions of the film: The villain, Clayton.

But come on, he’s a Disney Renaissance villain! Surely he can’t actually be so boring and forgettable that we just don’t bother to talk about him, right? Well, let’s take a look at this mighty hunter and see why he doesn’t seem to be remembered quite as much as that rocking soundtrack.

Motivation/Goals: Clayton’s biggest issue is he has easily the lamest and most uninteresting motivation for a Disney villain: Greed. Now, greed in and of itself is not a bad motivator for a villain; some of the greatest villains of all time are motivated by greed, such as Hans Gruber. But it seems like nearly every time Disney has attempted to do a villain motivated by greed, it just hasn’t worked out well, as Ratcliffe can attest to. They did eventually manage a few solid greed-motivated antagonists in the post-Renaissance era like Rourke and Silver, but that was immediately after Clayton’s time, so he doesn’t really avoid the fate of being a rather predictable and dull foe.

It’s even worse because there is a much more personal foe, the leopard Sabor. Sabor is the killer of Tarzan’s human parents as well as his adoptive mother’s gorilla child, so there’s a much more meaningful and personal connection there, not to mention the fact Sabor is just plain scary. But nah, she gets axed off halfway through and we’re stuck with a two-dimensional big game hunter.

Performance: When he’s not lending his mighty voice to the famous Tarzan yell, BRIAN BLESSED spends his time in the movie playing the final boss of Tarzan’s story and the killer of his gorilla father. The vocal performance here is one of the biggest redemptive elements of Clayton; not once has BRIAN BLESSED ever half-assed a role, no matter how corny or flat it is (look at his performance in the insane animated film Freddie as F.R.0.7. for instance, where he plays the most generic supervillain ever with great gusto). He manages to breathe a lot of life and a little bit of personality into this not-so-great white hunter, even if he’s still a generic character at the end of the day.

Final Fate: This is perhaps the most notable thing about Clayton aside from his VA. During the final confrontation, Clayton becomes entangled in vines. He begins hacking and slashing at them, until finally he cuts through enough and he goes tumbling to the ground, a vine wrapping around his neck. You can guess what happens next.

This one stands out because it is honestly shockingly graphic. Yes, Tarzan is a bit more violent than your typical Disney fare, but for a split second you get to see the broken-necked corpse of this dude swinging in silhouette! It’s up there as one of the most brutal and disturbing Disney deaths ever seen. 

On top of that, it’s a rather brutal take on the greatest foe of every Disney villain: Gravity. Disney, much like Enrico Pucci, is absolutely obsessed with gravity judging by how often it takes out the big bads of their films. From the very start with the Evil Queen in Snow White to several Renaissance villains like Frollo and Gaston, that thing that dropped an apple on Newton’s head seems to have it out for Disney villains. The thing is, we usually don’t see the splat, we don’t see the actual moment of death. Some of them you can even pretend they survived with some injuries if you’re feeling overly nice (Gaston was actually supposed to survive his fall originally). Here though? Clayton is completely and unambiguously fucking dead, his neck snapped by his own wrathful arrogance being combined with gravity. 

Final Thoughts & Score: Clayton is almost the very definition of “mid.” He’s not great, he’s not awful, he’s just fine and serviceable. That being said, there are a few elements that help him stand out at least a little.

Yes, Clayton has very boring and basic motivations, and that don’t really put the most exciting spin on it. He’s a poacher and a hunter, but he doesn’t have the sheer charisma and personality of fellow villainous hunter Gaston. That being said, BRIAN BLESSED definitely injects his usual grandiose hamminess into the role, and his death scene is just so good… Maybe too good, honestly. His death scene is so great that it really does overshadow everything else about him. Think about it: When was the last time you saw anyone talk about Clayton outside of maybe his Kingdom Hearts boss battle? It’s really the most memorable thing that happens to him. He doesn’t get a villain song, he doesn’t really get any cool quotes, he just has a great vocal performance, an awesome death scene, and gets to ride a giant monster chameleon into battle in a Disney/Final Fantasy crossover video game. That’s the extent of his impact.

And like I mentioned above, it really doesn’t help that he steals the spotlight away from a far more intimidating villain who actually has an honest-to-god personal connection to our protagonist. Sure, Sabor isn’t the deepest character on Earth and she’s a 6.5/10 at best, but I’d argue she’s at least as complex as Clayton is, if not more so. There’s even something of a mystique to her that our maniacal hunter simply lacks, and it really is a waste she was killed at the midpoint just so we could have Clayton take on the big bad role.

Still, for what he is, he’s not bad. He’s a remarkably unsubtle villain but he does serve his role in the plot well, and he’s not really the bottom of the barrel. I’d say he scores a very low 6/10. I almost gave him a 5.5, but I think that death and the fact he’s voiced by a man who was willing to reprise the role in a video game where Donald and Goofy team up with an anime boy to fight freakish heart-stealing monsters gives him a little bit of a boost. He’s one of the least interesting villains of the Disney Renaissance, sure, but that still makes him better than a lot of villains out there. 

[simstrope]

Andes Trey Ratcliff

[thingsdavidlikes]

New Presets out NOW! by Trey Ratcliff

[rencontres-et-loisirs]

Saint-Malo : 10 activités incontournables à découvrir

Plongez-vous dans l'atmosphère relaxante des Thermes Marins, offrant des soins revitalisants dans un cadre historique. En effet, Saint-Malo est le lieu idéal pour se relaxer et se détendre.

Crédit image : Trey Ratcliff via Flickr / Attribution – Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 2.0 Générique (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

[capturingtime]

Cave Exploration by Trey Ratcliff via Flickr Here's a very mysterious cave that took me about five hours hiking around the Valley of Fire to find on the way to Burning Man. Like most things in life, I underestimated how difficult it would be... the blessing and a curse of being an eternal optimist! Man, it must have been like 110 degrees out there... I was pouring with sweat... so by the time I actually got to Burning Man I was completely exhausted. But I found the cave!

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An Alternate View by Trey Ratcliff Via Flickr: A different view of Eilean Donan castle from the one I shared a few weeks ago. I liked that alternate view, looking back down the glen towards the mountains, rather than out towards the sea as seen here but this one does have a typically Scottish weather feel to it... which was good because the first chunk of my trip was abnormally sunny with clear blue skies a lot of the time. Nice to get some contrasts.

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Andes Trey Ratcliff

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Great Wall / Trey Ratcliff

Join us on an enchanting journey along the Great Wall, inspired by the incredible lens of Trey Ratcliff.