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bookandcover · 3 years ago

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What I miss most: “the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue.” ~June 8, 2021

I’m so glad to have finally read this book after it was repeatedly recommended to me by several different friends. Hanif Abdurraqib has an absolute gift for crafting essays that braid his personal experiences with the (sometimes seemingly cosmic, and therefore daunting to explain or conceptualize) forces of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and nationalism in America. He also jumps seamlessly in scale and in scope, summarizing the heart of something hugely complex—a masterpiece album, a regional sound, a decades-long relationship—without reducing the irreducibly complex, without sacrificing specificity, without sounding trite. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like this, although I haven’t read very much Creative Non-Fiction. Regardless, Hanif moves skillfully, masterfully. I love the collection’s confidence in narration, the love of language, the direct confrontation with that which makes us all deeply flawed (deeply human).

Each of these essays could stand alone. It’s a joy to read even one and Abdurraqib’s style shines through in just a couple pages. He crafts his stories with such dexterity. It’s clear that he comes from a background in poetry, as he celebrates language, builds vivid images, and thinks thematically. (I love the moments that are truly experimental—erasures of his own work, pieces without punctuation that flow on and on in one interlinked sequence). At the same time, he relies heavily on facts and content. Part of his conviction is born of research and depth of understanding. He knows his subject; yet, within this knowledge, he expresses personal preferences and sentimental love. I learned a ton from this book about music, about the history of particular musicians, about the relationship between racial inequality and self-expression within the field of music. Together, these essays form of complex tapestry of recent history in America seen through the lens of music. I absolutely loved the experience of coming to understand the interweaving of so many of our lives’ central questions and tensions through the history of music.

Art is inherently political, as many contemporary artists would agree (a viewpoint that counters the modernists before them who argued for the apolitical nature of art—art for art’s sake). Abdurraqib makes a very compelling argument for the deep integration of art with politics, social systems, economics, and trends. These things, however, are also deeply tied to the powerful forces of our choices, our identities, our love, and our compassion. It does not cheapen art of have it be so informed by, so shaped by political and social forces. In Abdurraqib’s worldview, art is the medium by which we reflect ourselves back to ourselves. And it’s also the medium by which we find freedom, by which we challenge ourselves to grow beyond the ways we understand ourselves to be. Race is the most central political and social theme that weaves throughout these essays, starting with the title of the book, which is introduced in the essay on Bruce Springsteen. “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” are the words that hang above Michael Brown’s memorial in Ferguson, Missouri. It might be hard to imagine an essay that weaves a Springsteen concert with a trip to Michael Brown’s resting place, a task that would certainly be daunting to any other writer, yet Abdurraqib navigates this with dexterity that seems natural, fundamental to how he thinks about the world.

Within the framework of race in America, some of the themes from these essays that I most appreciated and internalized included: Black joy (when it’s expressed and what it means), the markings of wealth (in the context of a journey out of poverty), and the policing of authenticity (or other forms of self-expression/emotion). Black joy is mentioned repeatedly in these essays, as something to be commented on for its rareness, while also positing the idea that music is a space that more boldly permits Black joy. Awareness of joy seems flow underneath these essays; it’s something not taken for granted, something treasured. I found this awareness of joy in the essay on Nina Simone’s Blackness and in the contrast between how she is portrayal by Hollywood and how she lives on in Abdurraqib’s childhood memories. I found this awareness of joy in the essay “Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough to Find Afropunk,” which focused on the exclusion of Black bodies from punk rock spaces (and the disregard for the handful of Black bodies that dared to enter anyway), while emphasizing the inherent survival in the African American experience that resonants deeply with punk rock’s values. A longing for a space that is joyful for Black people was addressed beautifully in the essay on Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, in which Abdurraqib wishes for a home in the darkness of the photo of the two of them, where he sees “a small & black eternity.”

One of my favorite essays in the collection was the piece “Burning That Which Will Not Save You: Wipe Me Down and the Ballad of Baton Rouge,” which focuses on the rise of three Baton Rouge rappers—Foxx, Lil Boosie, and Webbie—in the years that followed Hurricane Katrina, which changed the outlook of Baton Rouge and its relationship to loud neighbor New Orleans. The essay breaks down the fundamental pieces of the rapper persona (circa mid-to-late 2000s): shoulders, chest, pants, shoes. For each of these elements, the essential nature of each is discussed, particularly as they relate to signaling both wealth and self-confidence: the dream realized. I loved this essay because it brilliantly articulated something I’ve always sensed (understood in myself in certain ways), but been unable to well-articulate, which is the power of “markings of wealth” in the life of someone who has survived through poverty, or an understanding of the proximity of poverty. For this person, the possession of wealth (things that show wealth, that communicate its presence to others, whether or not there is a real depth of wealth) feels and is different. Someone wears their wealth differently if they are conscious of it. This is a different look than that of the third-generation millionaire’s son for whom a real depth of security is so deeply ingrained as to limit the frame of imagination to always include it. I loved how this essay explained that wealth is not an universally proud/cocky look, but instead braggadocios, something that has a lot of context, a lot of nuance, a lot to do with environment and habit and understanding of temporary/permanent.

Sports, another space in which the economic and political forces of America come head-to-head with the personal and lived experiences of diverse Americans, also center several of these essays. Abdurraqib has a similar appreciation of sports—spaces of fandom, spaces of mass-appeal, spaces where the struggles and triumphs of a few become the struggles and triumphs of many—as he has of music. The social discussion around sports also holds a magnifying class to systemic racism, a process which Abdurraqib unpacks and examines. Serena Williams is discussed as an example of the policing of Black self-expression (policing how she expresses anger, how she expresses confidence, i.e. “too loudly” for the white Western world), topics also addressed in depth in “On Kindness.” “Black Life On Film” tackles the way violence is romanticized and compartmentalized as part of the Black experience, allowing an observation of violence for white viewers that is unhinged from a need to alleviate it, to address it. These same tensions and problems bubble forth in the dialogue around sports, as the eyes of the nation are turned to popular topics, which are filtered through (nearly exclusively, exhaustively) the same biased lenses.

As Abdurraqib develops these complex themes, he relies on a few central tools that are essential to his literary project. To point out these common tools is not to say that Abdurraqib only has a couple tricks up his sleeve. These aren’t “tricks” at all. Instead, these seem important to how he thinks about the world, things that are inseparable from his mode of observation.

His most central tool is the “parallel events” essay structure. With this approach, Abdurraqib details what happened for him personally as events occurred elsewhere that rocked the framework and landscape of America. A collapse of time collapses distance. Abdurraqib seems to have experienced many of these such moments of collapse, as he vividly recalls where he was and what he was doing as particular significant events unfolded. The eeriness of these experiences are not lost on a reader; we’ve all been there. To say that Abdurraqib has experienced many of these is to, perhaps, point out how much current events impact and rock him (as they always do those who belong to the groups that are, time and time again, targeted and destroyed in America). But it’s also, perhaps, to point out the precision of Abdurraqib’s memory. He holds onto details like a vice, capturing for us in painful and poignant specificity the situation in which he personally broke against the tragedy of the news (as the news breaks to us, we break against it, like waves). One of the delicate powers of Abdurraqib’s use of this essay structure is the way that his personal narrative is not cheapened, nor lessened when set up against the national event, the event we all remember. Instead, one is given the right urgency and the other given the right intimacy.

This technique for framing an essay (an experience, a life) begins in the essay “A Night in Bruce Springsteen’s America” in which a white older man at a Springsteen concert tells Abdurraqib he was at another Springsteen show on the evening Lennon was murdered. While this man wishes that “no one gets killed out there during the show this time,” there’s no world in which, for Abdurraqib, someone is not killed out there during this show. The cycle of loss that is stitched into Abdurraqib’s environment, his racial identity, is too great for him to ever hold that same hope. I think that this technique of parallel events (one personal and intimate, one tectonic and tragic) is best maximized in the short piece “August 9, 2014,” a poetic erasure of Abdurraqib’s own writing. In the main text, Abdurraqib recounts something that seems, on the surface, like an every day experience: another passenger complaining on the flight he’s boarding, a mother asking to switch seats so her son can look out the window. With the bulk of the text crossed out, the secondary narrative that emerges from the remaining words is of another mother asking for her son. The date in the title clarifies that this secondary mother-son narrative centers on the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The longing, the seeking, the asking of both mothers exists in a poignant overly. Perhaps what the mother on the plane asks for is trivial, all things considered, but Abdurraqib never dismisses her impulse to shelter her son, from fear, but, at the same time, to let him see the world beyond the plane’s window. The personal and small that occurs in Abdurraqib’s unique experience takes on the sacredness, the elevation of the cosmic, the tectonic plate shifts of death/life, and also the heralding in of a new/old era in America with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

My favorite, though, of all these essays was “Fall Out Boy Forever,” one of the most personal in the collection. Abdurraqib places the loss of his closest friend to suicide into the context of the rise, fall, and rebirth (as if from the ashes) of the band they both loved. Abdurraqib’s long-term fan following of Fall Out Boy works like pearls on a string, moments in time that span years, yet unite into a collective personal narrative. This narrative rang so, so true to me, as someone for whom the bulk of the past six years has been shaped by my relationship to a specific band. Their narrative contains my narrative; my narrative contains their narrative. Their concerts, their albums, their successes, their growth—these things exist like glowing points on the thread of my experience. I recall my life within this thread, anchored by it. I know the previous time I was able to see my grandparents, down to the exact date three years ago, because it followed on the heels of a particular BTS album that played in my ears over and over that week. I know when and where I traveled within the timeline of their music. I know when my friendships blossomed, pinned to the backdrop that is their musical evolution. I know the ways they challenged and changed me, changed my writing, grew my sense of myself. I know how inseparable I am from BTS, and I saw this so poignantly reflected in Abdurraqib’s journey with Fall Out Boy.

Like any true fan (the fan who is not self-interested, the fan who is there for the ups and downs, the fan who is there for the real story), Abdurraqib observes the members of Fall Out Boy with such astuteness (this made me go and listen to more Fall Out Boy songs than I ever had before). I loved the way he captures the dynamic between the band members. He’s great at this in general (his insights into the intra-band relationships in Fleetwood Mac and the production of the album Rumors was also so engaging), but there’s a different intimacy, a different kind of care with Fall Out Boy. Abdurraqib’s ability to so clearly reveal his own close relationship with Tyler in the context of Fall Out Boy’s inner life is striking and heart-breaking—from Patrick’s frantic internalization of his music (performed for himself, yet in front of a crowd) without Pete’s complimentary/conflicting (necessary) presence when Abdurraqib seems him perform solo in Austin, to Tyler’s DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU patch that Abdurraqib casts into the pit at a concert after wearing it to shows for years. To me, Tyler leapt from these pages, alive in the space where Fall Out Boy and their audience come together, transcending his own life’s timeframe in the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue. This essay made me feel less alone in my experience of life perceived through the lens of music. This essay was Abdurraqib’s project at its most intimate, where the perception that happens through the lens of music is, most fundamentally, that of one’s self.

#they can't kill us until they kill us #hanif abdurraqib #music criticism #important reading #race in the context of music #art is inherently political #writing about race #writing about music #rap #hip hop #pop music #creative nonfiction #popular culture #black lives matter #fall out boy forever

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mittensmorgul · 6 years ago

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I thought there were three Large Meta Posts I wanted to make about 14.17, but the more I try to focus on any one of them, to sort out exactly what I want to say on each topic, the more I’m realizing that they’re not three separate topics, and this is giving me fits...

1) Jack, and what everyone has known and/or suspected and/or been concerned about regarding his soullessness and his newly regained powers

2) blame vs guilt vs responsibility for all of TFW

3) the parallels and observations of the two “outsider” characters of the week-- Anael’s observations and assumptions about Cas and her certainty that Jack’s soul is completely gone, and Nick’s assumptions about Dean and how he felt about his possession by Michael (because obviously one is a BLATANTLY wrong assumption, and the other is merely... kinda shady...)

I’m also curious as to how Nick even KNEW how to contact Lucifer in the Empty. Last we saw, his desperate prayer awakened Lucifer, but where did Nick learn what he needed to do regarding the angel grace and Donatello, the ritual he needed to perform to even make that phone call to Lucifer for instructions on how to free him? Did he get that from those demons? I mean, if the demons had that info all along and were as desperate to get Lucifer back as Nick was, why didn’t one of them collect that grace and do what Nick did in the first place? Did it only work for him because of that “open phone line” to their former vessel that we learned about way back in 5.03? Is that something that Nick just had lying around in his memory bank from when he was Lucifer’s vessel? Or was his awareness of this stuff tangentially related to how Crowley tinkered with his vessel in order to make him Lucifer’s permanent vessel back during s12?

And I’ve read some assumptions about what Anael’s connection to this all might be, because how COULD she know for sure that Jack’s soul really was all gone? Which brings me to the first part of point 3 above... Yes, it could be that Nick and/or one of his demon buddies contacted her and made a deal for the little bit of grace they used in that spell, but we also know there’s shady characters like Sergei from 14.07 who deal in that sort of thing. A LOT of angels fell back in the day, and we know when they do their grace sort of... crash lands on Earth (like Anna’s magical grace tree from 4.10). For someone who knows where to look, there’s probably all sorts of shady things stashed around the world, you know? So I’m not ready to say that Anael is in league with Lucifer in this yet. I think she’s smarter than wanting to bring him back, for thinking that he’d be any different than he’d been the last time she’d dealt with him. She is, after all, a good businesswoman.

But that brings me to her assumptions about Jack, and about Castiel, and about God himself. She’s lost faith in Heaven’s mission, in God himself, and has decided that without that connection to God, everyone is all alone. So she does what she can to change things, to help people. Yeah, she does it for money, but she also does it because it helps people. It’s how she connects to the world, her radical choice to do what she can to make life a little better for at least some of humanity. That’s the mission she’d believed in.

And yet, because of that work, she’s spent a LOT of time really looking at humanity, really looking at what people do and the reasons they do them. Not only is she a good businesswoman, she’s also good at reading people, seeing through their BS. I mean, like the other famous faith healer in the series-- Roy LeGrange-- who described how he chooses people to heal: he looks into their heart, which in another manner of speaking, is just a cold read of someone the way Melanie in 7.07 did:

MELANIE: I'm off the clock. Also not psychic. What? It's an honest living. DEAN: Interesting definition of "honest." MELANIE: Well, I honestly read people. It's just less whoo-whoo, more body language. Like you two – long-time partners, but, um... a lot of tension. [Gestures to SAM.] You're pissed. [Gestures to DEAN.] And you're stressed. It's not brain surgery.

Well, Anael might think she’s got Cas figured out, but considering her entire foundation for that assumption is skewed because of her own personal assumptions about God and Cas’s reasons for leaving Heaven, and his drastically different lens for the human experience than Anael has made it impossible for her to clearly see and understand his entire situation makes me doubt her proclamations about Jack.

I mean, to go off down a minor tangent here, this is where Michael’s statements about God having abandoned the universe as a “failure” are good to remember. I mean, we KNOW the circumstances under which Chuck left this universe in Dean’s hands in 11.23, you know? We KNOW why Chuck doesn’t “meddle” in the universe, and leaves it to the inhabitants to sort out. I have already written this essay back when 14.10 aired, but to sum it up as briefly as I can... it’s the difference between the inflexible mindset Michael adopted regarding what HE believed would be his “reward” for completing Chuck’s prophecy and bringing about the Apocalypse. To his eternal disappointment, that reward never came. Because Michael failed to learn the lesson God had actually set for him: watch over the world, watch over humanity, and understand.

Since Cas is literally the ONLY angel Chuck has ever brought back (multiple times even!) and he’s the ONLY angel who’s actually learned something about humanity and free will, not just through observation but gradually adopting it as his own, it tends to follow that Cas is the ONLY angel who actually got this point. Chuck set the challenge, and Michael was too dumb to do anything other than activating his Universe Failure Self-Destruct Button. Faith vs Free Will... he lost that bet.

Dean, and all of TFW, WON. They got the reward. Unfortunately Lucifer was still left dangling out there to stir up new troubles, because HE, like Michael, failed to get the lesson. Instead of understanding that this wide open universe full of potential had been the reward, Michael and Lucifer both expected Chuck to stick around to continue parenting them. And that was never the deal.

Anael is kind of in the same position, except she understands that she has choices in what she does next. She chooses to do good with what power she has (yeah, even if she charges people for her services-- $300 is still a STEAL for a complete cure for what ails you, you know?). But unlike Cas, she does what she does for HERSELF. And as Cas pointed out, her “happiness” sounds very lonely. Anael can’t even disagree, but assumes without without God, everyone is lonely. As if God was the only connection of any import in the universe. As if God’s intent hadn’t been for all of us to love one another as we have loved him. I mean... That’s kinda... the whole point of existence.

And Cas HAS that (or, well, when things aren’t all going to heck in a handbasket, he has that) with his chosen family. Obviously Cas is still on his journey to understand his true place within that family, and we know the entire Winchester Family Bus is about to hit a landmine. But Anael employed a lot of her strategic cold reading skills on Cas.

She DIDN’T, she COULDN’T know for sure that Jack’s soul is completely gone, but what else could power Cas’s desperation to contact God-- aka the only being that can restore a soul-- if he wasn’t at least afraid of that being true. I mean, I don’t think Anael’s statements she presented as facts were actually based on cold, hard fact. Because of how she framed her knowledge of Joshua’s “long distance call” to Chuck after the fall. She just wanted those earrings... When Cas collected the earrings from the table in the Waffelette, she made a strategic play to earn herself those earrings:

[Cas reaches over to collect the earrings and Anael reconsiders] ANAEL: But… there was a rumor. A whisper, after the Fall. Joshua placed a long-distance call, and God picked up. CASTIEL: Okay. How? ANAEL: I don't know. I wasn't there. But I know someone who was, and I can take you to them.

And then after searching Methuselah’s shop, we learn the actual truth-- not just the rumor that Anael had believed before:

CASTIEL (picking up an amulet similar to the one Dean used to wear): No. The one I know, it-- it glows in the presence of-- of God. This is what we're looking for. METHUSELAH: Good eye. Joshua forged it after he Fell. ANAEL: That thing talks to God? METHUSELAH: Only one way to find out. CASTIEL (clutching the amulet): God… I don't know where you are. I don't know if you can hear me. But please. Sam, Dean-- we need you. Please. METHUSELAH: Yeah, it never worked for Joshua, either.

IT NEVER WORKED FOR JOSHUA, EITHER. I mean... Anael had presented it as if it had, you know? So she’s perfectly comfortable working on assumptions-- just like the assumption that God doesn’t care about them or else he’d “meddle.”

To address the other half of point 3 in my original list at the top of this essay, there’s Nick’s assumptions about Dean. I think Nick actually believed that Dean had the same sort of deluded “connection” with Michael that Nick thought he had with Lucifer. That Dean was as power-hungry to play host to an archangel as he had been, and that his life had lost all other meaning without that self-important connection.

NICK: I get you, Dean. You and me, we're almost like brothers, you know. Michael, you, Lucifer, me-- we both know what it's like to be hog-tied to a nuclear warhead, man. DEAN: Mm. [Dean punches Nick again] Cut the crap. Where is he? NICK: You're never the same after something like that, are ya? Being one with one of them. It changes you. Makes you more than human. Come on, Dean, admit it. With Michael, you were a prince. Now you're just a broken Hunter.

Because we know Nick rejected everything about his old life, like a drug addict looking for that high again. He liked the feeling of power that we know Dean hated. Just like Jimmy Novak hated being “chained to a comet,” and yet chose it to save his daughter from that fate. Nick rejected his family for the chance to experience it again. It made him feel special, more important than everyone else, to have been “chosen.” And just... ewwww.

Nick was merely the Worst Version of Jeffrey in 7.15, who became the murderer in hopes of reuniting with “his demon.” And in the end, his demon rejected him, because Jeffrey had only been one of a string of victims that demon had used to create mayhem and twist souls toward Hell. I mean, Jeffrey had been disposable to the demon, just like Lucifer didn’t really care about Nick. Like he didn’t really care about Azazel or Lilith or any of his other loyal demons. He just wanted back in this world.

But Nick couldn’t see that Dean in no way felt the same about Michael. Dean doesn’t lust for power at any cost. He only wanted to be free of that.

Nick also made a similar wrong assumption about Sam, in their fight when he threw this line at Sam as if it was a taunt:

NICK: Lucifer's perfect vessel. Not so perfect now, are ya?

That line didn’t have anything to do with Sam, who has rejected Lucifer over and over again since his original possession and time in the cage. I mean 11.10 had Sam reject him again. To his face. Even if it meant the Darkness would swallow the universe. Sam would NOT play vessel to Lucifer again. So what Nick considered a taunt, to Sam it probably came off more like a compliment. Why yes, thank you, I’ve grown a lot since I believed the only role I could play was as Angel Condom to save the world. And that.. was NEVER a fate Sam had wanted. He’s been TRAUMATIZED because of his experiences, unlike Nick who seems to revel in his.

So assumptions are not working out well for characters in this episode... :P

But that also leads us into the other two items on my original list up there. All season long, everyone’s been concerned about Jack-- first as a function of his gracelessness and how he sickened and died because of that, and now as a function of his soullessness and how his stolen grace has been malfunctioning because of that. We know from the preview for 14.18 that Cas is going to finally come clean about what he saw in 14.15, when Jack killed Felix the snake...

I think Dean’s reaction in the promo isn’t specifically directed at Cas. I mean, yeah, he says the thing to Cas, and he’s ANGRY about it, but I think this is more of a tipping point combined with a convenient target than it is about him truly believing that the entirety of the blame actually falls on Cas. I mean, Dean has been single-handedly blaming himself for everything having to do with Michael all season long.

If only he’d locked himself in the Ma’lak box and tossed himself in the ocean before Michael escaped and Jack was forced to burn up his own soul to destroy Michael! If only Dean had been stronger and kept Michael locked up in his brain! If only he’d known better than to play directly into Michael’s trap in 14.09! If only he’d never said yes to Michael in the first place! If only he’d been stronger when Michael took him over the first time! WOE IS DEAN!

But also, Jack has been similarly blaming himself for everything... if only he hadn’t been so stupid and believed Lucifer back in 13.23, and had his grace stolen. If only he’d killed Michael and Lucifer when he’d had the chance back then, none of this would’ve happened. The AU hunters would still be alive, Michael wouldn’t have used all the monsters to wreak havoc, Dean wouldn’t have had to say yes to Michael to fix his mistake and kill Lucifer...

But Sam has also been blaming himself, for not having been able to find a way to save Dean from Michael, for not being able to save the AU hunters, for not being able to help Jack...

And Cas? Yeah, Cas has been unwilling to “burden” Sam and Dean with some of the terrible choices he’s made on their behalf and on Jack’s behalf, because there were so many other terrible things going on that were more immediate if not more important...

So the fact that they all have been indulging in a lot of SELF blame, it’s kind of interesting that this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Dean.

It’s not as if Dean himself hasn’t suspected that there was something seriously wrong with Jack. I mean, why else take him to Donatello’s to talk with someone else who might understand Jack’s current plight? Why else would Dean “test” Jack with the stupid cake choice? I mean, we’d already seen some worrying behavior out of Jack leading up to that, in 14.14 and his insistence that he was fine when *we* knew that he was not fine. But Cas seemed to notice Jack’s deteriorating state, and so did Dean. They just had no idea what to do about it.

Donatello: I'd keep an eye on him, but I think if he seems okay, he probably is. Dean: So he's not like you? Donatello: Oh, no. I'm a Prophet of the Lord, but he -- Jack's probably the most powerful being in the universe. I mean, really, who knows what's going on inside his head?

In 14.15, here’s another little misunderstanding. Dean asks Donatello if Jack was “like you.” I believe Dean meant, “soulless,” but Donatello interpreted it as “power level,” or possibly, “essential nature.” And the entire assumption that Donatello left Dean with, the “if he seems okay, he probably is,” seems like TERRIBLE advice, considering Donatello had just advised Jack to essentially “fake it,” by acting the way the Winchesters would. From that point on, Jack did his best to wear a mask. He was intentionally disguising his issues and instead doing his best to “seem fine.”

We saw it a few times, through interesting camera angles. Most notably at the beginning of 14.17, in the kitchen with Mary, we saw Jack’s dead-eyed stare when Mary was warmly encouraging Jack to open up to her. Her concern for him was evident, but rather than feel comforted by that, Jack flat-out said he found it annoying. But we actually saw him compose his face into a mask of pleasantry before he turned to face her:

And how unsettling was that?

But Mary definitely suspected that something is seriously not right with Jack. Just as Dean suspected it in 14.15. Just as Sam and Dean both suspected it at the end of 14.16. They knew nothing of how Jack had killed the snake, though.

I don’t think Cas would’ve left without telling them if he believed Sam and Dean would’ve just... let Jack run errands in town, or left him on his own for a few days to go on a hunt, or left him alone with just Mary. After all, when Cas left, the Winchesters hadn’t left the bunker in weeks. He didn’t have any reason to assume that was all about to change in the few days he’d be gone to meet with Anael.

But as we all know, in times of crisis, when Dean is terrified or horrified or just angry... as he would be over Jack gone rogue and Mary MIA or even possibly dead (this remains to be seen, but I suspect we’ll find out soon enough...), this will also be a breaking point for Dean, where he just can’t take any more of the blame onto himself, and unfortunately for Cas, he’s the one on deck to take the next hit...

(hooray, baseball metaphor)

So while Jack has been actively deceiving everyone as to his status-- partly because I really don’t think he gets just how messed up he is, and why anyone is worried for his sake, but also because without his soul he’s resorting to the same sort of black-and-white value judgments he did when he was a newborn and therefore can’t really see how messed up he is-- everybody else around him has had their suspicions about him, but they have ALL been afraid to compare notes, so to speak.

Sure, Cas didn’t tell them that one thing he saw that freaked him out enough to go seek out God’s help behind their backs, but similarly, Mary didn’t speak up about Jack’s reactions to her, and Dean didn’t speak up about his unsettling road trip with Jack... heck, he didn’t even go inside to listen to Jack and Donatello’s conversation! He was so unsettled between the snake in the back seat of the Impala, and the fear that Donatello would confirm his worst fears about Jack and the state of his soul that he stood awkwardly next to the car for the duration. Dean blames Cas for not telling him about how unstable Jack was, when just two episodes ago Dean was actively avoiding dealing with just how unstable Jack was... so there’s definitely an element of guilt and self-blame on Dean’s behalf going on with the anger he’s directing at Cas in the promo... not to mention the fact that Dean still doesn’t know about what Cas personally sacrificed to save Jack’s soul in 14.08, and Cas’s denial and desperation for that sacrifice not to have been entirely in vain (and the further guilt, horror, and fear Dean will experience when he does finally learn that truth...)

THESE GUYS AND THEIR FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE WILL GET US EVERY TIME.

The light at the end of this tunnel, though, is that they always do eventually get on the same page again. Unfortunately for us, they’ve just noticed they’re about to head into the long, dark tunnel, and they’ve got a long walk dodging monsters before they get to that light...

I know there was more I wanted to say on all of this, but heck this has gone on long enough and I think I’ve purged enough of it from my brain that I at least unstuck myself from obsessing over it for today. :P

#spn s14 spoilers #spn 14.17 #spn 14.16 #spn 14.15 #spn 14.14 #spn 14.18 #spn 14.08 #spn 13.23 #spn 14.09 #spn 7.15 #spn 11.23 #spn 14.10 #spn 7.07 #spn 1.12 #spn 5.03 #it's spirals all the way down #the scheherazade of supernatural #using your words #lies and damn lies

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ingravinoveritas · 4 months ago

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I love that Michael is aggressively consistent in letting us know exactly where he stands, in and out of character...

screaming at this exchange from when Michael posted about the end of S2 filming

#michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #good omens #aziraphale #sometimes i think about the fact that Michael has played so many queer roles #Aziraphale is a more mature realized version of Miles #which i think parallels with Michael's own journey to self awareness #also these tweets are 13 years apart #and yet the vibes remain immaculate #michael is not hiding #even if he doesn't label it specifically #amazing #reblog

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briangroth27 · 5 years ago

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Annabelle Comes Home Review

Annabelle Comes Home is a respectable and dependably spooky addition to the Conjuring franchise. It isn't the scariest—none of the spin-offs have been able to touch The Conjuring 1 or 2 yet—but this is my third-favorite film in this ever-growing horror shared universe and I had a lot of fun watching it!

Full Spoilers…

It was great to have Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) back in more than just stock footage, even if they still had reduced roles. I’m glad they touched on the real-life questions surrounding the veracity of the Warrens’ investigations: that’s a good aspect to mine for drama, both for them and for Judy (McKenna Grace) with her peers at school. As far as the Warrens go, it’s hard to play that real-life public scrutiny any further than they do here: there’s no question whether ghosts are real in the movies since we can plainly see that they are. This film finds the Warrens in a more traditional horror setup, with them out of the house and the terrors affecting the teenagers left home alone, but the movie’s creators found the right balance to keep them recognizably “the Warrens” while also exploring that setup. Plus, Farmiga and Wilson are both so good in these roles that it’s nice to see them in whatever new situations the writers can cook up! This setup offered a peek into their home life when they’re not on an investigation and brought a little more variety to this cinematic universe’s offerings. The one thing I would’ve liked from Lorraine and Ed this time was a discussion about whether or not they should continue keeping their haunted vault room in their house with their daughter. They have to decide that they will, given it still exists in the Conjuring films, but I would’ve liked to hear the thought process behind keeping it. Did they have second thoughts at all? Do they just trust that the kids have learned their lesson? Did Judy reassure them that she’d be fine, either through her actions here or with a newfound strength uncovered by the film’s events? Might they even use the archives room to train Judy in the use of her paranormal sensitivity to some degree? (Probably not, given that would mean intentionally exposing her to dangerous demons).

Like the Warrens, the rest of the characters were very likable and engaging. I greatly appreciated that the kids at the center of this film weren't the typical dumb teenagers messing with haunted things for fun or because of carelessness, but were instead aware of and at least a little respectful of the power of the Warren's archives. They were also capable in their own right (at least, as much as they could be in the face of this sort of danger). Judy's struggle with her burgeoning paranormal powers was well-handled and this was one hell of a first experience! The fallout at school from the questions about her parents' honesty was both a smart place to plant the seeds for the movie's main plot and to explore the unexpected (and until now, unexplored in this series) effects on Judy. I wonder if they’ll take liberties and have Judy grow up to follow in her parents’ footsteps someday, because Judy going from scared, lonely kid to opening herself up to the supernatural to save her friends was a great arc that could easily build into a new sub-franchise (particularly as we haven’t seen Lorraine’s early experiences with her supernatural abilities at an extended length). Grace did great with that transition and she was also really good at playing the more everyday character beats like Judy’s conflicting hesitancy and eagerness to open up to a new friend (Katie Sarife) despite pretty much everyone she knew thinking she was a freak (a very relatable tween/teen struggle). That development was a nice, grounded parallel to Judy’s sensitivity to the supernatural. I liked the idea that there would logically be good ghosts out there in addition to the demons the Warrens investigated, just like not all people are bad. That bit of wisdom was a cool moment for Judy’s babysitter and (initially) only friend Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) to help Judy on her journey, giving Judy the courage to lean into her abilities to help save the day.

Mary Ellen was a refreshing change of pace as a responsible babysitter who truly cared about her charge. I liked her friendship with Judy and their scenes together felt totally natural and lived-in, as if their hangouts had been going on for years. I also enjoyed her displaying no hesitation to trying to put an end to the ghosts once she knew what was going on. Iseman’s acting and Mary Ellen’s writing also made good use of the push and pull between her responsibility to take care of Judy and Daniella’s intrusion into both the Warrens’ house and her romantic life. Mary Ellen’s awkward flirtation/burgeoning romance with Bob (Michael Cimino) was cute and the film included just enough of it to sell their mutual attraction and chemistry, while keeping it at a realistic level for teens who knew each other but didn't really hang out (so there was no "it's totally love already!"). The one beat that rang a little false for me was Mary Ellen and co. going “We’re totally fine!” at the end of all that terror: that was a touch too glib IMO, but as teens trying to save face in front of their peers—especially the guy she liked—it still worked. Besides that, I’m glad the horrors here weren’t just laughed off and there was an honest discussion with the Warrens about this being a serious incident.

Mary-Ellen's friend Daniella gets that talk and it was a nice show of responsibility that she’s the one who pushed Lorraine to call her out on her mistake. Throughout the movie, she was well-drawn not just as a dumb teen looking to stir up some ghosts for laughs, but as someone who had real pathos in wanting to see her dad (Anthony Wemmys) again. While you’re spending the movie thinking that she should absolutely not be exploring the vault and trying to contact her dad, her performance and the writing make it totally understandable that she would. I bought her sadness and guilt and thought she walked the line between accomplishing her agenda and genuinely caring about Mary Ellen and Judy very well. I also liked that she truly seemed interested in Judy as a person, even if she was also using her to see her dad again (if only she’d just asked Judy which artifact could help her!). All three of the central girls have a similar complexity to their characters, pulled between what they want and what’s been forced on them (Judy’s powers and the isolation caused by them and her parents’ reputation), what they’ve been hired to do (Mary Ellen, though she would still be Judy’s friend; her arc has the least tension), and what they’ve convinced themselves they have to do (Daniella seeing her dad again, which makes her a nice foil for Judy in that the paranormal is what she’s seeking but her pull away from it comes from befriending Judy). That’s a cool common building block to these characters that immediately makes them multi-dimensional, a state that’s only further enhanced by the actresses’ performances. Ben was fun as an awkward teen with a crush, and I liked that he wasn’t too toxic, like you might expect from a high school boy in a horror movie. Another refreshing twist (and a bonus gift stemming from the public scrutiny about the Warrens’ cases) was that all the kids readily accepted that ghosts were real rather than having to go through the motions of beginning to believe in them.

While this was entertaining, I’m over Annabelle as an antagonist at this point: she was fine here, but the other ghosts definitely felt like more of a threat and stole the show while it felt like the doll didn’t do much of anything (even though it was the object pulling the other ghosts to the house). I wouldn’t mind if this were the last Annabelle movie, as it seems like they’ve said all there is to say about the doll. They also included a nice full-circle tie back to Annabelle Creation with a brief vision of her human self (Samara Lee), making it feel even more like this is the last one. Thankfully, there was a sizable monster mash of new ghosts here too! While I would’ve liked some more focus on each of them (a longer haunting act would’ve been nice), I liked what we got and there was a solid variety to the types of scares they generated. The Ferryman was scary and I liked the mythology behind him as well as his appearance. The the coins hitting the floor and rolling in to view to herald his approach were really creepy-cool, and the rules about him appearing in the dark vs. disappearing in the light were used against and by him really effectively. At one point I was hoping the “werewolf” case would be the basis of Conjuring 3 since it seemed like an original take on both a possession and a werewolf movie, but I guess not. Still, I liked that they got some classic werewolf imagery out of the Black Shuck (Douglas Tait) when it ripped up the car. The Bride (Natalia Safran) and the typewriter brought a classic ghost sensibility to the mix and the Feeley Meeley game was bizarre even before it was haunted! The movie definitely left me wanting to know more about the other ghost artifacts in the Warrens’ vault, especially the cursed samurai armor and the future-telling TV. Maybe they could make a web series or something exploring the cases that brought the vault objects to the Warrens’ attention!

Annabelle Comes Home has a strong cast with well-written and atypically alert characters facing a good variety of specters. The pacing’s solid: they take their time introducing us to the characters, which helped generate fear for them when they were put in danger and made the film feel like a throwback to 70s horror, which is fitting given the film’s setting. It also helped to defuse any knee-jerk “this is a real dumb plan” reactions to Daniella trying to contact her dad because she explained her mission enough for me to be invested in it (giving her such a strong a need to see him also avoids any “this is what you get for being stupid” reactions when her quest puts everyone in danger because I felt sorry for her). Jump scares don’t bother me—they’re fun too!—and this movie definitely has some effective ones along with the creepy visuals (like the denizens of a graveyard (Sheila McKellan and others) approaching the Warrens’ car that only Lorraine can see). The paranormal attacks seemed more intense overall in the Conjuring films and Annabelle Creation, which are probably the three scariest entries in this franchise so far (though I liked this one and these characters better than Creation’s). The music, both the score and the 70s songs, was well used to creepy effect.

This movie might not have been necessary, strictly-speaking, since we already saw Annabelle get loose in the first Conjuring, but it was definitely a lot of spooky fun! It's a solid haunted house flick with a strong cast and that’s exactly what it needed to be. It’s also a good ending to Annabelle’s spin-off trilogy and got me ready for the next Conjuring with the focus shifting back to the Warrens (and maybe Judy this time?). You should definitely check this out!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

#annabelle comes home #the conjuring #annabelle #mckenna grace #madison iseman #katie sarife #Vera Farmiga #patrick wilson

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Jupiter’s Legacy: Mark Millar on the Genesis of His Superhero Story

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Superheroes have a long history. After flying onto the scene more than eight decades ago, led by Superman, along with fellow octogenarians Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America, the pantheon of capes-and-tights characters has expanded to include countless more. And as legendary creators made their mark across decades, the origins and powers of these icons transformed almost as frequently as their costumes.

Meanwhile, the superhero team The Union, from the comic book saga Jupiter’s Legacy, have 90 years of consistent fictional history, with a singular overarching story, envisioned by one man: Mark Millar.

After discovering both Superman and Spider-Man comics the same day, at the age of four in Scotland (where he grew up), the now 51-year-old writer would go on to make a significant impact on the superpowered set. But he wanted his own pantheon.

And with Jupiter’s Legacy, Mark Millar has created a long history of superheroes of his own—now set to be adapted as a Netflix series.

“I wanted to do an epic,” he says. “Like The Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars… the ultimate superhero story.”

Co-created with artist Frank Quitely and published by Image Comics in 2013, Millar calls Jupiter’s Legacy his love letter to superheroes—and part of his own legacy.

The story begins in 1932 with a mysterious island that grants powers to a group of friends who then adopt the costumed monikers The Utopian, Lady Liberty, Brainwave, Skyfox, The Flare, and Blue Bolt. Told on a grand scale with cross-genre influences, the story spans three arcs: the prequel Jupiter’s Circle (with art by Wilfredo Torres), Jupiter’s Legacy, and the upcoming June 16, 2021 release Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem (featuring art by Tommy Lee Edwards). With the May 7 debut of the Jupiter’s Legacy series on Netflix, the story will now also be told in live action.

Millar established himself in the comics industry in 1993 and crafted successful stories including Superman: Red Son, Wolverine: Old Man Logan, The Ultimates, and Marvel Comics’ Civil War—all of which have inspired adaptations and films, and led to him becoming a creative consultant at Fox Studios on its Marvel projects. His creator-owned titles Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kick-Ass, and Wanted, have likewise spawned hit movies.

But compared to Jupiter’s Legacy, none of those possessed such massive scope and aspiration as the story that explores the evolving ideologies of superpowered individuals, and how involved they should be when it comes to solving the world’s problems. Relationships are forged—and shattered by betrayal—with startling violence and titanic action sequences (both part of Millar’s signature style).

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“From Superman and the Justice League to Marvel to British comics—inspired by guys like Alan Moore, and so on, I’ve thrown it in there… it’s got a bit of everything,” he says.

That “everything” extends beyond comic books. Millar drew inspiration from King Kong’s Skull Island, and references the cosmic aesthetic of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which informed the “sci-fi stuff.” The writings of horror author H.P. Lovecraft “were a big thing for me,” when it came to The Island, created by aliens, “that existed before humanity, and that these people are drawn out towards where they get their superpowers.” The character Sheldon Sampson/The Utopian is a Clark Kent/Superman type, but his cohort George Hutchence/Skyfox is more than a millionaire playboy stand-in for Bruce Wayne. Rather, Millar based him on British actors from the 1960s—Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton, Richard Harris—who were suave rascals.

“I loved the idea of a superhero having a good time, getting on with girls, drinking whisky, smoking lots of cigarettes,” Millar said.

At the risk of sounding “so pretentious,” Millar jokes, he also pulled from Shakespeare. Indeed, the comics are as much a family saga as a superhero one (and written by the much younger brother of six whose parents died before he was 20). Utopian is a father to his own disappointing children, and a father of sorts to all heroes. He is Lear as much as he is Jupiter, the Roman god of gods. The end of his reign approaches, and various factions have their own appetite for power—such as his self-righteous brother who thinks he should be a leader, or Utopian’s son, born into the family business of being a hero, but who could never live up to his father’s expectations, or his daughter who is more interested in fame than heroism.

He views Jupiter’s Legacy as more thoughtful than Kick-Ass, Kingsman, or Wanted. The plot’s driving action hinges on a debate about the superheroes’ philosophies and moral imperatives. It seeks to address a question Millar asked when he was a kid reading comics.

“Why doesn’t Superman solve the world’s problems?” he recalls thinking. “Why didn’t he interfere and stop wars from even existing?… Is it ethically wrong to stand aside and just maintain the status quo, especially when the status quo creates so many problems for a lot of people?”

On one side of the debate, Utopian believes interfering too much with society’s trajectory is a bad move. It’s not that he is cynical; quite the opposite. He thinks things are actually improving in the world. His viewpoint is there are less people hungry across the globe than ever before, and less people with disease. Millar describes Utopian as a “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” kind of hero, to borrow a phrase associated with Superman, and believes capitalism works. As his hero name suggests, Utopian thinks a better world is within reach, even if it takes generations, and encourages even the heroes to be patient and trust people to do the right thing because they are innately good.

“He says, if you look at the difference somebody like Bill Gates has made in Africa—just one guy—if you look at capitalism taken to the Nth degree, then it pulls everybody up, and poverty in places like India, is massively better just compared to a generation ago.”

Besides, as Utopian says to his impatient brother Walter/Brainwave, in Jupiter’s Legacy #1, being a caped hero doesn’t make them economists and, “Just because you can fly doesn’t mean you know how to balance a budget.” Plus, the notion of using psychic powers or brute force to simply make the world “better” is out of the question. Or is it?

The mainstream awareness of superheroes baked in from more than 80 years of stories, and the shorthand that especially comes with 13 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe commercial juggernaut, has provided Millar with a set of archetypes to lean into. It was true of the hero proxies in the Jupiter’s Legacy books, and he says it’s true of the show. In fact, he says audiences are so sophisticated with regards to these types of characters they’ll be able to immediately slip into his universe, and that “a lot of the hard work has been done for us.” He adds that audience literacy with superhero tropes also provided him something to push against.

“The Marvel characters lock these guys up in prison at the end of these movies,” Millar says. “Everything’s tied up neatly with a bow, the rich are still the rich, the poor are still starving, and the superheroes aren’t really doing anything for the common man in any very global sense. These guys have just had enough of that.”

Millar’s comics technically kick off in 1932, when Sheldon first brings his friends on a journey to The Island, but his story goes back to 1929 when the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began. This is likewise when the Netflix series will begin, and Millar says it’s because of the historic parallels between then and 2021.

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“We’ve been in a similar situation as we are now: there’s impending financial collapse coming out of a global pandemic,” he says. “The idea is that history continues and repeats itself, and people make the same mistakes over and over again, and the superheroes are saying, ‘Let’s actually fix everything.’”

Continuing the theme of parallels, when discussing the inception of Jupiter’s Legacy with Millar, The Godfather Part II comes up more than once because of the film’s dual storylines following Vito Corleone and son Michael, separated by decades. However, while the comics contain some flashbacks, the plot doesn’t unfold across different time periods simultaneously. But the Netflix series will shift between eras, with half of the show during the season taking place in 1929, for which Millar credits Steven S. DeKnight, who developed the series.

“The way Steven structured it was really brilliant, because I saw these taking place over two [different] years,” Millar says. “[But] The Godfather Part II track shows you the father and the son at the same age and juxtaposes their two lives.”

As a result, he says the series is a visual mash-up of genres that’s both classical and futuristic.

“It just feels like a beautiful period movie, then when it gets cosmic, and it gets to the superhero stuff, it’s a double wow… it’s like seeing Once Upon a Time in America suddenly directed by Stanley Kubrick doing 2001.”

This is a notable advantage to bringing the story to television, as opposed to making Jupiter’s Legacy three two-hour films as he originally planned with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura in 2015. Millar says that to tell the Jupiter’s Legacy story properly on screen would require 40 hours, and with a series, what would have been a one-minute flashback in a movie can now be revealed in two hours of its own.

It was another director who has since made a name adapting ambitious comic book properties that extolled to Millar the benefits of television: James Gunn. When Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad) had a chat with Millar about the project, Gunn said it could never be done as a movie. “The smartest guy in the world is James Gunn,” Millar says.

An exciting challenge of adapting his work for television is that the series will expand on the backstories and concepts of the books. For example when Sheldon Sampson and his friends head to The Island in the first issue, it takes up six pages. Within the series, half of the first season is that journey, and what happens when they arrive.

“Six issues of a graphic novel are roughly about an hour and 10 minutes of a movie; for something like an eight-part drama on TV, you really have to flesh it out,” he says. “It just goes a little deeper than what I had maybe two panels do.”

He emphasizes, however, that these flourishes won’t contradict the comics. Though he sold Millarworld to Netflix, he remains president so he can maintain control of his creations.

Overall the series has made the writer realize the value of television, and while a second season has not yet been confirmed, he’s already thinking about a third and fourth, and how it will dovetail with the upcoming Requiem. The story that began in 1929 continued through 2021, and collected in four volumes, will soon continue far into the future in the concluding two volumes.

“We saw the parents, then we have the present, and then we see their children in the next storyline,” he says. “That storyline goes way off into the future where we discover everything about humanity, superheroes, all these things. It’s a big, grand, high-concept, sci-fi thing beyond that.”

Listening to the jovial Millar discuss the scope of his Jupiter universe, which is imbued with optimism, one might not think this is the same person known for employing graphic violence in his works.

He thinks his films especially are violent yet hopeful, and fun. Kingsman is a rags-to-riches story, and “you feel great at the end of Kick-Ass, even though you’ve seen 200 people knifed in the face.” But he doesn’t consider his writing to fit under the dark-and-gritty label, and he’s not interested in angst, which he finds dull. With Jupiter’s Legacy, the comic and the show, he views the tone as complex but not “overtly dark.”

Additionally, Millar says he thinks society needs hopeful characters such as Captain America, Superman, and yes, The Utopian in 2021—as opposed to an ongoing genre trend of heroes drowning in pathos.

“The Superman-type characters are just now something from a pop culture, societal point of view, we need more than ever,” he says. “The last thing you want is seeing the world as dark, as something that makes you feel bad. Never forget Superman was created just before World War II in the midst of the economic depression by two Jewish kids who were just scraping a living together… I just think it’s so important when things are tough to have a character like that that makes you feel good.”

Even though Utopian suffers for his idealism in the comic, Millar says his ideas are passed on. This is The Utopian’s legacy.

“Ultimately, he wins if you think about it,” ponders Millar.

After a successful career spent creating characters and re-shaping superheroes with 80 years of history, the new pantheon of Jupiter’s Legacy may become one of the defining and lasting features of Mark Millar’s own legacy.

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Jupiter’s Legacy premieres on Netflix on May 7. Read more about the series in our special edition magazine!

The post Jupiter’s Legacy: Mark Millar on the Genesis of His Superhero Story appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ingravinoveritas · 1 year ago

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I can think of a few reasons...

All I wanna know is why Mr. Sheen avoids straight roles like the plague

#sometimes i think about the fact that Michael has played so many queer roles #and how they all represent different parts of him #i think about that a lot #Aziraphale is a more mature realized version of Miles #which i think parallels with Michael's own journey to self awareness #i think Michael has been telling us exactly who he is for a long time now #even if he doesn't label it specifically #david is lowkey bi and michael is highkey bi #discourse #reblog

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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Carlos Ghosn: The C-Suite Fugitive Under Pressure

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Most global fugitives tend to lie low. They do not beckon reporters to televised news conferences or allow themselves to be photographed drinking wine by candlelight days after being smuggled in a box aboard a chartered jet to freedom.But Carlos Ghosn, the deposed auto executive, is no normal fugitive. Unapologetic and unrelenting, he stood at a lectern in Beirut before more than 100 journalists on Wednesday and laid out his case for how criminal charges of financial wrongdoing in Japan are part of a vast conspiracy to take him down. The highly choreographed event, during which Mr. Ghosn took aim at the Japanese justice system and his corporate enemies, was scheduled 415 days after he was first arrested and more than a week after a team of operatives helped spirit him away from house arrest in Tokyo, where he was awaiting trial.“I did not escape justice,” said Mr. Ghosn, 65, wearing an immaculate blue suit, white shirt and red tie. “I fled injustice and political persecution.”For all the bravado he projects, Mr. Ghosn is a potent symbol of globalism under pressure, an imperial executive in retreat.Until his arrest, he ruled an automotive alliance that spanned continents, comprising Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi. As head of Nissan, Mr. Ghosn was one of only a handful of foreign chief executives of a Japanese company. But the alliance now threatens to fall apart, a parallel for a time when the global trade order and the military and political alliances that once held the modern world together are facing their toughest tests in decades.For nearly three hours on Wednesday, alternating flawlessly through four languages (English, Arabic, French and Portuguese), Mr. Ghosn talked about how “more than 20 books of management have been written about me.” He referred to himself in the third person and talked about the drop in market valuation at the auto companies he once ran. He drew applause from some reporters, and flattered others, promising to take questions from every region.Mr. Ghosn’s presentation felt, at times, like one he would have delivered to fellow executives and global leaders during one of his regular trips to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual gathering in Switzerland that has come to be seen as both a forum for world-changing ideas and a convening of the capitalist and self-congratulatory elite.In a sit-down interview with The New York Times after the news conference, Mr. Ghosn sounded more subdued than during his fiery performance in front of the cameras. He expressed regrets about whom he had hired to replace him at Nissan, admitting, “Frankly, I should have retired.” But Mr. Ghosn remained fiercely protective of his legacy, which is badly bruised. “The revival of Nissan, nobody’s going to take it from me,” he insisted. Mr. Ghosn’s story isn’t a neat one. Company insiders have described him as increasingly haughty and imperious. Though he blames the Japanese justice system for its unfairness, he agreed last fall to pay $1 million to settle a civil case in the United States, which barred him from serving as an officer or a director of a publicly traded company for 10 years. Mr. Ghosn did not admit wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement, but it essentially ended his chance of ever running another large global business. A man with passports from several countries and homes across the world, Mr. Ghosn and his wife, Carole, who also faces a Japanese arrest warrant, are essentially stuck in Lebanon, where they have family and own property but are not free from prosecution. On Wednesday, Lebanese prosecutors said Mr. Ghosn must submit to an interrogation over his flight from Japan.France is also investigating whether Mr. Ghosn used company money from Renault to throw a Marie Antoinette-themed party at Versailles in 2016. And Nissan has accused him of siphoning millions of dollars from the auto company to pay for his yacht, buy houses and distribute cash to members of his family — all of which he denies. Mr. Ghosn argued that in most countries, he would not have been held for months in jail for these types of allegations. He said he felt he was being treated “like a terrorist.”During the news conference, he flashed giant slides on a white wall behind him, showing various corporate documents. In explaining some of the questionable personal expenses, Mr. Ghosn used a defense common on Wall Street: He said other executives at Nissan had signed off on the transactions, which made them authorized by the company.Since his arrest in Japan in November 2018, Mr. Ghosn and his supporters have worked aggressively to tell his side of the story and attack his critics.He has employed lawyers on at least three continents, talked to a Hollywood producer about making a movie about his legal ordeal and hired a public relations firm that advised the National Football League on its efforts to reduce head injuries.In France, the “Committee to Support Mr. Carlos Ghosn” formed on Facebook. Some of his supporters there blame the government for failing to stand up for Mr. Ghosn, a French citizen, for fear of angering the country’s “yellow vest” protesters railing against the global elite.In Lebanon, where Mr. Ghosn grew up, he is celebrated as a member of the diaspora of business leaders and artists who have achieved worldwide success. Hours after he landed in Beirut, Mr. Ghosn met with the country’s president, Michel Aoun, and other top leaders, and operatives who helped him carry out his escape had ties to the country. Lebanese supporters paid for billboard ads across Beirut with the executive’s face on them and the message: “We are all Carlos Ghosn.” But in truth, there are few people in the world who have Mr. Ghosn’s money and influence.A grandson of a Lebanese entrepreneur who ran several companies in South America, Mr. Ghosn was born in Brazil in 1954. His family moved back to Lebanon when he was 6, and he later attended college in France.“I’ve always been someone who was different,” he wrote in his autobiography in 2003. Mr. Ghosn went to work in the auto industry after college and made his mark revitalizing Renault. In the 1990s, he helped turn around Nissan by slashing jobs and upending its corporate culture. “It was a dead company,” he said on Wednesday.Mr. Ghosn expanded his auto empire further by creating the alliance of Renault, Nissan and another Japanese company, Mitsubishi.His leadership of Renault, which the French government partly owns, gave him political standing in France. In Lebanon, some people hoped he would run for public office, maybe even president.Mr. Ghosn’s personal and professional empire collapsed when he was arrested at the Tokyo airport on his return from a trip to Lebanon. By that point, he had stepped down as chief executive at Nissan, but was still its chairman.From the airport, Mr. Ghosn was taken to jail, where he was forced to live in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. He was allowed to shower twice a week and was let out of his cell for 30 minutes a day. Prosecutors, he said, hid the evidence against him and prohibited him from contacting his wife in Lebanon.He was released on bail, but he was jailed again in April after he announced that he planned to speak with the press. Last fall, Mr. Ghosn said, his lawyers told him that his case could drag on for five years, which he said was a violation of a basic human right to a speedy trial. It wasn’t all glum. Two days before his Dec. 29 escape, his secretary made him a reservation at a Tokyo restaurant where he enjoyed his favorite salad with sesame dressing, according to the restaurant’s manager. He posed for photos with about 40 customers.Mr. Ghosn wouldn’t talk on Wednesday about how he got from Japan to Beirut, despite reporters’ attempts. Government-authorized media accounts from Turkey, where Mr. Ghosn landed on the first leg of his journey, have said he was smuggled inside of a large box from an airport in Osaka, Japan.The box was loaded into the storage area of a private plane, which was accessible from where the passengers sat, according to the Turkish account. The two operatives working with Mr. Ghosn told the flight attendant not to bother them.After takeoff, Mr. Ghosn was let out of the box and sat in the passenger area, which contained a bed and sofa and was separated from the front of the plane by a locked door. For about 12 hours, the quintessential global citizen was officially stateless, flying high above Asia in secret.The Bombardier jet landed in the rain at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. A car pulled up to the plane and then drove to another jet parked a short distance away, according to the Turkish media. That second plane then took off for Beirut.At least 15 operatives were involved in the operation, and some of them were not aware of whom they were extracting from Japan, according to a person briefed on the operation. They assumed that the plan was to rescue a kidnapped child.In the interview on Wednesday, Mr. Ghosn said he had planned the escape himself, but with help from others, whom he wouldn’t disclose. “Little by little,” he said, he began to think through a strategy for getting out. “When I started to do that, it kept me motivated. It kept me alive.”During the escape, he kept telling himself: “You need to always remember what happened to you. No matter what, never forget that.”Ben Dooley reported from Beirut, and Michael Corkery from New York. Reporting was contributed by Vivian Yee from Beirut, Hisako Ueno from Tokyo, Liz Alderman from Paris, and Emily Flitter and David Yaffe-Bellany from New York. Read the full article

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ingravinoveritas · 3 years ago

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Behind the scenes of filming Bright Young Things.

#michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #please tell me again how people think this man is 100% straight #sometimes i think about the fact that Michael has played so many queer roles #and how they all represent different parts of him #i think about that a lot #Aziraphale is a more mature realized version of Miles #which i think parallels with Michael's own journey to self awareness #bless his bisexual Welsh chaos #miles maitland #bright young things #gifs by me

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kuwaiti-kid · 5 years ago

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What Jurassic Park Taught Me About Personal Finance

*Jurassic Park movie and book spoilers below*

There has always been something thrilling and enticing to me about dinosaurs.

They seem like a fantasy, but they were real-life monsters that actually walked this earth. And, though they are terrifying, there's something attractive about them too. They seem to threaten humanity as the dominant species, even from their extinction — reminding us that we're lucky to have made it this far.

The Jurassic Park franchise, especially the first movie, does an incredible job of capturing this idea and sharing it with its global Hollywood audience.

I've always been a dinosaur junkie. Growing up in the early 1990s, I was too young to catch the theatrical release of Spielberg's Jurassic Park movie. I had my fair share of dinosaur pop-up books and action figures though.

Later, I had full-on kids' dinosaur encyclopedias. In high school, I finally watched all of the Jurassic Park movies (the first 3 that were out, at the time) and I read both of the Michael Crichton books. This inspired a years-long period of Michael Crichton fandom and science fiction consumption.

Now, I write a blog about early retirement. I'm realizing that many of the moments that make the original movie so special also apply to personal finance. Maybe my nerd colors are showing, but I feel a similar sense of intrigue and excitement when it comes to financial planning.

Here's why Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park movie applies to personal finance and means more to me than being just CGI and sharp teeth.

There’s a Sense of Excitement and Possibilities

The opening sequences of both the Jurassic Park book and movie build tension and excitement about the possibility of the dinosaurs. Could scientists really achieve this dino re-boot? And if so, should they? The plot has viewers asking themselves these questions, both in the fictional movie realm and in real life.

When our archaeologist heroes finally arrive at Isla Nublar with dozens of the re-born creatures in full view, it's an iconic scene in cinematic history. Groundbreaking CGI (that still holds up decently well, considering its age) and an extraordinary music score from John Williams solidify the sense of wonder and was truly unprecedented for 1993 viewers. The main theme still gives me goosebumps, even today.

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In the movie, the paleontologists, kids, and businesspeople alike (especially John Hammond) experience moments of joy and awe at the sight of the living dinosaurs. I like that both Crichton and Spielberg showed these people across a spectrum of ages and backgrounds — everyone is in awe of the dinosaurs, at least in some way.

The first time the significance of investing and financial independence “clicks” can feel the same way. The compound growth of your investments is an immensely powerful force. It's awe-inspiring. Financial independence can create simultaneous control and flexibility with your time. And, like the appeal of dinosaurs, personal finance affects everyone.

Over the past millennia, the concept of financial independence or retirement didn't exist until relatively recently. The ability to dictate your own schedule and priorities is a thrilling concept that, like the Jurassic Park movie, is really unprecedented in human history.

Be Skeptical — Bad Guys Take Advantage of Good People

In Jurassic Park, bioengineering company InGen seems to be motivated primarily by corporate greed. InGen has developed a groundbreaking technique that lets them harvest dino DNA and fill in the gaps so they can create healthy dino eggs.

Rather than using this technology exclusively for research or gradual entrepreneurship, the company goes all-in and develops a theme park attraction with about a dozen species (including ferocious carnivores). Any viewer or reader could sense that something was bound to go wrong.

In the book, and many of Crichton's other novels, there's an even stronger tone of warning. Crichton's stories repeatedly suggest that corporations are bound to take major risks to achieve possible profits, even at the expense of human lives and society as a whole. This worldview may sound extreme, but it's certainly a valid concern in today’s technological and business climates.

From early on, Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm was skeptical that the Jurassic Park experiment would go according to plan.

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Similarly, you need to maintain a level of skepticism and awareness when it comes to your investments and financial products.

Many people in the financial services industry are not obligated to act in the individual's best interest. Often, investments and insurance products are sold with huge fees and expenses that seriously reduce the benefit of the product. Customers need to be informed and very careful when making investment and insurance decisions.

You Need to Prepare for the Unpredictable

The Ian Malcolm character is a mathematician and he famously specializes in chaos theory, which the movie references multiple times. Chaos theory “seeks to explain the effect of seemingly insignificant factors. Chaos theory is considered by some to explain chaotic or random occurrences.”

Very small, unpredictable factors can cause ripple effects that lead to significant results.

The Malcolm character acts as the voice of author Michael Crichton — the voice of caution and reason in the face of the greedy, hasty InGen corporation. Through the plot, Malcolm is proven correct as the park's plans unravel and the death count grows.

via GIPHY

Many of chaos theory's implications can be applied to personal finance, too. Seemingly small or isolated events can lead to major changes in your own financial situation or in the global economy. So, it's best to be cautious and be prepared. Be aware of the risk and manage it. Some of the best ways to do this are to increase your financial literacy, diversify your investments, or make the retirement transition more gradual and strategic through semi-retirement.

Don't Go at it Alone

As a bit of a corollary to the chaos theory takeaway, the Jurassic Park movie shows the danger in avoiding or disregarding expert input. None of the scientist consultants in the movie were comfortable with InGen's plans for resurrecting dinos. InGen was blinded by their own greed and John Hammond, specifically, was blinded by his own enthusiasm — even though the movie portrays him as good-natured, in a way.

In the book, Hammond is killed by the dinosaurs and it takes more of a righteous punishment tone, due to his lack of caution in designing and managing the park.

The Jurassic Park heroes (Malcolm, the paleontologists, and the kids) make it out of the park alive, thanks to their sober critical thinking and problem-solving abilities — skills that InGen lacked.

via GIPHY

In the same way, it's incredibly valuable to not approach your finances completely on your own. Seek professional input from a fiduciary advisor, if you have questions. Engage with the personal finance blogging community to encourage you on your journey towards financial independence. If you have savvy friends or family members, ask for their advice too when you're not sure how to move forward. You will develop your own sense of what advice is right and wrong. You'll be encouraged, and you'll realize that if a financial product seems too good to be true, it probably is.

It's Not About Dinosaurs (or a Big Bank Account)

The Jurassic Park movie masquerades as a prehistoric thriller, full of monsters and sci-fi-induced adrenaline. But really, as Crichton intended it, it was a cautionary tale. Jurassic Park is about the evils and selfishness of big business, the imperfections of humanity, and a lack of understanding and respect for other life and for the earth's history.

Likewise, personal finance isn't just about running up a high score in your retirement account. Progressing towards financial independence is about higher values that it can unlock — controlling your own future, self-actualization, flexibility, and creating a life that's in line with your own values and goals.

Maybe I'm just a dinosaur and money nerd, but I love seeing the parallels between these two topics. There's something beautiful that the Crichton books, the original film, and the financial independence movements all share — humble reminders of the best and worst of what we can be as humans.

The post What Jurassic Park Taught Me About Personal Finance appeared first on Your Money Geek.

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ismael37olson · 6 years ago

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Toxic Masculinity

Have you seen the Gillette ad that inexplicably has conservative America's panties in a twist?

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It's amazing that this ad charges into our already toxic public discourse just as we New Liners are in rehearsal for La Cage aux Folles, containing a song called "Masculinity." Imagine what the right-wingers would think of Albin! Oh, right, we don't have to imagine. That's our story. Yes, M. and Mme. Dindon are alive and well and living in America. After all, we've all seen the many and various indignities imposed on trans Americans by panicky Christians in recent years. It's fascinating to me how much the controversy over this Gillette ad parallels the song "Masculinity" in La Cage. We find the song funny as we watch it, because not only is Albin terrible at performing Maleness; so is Geroges. Albin's the one being "schooled" here, but Albin arguably has more self-awareness than Georges does. This one dialogue exchange over the song's intro is so perfect.

GEORGES. I want you to pick up that toast as if you were John Wayne. (ALBIN prepares, does his best gunslinger swagger, then sits back down and lifts the toast, fanning himself with it.) GEORGES: I thought I said John Wayne. ALBIN. It is John Wayne. John Wayne as a little girl!

It's a punchline but it tells the truth. Albin is a man in his way; he's John Wayne (tough, strong) as a little girl (who loves to play dress-up and house). Makes me think of The Bad Seed. Tellingly in this world, it's Madame Renaud who does the best "masculine" walk for Albin to imitate. And when Georges points that out to him, Albin replies, "It's easy for her. She's wearing flats." His world isn't made for this kind of performance. He doesn't even have the right shoes for it! It's only in retrospect that we realize that Act II cafe scene and the song "Masculinity" are as cruel as Jean-Michel's abuses and betrayals. Jean-Michael wants Albin gone; but Georges wants him to deny who he is -- including his real role as Jean-Michel's mother. Albin is to become "Uncle Al," not even a member of the immediate family! Which is worse? Georges sees Jean-Michel's betrayal, but not his own. Look at the examples of manliness they offer up for poor Albin in "Masculinity." They start with movie stars John Wayne and Jean-Paul Belmondo, both of whom performed their masculinity as much as Albin performs Zaza. And really, they're not telling Albin to think of the actors, but the parts they play on the screen -- fictional masculinity. Georges invokes the French Foreign Legion. According to Wikipedia, "Beyond its reputation as an elite unit often engaged in serious fighting, the recruitment practices of the French Foreign Legion have also led to a somewhat romanticized view of it being a place for disgraced or 'wronged' men looking to leave behind their old lives and start new ones. This view of the legion is common in literature, and has been used for dramatic effect in many films, not the least of which are the several versions of Beau Geste." To leave behind their old lives and start new ones. That's a pretty potent reference. He invokes "Charlemagne's Men," i.e. the Christian Crusaders. That's also really chilling, considering who Georges and Albin are. And a "stevedore" is a dock worker, a manual laborer. (Makes us wonder if Georges has spent time down at the docks...) Then the Renauds up the ante a bit, referencing Charles De Gaulle (France's World War II resistance hero), Rasputin (the notorious holy man to Russian Tsar Nicholas II), and the Biblical Daniel. No pressure, though.

Finally in the last verse, the stakes get raised to a ridiculous extreme, suggesting as manly role models the brutal and genocidal Ghengis Khan, the fictional Russian war hero Taras Bulba, the ruthless invader and plunderer Attila the Hun, and weirdly then, the gentler and largely fictional "Robin Hood's Men"... No wonder Albin can't get it right. With competing role models like that... In retrospect, we realize how wrong this whole scene is, how wrong it is to force Albin to masquerade as something he's not, to wear a mask not of his own choosing. In the club, Albin's mask and performance as Zaza reveal his truest self. But the mask and performance of "Uncle Al" will deny Albin's truest self. It's only when Albin rebels, discards the agreed-upon scheme, and appears in full drag as "Mother" that he's once again showing his truest self. He is Jean-Michel's mother. But it goes deeper than that, to a lesson we're taught in the brilliant musical, Passing Strange, that we are each on our own quest to find The Real -- our truth, our path, our journey -- but we all have to learn that our Real is different from everybody else's, so nobody else can ever tell you how to find your Real. As Stew tells us at the end of the show:

'Cuz The Real is a construct... It's the raw nerve's private zone... It's a personal sunset You drive off into alone.

Here in La Cage, Albin has to find his Real, his definition of being a man, not Georges' definition, or the Renauds' or the Dindons'. I am what I am. Only Albin can find his path, and by the end of the show, we know that path is where Albin always knew it was. With family. He -- and the others -- have to learn that really being a man means taking responsibility, stepping up. It's not about our culturally constructed models of masculine and feminine; it's about being strong and dependable. Being a man is about being proud of yourself and not apologizing for or hiding who you are. That's what Albin knows and what Jean-Michel has to learn. When Albin shows up in drag as "Mother," that's when he is most being a man, showing up for his family, even though he's in drag head to toe. I told Zak (who's playing Albin) and Robert (who's playing Georges) that my biggest revelation when I started working on this show was that it's not a gay comedy. It's not a showbiz comedy. It's really not a even comedy, though it's awfully funny. It's a drama about a middle-aged marriage and whether or not it can survive this crisis. That's the central action of the story. And I would submit, the real crisis isn't the hugely problematic engagement; it's a crisis of dignity and identity. Jean-Michel asks Georges to give up his (and Albin's) dignity and identity, and out of love, Georges agrees; but Albin saves both marriages because he refuses to give up his dignity, and he teaches both Jean-Michel and Anne an important lesson about being who you are.

And in the process, Albin becomes the role model for everybody else. Literally. Just as La Cage shows us there isn't just one kind of family (and sometimes, the "Other" kind might just be healthier), it also shows us there isn't only one way to be a man, that "being a man" isn't always about being a man. Notice that throughout the show, the Cagelles are tough as fuckin' nails, even intimidating, even though they're always in women's clothes. When we produced Anything Goes last season, everybody was astonished at what we revealed in the material, but all we did was take the text, the characters, the story, the themes, seriously; yes, even though it's a funny show. We're doing the same with La Cage, and though it's not my goal, I bet we get a lot of the same reactions for this one. It's so much richer and realer and more complex than most people think. And so truthful and so funny. And unfortunately, also reeeeeally timely. The adventure continues... Long Live the Musical! Scott To order tickets to La Cage aux Folles, click here. from The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre http://newlinetheatre.blogspot.com/2019/01/toxic-masculinity.html

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lorrainecparker · 7 years ago

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ART OF THE CUT on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant

Pietro Scalia has won two Best Editing Oscars, for his work on JFK and Black Hawk Down. He was also nominated for Gladiator and Good Will Hunting. Other films have included: Kick-Ass, American Gangster, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2, The Martian and, the previous film in the Alien franchise: Prometheus. Art of the Cut caught up with Scalia to talk about Alien: Covenant as he was coming home from work at Pinewood Studios.

HULLFISH: Can you tell me what movie you’re working on now?

SCALIA: Yes. I just started the Star Wars Han Solo Untitled Project.

HULLFISH: That’s cool! So on Alien: Covenant, do you remember the length of your first cut?

SCALIA: I think the first cut was around two twenty, two twenty-five.

HULLFISH: Where did you end up?

SCALIA: It was just under two hours… with credits its 2:01 or 2:02… something like that.

HULLFISH: Let’s talk about intercutting storylines. You’ve got the group of guys that are up in Covenant and there’s the group of people exploring on foot, and the woman that’s waiting with the lander. Did you find that you needed to manage the intercutting of those storylines differently than the script?

SCALIA: We moved some pieces around structurally dealing with when do we leave, what action or story beats on the planet and when to go back onto the spaceship. There were several longer beats between Farris and Tennessee trying to establish communication. Going back and forth too many times tended to make the journey to the Juggernaut and the Engineer’s City belabored and tedious. We combined certain scenes between Farris and Tennessee, eliminated the walking and talking through the forest, getting the ground crew up the mountain quicker. Later on, after the attack in the Med Bay on the lander, we held back going back to Tennessee, for the part where he says: “I never heard my wife so scared before”, not after her death as scripted but after the second Neomorph birth as to not interrupt the momentum. The middle part of the film was more challenging after the reveal of David. Once the Covenant Story merges with the Prometheus storyline finding the proper structural order of the scenes proofed to be difficult because of the distinctive dynamics of the two story lines in addition to the separation of the two locations of the action. In one sense the action, the tension and unfolding drama going from one group to the other had to be balanced and spaced properly as not to loose the connective tissue of the film.

(L-R) Danny McBride (Tennessee) and Katherine Waterston (Daniels) star in ALIEN: COVENANT.

Many scenes slowed down the forward momentum and the tension that we generated in the Med Bay sequence. But because we have to slow down in order to develop several character interactions between David and Walter, thematically the heart of the movie, understanding his purpose, his motivations was key to keeping the story moving forward. Ridley did not want to sacrifice the pace, but we couldn’t speed up the scenes with David and Walter. And we didn’t want to truncate the beauty of Michael’s performances in order to shave time off. Pace is not about length of time; it’s about narrative rhythm. Again there were several back-to-back scenes between David and Walter, when he teaches him how to play the flute and the terraced garden scene with Shaw’s grave where he talks about the destruction of the Engineers. In the script they were separated by scenes between Rosenthal leaving to take a break, Daniels and Oram reflecting on the loss of their crewmates, the Covenant crew establishing communication, Rosenthal’s death and so forth.

I spent a long time moving he individual scenes around, reshuffling and restructuring, trying different ways and saying, “I can stay away from this action for too long. I need to continue with this story line.” Each structural change had a domino effect. I must have tried over twenty different ways to structure the middle part of the film. There was a lot of trial and error with that part because I knew I was always being pulled in opposite directions by the two story dynamics. Ultimately they had to complement each other in order to advance story and character.

Director Ridley Scott on the set of ALIEN: COVENANT

HULLFISH: You mentioned building tension. How do you find that you can best build tension in editing and what’s the relationship between tension and release of tension?

SCALIA: Well, you build tension by meticulously and deliberately building on the expectation that something is going to happen. You release it, when you can find the right moment – the enjoyment comes from the slow build up of tension and the quick “unexpected” release. You build tension through the use of camera movements, sound design and the composition of space within the frame, what you show or not show, what sound are emphasized, or how music or lack of it helps enormously.

HULLFISH: Did you do anything specific to build the subtext about the themes of faith and creations? There is the text of the movie and the subtext of the movie and the subtext was definitely about God and creation. Your thoughts about subtext?

SCALIA: In Alien: Covenant the fundamental theme is the relation of God/Man or Creator/Subject. With creation also comes death and destruction. There can’t be creation of something new without something else dying. So from the opening prologue scene where David and Weyland talk about creation and art, and it becomes clear that the we are revisiting the themes of creation from Prometheus – In that film we explored the theme of human hubris, the arrogance of man that he can create like a God, which is what ultimately leads to the fall of man. Creation, destruction, life and death, knowledge, and survival of our species in the future are themes that Ridley talked a lot about even during Prometheus: the idea of stealing the fire (knowledge) from the gods. In a way Weyland represents the pinnacle of a man’s ability to create something superior that is almost human – in our likeness, just like God did with man. Yet David the perfect android equates creation with the power of imagination. I think the subtext or the themes in Covenant are expressed through David’s actions. We know David is brilliant, very likable yet at its core purely evil. Is that a trait that he somehow inherits from his “father-creator” Weyland? You can see in Fassbender’s performance the under-current of his deviousness. This self-awareness allows him to create simply because he feels the need to match or surpass the accomplishments of his creator. We get a sense of his superiority complex from the prologue scene when David challenges his creator, and says, “If you created me who created you?” The age old question that we all want to know. – Where do we come from? As Weyland replies. But David goes even further and says, “You will die, I will not.” Again, death and creation; you are mortal and I am not. That makes him more powerful than his own creator. It’s that spark that makes him superior in evolutionary terms to man. He thinks therefore he is, as Descartes said. Yet he’s something new. He’s immortal like a God. Weyland shows he can still control him by ordering him “Bring me my tea”. (You’re my servant. You’re still my subject). But throughout the film Ridley shows moments of creation and mutations of creations and that life in its form and creation is not pleasant. The alien in a way represents the most perfect creation of creature that is perfectly engineered to be a superior killing beast. Its only purpose is to destroy any other living form. Specifically man, the flesh or “the meat” as David describes in the Hall of Heads. Later he tells Walter of his achievement by creating the perfect form, void of the capacity to procreate by itself without a host. That’s the genius of what David has accomplished. The Alien – a perfect killing machine, as the culmination of his imagination.

Katherine Waterston (Daniels) stars in ALIEN: COVENANT

HULLFISH: One of the things that I was wondering if it got explored more in the script was Billy Crudup’s character … Oram, who ends up being the captain … and talks about how he got chosen despite having faith.

SCALIA: As a character Oram mentions to his wife that they wouldn’t give him the position of captain because of his belief because they don’t want a man of faith to be a leader. He’s someone who comes from a Christian belief of God and Billy explored his background as Evangelical Christian … it’s not clear in the script at all nor ever developed any further what exactly religious background is. It could be implied that when he says, “I’ve seen the devil” when confronting David that possibly a close relative was the devil disguised as a preacher or a man of god. It was never really explored any further, it’s just conversations Ridley and I had about his character. He talks about being challenged by his own faith. He is a man of faith, whose faith constantly challenges him.

HULLFISH: You and Ridley worked on Prometheus. Do you think your familiarity of the film affected this film in any way?

Director Ridley Scott and Katherine Waterston (Daniels) on the set of ALIEN: COVENANT

SCALIA: Not really. Prometheus could’ve gone a little further with exploring the themes of creation. During the making of Prometheus, we talked about themes in Milton’s Paradise Lost. I saw that there were some parallels of themes between the Engineers and the Fallen angels in Paradise Lost. That’s why, at one point, Ridley was probably considering the idea of calling Alien, Paradise Lost. The story of Lucifer being one of the brightest angels and most beautiful of angels in God’s Paradise confronts God about his creations of Adam and Eve and giving them free will. When challenging God, God punishes him and expelled him from paradise with a band of Angels that sided with Lucifer. I saw the Engineers as these Fallen angels. Some of these who later regretted their choice who returned into God’s grace and were forgiven. But Lucifer never did, and it was Lucifer who tempted – in the Book of Genesis – Adam and Eve. Thus showing God that his creation of man was doomed. These themes were unfortunately not developed in Prometheus. The film became something else. But I think that the seeds of these ideas were there and maybe continue to live in Alien: Covenant . Ridley and the writers wanted to incorporate the destruction of the Engineers’ world as a prologue to bridge the two films and to show what happened to Shaw after she and David when traveling to the Creators/Engineers’ world. There were a lot more scenes that connect directly to Prometheus but structurally it didn’t work to have two or three scenes or about 12 mins. of film that connect one film to the next. And then start the actual story of AC. I think that the prologue scene with Weyland and David sets up the thematic of creation in a more cinematically elegant and concise way. In the overall context of the film, Prometheus, connects halfway through Alien Covenant as a flashback. At a point when it was important to tell what happened to the Engineers planet, the destruction, and the truth yet a hidden lie on David’s part. It could possibly help answering some questions for people who had seen Prometheus, but I don’t think it takes away from people who hadn’t. We also tried to have two flashbacks, when David touches Shaw’s grave and explains to Walter what happened and how she died, again another misdirection from David. On the Fox AC website you see some of these deleted prologue scenes and flashbacks that became part of the marketing campaign to engage viewers who wanted to know more of how the two films are connected.

HULLFISH: A lot of that stuff that you’re talking about is very writing oriented. The last time we spoke we talked about editing as writing. Do you think that’s something Ridley values in you? Kind of a writer?

SCALIA: Well, I’m not a writer. I’m an editor; … a visual storyteller and I look for connective tissues in images and sounds to merit big ideas. In Prometheus I think there was a promise of big ideas but at the same time you’re pulled into the demand of making a movie that’s visually and dramatically entertaining and not a philosophical essay. Sometimes those ideas don’t have to be explicit; they are subtext, thematic under currants that you can recognize from literature or art, familiar themes that writers and artist have dealt with before. I mean the whole history of art deals with creation and the fall of man. They are the big ideas that Ridley loves to tackle in his films. They appeal to him just the way he was inspired by the painting “Pollice Verso”, by Jean Leon Gerome to do Gladiator. Gustave Dore’s engravings of Dante’s Inferno, William Blake’s drawings illustrating the Divine Comedy or God creating the universe, Michelangelo’s David: the most perfect human form in sculpture, are all sources of inspiration for Ridley and myself. As filmmakers you work on all levels of aesthetics that stimulate all collaborators on the films: Production Designers, DPs, Composer, and unify all to a single vision of the director.

HULLFISH: So that’s a lot of theory and themes. Let’s talk about something practical and concrete. How do you approach a scene?

(L-R) Katherine Waterston (Daniels) and Demian Bichir (Sergeant Lope) star in ALIEN: COVENANT.

SCALIA: So the first thing is that the assistants organize the material from the previous days shoot. A lot of times scenes takes several days. I start looking at the material when I receive it but don’t star editing the scene until I have all the pieces. I make screening notes I reread the scene in the script and rewatch the dailies before cutting. I watch everything not only the preferred “circled” takes. By this time I’m very familiar with the material and I start to build the scene. What I look for is character and story beats. I’m trying to react to the material that’s presented to me. I want to be inspired by the way it’s shot and I’ll make notes based on those reactions. I want to memorize the footage as well as I can. And the visual organization of my Avid bin helps. I make selected shot sequences have get a rough sense of the dramatic arc or shape of a scene, especially in long or complex action sequences. I can see what changes were made from the initial script and what unexpected beats and sometimes mistakes could be useful for character and story.

Michael Fassbender (Walter) stars in ALIEN: COVENANT

I’m conscious when building a scene of the space the action takes place in. Trying to make sense for the viewer to understand the surroundings the characters inhabit. Rhythm of dialogue, speed of camera movements, composition and performance are the main elements that determine the structure of a scene. My first goal is really to build character. What choices did the actor make? How does this contribute to character? Do the character’s emotions feel real? I really on my gut instinct and first impressions: “Do I cover all the story points?” that the scene requires. After a first pass I add some sound effects or background ambiences, or music to enhance the scenes. I have a visual effects editor who helps me comp temp VFX shots if they shoot with green screen. The First Assistant builds sound effects backgrounds as needed. After several scenes are cut and follow in script order I string them together into a sequence and so forth finding new transitions between scenes, which usually means removing all the beginnings and ends of scenes.

A week or so after principle photography finishes; you have a so-called first cut that includes everything that was shot, everything in script order. At this stage it’s not really a film yet. Even though the scenes are cut to the proper length it’s just a vague indication of what it could be.

A lot of times you realize when you watch it that you don’t need all of the expositional dialogue. You don’t have to actually have to say a line of dialogue when you can see it from the actors’ actions or intent. In very long static scenes or long dialogue scenes, I try to find ways of how can I move this along without destroying the fabric of the performance. I look for ways to create a forward narrative movement, visually and dramatically to keep the viewer engaged. It’s kind of an organic process of slowly building and reshaping the film as you edit.

Katherine Waterston (Daniels) stars in ALIEN: COVENANT

HULLFISH: How are your bins organized?

SCALIA: I use frame view. A lot of times if it’s a small scene usually organized by slate, by set up, numbered in chronological or alphabetical order. When it’s a very large scene and there are hundreds of set ups and an enormous amount of material I see the material first and then they organize it based on what used to call KEM rolls, which are basically a dailies roll in that order. But later on I actually ask the assistance to order the bins in parts and sections in order of scene or the order of action. Another thing I do when there is a lot of material is I mark sections with a locator marker. I go to the locaters as a way to remember. Another thing that I discovered on the picture I’m working right now is ScriptSync. And it’s my first time using it. Comes very handy when you have many takes with a lot of improvisation and ad-libs comedy beats. With digital film usually what happens is some directors continue shooting without calling cut, so you end up with several takes within on slated take. You can have anywhere between two and a half a dozen line starts. But ScriptSync helps me to go to these lines and see all variations of the line readings. It’s turned out to be a very helpful tool. Ridley and I have worked for so long and I know how he prefers to cover a scene with multiple cameras with few takes, so I never saw the need for Script Sync.

HULLFISH: So you’ve worked with Ridley if I have my numbers correct eleven times. That’s an impressive marriage.

SCALIA: There are those marriages: like Michael Kahn with Spielberg and Thelma Schoonmaker with Scorsese. Both editors I highly admire.

HULLFISH: You’re getting up there yourself with Ridley. I’ve talked to a bunch of people about the need for the editing room to be a safe place; a place of trust. Beyond your obvious talents -your Oscars, your Oscar nominations, just the quality of work you’ve done – what do you think it is that that Ridley appreciates about you and why he asks you back over and over again to work with him?

Demian Bichir (Sergeant Lope) in ALIEN: COVENANT.

SCALIA: Like you said, it’s about trust and the need to feel comfortable and safe in environment for creativity to flourish is all true. I think not only from me but with all of Ridley’s collaborators he wants somebody that has a point of view. We’re there to help the film to be able to highlight the best from all departments, to make a cohesive whole from everyone’s contributions. My job is to be protective of the story and to work with the director to realize his vision. But at the same time I have a point of view. I’m not just there to put together what was shot because it’s not a given. It’s not about your technical know-how. Those skills are not what makes a film. My craftis my artistic and personal contribution, my imagination my life experiences my interests that can bring something to the project. That’s why we get hired as editors.

Directors want collaborators and people that will contribute to the film and make it the best the it can be. As an editor I take care of the quality and care of craftsmanship, how things are built, and executed through all stages and delivery of the finished film. I work really hard for a long period of time, I’m fearless and persevere when things get though, but I guess Ridley likes the fact that I work fast and meticulously. My assistants and I make sure we stay always on schedule regardless the pressure of some demands. I defend the film, and protect the director’s vision. It’s a little bit of a cliche me being Italian, but I’m passionate about film and my work. You have to be a bit obsessive about something to excel or to do well.

When I worked with Oliver Stone, he always said, “Yes it’s good, but how can we make it better?” And then you work on it again and he says, “Yeah, let’s make it better and better and better.” And that’s just the way it is. You have to distill it to its essence. You have to focus it. You have to be very specific why you choose something. You can’t be vague. Every decision counts. There’s millions of decisions and if you are passionate about something and you take care of it. I love the process of creating something and seeing it on the big screen. The biggest thrill for me is to share that experience – the collaboration and work of many creative people and crew members funneled through editing process coming together as a film – to be shared by an audience in front of a big screen is very satisfying for all the hard work one put’s into it.

HULLFISH: You talked about how passionate you are and your point of view. I think all editors need that passion and that point of view otherwise we’re useless. At the same time the final point of view is not ours. The point of view is the director’s and so at some point you need to take this great ego that you have about your own point of view and your own ability and subvert it to the director.

SCALIA: Ego can be dangerous. It’s not only the director, there’s a lot of people involved in the final product and sometimes you win sometimes you don’t. Ultimately it’s not about winning the argument. I really will defend story and character. That to me is essential. I welcome if somebody has a better idea that makes the film better… great… love it…let’s use it.

At one point Ridley wanted to take the “white room” Prologue out at the beginning. I said, “why … no absolutely not. You can’t. It’s very good.” It’s very formal, the way was shot and edited. The compositions and deliberate pace is the beauty of it. A chess game in the formal sense, triangles and lines that intersect from a desifgn point of view, beside it’s thematic importance I mentioned before. I love that the whole scene It reminded me of Kubrick and ….

HULLFISH: Kurasawa.

SCALIA: Yes! Kurasawa. A beautiful and austere scene at the same time filled with tension. I wanted the whole movie to be like that. Ultimately it’s the director’s film and Ridley decided to keep it at the front. At the end of the day regardless of disagreements or different opinions one leaves personal imprints behind; all choices are filtered through.

HULLFISH: In our earlier interview you said that story starts with character and you’ve talked a couple of times about character. Can you think of specific ways that you enhanced or brought out character in a scene in Alien: Covenant through editing?

SCALIA: Interesting question. Let me think about that. Character through editing. I worked a lot on Daniels’ character. I wanted her to be both vulnerable and strong. I didn’t go for a lot for the obvious takes. I needed to find the fire in the character, to uncover that she has the potential of actually becoming a leader at the end. It took a while to find that proper balance in her. I think Billy Crudup brought a lot to his character. From the script pages he seemed to be more negative… and pessimistic character. But it’s to Crudup’s credit that he created a fully rounded character, with good intension but also insecurities. So those these examples where I held back and chose different performances and consciously shaped the performance to enhance the quality of each character. The great pleasure was finding the difference in character between Michael Fassbender playing David and when playing Walter. From Prometheus I knew David and I loved his creation of that character. It is very recognizable when he’s David. But initially I had difficulty with Walter. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to like the character of Walter and what he was bringing to it, but I grew to recognize what Michael was doing and I was able to make certain specific choices that enhanced their subtle difference. When Michael saw the film he was happy with it both characters, having created enough differences between the two. It showed his amazing talent. There were times when maybe Walter would show too much emotion towards Daniels in scenes that we lost or didn’t need. He was becoming too human-like. Those are things we eliminated in order to make him more straight devoid of human emotions. I was looking for takes where there’s an internal process that happens and can be witnessed, but being programmed up to a certain point, how little or how much you show is tricky. It was only after having put all the scenes together and looking the arc of Walter’s character did I question, “Does he make sense? Is he consistent?” And does he have enough contrast to David character?

Katherine Waterston (Daniels) and Michael Fassbender (Walter) star in ALIEN: COVENANT

HULLFISH: You mentioned having an extensive music library. What did you temp with? Stuff from the previous films?

SCALIA: Ridley really wanted to pay tribute to Jerry Goldsmith’s score of Alien. I also started working with Jed Kurzel’s cues from The Snowtown. and Macbeth. One particular track fro Snowtown had this relentless pulsating tone and rhythm that I used in the Med Bay sequence and Ridley immediately responded to it. I also used some Harry Gregson-Williams music thematic temp cues that he provided us with. For some really low-end voices and beats I used elements from Sicario and some David Wingo from Midnight Special.

HULLFISH: All right. I should let you relax after a long day of editing. I really appreciate all the time you’ve spent with me.

SCALIA: Have a great day. Bye bye.

Most of this interview was transcribed using SpeedScriber.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 Art of the Cut interviews have been curated into a book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV editors.” The book is not merely a collection of interviews, but was edited into topics that read like a massive, virtual roundtable discussion of some of the most important topics to editors everywhere: storytelling, pacing, rhythm, collaboration with directors, approach to a scene and more. Oscar nominee, Dody Dorn, ACE, said of the book: “Congratulations on putting together such a wonderful book. I can see why so many editors enjoy talking with you. The depth and insightfulness of your questions makes the answers so much more interesting than the garden variety interview. It is truly a wonderful resource for anyone who is in love with or fascinated by the alchemy of editing.” In CinemaEditor magazine, Jack Tucker, ACE, writes: “Steve Hullfish asks questions that only an editor would know to ask. … It is to his credit that Hullfish has created an editing manual similar to the camera manual that ASC has published for many years and can be found in almost any back pocket of members of the camera crew. … Art of the Cut may indeed be the essential tool for the cutting room. Here is a reference where you can immediately see how our contemporaries deal with the complexities of editing a film. … Hullfish’s book is an awesome piece of text editing itself. The results make me recommend it to all. I am placing this book on my shelf of editing books and I urge others to do the same.”

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First Found At: ART OF THE CUT on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant

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dramatistsguild · 8 years ago

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DG National Report: Minneapolis/St. Paul by Laurie Flanigan Hegge

@dramatistsguild @LaurieFlanigan

This month’s report features two fierce Twin Cities artists who faced cancer head-on, onstage, in pieces they wrote and performed: Ball: A Musical Tribute To My Lost Testicle by Max Wojtanowicz (with original music by Andrew Cooke, Michael Gruber and Jason Hansen) and Final Round, written and performed by Katie Ka Vang. Let’s get right to it.

Laurie Flanigan Hegge: At what point did you decide to write about your cancer diagnosis?

Max Wojtanowicz: The idea to write the show came out of a conversation I had with Nikki Swoboda (my director and co-founder of The Catalysts) early in my diagnosis about how to process what was happening. I wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea at first; I wasn’t sure if I would be out of the woods or have enough hindsight when the time came to perform it. But I had already planned a solo cabaret, and once I put that together, it felt like a reachable goal to add storytelling to the cabaret setup.

Katie Ka Vang: As a theatre artist I knew I was going to create a show borrowing from this experience, much like I do with the rest of my work, I just didn’t know what it would look like or when I’d do it. It helps that my style of solo work comes from an extremely autobiographical aesthetic—literally, on stage I play Katie Ka Vang. It’s important to me that my solo work reflects my truth. It’s my way of contributing to a larger social justice movement. Change starts from within and at home first. I make work to get closer to myself and understand the histrionics of the culture(s) I was born into. I believe once one is self-aware, only then can one genuinely contribute to social change.

LFH: What was your writing process like and how did it impact your healing?

KKV: I’m actually still healing, but it forced me to carve out time to just be, to learn to let go of things that don’t serve me anymore, and be aware of habits that were harming me. It gave me something to look forward to, like I was going somewhere and being purposeful, which is extremely helpful in combating depression (a thing transplant patients go through). I had an allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) (actually my second BMT). During the transplant process you are admitted into the hospital for at least two weeks, and during this time they prime your body by giving you high doses of chemo and immunosuppressant pills—they basically take your body levels down as close as they can to mortality without actually killing you—and then they give you some new cells and wait for them to engraft. When they send you home you are in quarantine. I had to stay away from anything that could give me an infection, because my immune system was extremely compromised. And so I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for 100 days, except to my daily clinic visits, for blood work. When I started to meet with my director, Zaraawar Mistry, I hadn’t yet hit my post-100 days milestone, so we started rehearsals over FaceTime. We had the attitude that we didn’t know what was going to happen, or how my health would be in three months, so we’d just take it day-by-day, and that’s how we created. It’s quite freeing working in this way. It was the most easygoing process thus far in all of my history in making theatre.

MW: I was free-writing during treatment, and updating my Caring Bridge journal, so I had that to draw from once I started writing in earnest after treatments were over. By the time I finished chemo and started structuring the show and filling in gaps, it had written some of itself. Writing the words down and saying them aloud, especially admitting my darkest fears and embarrassments, was incredibly therapeutic. That’s actually a part of the takeaway of my show, I hope: we are confronted with huge, scary challenges in our lives, and there is a medium through which to process them. That medium for every person is different; mine is this show. I’m a big sharer—my first musical [Fruit Fly]was about my coming out journey and the parallel lives of my straight best friend and I—so for me, that worked. It felt like I had an obligation to say things out loud so an audience could hear them. Nobody wants to talk about cancer, but we do want to talk about how to heal and how to move forward.

KKV: I have no issues being publicly vulnerable or sharing the details of my experience with cancer. (That may be because I was schooled by Laurie Carlos, whom we also recently lost to cancer.) But from the very beginning I was vocal about it, and have been extremely blessed by a whole theatre/art community having my back. I feel like every culture has their own beliefs about illness. In some Asian cultures, serious illnesses and diseases still carry a stigma, so when I created Final Round I was hoping it would open a dialogue around these issues in my community. And it did. I’ve already seen projects from several Hmong artists using my concept of art as a tool to dismantle and talk about stigmas, and it’s flattering.

LFH: What did you find empowering?

KKV: I got funding from the Knight Arts Challenge and Jerome Foundation. The work would’ve still happened, but I was able to pay myself, and my team, to create art, and getting paid to make art is empowering.

MW: Creating Ball was a great reminder for me of the power of telling your own story, of opening yourself up to an audience. I made a connection to my father’s cancer journey—he had terminal cancer with no chance of survival. I had a type of cancer where I was already in remission five months after diagnosis. I make a point in the show that I didn’t like it when people would use the word “brave” describing me, because my dad had so little chance of hope and still had to walk around and live for three years. That’s bravery. I was glad to make a connection with him, and to find courage and strength in his journey.

LFH: What did it feel like to perform with your cancer journey still unfolding?

MW: It was bizarre! My hair was starting to grow back, but it was still pretty short, and you can still see my portacath scar, which I showed the audience. I’ll be curious to see how audiences respond as I go forward with the show, the further away I get from it.

KKV: It was a balancing act—literally—because my health wasn’t fully up to par. But I’m learning that life in general is just that—a big balancing act.

LFH: What made you laugh?

KKV: I love playing different characters, and in Final Round there’s a character who’s of an older generation but has horrible manners, based on my mom’s friend. I had a great time playing her.

MW: I brought a gentleman up on stage with me every night for a seduction song (pretending he’s my boyfriend). I sang about how grateful I am that he stood by and supported me, turned on by my surgical scars while I pole-danced around the IV.

LFH: Did anything anger you?

KKV: Nothing angered me, because anger comes from fear, and whenever I was scared I expressed it through tears. I got acquainted with fear very quickly and told it that it can be a part of this caravan, but it ain’t driving or sitting shotgun.

MW: The only thing that kept me up at night was making sure my ending played well, when I talked about my dad. I knew my family would be in the audience, and I was afraid that bringing him up would seem exploitative to them. So I spent a lot of energy fretting about that, but ultimately I found a way to honor him and gain perspective from his life.

LFH: How was it received?

MW: I got many letters from people who were going through cancer or who knew someone who was (that’s just about everybody, right?). One particularly meaningful letter was from a friend of mine who had lost both parents to cancer as a teenager. She admitted she was hesitant to see the show because she assumed it would be another cancer narrative that lifted up the “strong” people who survived and forgot about the “weak” people who lost their battles. She was surprised and gratified by the connection with my dad—that I could pull strength from my dad’s ultimate failure to beat his cancer—and she said that was very meaningful to her. I also performed the show once for a family who told me after the show that they had lost their mother that afternoon to cancer. “Now when we think about today, it won’t be all bad memories,” they said. I lost it.

KKV: It was received extremely well. One of the perks of performing in a smaller theatre is that you get to talk to everyone in the audience and exchange stories, whether they be about healing, grieving, or thriving.

LFH: What’s next for you?

KKV: There is a part two to Final Round, and it’s a performance installation based on the 100 days post-transplant protocol. I’m hoping to premiere it in the summer. And with this piece, I’ll be working with an ensemble.

MW: I was awarded an Artists Initiative grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board to create a musical for young people based on a Chilean folktale. I’m currently hard at work on that with composer Michael Gruber and director Nikki Swoboda. Ball has toured around the State of Minnesota. We’re hoping to bring it to oncologists’ conferences, since many doctors who have seen the show have commented that they thought it could serve as an educational tool about the doctor-patient relationship and a study in patient empathy.

You may have seen Katie’s testimony from the DG Fund’s end-of-year appeal about how an emergency grant from helped her during her transplant period. If you have the means, consider supporting the Fund. And last but not least, if you’ve got balls, Max reminds you to fondle them.

[email protected]

Katie Ka Vang in Final Round

Max Wojtanowicz in Musical Tribute To My Lost Testicle

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