#while I was watching Succession my fave was Tom

[woozapooza]

favorite character per show 27/∞: Succession → Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed)

[monstress]

succession finale thoughts

rewatching already because i need to write this down while i'm still on that finale high

the immediate problem of the episode is stewy making drama. i love himmm

why would "golden parachute" frank even be in the consideration to vote 'no' for the deal??? we're grasping at straws here oh i feel for tellis despite his soulless blond self

NICKY BEE FIRE IT UP ONE LAST TIME ... god im gonna miss this theme song 🥺

when shiv said that tom is easy to manipulate while mattson is looking at the political cartoon of them. what a blunder

shiv calling her mom an associate in front of mattson slkflskgls

"are there any positives about the nightmare we've shared?" "yeah you've fallen in love finally. fallen in love with our scheduling opportunities." goddddd im so obsessed...yessss they're so awfulllllll like so true jesse make this show also a story of their marriage noah baumbach whomst????

sorry to be so kenstewpilled but the white button down, sleeves rolled up and this line???? delectable. i must speak my truth here like how could stewy not vote 'no'?

new jess.....good for you Jess you escaped this sinking ship

i gasped seeing kendall's sunglasses this episode. that has to be japanese made. nowhere else in the world make such stylish sunglasses. gorgeous pair

greg makes 200k? per month OR year????? answer me. answer meeeeee

love the Lawrence name drop! like we miss u king

the entire lukas and tom dinner scene is sooooo

tom confessing all he he built was sand and he's paranoid to keep what he has. mattson knowing he's hungry but wants to know if he's willing to betray shiv

THEN lukas immediately belittling shiv : she was pushy, she wasn't as vital as i thought she'd be, i'm SUCH a big man i know everything, she's fuckable and she wants me too

and TOM eats it????? so mattson chooses him !!!!

ugh i dont want shiv she has a lot of ideas and i want to fuck her ugh fucking disgusting ubermensch i hope jeryd doesn't win ohio and waystar royco gojogo get FCC up in their ass

alexander skarsgard's line read and acting choices r amazing tho

me to my sister: why haven't any of them used a live translator to check what the swedes are talking about? (greg in the final episode uses one) OK FINALLYYYY

shiv screaming from another room is hilarious

logan promised kendall ceo when he was seven.......the crown prince.....if dad didn't need me i don't know what i would be for.....

shiv and roman bonding at the beach after election night. when they're doing impressions of kendall and knowing sarah and kieran are each other's fave scene partners....this scene was the one that hit me that i'm watching the FINALE finale

meal fit for a king scene....when i watched this scene i was all smiles but underneath the DREADDD knowing they might be showing this because it may be the final time the scenes are happy together. oh honey. we got a big storm coming.

not shiv saying all that to willa and connor not getting slovenia in the end....the terror

the iphone video dinner scene? cheesy as fuckkkkk im sorry that was sentimental as shit and maybe a tad unnecessary. i did cry tho i did...

"IT'S FUCKING TOM." the fight in the bathroom??? mattson rallying his crew???? the convoy to hq??? with THE MUSICCCCC???? FUCKKKK UGH HOT UGH!!!! GO OFF NICHOLAS!!!!

loveeee roman's all black outfit. so chic! (he's still mourning 🙃)

and we cheered. if anything else, us gay stewy truthers won succession

(also noticed that in the above pic - the only picture of the kids on logan's table is shiv. forshadowing? maybe, maybe not but lol)

the final 20 minutes of the finale *screaming into a pillow*

like roman immediately spiralling upon seeing gerri. doubting himself, questioning his autonomy, his worth. and did kendall....break roman's stitches on purpose. to like?? steady him somewhat??? good god. what the fuck.

shiv in this shot like...this is the closest to ultimate power she'll ever have and she's reveling in it. despite herself, she enjoys being kingmaker. that's why she went into politics

it's just. i wanna wrap my head around why shiv didn't vote 'no'. is it because she *has* seen the toxicity of protecting this company infect her brothers during election night? they should take the deal and get out? is it to freeze kendall and roman out of the company as they often had done to her? if i can't be ceo, then no one can? and mattson wants tom to be the ceo and i get to manipulate tom so i win this battle? i can keep my proximity of power by virtue of being a woman that my brothers would never have? is that it? does this make sense?

(but we all know mattson is keeping tom because he's a yes man. he won't have any real power in the waystar royco gojogo so like *sad kazoo noise*)

kendall lying about the manslaughter not being real. the real thing they've bonded over??? just because it may not make him ceo??? jelly-spined move

shiv laughing kendall going 'i'm the eldest boy' and walking away going "fucking child". lmaooo deserved

i wonder if roman saying all that abt sophie & iverson is a way to distract kendall from shiv, maybe even a little spite to get back at him for supposedly lying abt the manslaughter

roman going "we're nothing." yeah...yeah....you are.....

(but they have 195 per share....so)

kendall clicking the elevator to floor zero. cinema.

the one guy entering the elevator with kendall. has he been oblivious abt what just went down? if it were me, i'd wait for the next one

tom being ceo slgjklskglskglsklhgsfglskg

him keeping gerri and karolina this is a win for the glass ceiling shatterers /jk

and tom keeping greg? will he needs someone to bully since mattson&mencken is gonna use him as a punching bag in turn lol

yes the tiger! he destroyed his cage! yes YES the tiger is out!!!!

i truly can't believe that roman came out of this series unscathed (somewhat). like his breakthrough this episode? him realizing his self worth has been hinged on inheriting the company aka his father's love? time to go back to therapy

(also him drinking a martini because that's gerri's favorite drink. what a choice!)

and friends i was rubbing my hands with anticipation when tom approaches the car just hoping hopingggg shiv was in it and when it turns out she was??? i was chanting 'hand in unlovable hand' over and over and when tom offered his hand??? i was fully clapping it AND when shiv TOOK IT?? i was fully screamingggg

in all seriousness, what a bleak ending for shiv. relegating herself as the wife of ceo. just like her mother. the power dynamics of the man she think is beneath her is now her husband and the father of her child and in the company position she coveted all her life. she can never win...she willing stay in the tarpit....shiv my tragic girlfailure i love youuu

when kendall shows up in the park in a tweed coat i was like 'oooo i hope colin is behind him' and when they pan to show he is?????? i was cheering. the micheal corleonification of kendall roy

head under water.....aaaahhhh ambigious kendeath my beloved <3

[zalrb]

Who is your favorite Roy sibling and why?

It's between Kendall and Roman, I'm not sure which. For a while I thought it was just Kendall, I'm not sure when I realized that Roman was up there too, I think it was season 3 when I ended up writing a "in defence of Roman" post and someone was like you never defend any of the siblings but you defended Roman, you're a Roman apologist who knew, lmao. And then for a while I thought it was just Roman ad then I did my rewatch and I was like, no Kendall's up there too.

In terms of why, with the caveat that everyone on this show is a piece of shit, I sympathize with Tom's sentiment about Kendall, "I've seen you get fucked a lot, and I've never seen Logan get fucked once", I root for Kendall to win over Logan every time and I think Jeremy imbues such pain and earnestness in Kendall, like the acting for that character is excellent.

With Roman, I like how layered he is despite not seeming so at a first glance, I think that while Kendall is the most outwardly vulnerable sibling, Roman has a crushing vulnerability to him that's unfortunately leads him to be manipulated by Logan in ways the others aren't, I also like that he's a dark horse, he makes some really rash decisions but he also has good instincts and if he took Gerri's tutelage seriously, I think he could've been a beast.

Basically, the reasons why both characters are a fave can also be summed up here:

[salsatabasco]

not my dad rewatching succession while I was away on vacatioooon alskfkhkska. this is huge. this man never ever wants to rewatch things. he is always mocking me because I'm always rewatching my faves. he just basically said succession is his favorite series ever idc idc

he watched it in spanish and he was so happy telling me about things he missed because he was busy reading the subtitles, so cute

he says he went "fuck this dude" about tom back in s1 lol

[dotthings]

It seems the Nexstar acquisition of CW is near completion.

A summary: Nexstar takes a 75% stake, Paramount Global (which owns CBS, which co-owns CW) and Warner Bros Discovery (which recently acquired WB, which co-owns CW) with 12.5% each. Instead of paying cash, Nexstar would take on the network losses which are over $100 million per year.

Some ramblings:

Previous industry spec was Nexstar mostly be interested in CW’s digital assets—streaming. Now the reporting says Nexstar is interested in making CW a “fully sustainable broadcast network" which changes the spec a bit.

Reminder again, it's important NOW to support the kinds of shows you want to see more of, and going forward. While their streaming value still matters, the emphasis on a fleshed-out broadcast network means Nielsen ratings get more weight.

I'm just throwing around spec myself, but it seems unlikely Nexstar is therefore going to ditch scripted programming to become a 24/7 conservative news platform like I saw tossed around as an idea on twitter.

And I'd be careful about making hard assumptions on what kinds of scripted programming they want. Yes, they want to tilt older and the “homeland-heartland” spec from last year might be a factor and we know what that means. But to be a successful broadcast network, they need a variety of programming, appeal to different demos and different interests. If Nexstar accounting sees diverse shows as money-makers, they'll be assets. It comes down to money. If they think they can make a profit, they’ll still want those shows, not solely series that appeal to a middle aged straight white male demo.

Long term, I think WBD and Paramount want their shows on their own native platforms.

Short term, I don’t think that’s happening yet, but...it's a real thing.

SPN on HBO Max isn’t a fandom pipe dream, down the line this could actually happen.

Anyway, CW was never a full network. It has no studio of its own. It’s a delivery platform for WB and CBS, effectively a loss-leading tax shelter, and I don't think they cared about it much, or about the quality of the programming or marketing. The model wasn’t sustainable. It was never profitable.

CW had some great moments and great shows, there are some talented creative people and actors who have worked there, I'm not here to put down people's shows. But it often was a dumpster fire, across shows. Which is why a lot of us fans cold turkey boycotted it. Why there's been a lot of rage and backlash, from more than one fandom.

I ended my boycotting--which I stuck with for a year--because of the announced sale. It opened up the chance for a clean-up and needed changes.

No it isn't because of my faves. But I feel a lot better about the projects my faves are involved in because when I settled down to watch some shows I chose for targeted support, I found a lot of improvement. I’m not knocking the diversity that was there before, but the intersectionality, the depth of the usually under-represented pov's, is going farther. There used to be a lot more tokenization, more mishandling, or half-way good and bad.

There’s also a recent vibe of “no such thing as too much rep” which is refreshing to see. Shows that started out diverse keep adding more.

The shows I’m supporting: Kung Fu, All American (and I will be watching All American: Homecoming), Nancy Drew, Tom Swift (please, please check out Tom Swift, it’s a goddamn DELIGHT). I’ll be watching The Winchesters — which looks like a promising start to a far more expensive and inclusive SPN universe, as well as giving us some much needed Dean pov after the disastrous finale — and Gotham Knights — which intrigues me as a dc fan as a sort of elseworlds type scenario, and centers queer characters, women, women of color, PoC, along with having the treat of Misha Collins portraying Harvey Dent.

(There’s still some tokenization, on some shows, mixed with at least some attempts to do a little better, it’s not perfect across the board).

Other thing to note: The death of the Arrowverse wasn’t really because of the sale. I think that ‘verse winding down was inevitable, after many years and lbr--declining quality, and I'm saying this as a former big fan of the Arrowverse shows. That was also WBD and DC wanting an overhaul of the DCEU. Arrowverse had some great shows, but they were underperforming by DCTV standards. No, CW did not cut those series to get rid of the diversity, if you look at the new gen diverse CW series that line of thinking makes no sense. It was a cull based on lowest performers, and a DC show with a diverse cast—Gotham Knights—was added.

I'm here to support the shows and the people who make the shows, I don't stan for corporations. Some fans seem to think their brand loyalty should be to CW and they evangelized in a baffling way, but their brand loyalty was not to CW. It was to a particular show, or a set of shows, it's brand loyalty to franchises, and sometimes it's brand loyalty to a favorite actor. Don't get mixed up about this.

And if things go fully pear-shaped with Nexstar, I'm happy to support those shows on other platforms.

[wizkiddx]

unusable faces

i have exams hence why i needed to write something exceptionally cringe :)

PSA: this is completely inspired from one of my fave writers own blurb @blissfulparker​ --> completely recommend u go read hers its much better than anything i could ever write!!!! (and just her whole account) = link

Summary: pure exhaustion and mutual pining, Tom Holland x actress!reader

^(just thought this was cute, doesn't really fit aha but full credit to op!!)

A scheduling nightmare would be putting it lightly. Perhaps almost unavoidable but that didn’t make it any less of a hellish form a torture. Harry had very helpfully said it actually was a form of torture, that is sleep deprivation. Y/n loved her job - it was all she’d ever really wanted - yet that thought was quickly becoming not enough to get her through the day. Not when it felt like an interrogation tactic used by the CIA. 

To give a quick timeline of the past few days may give a little context:

Thursday - filming the fight scene all day plus an evening-turned-half-the-night-shoot due to some technically difficulties delaying the process.

Friday - flying to New York while doing read throughs of scenes for the next few days; followed immediately by getting glammed and filming the tonight show with Fallon; then a dash across town to the late late show with James Corden; then straight back on a flight to Atlanta that landed at stupid o’clock in the morning

Saturday - a full day of shooting in a mock grand central station set

The press trip to NY had been unplanned… to say the least. But the star of their studios other new release had taken ill - meaning they had slots booked on some of the biggest talk shows in America that would just be abandoned (angering the shows bookers too). It was a waste of perfectly good promo time and since the studio had their two other stars together doing a block of reshoots - it wasn’t a conversation. Much more a call demanding the two of them to be on the plane.

Normally this wouldn’t be such an unmanageable ask either, except the reshoot block was really rather time pressured. You see, the promo tour wasn’t far from beginning meaning they really needed the final film in the can. So really it was a bit of a mess. Just to free up that single day the two were in New York the whole schedule had had to be rejigged - in doing so they’d lost a rare day off too. It was just typical.  

The joys of success hey?

Well, that’s at least what Y/n was making herself think whilst her incredibly talented SFX artist was in the process of crafting a deep wound onto her upper arm. The reason why she would be ‘dripping with blood’ whilst at a train station was beyond Y/n to be honest - she hadn’t been allowed to read a lot of the script so even now as filming was drawing to a close, the story arc of the movie she was headlining was still a little ‘fuzzy’.

“So I watched your ‘spill your guts’ thing on YouTube” Ellie giggled whilst reaching over for more prosthetic putty- a technical term apparently

“I’m glad one of us enjoyed the experience” Y/n replied with a sigh, rolling her eyes at the mischievous smirk on her face - no doubt Ellie took great joy out of seeing her suffer through eating a thousand year old egg. Which Y/n swore the taste of was still in her mouth�� and it seemed as though it’d never leave. 

“Oh don’t worry darling I did too” Nelli called over from the next chair along, where she was doing Tom’s makeup for the day of shoots. “Between that and the animals on Fallon, you made a hell of a lot of people laugh last night” Tom’s artist was referencing the fact one of Jimmys other guests was a zookeeper, so at the end of the interview he had you and Tom join in trying not to scream at the snakes and spiders.

“You mean laugh at us?” 

“Well of course darling!” Nelli exclaimed back in an overdramatic bronx accent making all three of the women burst out laughing, Ellie’s unceremonious snorts echoing through the trailer only egged them all on more.

Tom in response, who had otherwise been absent from conversation for the majority of the morning, exclaimed a curse and jumped up in his chair. While you and Ellie collected yourself, Nelli apologised to him.

“Oh sorry love, I’m interrupting your snooze with my uncontrollable comedic gift” She spoke sweetly, even if still taking the moment to flaunt to the other women, as she squeezed his shoulder compassionately.

“No no” Tom waved off her apology, attempting to rub his eye before Nelli swatted his arm away - a stern look for the risk of ruining all her hard work she’d put into making his face look half presentable. 

“I’m impressed you can sleep while they poke you with all these er instruments” Y/n added in, having only just realised Tom had been in a light sleep for god knows how long they’d been in that chair. It did seem a bit unlikely, being able to fall asleep as you were dabbed, prodded and brushed. 

“Maybe you should try though Y/n… your purple eye bags are proving a struggle even for me” Ellie quipped back, now it was Y/n’s turn to give the stern look. Tom took the explain though, shutting her off from whatever kindly meant insult she was about to throw back at her friend. 

“No normally never, I just….” He was cut off by an ear splitting yawn, appearing almost powerful enough to crack his jaw - which would be a disaster, for no one should ruin such a beautiful and sharp jaw line. “…uh-sorry. I just think I ended up taking my NyQuil and DayQuil the wrong way round in the madness of yesterday.” Only Tom, the poor kid often seemed to lacking in any form of common sense - even if those closest to him knew just how intellectual and passionate he could be about the right topic. Affectionately, Nelli scalded his idiocy by jokingly swatting his head with a little tut.

“I can’t believe your still standing then! I’m barely alive and I don’t have any sedatives in my system.” It was true, Y/n was at that stage where every part of her body felt ridiculously heavy… eyes included … eyes especially. 

“But I did sleep on the jet back while your stupid self was studying the script!” Tom replied with a pretty inarguable point - at the time he knew her actions were stupid;  when their flight took off at 11 PM he was certain that the most valuable asset to his ability to act in the reshoots today would be sleep - rather than character development. And he’d tried to convince Y/n that briefly, but gave up. She was bloody stubborn when she wanted to be. 

“Stop competing about who has it worse cos I think it’s me and Nell”Ellie announced - making Nelli agree empathically with her coworker, nodding her head as she looked first to Y/n in her chair then back at Tom.

“Yeh because we have to deal with your unusable faces!!”

After much sarcasm thrown back and fourth, the trailer slowly ebbed it’s way back into serenity and peace as both artists focused on their work. Once Nelli was done she excused herself, Tom staying in the chair in favour of studying (more like staring blankly) at the dialogue for this mornings scenes. His pretence didn’t last long though and while Ellie was busy adding the final touches of fake blood to the now almost completely believable gash that she’d crafted on Y/n’s arm - Y/n had her attention focused the opposite way.

At poor little Tom. He looked so childlike, his slightly puffy eyes looked as if they had weights tied to them - they way he was having fight against gravity to flutter his eyes open, before loosing the next second only for the process to repeat as they dragged downwards. The broad muscles of his neck occasionally seemed to occasionally let up a little, letting his head tilt slowly at first until it gathered enough momentum to throw him off balance. The then sudden movement of his head unconsciously pulling itself back in line caused his eyes to bolt open prior to the whole cycle repeating again. All Y/n wanted to do was let him lay down someone, her heart feeling a tug in her chest just seeing him like that. 

Ellie proclaimed her completion of the wound, leaning back to admire her work before looking to get an affirming nod from Y/n. Yet instead, she was too preoccupied gazing at the boy slouched across from them. “Someone seems a little distracted.” Ellie smirked, finally garnering Y/n’s attention, only feeling more and more smug watching a light tint appear on the actors cheeks. 

“I-well-no… we need to go.” Y/n ignored her words as though nothing had happened, instead rushing off the chair to get Tom out the chair and onto the awaiting set. They had places to be.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||| (bcos im lazy)

Honestly when the director, Ed, called for lunch break, it was pretty apparent to be purely as a compassionate gesture to Y/n and Tom. Both of them had tried so hard this morning to fully commit, even so they’d both been almost completely useless. Y/n kept missing cues whilst all Tom’s actions and lines where slow, dragged out and at times completely prompted from someone behind the cameras. 

So when the lunch break was called there was only one thing on Y/n’s mind and what sandwich was available in the mess tent was not it. Still standing on the set next to her fake holdall bag she looked toward Tom, who was pulling himself up to standing from the train station bench - the pace of his movement making him look more like an old man. 

“You good?” His answer was predictable. 

“I’m so fucking shattered”

Tom swore he’d never heard anything sweeter come out of Y/n’s pink lips than her next statement.

“C’mon I know somewhere we can lie down.”

Without any sort of thought Tom blindly agreed, nodding as he took her outstretched hand in his. The gesture in itself brought a fresh wave of comfort to his aching limbs and as his feet stumbled to catchup with her slight head start he leant the majority of his weight into their connected hands. 

Neither would admit it but they were ‘a thing’… whatever the hell that meant. It was clear as day to everyone and anyone that worked closely to the two but neither of them had ever broached the topic with each other. They’d worked on a few films together over the years; each time they got closer and closer to the point any job without the other simply wasn’t as good. It was scary though, especially for two actors in the prime of their careers. If they weren’t working the same film they’d likely be the opposite side of the world to each other most of the time - quality time together would be few and far between, Really their jobs didn’t suit dating at all, yet it would be perhaps easier if one half of it worked a ‘normal’ job. Something with consistency, a regular structure. A level of dependability that neither Y/n nor Tom could offer to the other. 

So it was terrifying, acknowledging the growth in their magnetic attraction to each other. Both were acutely aware that doing that, confronting their feelings, would most likely signal the beginning of the end. 

Although none of this stoped Y/n from returning the gesture, tilting her shoulder into Tom’s left side as they took slow steps through and then out the set building. She steered the two past the hair and makeup trailer and round into a store and extra equipment trailer. Tom tilted his head as she climbed the stairs whilst beckoning for him to follow - it didn’t seem like the most obvious choice. Rolling her eyes, Y/n explained.

“It’s where all the blankets and coats and kept for the raining scenes plusssss no one will disturb us in here.” Again Tom was not in a position to disagree, eyes drooping as his shoulders sagged to the floor. Right now he’d take anything. 

So he climbed up the stairs and shut the door behind him, just as Y/n flipped the light on. She was right, it was well equipped and with an almost mountainous supply of red blankets that normally the crew and extra would all be wrapped up in after the freezing rain scenes with all the ‘waterfall machines’ as Y/n called them. However it was also um…. It was cosy. “Oh I don’t think I realised how small it was” She chuckled lightly, since now the door was closed her back was pressed up against the far wall of cabinets and still her front was mere millimetres from Tom.

“I…I don’t mind… if-if you don’t?”

“I’m too tired to care” She giggled in response, and Tom , now with her seal of approval, immediately started ransacking the piled shelves for all their worth creating a floor carpeted in the pale red of the blankets, in an attempt to make it more cosy. Joining in, it was almost remarkable how quickly their bodies suddenly agreed to move, with the new promise of rest mere moments away. 

Once the trailer was fully drowned, Tom kicked off his costume shoes and threw his jacket off - it haphazardly landing by the doorway. Y/n copied him, leaving her stood up whilst he had the advantaged of already settling down on the floor, her standing and looking down at him.

The space between the two opposing shelving units was not close spacious enough for two people to lie down whilst keeping a respectable level of personal space. Suddenly feeling a wave of awkwardness, Y/n stayed standing, wringing her hands slightly - whilst fairly certain Tom could hear her heart running at 100 mph. 

“You er… gonna stay there or?” Tom, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t a complete idiot - he could see she was suddenly self conscious. He got it too - they’d never crossed this boundary of choosing to cuddle into each other. It had happened once of twice accidentally over there 2 years of knowing each other. Both of those times it was completely accidental, falling asleep watching a movie with a safe distance of space b between the two, only to find hours later their bodies almost completely intwined. Tom would be lying if he said that his heart didnt skip a beat when he had awoken to Y/n’s soft and gently breath fanning into his neck. He’d loved it, but understood that was unconsciously breaking down part of the wall they’d both been the constructors of.

For fear of getting hurt. 

So now, as Y/n awkwardly bent down and lay on her side, he thought it was imperative to make her feel comfortable. Naturally then, his arm slid round her shoulders and pulled her down toward his chest, releasing a little breath as he felt her relax, her legs slowly wrapping round one of his. 

“This okay?” He murmured, now into the crown of her head as she lay half on her side half on his chest. In reply she nodded into him and Tom couldn’t help but grin- unbeknownst to him but Y/n was doing the exact same thing. 

The peace lasted all of 3 seconds until she groaned again.

“What?” Tom enquired as she wriggled out his hold and stood up. Instead of replying though she just leant over and flicked the one harsh light bulb off making Tom chuckle as she fumbled her way back onto the padded floor in the darkness, earning a few grunts from both as she accidentally kicked Tom’s thighs or banged her head on one of the now empty shelves. Fumbling her way back into a comfortable position, occasionally cursing when she stubbed her toe- or Tom did when she accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. 

“Comfy?” Tom asked a little sarkily as he squeezed her a little more into his side.

“Mhmmmm… I’m gonna sleep for 100 years”

“Yeh me… me too”

And with that they both almost instantly and in complete unison sagged into each other and the blankets - the pent up stress and tension of the past few days ebbing away.

What the pair had neglected to remember was that sleeping for 100 years wasn’t really an option. The whole crew of 50 people, who wanted to restart filming after 45 minutes, had not been told about Y/n’s little hiding place. The pair were so completely safe in their own little cocoon of comfort they were completely oblivious to their teams calling there names more and more frantically. Completely oblivious to the game of hide and seek the situation had descended into, completely oblivious to Harrys natural annoyance as the director asked him for the whereabouts of the two stars - as though Harry was childminder to the pair of them.

It was Nelli who found them first. She’d and Ellie and Tom’s manager had all been recruited by Harry as part of the man hunt. Both girls, having seen first hand the state of the two this morning, were fairly certain they’d both crashed out somewhere. So Nelli, already with a sneaking suspicion, opened the door gently, her figure blocking the majority of the light from seeping through to the dimly lit inside. The sight she was met with had her actually pouting at the cuteness - and yes its a cringey word but also the only one appropriate.

Between bedding down and barely an hour later the two had managed to become impossibly tighter pressed to each other. Y/n’s face was pressed into the crook of Tom’s neck and his arms seemed to have pulled her on-top of him almost completely. Her left leg was hooked under his right, which was then sandwiched by his left too. They both looked so pure and innocent and god did Nelli know they both needed any extra time they could get.

Nelli cared a lot about Tom, she’d been working with him from the beginning, from the child star days to now. She cared about him like her very annoying surrogate son and she wanted to see him looked after. She also so completely wanted the two stars to stop pining after each other. Because frankly it was getting a little frustrating for everyone else. 

So she chose to tactically forget about her discovery, sneaking a photo on the sly before silently pulling the door closed and leaving them to their sleep. 

[kisswithfangs]

watchin succession (specifically safe room) w my dad in the room and i mentioned tom was my fave and as he watched him run out of the office and push people out of the way while shouting my dad was like "he seems like a beautiful person"

he seems like a beautiful person because he is a beautiful person <3 he’s just a girlboss who knows his priorities (himself) and he stands by that !

[marnie1964]

Karate Kid/Cobra Kai survey

i'm gonna consider myself tagged

It’s the year 2021 and you’re obsessed with The Karate Kid. How are you feeling?: an unexpected turn of events but it's passing the quarantine, i guess!

Did you grow up with TKK or are you new to the series?:  to be completely honest, i don't really like the movies? i didn't vibe with them as a kid and when i went back and tried to watch them this year i couldn't make it all the way through.* i think they're well crafted movies, but i've never liked relatable young boy wish fulfillment (i couldn't even get thru harry potter as a kid), and i think the first one is guilty of burying the lede twice over with regards to mr. miyagi and later the relationship between kreese and johnny. and lucky me--these are exactly the areas that cobra kai delivers on.

*except for the third one, which imo is a camp masterpiece and also genuinely heartbreaking. it's the only one that allows daniel to be an genuine pain in the ass. i think i've finally figured out what the target audience for cobra kai is: people who's favorite karate kid movie was tkk3 (me).

We gotta do the basics. Favorite character: johnny! what is a man but a miserable pile of bruce springsteen lyrics? or aimee mann lyrics? or mountain goats lyrics? or otis redding lyrics? or--fuck, have americans ever written songs about anyone else? i have an unreal amount of good will towards this man and his late-life struggle for recuperation. he's the heart of the show both in terms of his relationships with other characters and in terms of zabka's chemistry with the other actors.

my deep dark double secret fave is kreese. he makes me feel real anger in a way that's usually reserved for characters in vince gilligan shows. i'm a bit obsessed with him and his preoccupation with johnny and later johnny's teenaged son (I Have Thoughts). the show does a great job of making what he did to johnny--and all the years and years and years of fallout from that--feel really real, which makes him one of the most viscerally despicable villains i've ever come across . it's unironically among the best portrayals of domestic abuse i've seen, may god have mercy on our souls. the decision to pop out from behind a fucking cardboard cutout of himself to scare daniel in tkk3 was also a hilarious galaxy brain move. aspirational stuff.

also--shout out to daniel-san. the writers really had to work their asses off to make him into a character that appeals to me, and i think they did a great job of it. he's a cringey tool who's capable of displaying a surprising amount of integrity under the right circumstances! he's tom wambsgans! he's pete campbell! he's wonderful i love him!

Favorite ship:  johnny & daniel (what if mysterious skin was a sports comedy??)

Underrated character: the True and Correct answer to this question can only be aisha, although i don't think she was actually underrated by anyone besides the writers. chozen is also lowkey my favorite katate child because c'mon, he had everything (spear fights! ziplines! teen death matches! formfitting disco-era polyester button down shirts worn with gold chains!)

Underrated ship (don’t say therapy, lol):  uhhhh... the only teen couple that could have been interesting is tory/aisha. they were cute together and their friendship rang true to me. it's that thing where you're the new girl and you're conventionally attractive, but on the inside you know you're a freak so you immediately gravitate towards the most obvious female outsider. i lived it, bay-bey!

i also think there are interesting things to explore with carmen and johnny's relationship. i don't know if the writers are even aware of it (i lean towards no b/c men amirite) but the entire premise of carmen's character is that she chose to live in poverty to protect herself and her son from a bad man with power. she's thereby the exact opposite of johnny's mother, who (at least by his understanding) married hollywood film producer shmarvey shmeinstein to provide her son with a better life. so, there's a lot to unpack in his attraction to her. also they're super hot hur hur i like sexy nurse thing hur hur.

Wax On, Wax Off or Sweep the Leg?: i can't look directly at it, but sweep the leg. zabka what the fuck man.

Which of Daniel’s dumb little outfits is your favorite?:  i don't think i've seen anyone mention this one yet, but the football jersey with the sweatpants. it makes him look so small and huggable, i wanna pick him up and set him on my shelf or something.

Character from the films you most want to return, who’s not Terry Silver: bring back ali's lesbian girl gang!!! or else--dutch. he was funny and iconic, i loved his exaggerated offended reaction to everything daniel said or did in tkk. also, i'm tacky so i'm a sucker for aggressively bleach blonde hair. the SCANDALIZED wasp couple standing behind ali and johnny in the spaghetti scene will also do. or terry's secretary (an mvp--i believe the original actress has passed away so in my heart of hearts she's portrayed by j. smith-cameron).

Scene that lives in your head rent-free: the whole character development speed run that johnny does from sweep the leg to crying while handing daniel the trophy to getting strangled in the parking lot by his beloved teacher. i'm especially transfixed by that last bit--what's the thought process of a man who decides to publicly execute his teenage student via strangulation? why did none of the many bystanders call the police? johnny is the real kitty genovese, prison for everyone.

from the cobra kai series proper: daniel's decision to greet johnny with a big hug after not seeing him for 35 years and never actually being friends with him (I Have Thoughts), the heinously creepy scene where johnny is repeating the cobra kai mantra for miguel and his entire disposition completely changes (demonic possession shit), and johnny's tiny go-ahead-and-kill-my-abuser nod (his face is so stoney after being so animated at dinner) coupled with daniel's shaky little sign of relief (macchio is really the cutest when he looks scared).

it goes without saying that every johnny & miguel scene lives rent free in my HEART.

Will Anthony LaRusso ever be relevant?: anthony becomes relevant for one (1) episode next season when amanda and daniel finally get around to putting him up for adoption.

You live in The Valley and are forced into the karate gang war.  Which dojo do you join?:  i enter the cobra kai dojo decked out in all of my snake-themed clothing and jewelry (it's a lot). i approach kreese and explain to him that the open mouth of a snake, viewed head-on, is a yonic symbol. i am permanently banned from the cobra kai dojo.

(seriously though, assuming i'm a teen in this scenario i think i would have vibed with tory/miguel/aisha. dimitri and sam would have driven high school me up the fucking wall though. the cobra kai style looks like more fun/better exercise. do i also genuinely believe most young girls could actually benefit from someone yelling no mercy down their neck? maybe so 💖)

What’s your training montage song?:  50ft queenie - pj harvey (it takes place in the alison bechdel feminist karate dojo ofc)

It’s the crossover event of the century! Which TV show are you combining with Cobra Kai for an hour-long Saturday night special?: it's a full episode flashback to the time johnny got arrested in albuquerque, new mexico. johnny's court-appointed attorney is a weirdly hot babe who seems like a super straight laced killjoy at first, but soon reveals herself to be an unhinged woman. one thing leads to another, and johnny winds up in bed with her and her loser husband. there are lots of great themes about punitive justice, people's ability to change for the better (and worse), and what makes someone "good" or "bad" to begin with, but mostly it's just really hot sex. the husband tries to sell johnny a prepaid cellphone and johnny tell's him that cellphones are never gonna catch on, cause who want's to be bothered by people all the time like that?

better call saul. it's a better call saul crossover ep.

(fwiw think that greg 'hbo succession' hirsch should also be terry's cousin greg on the non-roy side. think about it--the roys are small people, but cousin greg is really tall?? and who else is really tall, and a blue eyed brunette to boot? terry silver. it all adds up! this never becomes relevant to the plot, in any case, i'm just considering it canon until the writers come to my house and explicitly tell me i'm wrong.)

Tagging: anyone who's interested 😘

[grigori77]

2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)

20.  ONWARD – Disney and Pixar’s best digitally animated family feature of 2020 (beating the admittedly impressive Soul to the punch) clearly has a love of fantasy roleplay games like Dungeons & Dragons, its quirky modern-day AU take populated by fantastical races and creatures seemingly tailor-made for the geek crowd … needless to say, me and many of my friends absolutely loved it.  That doesn’t mean that the classic Disney ideals of love, family and believing in yourself have been side-lined in favour of fan-service – this is as heartfelt, affecting and tearful as their previous standouts, albeit with plenty of literal magic added to the metaphorical kind.  The central premise is a clever one – once upon a time, magic was commonplace, but over the years technology came along to make life easier, so that in the present day the various races (elves, centaurs, fauns, pixies, goblins and trolls among others) get along fine without it. Then timid elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) receives a wizard’s staff for his sixteenth birthday, a bequeathed gift from his father, who died before he was born, with instructions for a spell that could bring him back to life for one whole day.  Encouraged by his brash, over-confident wannabe adventurer elder brother Barley (Chris Pratt), Ian tries it out, only for the spell to backfire, leaving them with the animated bottom half of their father and just 24 hours to find a means to restore the rest of him before time runs out.  Cue an “epic quest” … needless to say, this is another top-notch offering from the original masters of the craft, a fun, affecting and thoroughly infectious family-friendly romp with a winning sense of humour and inspired, flawless world-building.  Holland and Pratt are both fantastic, their instantly believable, ill-at-ease little/big brother chemistry effortlessly driving the story through its ingenious paces, and the ensuing emotional fireworks are hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, while there’s typically excellent support from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine from Seinfeld) as Ian and Barley’s put-upon but supportive mum, Laurel, Octavia Spencer as once-mighty adventurer-turned-restaurateur “Corey” the Manticore and Mel Rodriguez (Getting On, The Last Man On Earth) as overbearing centaur cop (and Laurel’s new boyfriend) Colt Bronco.  The film marks the sophomore feature gig for Dan Scanlon, who debuted with 2013’s sequel Monsters University, and while that was enjoyable enough I ultimately found it non-essential – no such verdict can be levelled against THIS film, the writer-director delivering magnificently in all categories, while the animation team have outdone themselves in every scene, from the exquisite environments and character/creature designs to some fantastic (and frequently delightfully bonkers) set-pieces, while there’s a veritable riot of brilliant RPG in-jokes to delight geekier viewers (gelatinous cube! XD).  Massive, unadulterated fun, frequently hilarious and absolutely BURSTING with Disney’s trademark heart, this was ALMOST my animated feature of the year.  More on that later …

19.  THE GENTLEMEN – Guy Ritchie’s been having a rough time with his last few movies (The Man From UNCLE didn’t do too bad but it wasn’t exactly a hit and was largely overlooked or simply ignored, while intended franchise-starter King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was largely derided and suffered badly on release, dying a quick death financially – it’s a shame on both counts, because I really liked them), so it’s nice to see him having some proper success with his latest, even if he has basically reverted to type to do it.  Still, when his newest London gangster flick is THIS GOOD it seems churlish to quibble – this really is what he does best, bringing together a collection of colourful geezers and shaking up their status quo, then standing back and letting us enjoy the bloody, expletive-riddled results. This particularly motley crew is another winning selection, led by Matthew McConaughey as ruthlessly successful cannabis baron Mickey Pearson, who’s looking to retire from the game by selling off his massive and highly lucrative enterprise for a most tidy sum (some $400,000,000 to be precise) to up-and-coming fellow American ex-pat Matthew Berger (Succession’s Jeremy Strong, oozing sleazy charm), only for local Chinese triad Dry Eye (Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding, chewing the scenery with enthusiasm) to start throwing spanners into the works with the intention of nabbing the deal for himself for a significant discount.  Needless to say Mickey’s not about to let that happen … McConaughey is ON FIRE here, the best he’s been since Dallas Buyers Club in my opinion, clearly having great fun sinking his teeth into this rich character and Ritchie’s typically sparkling, razor-witted dialogue, and he’s ably supported by a quality ensemble cast, particularly co-star Charlie Hunnam as Mickey’s ice-cold, steel-nerved right-hand-man Raymond Smith, Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery as his classy, strong-willed wife Rosalind, Colin Farrell as a wise-cracking, quietly exasperated MMA trainer and small-time hood simply known as the Coach (who gets many of the film’s best lines), and, most notably, Hugh Grant as the film’s nominal narrator, thoroughly morally bankrupt private investigator Fletcher, who consistently steals the film.  This is Guy Ritchie at his very best – a twisty rug-puller of a plot that constantly leaves you guessing, brilliantly observed and richly drawn characters you can’t help loving in spite of the fact there’s not a single hero among them, a deliciously unapologetic, politically incorrect sense of humour and a killer soundtrack.  Getting the cinematic year off to a phenomenal start, it’s EASILY Ritchie’s best film since Sherlock Holmes, and a strong call-back to the heady days of Snatch (STILL my favourite) and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.  Here’s hoping he’s on a roll again, eh?

18.  SPONTANEOUS – one of the year’s biggest under-the-radar surprise hits for me was one which I actually might not have caught if things had been a little more normal and ordered.  Thankfully with all the lockdown and cinematic shutdown bollocks going on, this fantastically subversive and deeply satirical indie teen comedy horror came along at the perfect time, and I completely flipped out over it.  Now those who know me know I don’t tend to gravitate towards teen cinema, but like all those other exceptions I’ve loved over the years, this one had a brilliantly compulsive hook I just couldn’t turn down – small-town high-schooler Mara (Knives Out and Netflix’ Cursed’s Katherine Langford) is your typical cool outsider kid, smart, snarky and just putting up with the scene until she can graduate and get as far away as possible … until one day in her senior year one of her classmates just inexplicably explodes. Like her peers, she’s shocked and she mourns, then starts to move on … until it happens again.  As the death toll among the senior class begins to mount, it becomes clear something weird is going on, but Mara has other things on her mind because the crisis has, for her, had an unexpected benefit – without it she wouldn’t have fallen in love with like-minded oddball new kid Dylan (Lean On Pete and Words On Bathroom Walls’ Charlie Plummer). The future’s looking bright, but only if they can both live to see it … this is a wickedly intelligent film, powered by a skilfully executed script and a wonderfully likeable young cast who consistently steer their characters around the potential cliched pitfalls of this kind of cinema, while debuting writer-director Brian Duffield (already a rising star thanks to scripts for Underwater, The Babysitter and blacklist darling Jane Got a Gun among others) show he’s got as much talent and flair for crafting truly inspired cinema as he has for thinking it up in the first place, delivering some impressively offbeat set-pieces and several neat twists you frequently don’t see coming ahead of time.  Langford and Plummer as a sassy, spicy pair who are easy to root for without ever getting cloying or sweet, while there’s glowing support from the likes of Hayley Law (Rioverdale, Altered Carbon, The New Romantic) as Mara’s best friend Tess, Piper Perabo and Transparent’s Rob Huebel as her increasingly concerned parents, and Insecure’s Yvonne Orji as Agent Rosetti, the beleaguered government employee sent to spearhead the investigation into exactly what’s happening to these kids.  Quirky, offbeat and endlessly inventive, this is one of those interesting instances where I’m glad they pushed the horror elements into the background so we could concentrate on the comedy, but more importantly these wonderfully well-realised and vital characters – there are some skilfully executed shocks, but far more deep belly laughs, and there’s bucketloads of heart to eclipse the gore.  Another winning debut from a talent I intend to watch with great interest in the future.

17.  HAMILTON – arriving just as Black Lives Matter reached fever-pitch levels, this feature presentation of the runaway Broadway musical smash-hit could not have been better timed. Shot over three nights during the show’s 2016 run with the original cast and cut together with specially created “setup shots”, it’s an immersive experience that at once puts you right in amongst the audience (at times almost a character themselves, never seen but DEFINITELY heard) but also lets you experience the action up close.  And what action – it’s an incredible show, a thoroughly fascinating piece of work that reads like something very staid and proper on paper (an all-encompassing biographical account of the life and times of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton) but, in execution, becomes something very different and EXTREMELY vital.  The execution certainly couldn’t be further from the usual period biopic fare this kind of historical subject matter usually gets (although in the face of recent high quality revisionist takes like Marie Antoinette, The Great and Tesla it’s not SO surprising), while the cast is not at all what you’d expect – with very few notable exceptions the cast is almost entirely people of colour, despite the fact that the real life individuals they’re playing were all very white indeed.  Every single one of them is also an absolute revelation – the show’s writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (already riding high on the success of In the Heights) carries the central role of Hamilton with effortless charm and raw star power, Leslie Odom Jr. (Smash, Murder On the Orient Express) is duplicitously complex as his constant nemesis Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson (In the Heights, Moana, Bull) oozes integrity and nobility as his mentor and friend George Washington, Phillipa Soo is sweet and classy as his wife Eliza while Renée Elise Goldsberry (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Jacks, Altered Carbon) is fiery and statuesque as her sister Angelica Schuyler (the one who got away), and Jonathan Groff (Mindhunter) consistently steals every scene he’s in as fiendish yet childish fan favourite King George III, but the show (and the film) ultimately belongs to veritable powerhouse Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting, The Good Lord Bird) in a spectacular duel role, starting subtly but gaining scene-stealing momentum as French Revolutionary Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, before EXPLODING onto the stage in the second half as indomitable third American President Thomas Jefferson.  Not having seen the stage show, I was taken completely by surprise by this, revelling in its revisionist genius and offbeat, quirky hip-hop charm, spellbound by the skilful ease with which is takes the sometimes quite dull historical fact and skews it into something consistently entertaining and absorbing, transported by the catchy earworm musical numbers and thoroughly tickled by the delightfully cheeky sense of humour strung throughout (at least when I wasn’t having my heart broken by moments of raw dramatic power). Altogether it’s a pretty unique cinematic experience I wish I could have actually gotten to see on the big screen, and one I’ve consistently recommended to all my friends, even the ones who don’t usually like musicals.  As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t need a proper Les Misérables style screen adaptation – this is about as perfect a presentation as the show could possibly hope for.

16.  SPUTNIK – summer’s horror highlight (despite SERIOUSLY tough competition) was a guaranteed sleeper hit that I almost missed entirely, stumbling across the trailer one day on YouTube and getting bowled over by its potential, prompting me to hunt it down by any means necessary.  The feature debut of Russian director Egor Abramenko, this first contact sci-fi chiller is about as far from E.T. as it’s possible to get, sharing some of the same DNA as Carpenter’s The Thing but proudly carving its own path with consummate skill and definitely signalling great things to come from its brand new helmer and relative unknown screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev.  Oksana Akinshina (probably best known in the West for her powerful climactic cameo in The Bourne Supremacy) is the beating heart of the film as neurophysiologist Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova, brought in to aid in the investigation in the Russian wilderness circa 1983 after an orbital research mission goes horribly wrong.  One of the cosmonauts dies horribly, while the other, Konstantin (The Duelist’s Pyotr Fyodorov) seems unharmed, but it quickly becomes clear that he’s now the host for something decidedly extraterrestrial and potentially terrifying, and as Tatyana becomes more deeply embroiled in her assignment she comes to realise that her superiors, particularly mysterious Red Army project leader Colonel Semiradov (The PyraMMMid’s Fyodor Bondarchuk), have far more insidious plans for Konstantin and his new “friend” than she could ever imagine. This is about as dark, intense and nightmarish as this particular sub-genre gets, a magnificently icky body horror that slowly builds its tension as we’re gradually exposed to the various truths and the awful gravity of the situation slowly reveals itself, punctuated by skilfully executed shocks and some particularly horrifying moments when the evils inflicted by the humans in charge prove far worse than anything the alien can do, while the ridiculously talented writers have a field day pulling the rug out from under us again and again, never going for the obvious twist and keeping us guessing right to the devastating ending, while the beautifully crafted digital creature effects are nothing short of astonishing and thoroughly creepy.  Akinshina dominates the film with her unbridled grace, vulnerability and integrity, the relationship that develops between Tatyana and Konstantin (Fyodorov delivering a beautifully understated turn belying deep inner turmoil) feeling realistically earned as it goes from tentatively wary to tragically bittersweet, while Bondarchuk invests the Colonel with a nuanced air of tarnished authority and restrained brutality that made him one of my top screen villains for the year.  One of 2020’s great sleeper hits, I can’t speak of this film highly enough – it’s a genuine revelation, an instant classic for whom I’ll sing its praises for years to come, and I wish enormous future success to all the creative talents involved.

15.  THE INVISIBLE MAN – looks like third time’s a charm for Leigh Whannell, writer-director of my ALMOST horror movie of the year (more on that later) – while he’s had immense success as a horror writer over the years (co-creator of both the Saw and Insidious franchises), as a director his first two features haven’t exactly set the world alight, with debut Insidious: Chapter III garnering similar takes to the rest of the series but ultimately turning out to be a bit of a damp squib quality-wise, while his second feature Upgrade was a stone-cold masterpiece that was (rightly) EXTREMELY well received critically, but ultimately snuck in under the radar and has remained a stubbornly hidden gem since. No such problems with his third feature, though – his latest collaboration with producer Jason Blum and the insanely lucrative Blumhouse Pictures has proven a massive hit both financially AND with reviewers, and deservedly so.  Having given up on trying to create a shared cinematic universe inhabited by their classic monsters, Universal resolved to concentrate on standalones to showcase their elite properties, and their first try is a rousing success, Whannell bringing HG Wells’ dark and devious human monster smack into the 21st Century as only he can.  The result is a surprisingly subtle piece of work, much more a lethally precise exercise in cinematic sleight of hand and extraordinary acting than flashy visual effects, strictly adhering to the Blumhouse credo of maximum returns for minimum bucks as the story is stripped down to its bare essentials and allowed to play out without any unnecessary weight.  The Handmaid’s Tale’s Elizabeth Moss once again confirms what a masterful actress she is as she brings all her performing weapons to bear in the role of Cecelia “Cee” Kass, the cloistered wife of affluent but monstrously abusive optics pioneer Aidan Griffin (Netflix’ The Haunting of Hill House’s Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who escapes his clutches in the furiously tense opening sequence and goes to ground with the help of her closest childhood friend, San Francisco cop James Lanier (Leverage’s Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter Sydney (A Wrinkle in Time’s Storm Reid).  Two weeks later, Aidan commits suicide, leaving Cee with a fortune to start her life over (with the proviso that she’s never ruled mentally incompetent), but as she tries to find her way in the world again little things start going wrong for her, and she begins to question if there might be something insidious going on.  As her nerves start to unravel, she begins to suspect that Aidan is still alive, still very much in her life, fiendishly toying with her and her friends, but no-one can see him.  Whannell plays her paranoia up for all it’s worth, skilfully teasing out the scares so that, just like her friends, we begin to wonder if it might all be in her head after all, before a spectacular mid-movie reveal throws the switch into high gear and the true threat becomes clear.  The lion’s share of the film’s immense success must of course go to Moss – her performance is BEYOND a revelation, a blistering career best that totally powers the whole enterprise, and it goes without saying that she’s the best thing in this.  Even so, she has sterling support from Hodge and Reid, as well as Love Child’s Harriet Dyer as Cee’s estranged big sister Emily and Wonderland’s Michael Dorman as Adrian’s slimy, spineless lawyer brother Tom, and, while he doesn’t have much actual (ahem) “screen time”, Jackson-Cohen delivers a fantastically icy, subtly malevolent turn which casts a large “shadow” over the film.  This is one of my very favourite Blumhouse films, a pitch-perfect psychological chiller that keeps the tension cranked up unbearably tight and never lets go, Whannell once again displaying uncanny skill with expert jump-scares, knuckle-whitening chills and a truly astounding standout set-piece that easily goes down as one of the top action sequences of 2020. Undoubtedly the best version of Wells’ story to date, this goes a long way in repairing the damage of Universal’s abortive “Dark Universe” efforts, as well as showcasing a filmmaking master at the very height of his talents.

14.  EXTRACTION – the Coronavirus certainly has threw a massive spanner in the works of the year’s cinematic calendar – among many other casualties to the blockbuster shunt, the latest (and most long-awaited) MCU movie, Black Widow, should have opened to further record-breaking box office success at the end of spring, but instead the theatres were all closed and virtually all the heavyweights were pushed back or shelved indefinitely.  Thank God, then, for the streaming services, particularly Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, the latter of which provided a perfect movie for us to see through the key transition into the summer blockbuster season, an explosively flashy big budget action thriller ushered in by MCU alumni the Russo Brothers (who produced and co-wrote this adaptation of Ciudad, a graphic novel that Joe Russo co-created with Ande Parks and Fernando Leon Gonzalez) and barely able to contain the sheer star-power wattage of its lead, Thor himself.  Chris Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, a former Australian SAS operative who hires out his services to an extraction operation under the command of mercenary Nik Khan (The Patience Stone’s Golshifteh Farahani), brought in to liberate Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal in his first major role), the pre-teen son of incarcerated Indian crime lord Ovi Sr. (Pankaj Tripathi), who has been abducted by Bangladeshi rival Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli).  The rescue itself goes perfectly, but when the time comes for the hand-off the team is double-crossed and Tyler is left stranded in the middle of Dhaka with no choice but to keep Ovi alive as every corrupt cop and street gang in the city closes in around them.  This is the feature debut of Sam Hargrave, the latest stuntman to try his hand at directing, so he certainly knows his way around an action set-piece, and the result is a thoroughly breathless adrenaline rush of a film, bursting at the seams with spectacular fights, gun battles and car chases, dominated by a stunning sustained sequence that plays out in one long shot, guaranteed to leave jaws lying on the floor.  Not that there should be any surprise – Hargrave cut his teeth as a stunt coordinator for the Russos on Captain America: Civil War and their Avengers films.  That said, he displays strong talent for the quieter disciplines of filmmaking too, delivering quality character development and drawing out consistently noteworthy performances from his cast.  Of course, Hemsworth can do the action stuff in his sleep, but there’s a lot more to Tyler than just his muscle, the MCU veteran investing him with real wounded vulnerability and a tragic fatalism which colours every scene, while Jaiswal is exceptional throughout, showing plenty of promise for the future, and there’s strong support from Farahani and Painyuli, as well as Stranger Things’ David Harbour as world-weary retired merc Gaspard, and a particularly impressive, muscular turn from Randeep Hooda (Once Upon a Time in Mumbai) as Saju, a former Para and Ovi’s bodyguard, who’s determined to take possession of the boy himself, even if he has to go through Tyler to get him.  This is action cinema that really deserves to be seen on the big screen – I watched it twice in a week and would happily have paid for two trips to the cinema for it if I could have.  As we looked down the barrel of a summer season largely devoid of blockbuster fare, I couldn’t recommend this enough.  Thank the gods for Netflix …

13.  THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 – although it’s definitely a film that really benefitted enormously from releasing on Netflix during the various lockdowns, this was one of the blessed few I actually got to see during one of the UK’s frustratingly rare lulls when cinemas were actually OPEN.  Rather perversely it therefore became one of my favourite cinematic experiences of 2020, but then I’m just as much a fan of well-made cerebral films as I am of the big, immersive blockbuster EXPERIENCES, so this probably still would have been a standout in a normal year. Certainly if this was a purely CRITICAL list for the year this probably would have placed high in the Top Ten … Aaron Sorkin is a writer whose work I have ardently admired ever since he went from esteemed playwright to in-demand talent for both the big screen AND the small with A Few Good Men, and TTOTC7 is just another in a long line of consistently impressive, flawlessly written works rife with addictive quickfire dialogue, beautifully observed characters and rewardingly propulsive narrative storytelling (therefore resting comfortably amongst the well-respected likes of The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War, Moneyball and The Social Network).  It also marks his second feature as a director (after fascinating and incendiary debut Molly’s Game), and once again he’s gone for true story over fiction, tackling the still controversial subject of the infamous 1968 trial of the “ringleaders” of the infamous riots which marred Chicago’s Diplomatic National Convention five months earlier, in which thousands of hippies and college students protesting the Vietnam War clashed with police.  Spurred on by the newly-instated Presidential Administration of Richard Nixon to make some examples, hungry up-and-coming prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is confident in his case, while the Seven – who include respected and astute student activist Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and confrontational counterculture firebrands Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Succession’s Jeremy Strong) – are the clear underdogs.  They’re a divided bunch (particularly Hayden and Hoffman, who never mince their words about what little regard they hold for each other), and they’re up against the combined might of the U.S. Government, while all they have on their side is pro-bono lawyer and civil rights activist William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), who’s sharp, driven and thoroughly committed to the cause but clearly massively outmatched … not to mention the fact that the judge presiding over the case is Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a fierce and uncompromising conservative who’s clearly 100% on the Administration’s side, and who might in fact be stark raving mad (he also frequently goes to great lengths to make it clear to all concerned that he is NOT related to Abbie).  Much as we’ve come to expect from Sorkin, this is cinema of grand ideals and strong characters, not big spectacle and hard action, and all the better for it – he’s proved time and again that he’s one of the very best creative minds in Hollywood when it comes to intelligent, thought-provoking and engrossing thinking-man’s entertainment, and this is pure par for the course, keeping us glued to the screen from the skilfully-executed whirlwind introductory montage to the powerfully cathartic climax, and every varied and brilliant scene in-between.  This is heady stuff, focusing on what’s still an extremely thorny issue made all the more urgently relevant and timely given what was (and still is) going on in American politics at the time, and everyone involved here was clearly fully committed to making the film as palpable, powerful and resonant as possible for the viewer, no matter their nationality or political inclination.  Also typical for a Sorkin film, the cast are exceptional, everyone clearly having the wildest time getting their teeth into their finely-drawn characters and that magnificent dialogue – Redmayne and Baron Cohen are compellingly complimentary intellectual antagonists given their radically different approaches and their roles’ polar opposite energies, while Rylance delivers another pitch-perfect, simply ASTOUNDING performance that once again marks him as one of the very best actors of his generation, and there are particularly meaty turns from Strong, Langella, Aquaman’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (as besieged Black Panther Bobby Seale) and a potent late appearance from Michael Keaton that sear themselves into the memory long after viewing. Altogether then, this is a phenomenal film which deserves to be seen no matter the format, a thought-provoking and undeniably IMPORTANT masterwork from a master cinematic storyteller that says as much about the world we live in now as the decidedly turbulent times it portrays …

12.  GREYHOUND – when the cinemas closed back in March, the fate of many of the major summer blockbusters we’d been looking forward to was thrown into terrible doubt. Some were pushed back to more amenable dates in the autumn or winter (which even then ultimately proved frustratingly ambitious), others knocked back a whole year to fill summer slots for 2021, but more than a few simply dropped off the radar entirely with the terrible words “postponed until further notice” stamped on them, and I lamented them all, this one in particular.  It hung in there longer than some, stubbornly holding onto its June release slot for as long as possible, but eventually it gave up the ghost too … but thanks to Apple TV+, not for long, ultimately releasing less than a month later than intended.  Thankfully the film itself was worth the fuss, a taut World War II suspense thriller that’s all killer, no filler – set during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic, it portrays the constant life-or-death struggle faced by the Allied warships assigned to escort the transport convoys as they crossed the ocean, defending their charges from German U-boats.  Adapted from C.S. Forester’s famous 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by Tom Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider (Get Low), the narrative focuses on the crew of the escort leader, American destroyer USS Fletcher, codenamed “Greyhound”, and in particular its captain, Commander Ernest Krause (Hanks), a career sailor serving his first command.  As they cross “the Pit”, the most dangerous middle stretch of the journey where they spend days without air-cover, they find themselves shadowed by “the Wolf Pack”, a particularly cunning group of German submarines that begin to pick away at the convoy’s stragglers.  Faced with daunting odds, a dwindling supply of vital depth-charges and a ruthless, persistent enemy, Krause must make hard choices to bring his ships home safe … jumping into the thick of the action within the first ten minutes and maintaining its tension for the remainder of the trim 90-minute run, this is screen suspense par excellence, a sleek textbook example of how to craft a compelling big screen knuckle-whitener with zero fat and maximum reward, delivering a series of desperate naval scraps packed with hide-and-seek intensity, heart-in-mouth near-misses and fist-in-air cathartic payoffs by the bucket-load.  Hanks is subtly magnificent, the calm centre of the narrative storm as a supposed newcomer to this battle arena who could have been BORN for it, bringing to mind his similarly unflappable in Captain Phillips and certainly not suffering by comparison; by and large he’s the focus point, but other crew members make strong (if sometimes quite brief) impressions, particularly Stephen Graham as Krause’s reliably seasoned XO, Lt. Commander Charlie Cole, The Magnificent Seven’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Just Mercy’s Rob Morgan, while Elisabeth Shue does a lot with a very small part in brief flashbacks as Krause’s fiancée Evelyn. Relentless, exhilarating and thoroughly unforgettable, this was one of the true action highlights of the summer, and one hell of a war flick.  I’m so glad it made the cut for the summer …

11.  PROJECT POWER – with Marvel and DC pushing their tent-pole titles back in the face of COVID, the usual superhero antics we’ve come to expect for the summer were pretty thin on the ground in 2020, leading us to find our geeky fan thrills elsewhere. Unfortunately, pickings were frustratingly slim – Korean comic book actioner Gundala was entertaining but workmanlike, while Thor AU Mortal was underwhelming despite strong direction from Troll Hunter’s André Øvredal, and The New Mutants just got shat on by the studio and its distributors and no mistake – thank the Gods, then, for Netflix, once again riding to the rescue with this enjoyably offbeat super-thriller, which takes an intriguing central premise and really runs with it.  New designer drug Power has hit the streets of New Orleans, able to give anyone who takes it a superpower for five minutes … the only problem is, until you try it, you don’t know what your own unique talent is – for some, it could mean five minutes of invisibility, or insane levels of super-strength, but other powers can be potentially lethal, the really unlucky buggers just blowing up on the spot.  Robin (The Hate U Give’s Dominique Fishback) is a teenage Power-pusher with dreams of becoming a rap star, dealing the pills so she can help her diabetic mum; Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of her customers, a police detective who uses his power of near invulnerability to even the playing field when supercharged crims cause a disturbance.  Their lives are turned upside down when Art (Jamie Foxx) arrives in town – he’s a seriously badass ex-soldier determined to hunt down the source of Power by any means necessary, and he’s not above tearing the Big Easy apart to do it. This is a fun, gleefully infectious rollercoaster that doesn’t take itself too seriously, revelling in the anarchic potential of its premise and crafting some suitably OTT effects-driven chaos brought to pleasingly visceral fruition by its skilfully inventive director, Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Nerve, Viral), while Mattson Tomlin (the screenwriter of the DCEU’s oft-delayed, incendiary headline act The Batman) takes the story in some very interesting directions and poses fascinating questions about what Power’s TRULY capable of.  Gordon-Levitt and Fishback are both brilliant, the latter particularly impressing in what’s sure to be a major breakthrough role for her, and the friendship their characters share is pretty adorable, while Foxx really is a force to be reckoned with, pretty chill even when he’s in deep shit but fully capable of turning into a bona fide killing machine at the flip of a switch, and there’s strong support from Westworld’s Rodrigo Santoro as Biggie, Power’s delightfully oily kingpin, Courtney B. Vance as Frank’s by-the-book superior, Captain Crane, Amy Landecker as Gardner, the morally bankrupt CIA spook responsible for the drug’s production, and Machine Gun Kelly as Newt, a Power dealer whose pyrotechnic “gift” really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Exciting, inventive, frequently amusing and infectiously likeable, this was some of the most uncomplicated cinematic fun I had all summer.  Not bad for something which I’m sure was originally destined to become one of the season’s B-list features …

[frankburn]

okay so i don’t know When i followed u but i’ve been seeing ur succession posting for a while and it’s kinda got me curious abt watching it?? maybe u have answered this before but is tom/greg actually gay, heavily homoerotic subtext, or fandom glasses only

i definitely recommend watching it if ur interested !!!! its my fave show the writings fucken brilliant lmao. i will be honest, it took me about like 7 epsiode into the first season to rly get interested but once it got good for me it got GOOD and i havent stopped rewatching it now that i Know stuff, and i always find myself catching smthn new with each watch.

with tom and greg its funny bc theres no way theyre just like that and its not on purpose but also sadly nothings confirmed and?? i heard tell of streg 🙄 (straight greg) and was too tired to look into it but pls...pls all i ask........ look @ him hes so gay pls and tom is so so bi. anyway tomgreg is alive and well 4 me. i dont think its just fandom glasses only like the shit is Very homoerotic everyone ive shown the show to has noticed this

[superman86to99]

Adventures of Superman #505 (October 1993)

REIGN OF THE SUPERMAN! The Reign is over, and Superman does what we’d all do after being dead for several weeks and coming back to life: no, not visiting your parents, making out with Lois Lane.

Or more than making out, since the next page starts with a caption that says “Later...” and lets us know that they both had to take a shower. (NOTE: Check Don Sparrow’s section below for artist Tom Grummett’s definitive take on what happened in that scene.)

Their post-resurrection bliss comes to a stop when they remember a little detail: Clark Kent is still presumed dead. How are they gonna explain his return without making the extremely smart residents of Metropolis suspect that Superman and the guy who looks like Superman but with glasses are actually the same person? Superman’s mind immediately goes into “wacky bullshit excuse” mode and he starts spitballing ideas, like claiming Clark lost his memory, or was carried by underwater currents, or was abducted by aliens. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that last one would work, since there have been THREE major alien invasions in the past few years, but Lois thinks no one would be dumb enough to fall for that sort of thing. Really, Lois? No one?

At this point, Superman picks up some supervillain activity with his super hearing, so he gets dressed and goes there (though it would have been pretty intimidating for the criminals if she’d shown up in that shower rug). A bank uptown has been taken over by Loophole, a S.T.A.R. Labs accountant who stole a gizmo that allows him to phase through walls. When Superman shows up to arrest him and his henchmen (are they all villainous accountants?), Loophole literally puts his first through Superman’s chest, instantly killing him. RIP Superman, again.

Nah, Supes just swats Loophole away and breaks the gizmo, causing him to get his crotch area stuck inside a vault door. Now he has to change his supervillain name to “DickVault”.

(I freaking love Maggie Sawyer, btw.)

After that, Superman goes to one of the areas trashed by his fight with Doomsday and helps clean up the junk that’s still laying around there. It’s then that he finally reunites with his best friend and most valued ally: Bibbo Bibbowski. (Jimmy Olsen’s there, too, unfortunately.)

Bibbo also introduces Superman to the dog he named in honor of his home planet, Krypto -- and it’s Krypto who provides the most significant moment in this issue. The little mutt starts barking at some debris from a destroyed building, leading Superman to examine it with his X-Ray vision and find some kids underneath.

Turns out the kids had been trapped there since the Doomsday fight, leading some random passerby (fine, Jimmy) to wonder if Clark could be stuck in a similar situation. Superman and Lois look at each other... giving Superman an idea and providing the premise for next week’s issue.

Character-Watch:

First appearance of Loophole (real name Deke Dickinson, C.P.A.), who would become a running joke in Karl Kesel’s Superman and Superboy comics. While his phasing powers are tech based, he also has the metahuman ability to somehow convince attractive women to be his girlfriends/henchwomen despite being a balding little dweeb. In this issue he’s dating a blonde named Sheila (who wears a mask, so maybe she’s actually hideous), but I’m pretty sure he had other girlfriends in future issues.

Plotline-Watch:

As I said... holy shit, five years ago: no one draws Supes coming back to Lois after an extended absence like Tom Grummett. This scene is almost a remake of the one from that issue when Superman comes back from his time traveling jaunt. There’s also a callback to Man of Steel #25, when Lois hears a tap on her window and thinks it’s Superman, but it’s just some dumb bird. This time she gets it the other way around:

Don Sparrow says: “There’s a cute visual callback to the last time Superman returned after a long absence on page 18, when Superman is reunited with Jimmy. It’s a near identical pose to Action #643, where Superman returned from exile in space (and in that moment, infected Jimmy with Eradicator-based space sickness, womp womp).” I think he’s instinctively throwing Jimmy up in the air, hoping the cold of space will kill him. Unfortunately, both murder attempts were unsuccessful.

As seen above, Maggie Sawyer wasn’t too convinced that “Fabio” here was Superman at first. That changes when he calls her “Captain” even though she was recently promoted to Inspector, and she’s like “only a dead man wouldn’t know all the precise ranks for the local authorities!”

The surviving non-Supermen are seen arriving at S.T.A.R. Labs for medical care after the Engine City showdown. Don again: “There are some mild continuity issues stemming from Superman #82, which perhaps wasn’t completely finished being drawn while Tom Grummett worked on this one, as Steel’s costume is almost entirely intact, when we last saw it a week ago, it was in tatters. Ditto the Eradicator, who was a wizened husk, and now is apparently a scorched Ivan Drago.” Let’s assume Supergirl worked her clothes-shifting magic on Steel’s armor and the Eradicator’s, uh, hair.

There’s a short scene where Superboy is visited by his reporter pal Tana Moon, who tells him she quit WGBS and is leaving Metropolis. Awww. Goodbye, Tana. Or should I say... aloha?

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor Jr. has a scene with Dr. Happersen where he says he intends to control or destroy anyone who wears the “S” symbol. Basically, if he can’t date them, they should be dead. He also instructs Happersen to help Cadmus’ Director Westfield get in contact with disgraced genetician Dabney Donovan. Get ready for a whole lot of clone-related shenanigans in the near future.

And now, more Don Sparrow-related shenanigans after the jump!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

This issue is another favourite of mine, but I suppose all these issues around the Death and Return are faves when I really think about it.  My copy of this issue had the holographic fireworks cover, and it’s a good one.  I like that Superman and the Daily Planet are in natural colour, rather than holograms.  The cover credit goes Karl Kesel, Tom Grummett and Doug Hazlewood, so I’m not sure what the breakdown was (or if that’s just a handwritten cover credit, just in case?

The story opens with one of my favourite sequences ever, with Lois waking up on her couch, having fallen asleep following the events in Coast City.  I love the detail as she opens the curtain, we see her engagement ring, indicating she knows her real fiancée has returned.  This sequence is followed up by two pages of splashes of the passionate reunion of the best couple in comics.  All beautifully rendered as they float, locked in a passionate, sunrise kiss.  Just lovely (so lovely that I am willing to overlook a small colouring error, as Lois has black hair instead of reddish brown for one panel).  [Max: I can confirm that they fixed that in the collections.]

What follows is a very cute scene, and one of some debate among Superman fans.  There’s no overt evidence of what happened, all we get is a cryptic caption reading “later…”.   Again, I give credit for the subtlety of the writers, as they depict this scene in a way that can be read either way:  maybe Clark and Lois made love, and the “later” we are seeing is afterglow, or maybe Lois had a shower since she just woke up after sleeping in her clothes. Then, after calling his parents while Lois showered, Clark had a shower himself.  I feel like today’s writers wouldn’t feel the need to be so subtle, and might lose the sweetness of this scene.  

In previous posts, I’ve talked about my friendship with artist Tom Grummett, and how as a boy, I would wear him out with all my dumb fanboy questions.  Once I got older, and our relationship became a little more collegial (just a little closer to collegial, since I in no way consider myself anywhere near his level of skill or success) I would really try not to geek out too much when we would visit.  But the one question I had to ask was about this scene, and what their intention, or interpretation of it was, as I was always curious.  Once I had explained to him which issue it was (the guy has drawn hundreds, so they might not all spring to mind immediately!) he admitted that his assumption was indeed that they had sex.  So there you have it!  [Max: Hot damn! Another Superman ‘86 to ‘99 exclusive, folks!]

However you wish to read this scene, the choreography, and facial expressions as they horse around is really sweet and fun, and such a nice, light tone compared to the do-or-die pace the books had been for the last two years or so.   Their easy joking, and back and forth banter really do a great job of showing them as a real couple.

It’s a very nice pose on Supergirl as she lifts off, simultaneously spurning Superboy’s romantic complaints.

I quite like the design on Loophole, and his gang.  Loophole himself kinda harkens back to the silver age villains of the Flash as Loophole has a unique hairline, is an older man, with a pretty average build, which was rare for villains in the 90s. His gimmick is pretty cool, too, though we immediately see its vulnerability.

The tearful reunion of the now-sober Bibbo and Superman is also a great moment—if anyone rose to the challenge of living up to Superman’s example in his absence, it was Bibbo.  I discuss the scene in more detail in the observations later, but the image of Superman whipping away the debris on page 20 is a great visual, with the dust clouds creating great motion and urgency.

On the whole, a great first issue for the return to the never-ending battle, even if it brings us closer to Grummett’s last issue on this title (for a while).

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Could Superman referring to the Death and Return storyline as a dream, while stepping out of the shower be a reference to Dallas, and their famous about-face after an unpopular season, where Bobby Ewing emerged from the shower, alive and well, dismissing a yearlong storyline as a dream?

A coy semi-reference to perhaps my favourite line in the first Reeve Superman film on page 8, where Supergirl says “Easy steel, we’ve got you, then later adding, “ok, you got me”.  

A little more issue-to-issue dissonance with Superboy reversing himself from the end of Superman #82, where he said clearly that Kal-El was Superman, with Superboy pointing out that legally, he’s Superman and not Kal. [Max: I think he’s talking strictly in the legal sense, since he helps Superman deal with the legal problem on the next issue and all.]

For all the times that Superman has used his heat vision on guns (as he does on page 11), we’ve never seen rounds get burned off, firing on their own because of the heat.  There might be an idea there.    

An odd sorta-cameo by Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon, who Superman apparently defeats in the waterfront district. An eagle-eyed reader asked Larsen about it in issue #6 of Dragon’s own book, and he nixed any proper crossover rumours, saying it was just a shout-out from Larsen’s buddy Karl Kesel.  Eventually they’d meet in Superman/Savage Dragon: Chicago, a so-so crossover in 2002.

A slightly bawdy joke from one of the Loophole gang, on page 14, as the moll of Deke Dickson calls Loophole a “weiner”.  

GODWATCH: A stirring moment when Superman detects the faintest of life-signs, thanks to would-be super-pup, Krypto, and responds “God willing” when someone asks if anyone is alive in that wreckage.  The love and concern in Superman’s eyes when he says he’d “rather die” himself than let little ones perish is a tear-jerker moment for sure.  Bonus points for the cuteness of Superman heaping praise on Krypto, with the line “if that dog could fly, I’d put a cape on him…”

Question:  Does Jimmy know? He comes up with the solution to the Clark problem very conveniently.  Maybe he’s smarter than we (and by we, I mean Max) give him credit for? [Max: It was all Krypto! Okay, I’ll concede that maybe Jimmy is as smart as a dog.]

[ellynneversweet]

⭐️?

In reference to this post, which it took me fucking ages to find again. Thank you! And I’m so sorry for taking so long to reply — I realised that what I wanted to talk about was what I was in the middle of writing, and then I couldn’t find the original post FML.

For my free choice, I’m going to carry on about everything that gets broken (so far) in A Pillar I am of Pride, and why including literal babies as characters in fic is real fucking hard (ie they have next to no character or plot agency), so without further ado, may I present:

Stains and Spills and Smashed Pots, Oh My!

Right, so, Pillar started out as something along the lines of ‘five times the Darcys and the Rushworths had dinner together, and one time they didn’t,’ but because I am bad at sticking to a plan, it evolved into something slightly looser, and then I decided what I really wanted to do was write a something with a very formal and elaborate grammatical structure that was, on the face of it, about a bunch of posh, mostly dignified adults having a series of dull and unpleasant parties, and smuggle in a series of smutty jokes and wink-wink-nudge-nudge moments about which of the characters are getting it on (or failing to) with whom. To that end, everything I can think of gets to be a metaphor, and, by the way, looking back I’m slightly pissed that in the opening scene I missed a trick and wrote the Darcys buttering toast instead of muffins.

So far the list of smashed, stained, and broken items goes:

Item: Mr Darcy’s ornamental orange tree in a chinoiserie pot, and (nearly) his gigantic hallway mirror.  Damage: the former is tripped over by Mr Rushworth while blind drunk, and the latter he catches himself on. All of this is scene-setting ‘rich people showing off’ decor, and what this does on a literal level in-fic is aggravate Elizabeth and Darcy, who do not appreciate their stylish, comfortable home being smashed up by an oafish guest. On another level, it’s building on canon!Darcy’s associations with gardens and gardening, being someone who creates and produces within the community. On the jokey metaphor level, orange blossom is associated with marriage, and (smashed) mirrors with bad luck. The Rushworth marriage isn’t going to last, and they’re going to cause some stress to their married neighbours.

Item: Elizabeth’s evening outfit, and probably her dignity. Damage: stained by leaky breasts as a result of startled-awake-and-crying Darcy baby The cherry on top of the ruined evening. Elizabeth spends the evening watching half her guests delving into a previously unknown family feud and in the process accidentally insulting the other half, then finds out her husband is, unexpectedly, completely wasted (along with five other increasingly-less-decorous gentlemen, two of whom are her overnight guests while the others are theoretically responsible for getting their female family home safely after dark in an city and era not known for being particularly safe) and ends up trying to resolve everything in the middle of a wardrobe emergency while comforting a distressed baby. On the metaphorical level, the point is this: everyone’s body is betraying them. The resident drunks are telling, or at least alluding to, deep dark secrets, and generally making smutty jokes, and Elizabeth, who is trying very hard to be Mrs Darcy v1 (dignified society hostess with the mostess) instead ends the evening as Mrs Darcy v2 (frustrated, upset and hormonal young mother).

Item: Mr Bennet’s letter to Elizabeth, in which he probes her opinions on Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford. Damage: squirted by breastmilk when Darcy toddler picks a fight with Darcy baby during breakfast. This part is where I got stuck for ages. The Rushworths (Mr and Mrs) have seriously offended Elizabeth, who is a champion grudge holder, but she needs to continue to be around them on some level without overtly influencing the overarching Mansfield Park plot, in order for the fic to progress. Maria in particular has insulted Elizabeth’s parenting, so it makes sense to bring the children in. Only problem is: they’re babies. There’s a limit to what you can do with characters who are babies. In this case, they get to be useful metaphoric sounding boards for the actions and beliefs of the adults around them. Elizabeth is in this scene (and the fic more generally) meant to be set up as Maria’s foil. Elizabeth has a successful-by-regency-standards marriage, which means money, respected social status, and production of a (male) heir and spare. That she gets on with her husband is a cool bonus. So, on the metaphoric level, the kids are representative of the key regency gentlewoman KPI: legitimate fertility (and, by extension, legitimate sexual activity). Elizabeth has children, Maria doesn’t (yet), which puts Elizabeth up a peg on the social pole. Also, Mansfield Park is, among other things, heavily focused on siblings fighting with each other and older siblings in particular fucking things up for their younger siblings. The Darcy kids are having a playful wrestle, not trying to destroy each other’s lives and inheritances — the worst that happens is that Darcy baby gets his breakfast interrupted — but it’s a chibi reflection of the Bertram and Crawford siblings arguing with each other. On a jokey level — a bit of stray bodily fluid gets squirted onto a sheet (of paper), and literally stains Maria’s name. It’s crude, but hey.

Item: Broderie Anglaise table runner. Damage: ripped as a result of Darcy toddler playing racetracks on it with a toy horse. The table runner was originally Elizabeth’s sleeve, but that got changed because it didn’t quite flow, scene-structure wise. Darcy toddler is busy practising being a gentleman’s heir, which for a three year old in a century where hotwheels haven’t been invented yet, means playing with a toy horse. This carries on from the previous two incidents, but it basically boils down to Darcy toddler (and absent Darcy baby) being physical, living proof of Elizabeth having a sex life. Ripping a bit of white lace with a miniature Trojan horse is, again, probably a bit crude, but it is meant to reinforce the previous points made about married (prospective) mothers whose bodies conspire to produce proof of just what(/whom) they’re doing.

Item: baby rattle. Damage: Darcy baby throws it out of his pram, and eventually has his toy-chucking privileges taken away by Elizabeth after it gets dropped in something nasty. Small babies like to drop and throw stuff, which, I am assured, is a normal part of child development that works around concepts like figuring out how their hands/gravity work and engaging in trust exercises with their carers. Darcy toddler — Edward — and Darcy baby — Richard — are pretty deliberately named after Elizabeth’s decent, respectable Uncle Gardiner, and Darcy’s witty and sensible bestie/cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, who got the standard fandom first name this time round. Darcy baby takes after his (wilful) mother. In canon, pre-fic, Elizabeth Bennet, country girl next door, does a fair bit of damage by failing to consider the consequences of her actions. Obviously, at this point, Darcy baby is...a baby...and a toy accidentally thrown into a pile of horse manure is not, say, a ruined housemaid or pile of gambling debts, but grown up Richard Darcy, wealthy and charming second son of a very important family, exists in potentia as the sort of problem young man that turns up over and over again in Austen (George Wickham, Tom Bertram, Henry Crawford etc). His parents, who are all too aware of what it means to let a man in that social position regard himself as untouchable, are making a point of teaching both their sons that their tiny baby actions have tiny baby consequences. Which leads to 6 and 7:

Item: A red ball. Damage: the ball, offered by Mary Crawford after Richard has had his rattle taken away, meets the same muddy fate. This whole scene was structured around Mary getting to say ‘boys will be boys.’ Mary Crawford is a perennial fave of mine, but I do have one problem with her, and that is her blaming Fanny for Henry’s part in ruining Maria’s life. Mary, who has just been asked not to encourage Richard throwing his toys, goes ahead and does just that. She’s been raised with Henry, and it shows — she sees nothing wrong with indulging privileged kids and encouraging thoughtless behaviour. Darcy baby here also serves as a stand-in for his adult namesake, Colonel Fitz, another second son, whom Elizabeth is considering attempting to throw together with Mary. Mary is playful, charming, and fascinating, but possibly not very reliable. And, of course, because the original sin metaphor is inescapable in western culture, the toy she offers in this show of defiance is red, round, and chewable.

Item: Elizabeth’s redingote. Damage: drooled upon by Darcy baby In keeping with the Elizabeth-as-Maria’s foil theme, Elizabeth suffers a (very minor) public disgrace, and her various female companions attempt to address it. Georgiana Darcy  suffers an acute case of fremdschamen, and immediately informs Elizabeth of the issue before attempting to fix it but becoming overwhelmed, Anne Wentworth actually does fix it quietly and without a lot of fuss, Julia Bertram is completely ineffectual, and Mary Crawford, after ignoring what was going on right in front of her eyes and letting things progress past where they should have been, tries to cover it up by using the gentleman culprit as a shield, and relying on him to do something he is absolutely not going to do, ie, sit still (Not suggesting that Darcy baby is at fault or malicious — he’s just the unfortunate teething stand-in for Mary’s complicity in adult!brat Henry’s bad behaviour).

[taronunwin]

Can you rate everything that Taron has been in from your most fave to least fave? And giving your reasonings why for each eating. I know this might be hard to do since all of his work has been exceptional. I’m asking just because I need more Taron content to watch!

OH GOODNESS. Anon, this is a bit cruel, like making me pick my favourite children. Except I have no children. And I do not like children. I digress. I’ll do my best.

I haven’t seen most of the voice projects Taron’s done so I’ll just list what I have seen and I’ll rank it by things I love/need to watch vs. things I’m okay with watching less often, sort of thing. This is mostly spoiler free but there are a few things that dance on the line. I’m sorry, but it’s really hard not to explain what I love without getting into that territory.

Deep breath. Here goes.

1: Rocketman

When I watched Rocketman for the first time, it was one of the last of Taron’s films I had yet to see because I was the least interested in it. I wasn’t an Elton fan, I don’t care for musicals usually, and I’m not really keen on movies set in the 60′s. So there were three strikes against it and I honestly expected just to start it, click through, and move on because Taron didn’t look hot (I thought then). But by the time he got to the ‘My name is Elton Hercules John’, I was invested. Wholeheartedly. Even when Taron wasn’t on screen, I cared deeply for the young Elton. I was rooting for him, grieving with him, and feeling his pain and triumphs. That movie is an experience unlike any other and by far the best movie I have ever seen in my life. The pure joy that radiates from it… it’s hard to explain.

2: Kingsman: The Secret Service

I’m not a Bond fan myself, I’m not really an action spy genre fan, so, again, I didn’t really think I was going to love this movie. But when Lee Unwin jumped on that grenade, I sat up in my seat a bit. That wasn’t the beginning I expected. And then when his son showed up later, stuck in a life that was so miserable and far from what he wanted, my heart broke. Eggsy had so much depth and went so far beyond just a ‘kid from the wrong side of the tracks’ kind of backstory. The details about him being in gymnastics and giving it up because his mum had married a good-for-nothing creep who influenced him more than he wanted to admit, being borderline brilliant and doing so well in school, only to give that up, too, because what was the freaking point in even trying when he was stuck in a world he wanted desperately out of. And then, when that opportunity presented itself and he was able to join the Marines, the first time in his life he really felt like he had some control and could follow in his dad’s footsteps, his mum wouldn’t allow it because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. So Eggsy was utterly stuck. Until…

3: Robin Hood

Oh, Robin. I think we all have a very special soft spot for the first character we fell for in an actor’s filmography and Robin is it for me. I had seen Testament of Youth in early 2019 with my teary eye on Kit Harington but I loved Edward. However I had no idea that Robin was Edward when I started watching, I just like historical movies and thought Robin Hood looked interesting. When I started, I was pretty smitten by Rob right away but as the movie progressed and the story got more convoluted, I became less interested and actually turned it off. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Robin. So I started watching it again and boy did I fall hard. The movie itself? A stupid, fun, absolutely enjoyable ride. Robin? Well, that beautiful boy is the love of my life.

4: Billionaire Boys Club

I’ve seen a lot of negative things about this film, not just in regards to a certain cast members, but in general and frankly? I don’t get it. I know I’m probably watching it through rose-coloured glasses but honestly, I really, genuinely love this movie. I love Dean’s charisma and charm, how much he loved Joe and wanted the best for him—for both of them. I love Dean’s darkness and how his character gradually yet drastically changed over the course of the film; how he started as just a passionate, excited, enthusiastic young man and ended in such a different place, even willing to give up something and someone that meant so much to him because desperation drove him to do something he would have never imagined himself doing in the beginning. I loved watching the relationships fray and bonds dissolve and I especially loved watching Taron play Dean’s darkness so realistically, paying special attention to how he portrayed Dean’s growing drug addiction. Also? Dean is really hot. There’s no way of sugarcoating that.

5: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

I love Eggsy Unwin. I mean I love him. Like I-would-take-a-bullet-for-him kind of love. And though the charm of the first movie being his transformation from street kid to Kingsman isn’t really in this film, it’s still such a fun ride. My favourite parts are mostly the quieter moments, the little scenes where we see Eggsy, less as a Kingsman and more as himself. His struggles, his doubts, the times where he’s shaken and isn’t really sure of anything anymore. But what I love about Eggsy is how fiercely he gets back up every time. Doesn’t matter what is thrown at him, he will take it all and become stronger.

Also… “Let’s make this fair,” Eggsy says, tucking his right arm behind his back and effectively evening the playing field with his one-armed opponent before he engages in a to-the-death brawl with the man he trained with until snapping his neck with one. hand. still. tucked. behind. his. back.

6: Testament of Youth

I hate this movie so much. But I also love this movie so much. Edward is one of the sweetest angels there ever was and I adore him with every fiber of my body. And watching his story… well… it makes me more unhappy than I’ve ever been. Does that stop me from watching it? No. But it does limit the number of rewatches. It’s one of those movies that’s so perfect for a sad mood. Like when I need a good cry, oh my goodness, I need look no further. But looking beyond just the emotional nature of the movie, Taron’s performance is so so beautiful. Watching Edward’s boyish innocence peeling away to show the more hardened, deeply hurt and disillusioned young man as the war’s grip on him tightens? Honestly, it’s stunning.

7: The Last of the Haussmans

A play? Really? What’s that doing on this list? Well, let me tell you. Taron’s character, Daniel, affected me very deeply and I’m not even being silly. This list is already too long so I’ll spare the details but Daniel… he got me. He’s such a sweetheart, so genuine and pure and good and earnest and wonderful and the kiss scene, well, I don’t even know how many times I’ve watched it. The tenderness he displays, the sweet uncertainty and awkwardness yet visibly bolstering himself so he can do what he’s so unsure about… oh, Daniel. For it being one of his first public roles, I am consistently amazed by how good Taron is. Daniel’s awkwardness does not feel like Taron’s discomfort. Daniel is entirely his own person with his own story and struggles and watching his story unfold is a really lovely thing.

8: Eddie the Eagle

This sweet, fun, encouraging, uplifting, charming movie, oh, how I love it. Though I have to be honest, it isn’t one of those movies I just need to watch like every month or two. I love enjoying it with other people and seeing their reactions but it’s not one that I crave at any given time. Even still, Eddie is a pure sweetheart and I love him and his heart-filled, passion-fueled, wonderful story.

9: The Smoke

I’m actually kinda surprised where this landed on the list, but let me explain. Dennis Severs is so much like Eggsy in terms of being a very layered, three-dimensional, incredibly deep and fascinating character. I love him. Nay, I adore him. I loved watching his ups and downs, his gut-wrenching revelations and triumphant success as he strove hard to free himself of the bondage of his past. But the show itself? It’s, same as Eddie, not something I feel drawn to watch at any given time. It’s intense, very intense, and asides from Dennis’ story, I didn’t really connect with any character, other than Kev. So in terms of watchability and enjoyment of the project overall, this ranks lower, but in terms of Dennis and his importance to me? Well, he ranks much higher ❤

10: Legend

So the first time I checked out this movie, I skipped through, searching for Taron. Next time, I skipped through again. Then I bought the movie and actually watched it, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Ignoring the obviously impressive feat that was Tom Hardy playing both main characters, I loved the relationship between Reggie and Frances and found myself caring quite a lot for them. I don’t know that I’ll ever watch it in full again but I do skip through every so often for Teddy and thoroughly that little psycho.

11: Sing

I’ve mentioned that I don’t really watch much of Taron’s voice work because I find it annoying to hear him but not be able to see him. That’s my ultimate problem with Sing. While a very enjoyable movie and one I’ve watched a few times all the way through, I don’t necessary care enough about the other characters to want to watch it from start to finish. I’m happy just skipping through for Johnny’s story, but there’s always that nagging feeling of knowing Taron is back there somewhere, looking breathtaking, and I can’t see him. And for that, I must place this sweet movie at the bottom of this list.

This honestly took hours for me to write and perfect but I think I’m good with it now. Phew!

I’m so sorry, anon, I’m absolutely certain you were looking for like two sentences to explain what I liked or didn’t like about each of these but instead you got a mini review. Whoops.

[oldjocklowden]

ooc meme

@hollywoodland-hqs​

How long have you been roleplaying?

I had a brief Sherlock RP blog way back in late 2010/early 2011 with my friend RPing as John, but that was short-lived. I didn’t properly start until December 2013. So... been a while now. 

What are your hobbies outside of writing?

I’ve really gotten back into watch movies recently, especially foreign language films. Other than that, I play video games, and mess about on my piano and ukulele and do a bit of singing alongside.

Do you have any pets? Tell us about them!

I do! We’ve always had cats, and we currently have two. There’s Darwin, who was named after the scientist for being seemingly intelligent at a week old, but his intelligence hasn’t improved much since - he can just about catch a leaf in the garden and that’s it. Then there’s Oliver, who despite being four years old, still looks like a big kitten and acts like it, too. He’s very sweet, loves attention, and is basically the cat version of my niece, who is only two weeks older than him. We also legally still own a cat called Lily (Darwin’s mum) but she abandoned us after we got Oliver because she hates boy cats (despite having two litters in very quick succession hmmm). I also have two tortoises called Tiberius and Tarquin, and they are hysterical, and even fussier eaters than me, which is saying a lot.

If you had a month of free time to learn to do something new, what would you choose?

There’s a few songs I want to learn on piano, so I’d probably focus a lot of time on that. Maybe learn how to edit videos better, too. 

Do you listen to music while you write? What are three songs on your playlist?

Sometimes. Most days, I have youtube videos on in the background, but occasionally I’ll have a music day. I have a playlist (called the Trash List) of Jaoirse songs for whenever I’m doing posts relating to them especially, but sometimes other stuff too. Songs include: Take My Hand by Skerryvore (their wedding song), Tell Me sung by Saoirse, and Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran, because of course. Are we surprised by any of these??

What’s a favorite recent youtube video/channel?

Oh christ, I spend so much time watching youtube videos. But some of my fave creators at the moment are: Markiplier (including Unus Annus with Ethan), PewDiePie, Drew Gooden, Kurtis Conner, Cody Ko, and Noel Miller. (Hit me up if you like any of these dudes so we can chat about em all day k thx.)

Tell us one random fact about you!

I studied history at university (although I had to dropout due to ill health), and I have a bunch of weird history books that I will happily talk to you about if you want me to. Just brace yourself. 

Who is an FC you’ve always wanted to use but haven’t yet?

Oof don’t open that can of worms! I’d quite like to play a YouTuber at some point, since I love watching their videos so much. Mark or Felix especially, love those dorks. 

What’s a plot you’ve always wanted to write but haven’t yet?

Uhhh Jack and Gigi makeout? @itsgenevievegnt​

Do you have a favorite plot you’ve seen someone else in the group do

Everything Harry and Fionn. @hcurly​ @tommyboyfionn​

Who on the dash makes you smile?

Everybodyyyyyy. I love seeing people I’ve known for half a decade, and people I haven’t had the chance to get to know yet, and everybody in between. Except @emwatsonx​ obviously. 

What is your favorite memory in the group?

Jaoirse wedding was a masterpiece, if I do say so myself. And it was so much fun seeing all the threads going on on the dash and people having a good time ic and ooc. That was pretty special. @irishxseahorse​

What’s your favorite thing about your celeb(s)?

Jack: he’s so unashamedly himself - one minute he’s all cool and suave, and the next he’s making himself laugh and being ridiculous. He and I also have the exact same sense of humour.

Zac: I love how untouched by fame he seems to be. He’s still best friends with people he’s known since he was young, and doesn’t really care much about being in the spotlight unless it’s on his own terms, and he just seems so down to earth and curious about everybody around him, whilst also being amazed that people are interested in him and his life. All that despite being in the public eye for half his life.

Timmy: he’s so weird and wonderful - doesn’t care about societal norms, does his own thing, embraces that he isn’t perfect, and loves messing with people for a laugh. 

George: he is the sweetest guy ever. Every time I read a new article or story about him, it’s somebody saying how kind he is to literally everybody. He knows everybody he works with’s name and takes the time to get to know them between takes. 

What’s a plot you miss?

Just from this group? First thing that comes to mind is always Tomily, because we all know I’m Tomily trash forever. But honestly just any plot involving Tom I miss, because I played him for such a long time. 

What would you love to see this group do in the future?

OOC barbecue yeah?? At mine. Nah, honestly, just more of the same - group trips, events, but not being bombarded with that kind of thing all the time. I like that it’s not overwhelming.

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #5: Will Slater.

Talking mullets and other manes with the man behind the internet’s definitive ‘exploding helicopters in movies’ catalog.

“Man cannot live on helicopter explosions alone. Even I need some occasional intellectual nourishment.”

A London-based PR man by day, by night Will Slater has a thing (and a podcast, blog and Twitter account) for movies that feature exploding helicopters. According to his Letterboxd bio, it’s “the world’s only podcast and blog dedicated to celebrating the art of exploding helicopters in films… as well as shaming those directors who dishonor the helicopter explosion genre”. As Will tells Jack Moulton, he also loves film noir, Wakaliwood, masala movies and much more. Just don’t get him started on the one action movie cliché that never fails to disappoint.

Sylvester Stallone takes aim in ‘Rambo III’ (1988).

First things first, have you ever had a ride in a helicopter? Will Slater: What, do you think I’m mad? Of course I’ve never flown in a helicopter! If I’ve learned anything from watching hundreds of films where helicopters spectacularly explode, it’s that they are a singularly dangerous form of transport. You never know when Sylvester Stallone is going to pop up with an explosive-tipped arrow and blow you out of the sky.

I’m going to say the words ‘the definitive action hero/heroine’. Who pops into your head first? No runners-up. Go. Snake Plissken, no question, for a number of good reasons. First, there’s the look: that eye-patch, the beaten-to-hell leather jacket and Kurt Russell’s lustrous mane of hair. Second, there’s the attitude: his contempt for authority, the drawled sarcasm and all-round bad-assery. And I also like that he doesn’t have any special abilities. Action heroes generally tend to be either musclebound slabs of beef—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone—or martial arts specialists—Jean-Claude van Damme, Jackie Chan—Plissken is just a pissed-off, angry dude who’s trying to stay alive. He’s very relatable. Plus, I’d argue he pretty much invented the whole anti-hero formula that rules our screens today.

Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s ‘Escape from New York’ (1981).

When did you start your podcast and which film got you into looking deeper into the topic? It was while watching the cheesily bad Cyborg Cop that I first had an epiphany about the weird and wonderful ways in which helicopters seemed to continually explode in movies. But the film that convinced me to start documenting the phenomenon was Stone Cold. If you’re not familiar with the film, it was an attempt to turn former gridiron star and mullet-king Brian Bosworth into the next big action star. It goes without saying that Stone Cold did not transform ‘The Boz’ into the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the film wasn’t a total failure as it features a helicopter explosion that is as brilliant as it is gloriously stupid.

And that was the prompt to start the Exploding Helicopter. I launched the website in 2009, and the podcast followed 2015. Since we started, our aim has been a simple one: to celebrate the strange and inventive ways that helicopters explode in films.

Motorcycle crashes into helicopter in mid-air, ‘Stone Cold’ (1991).

When did you join Letterboxd? What are your favorite features here? I’ve been around since 2013. As for the features, the stats are very cool. When you dig into your viewing history, you can learn some very revealing things about yourself. For example, I generally like to think I have a commendably broad taste in film, and watch only the most important and influential works from every decade, genre and country. But then you look at the data and find you’ve watched Thunderball nine times in the last five years, so maybe you’re not as cool as you thought.

We noticed that your profile faves are low-key and explosion-free, given your theme of choice. Why these four and not Die Hard four times? Man cannot live on helicopter explosions alone. Even I need some occasional intellectual nourishment, between watching whirlybird conflagrations. There’s a little bit of nostalgia tied up in The Ipcress File. I first saw it as a kid, and it made a big impression on me. It’s very stylishly directed, has a great John Barry score and a star-making turn from Michael Caine. I’m a big film noir fan and Sweet Smell Of Success is a beautifully sour tale of cynicism and manipulation. To borrow the words of Burt Lancaster in the film, it’s a “cookie full of arsenic”.

Jean-Pierre Melville is my favorite director and Le Samouraï was the first of his films that I saw. What Melville does so masterfully in this, and his other crime films, is distil the elements of film noir. Basically, he takes the genre’s iconography—the gun, the trenchcoat, the fedora—and familiar plot tropes—the betrayed assassin, the heist gone wrong, the criminal doing one last job—then elevates them above cliché into something almost mythic. And what do I really need to say about Taxi Driver, other than it’s a masterpiece?

Now you say you shame directors who dishonor the art of helicopter explosions? Which directors did you dirty? Well, one of the biggest names in our hall of shame is Tony Scott. For a man who specialized in hyper-stylized, pyrotechnic-filled action movies, he flunked every helicopter explosion he filmed. In our eyes, one of the most egregious offences you can commit is failing to show the helicopter explosion. And in both Spy Game and Domino, old Tony cheats the viewer by having the chopper fly out of sight before it explodes. Now, I can accept such visual chicanery in a low-budget film, where they presumably don’t have the money to stage the scene, but what’s Tony’s excuse? If you look at his filmography, at one time or another he’s wrecked trains, planes and automobiles in spectacular fashion. But for some reason, he repeatedly couldn’t be bothered to give us a satisfying chopper conflagration. At a certain point, it starts to feel like a personal slight. Tony, what did I ever do to you?

In your immortal words, “a film is always improved by a helicopter explosion.” When has this been especially true? When you see lists of worst-ever directors, Uwe Boll is a name that always seems to turn up. And, according to the internet, one of his worst-ever films is the video game adaptation, Far Cry. Now, I’m not going to try [to] convince you that the film is a neglected classic, but it does have a very imaginatively staged exploding helicopter scene. It’s too convoluted to explain here, but take my word that it wouldn’t be out of place in a Fast and Furious movie.

What about the unsung heroes; the stunt artists, the pilots, the pyrotechnicians, the VFX wizards who have worked on numerous iconic action moments, all of whom deserve a shoutout? Personally, I don’t understand why the Academy doesn’t have a stunts category. But if they did, I’d be lobbying hard for Spiro Razatos to get the first award. These days, he works as a stunt coordinator on the Fast and Furious and Marvel films, but I’d like to draw people’s attention to some of his early work. Back in the nineties, he did a lot of work with PM Entertainment films, an independent company that made low-budget action films for the home video market.

They might not have had much money, but they put every cent on the screen with glorious, raucously inventive set pieces that were often more spectacular than big-budget Hollywood offerings. And remember: this was in pre-CGI times, so every death-defying detail was absolutely ‘real’. Go back and watch films like The Sweeper or Rage, and you’ll can see why Super Spiro has now graduated to these more prestigious gigs.

Narrow this list down for us: which is the ultimate most spine-tingly epic “we got company” movie moment? As you may have gathered, I do like an action movie cliché. When you encounter one in a film, it’s like meeting an old friend. And one of my favorites is when someone uses this classic line of dialog to signal that a car chase or a gun battle is about to start. I’ve heard people deliver the line in all sorts of ways–funny, scared, angrily and often just badly. But if you want spine-tingly, then you can’t beat Harrison Ford in Star Wars. He drops the line during the detention-block scene after failing to bluff an imperial officer. As soon as he says it, John Williams’ iconic score kicks in. It gives you the ‘feels’ every time.

“Boring conversation anyway.” Han Solo and Chewbacca in ‘Star Wars’ (1977).

And which action movie cliché can you simply not stand? Stop it: my hackles are raising just thinking about it. For me, the trope that never fails to disappoint is the ‘reluctant’ hero being convinced to take up arms and join the fight. You know the scene. Invariably, the hero has hung up their spurs and is living a bucolic existence ‘off the grid’, when a gruff buddy shows up asking them to risk almost certain death by taking on ‘one last job’. Now, dialog is rarely an action film’s greatest strength, and these beefcake actors generally are not cast for their dramatic chops. Which means we get subjected to the same perfunctory and uninteresting scene over and over again: “I told you, I’m out the game”, “Goddamnit, we need you”, “OK, I’ll do it”. These scenes just never work and are never less than painful to watch.

Which up-and-coming action director are you most excited about? In terms of up-and-coming action talent, I’d pick the director Stefano Sollima. I first noticed his work on a couple of TV series: the fantastic Italian crime dramas, Romanzo Criminale and Gomorrah. The way he composed shots really stood out, and it was clear he had a very cinematic eye. He rather reminds me of Michael Mann. He’s now on Hollywood’s radar and got to direct Sicario: Day of the Soldado the other year. And he’s lined up to make a Tom Clancy adaptation with Michael B. Jordan. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Have you witnessed the glory that is Wakaliwood—Ugandan DIY action filmmaking—three of which make Letterboxd’s official top ten films by black directors? Which international films do you feel out-match Hollywood? I love the Wakaliwood films I’ve seen. It’s fascinating to watch action films from around the world and see their different styles and flavors. Recently, I’ve been trying to investigate Indian cinema and, in particular, what are known as ‘masala movies’. These mix action, comedy, drama, romance and dance numbers into one big, crazy, entertaining mess. They’re a unique experience. If you want to check one out, I’d suggest Dhoom 2. It’s bananas.

Can you believe there are only two female directors represented in your exploding helicopter list? Do you believe that’s due to systemic or thematic reasons? You have to say it’s systemic. Men have dominated filmmaking for more than a century. Until women have the same opportunities to direct and make films as men, it’s impossible to know what their interest may or may not be in blowing up helicopters. [Will has previously written about the search for “true gender equality in the world of exploding helicopters”.]

To address the elephant in the room, how has Kobe Bryant’s unfortunate death earlier this year changed the way you look at these scenes? Obviously, I appreciate that Kobe Bryant’s death was very shocking and a tragedy for his family and fans. But basketball really is not a thing on these grim shores, so it didn’t register with us unenlightened Brits other than [as] a sad headline about a US sports star.

What was your most anticipated movie event of 2020 before Covid-19 pushed every tentpole back? That’s easy: No Time To Die. I’m a huge Bond fan and as soon as tickets were available, I booked myself in to see it on opening day at an IMAX. But if the Daniel Craig era is synonymous with anything, it’s lengthy delays between films.

Freerunner Sébastien Foucan in the opening scene from ‘Casino Royale’ (2006).

What’s a fond memory you have in theaters related to the Bond franchise? I remember going to see Casino Royale. I was excited, but also nervous to see it. The Brosnan era had ended with the risible Die Another Day: invisible cars, kitesurfing and, worst of all, John Cleese’s awful Q. Since that had come out, we’d had Mission: Impossible, Bourne and the Triple X films, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Bond might be finished. Then the first ten minutes of Casino Royale happened. And while that outstanding parkour-inspired chase was terrifically exciting, it also hit me like cinematic Valium. I suddenly realised I could sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that 007 was going to be just fine.

Are you planning on returning to theaters as soon as you can? When would you feel comfortable? I’m taking a wait-and-see approach. I’d love to see films back on the big screen again, but I want to know more about how cinemas are going to maintain social distancing inside.

Finally, what three Letterboxd accounts should we all be following? Why not give Todd Gaines, Jayson Kennedy or Fred Andersson a follow? If you’re interested in genre films that are a little off the beaten trail, they’ll likely all steer you towards some hidden gems.

[annavolovodov]

ya girl saw the downton movie and has some Thoughts

if you followed me at all from 2011-2015 then you'll know i am firmly Team Downstairs and did not want this movie to happen, just so you all know what position i'm coming from here.

everything below is gonna be spoilery af. if you haven't seen it yet and want info just hmu. if you have seen it and want to talk about it please message me bc i’m always up for chatting about Downton.

okay but the title sequence with the music building and cresting as we come up over the hills and get our first shot of downton... goosebumps. tbh i don't know shit about film making but i can't fault the technical aspects (costumes, music, cinematography). the impact of the increased budget was felt from the very first second.

for the plot i’m gonna split things by character to make it easier. i’ll probably go to see it again and maybe after that i’ll have some deeper Thoughts but i missed being able to liveblog during the film so enjoy my rambling first reactions.

upstairs peeps

everything with violet was iconic. i'm glad that they didn't neglect her relationship with isobel and ofc maggie and imelda played fantastically off each other. pretty much everyone has already highlighted the scene with violet and mary at the end and it tied things up perfectly between them. violet and mary are so so similar and violet has been pushing for her to inherit since before S1. the movie showed us that mary is basically running the estate even if she doesn't get the the title and i can totally see why violet is confident in the future of downton now. that being said, i don't think violet will actually die. maggie has been talking about leaving since 2012 and fellowes obviously put this in as a get-out clause for her should she want to go, but i reckon they’ll convince her to do more. if carson's palsy can be mysteriously cured, so can violet's conveniently vague illness.

i already knew that robert and cora weren't gonna be in it much, but i wish we could've seen cora finding out what was happening with edith and helping her out. it wouldn't surprise me if there was a deleted scene there cause that whole storyline felt a little disjointed. i completely forgot that cora knew about the pregnancy and was so confused at how the queen foud out about it all. i don't think we got anything in robert and cora's bedroom, or anything with cora/baxter and robert/bates, which would've also been very welcome but i guess they can only fit in so much.

onto mary: this may be an unpopular opinion but god i miss her long hair. yeah i know it wasn't the style of the time but her wig in this one was tragic and they need to fix it. i absolutely love that t*lbot didn't exist for a solid 95% of this movie and mary got her rightful place ruling downton. i wouldn't say i’m the biggest mary fan but her arc felt like one of the more satisfying ones of the movie imo.

as someone who has been firmly #teamedith from day one i am delighted to see my girl happy and successful. literally all her outfits were A+ and not to be gay on main but those scenes of her in her nightclothes getting ready for bed gave me my rights. i’m sad that she seems like she's either given up her magazine or has less of a role in it now based on what they said outside???? she did seem unsatisfied with aspects of her position so hopefully she'll go back to doing some writing and publishing cause that was a good fit for her, and if edith and bertie are “modern” enough to travel without servants surely edith moving away from traditional grand lady duties and back to her magazine that wouldn't be an issue. 

the mention of sybil being gone seven years? yeah. thanks for the pain. tom accidentally saving the monarchy on no less than two occasions is the ultimate "congratulations you played yourself" moment but the fact he thought the army had sent someone to check up on him is the level of republican i'm trying to be on. i'm a bit ehhhh on his relationship with lucy, mainly cause i'd rather the screentime given to the newbies had went to established characters. but like sybil/tom was a wholeass epic romantic slowburn spanning several years through a war and across class divisions n shit and meanwhile lucy/tom have known each other for forty eight hours and had three conversations in a hallway so like obviously that’s just gonna pale in comparison????? like it just is???? i guess i don't hate it but it just was a bit unnecessary and the time coulda been spent on better things.

isobel didn't have all that much to do on her own but i appreciated her scenes with violet and i love that she was the one to figure out that lucy was lady whatever's daughter. penelope wilton's facial expressions during some of the exchanges with violet were great. i see lord merton has also undergone a miraculous recovery from his apparently serious anaemia but he also didn't appear much which was a big win for me!

team downstairs aka the ones i turned up to see

as a downstairs supremacist who has watched the screentime distribution in previous fifty two eps of the show, it’s fair to say i had low expectations going in. i expected a grand total of 10 minutes for the servants combined and i think that's why i was unexpectedly happy with what we got. ideally we would've ditched the subplots involving the personal lives of the royals and all the stuff w imelda staunton and her maid but oh well it could’ve been worse and i'll take any breadcrumbs i can get. anyway i'm eagerly awaiting the team downstairs cut of the film one of yall will hopefully make when the dvd comes out. the only part that was far, FAR too upstairs heavy for me was the last sequence of the film after the royals left and i think we would've benefitted from rounding things off with team downstairs after the ball.

so i guess retirement magically cured the palsy carson had, but i guess after matthew’s miraculous recovery anything can happen at downton when it comes to health. Fellowes is getting a free pass for retconning this one cause i cba with more death/loss. mary going to carson for help and him immediately coming to her aid was very sweet. kinda wish we'd find out what he was up to post-Downton (except for his gardening) tho.

i was expected zero carson/hughes content in this movie and yet !!!! and yet!!!!!! we were somewhat well-fed. like carson (incorrectly) thinking he can control the other servants and mrs hughes' "oh that went well charlie, start as you mean to go on" hdjksjs i love them. and the lil scene in their cottage ugh. also we got more of them using their first names and yeah i guess that makes sense given they've been married for a while now but as i said, i had low expectations.

mrs hughes is still like the best person ever but wbk. her vs. the royal housekeeper = iconic. i kinda felt bad for royal whatsherface in some ways because she clearly didn't know who she was up against THE elsie hughes who has vanquished much scarier foes in her time. the other servants were never gonna win that battle.

the 0.5 seconds of baby bates *chef's kiss* perfection. god i am slightly bitter it was only 0.5 seconds given the fuckin multiseason journey leading up to his birth. tbh we should've ditched everything involving the personal lives of the rando new characters and let baby bates have some of that time but fellowes loves upstairs too much to let that happen. the small interaction was adorable though and i'm glad the mention of his name was subtle enough that we can retcon it cause i truly believe anna and bates would've came up with a more creative choice than that. genuinely i'm so curious about their whole living situation and how they cope with a smol child while working full time but i doubt fellowes even considered that so y’know. what can we do. i enjoyed the breadcrumbs but i wanted more.

i did go into this film with the mindset of "something awful will probably happen to anna or bates," cause that's what usually happens in these things but plot twist!!!! we saw them smile on multiple occassions!!!! what a nice change for us all! i swear every time anna bates smiles an angel gains their wings. her scenes with mary were good and i'm happy their friendship made it into the film. you know what else i was happy to see? the EXTREMELY UNDERRATED brotp between anna and baxter. there was a couple of moments with them standing next to each other or talking to each other and it warmed my heart. like yass two of my fave people are friends. it's a big win for me. 

i'm sure i read something about brendan being involved in another project which meant he couldn't film too much (i'm curious to whether this impacted the lack of baby bates scenes?) and while it's true that bates didn't have a ton of scenes, i didn't feel like he was absent which was good.

thomas had the best storyline imo. i don't blame him for being angry that mary brought in carson and it was actually very iconic of him to go off in the library like that. i found it hilarious that while everyone else was panicking at downton he went off on gay adventures. i really wish we'd gotten this "thomas makes a gay friend then discovers the village's underground gay scene THEN gets a boyfriend" in the show cause that would've been SO MUCH BETTER than some of the other stuff that got stretched out across the last couple series (like the love quadrangle with daisy/ivy/alfred/jimmy). like, imagine thomas’ movie plot as a series-long arc. the impact. i liked the guy that was his maybe-boyfriend and i hope any continuation keeps that relationship going.

mrs p and daisy continue to be the mother-daughter duo of the century. i thought both of them were supposed to be moving to the farm post-S6 but i suppose that would've meant they wouldn't be in the film hence why it didn't come to fruition. i guess they could all move once daisy and andy get married. mrs patmore didn't get a great deal to do but i still feel like i saw her a fair amount. comrade daisy was awesome and is definitely me when i see any monarchy-related stuff. somewhere over the last few seasons she's developed into one of the most interesting characters in downton and we don't talk about that enough. andy trashing the boiler was immature af but at the same time i feel like it completely makes sense for daisy to take that as a compliment. it’s just such a daisy thing to do?????

now, there is one thing i kinda fucked up here. while i went into the film with low expectations for everyone else, i fully expected baxley to be A Thing because how could i not and boy did i come out looking like boo boo the fool. i guess baxter and molesley have continued the tradition of Agonisingly Long Downstairs Slowburns which would be okay if we were still getting one season per year but is quite frankly rude when we're on rationed content like this. the first half of the film i thought it was gonna be revealed that they were together or something but then that scene at the end implied they're dancing around each other and my god is it frustrating. i would give so much to trade tom and lucy's romantic subplot for a baxter/molesley one but once again i know that's an unrealistic dream.

definitely not enough baxter in general but that one shot of her, anna and mrs hughes standing in the same frame was worth the price of my cinema ticket. still love molesley even tho he's a monarchist.

in terms of the overall downstairs stuff, i'm euphoric at seeing all these people interact with each other again. as we all know, found family is the best trope and since the servants are literally the epitome of that every moment focussed on them is like chicken soup for my weary soul. was the revolution against the royal servants realistic? no. was it realistic for the two people who came up with most of the plot to be the ones who went to jail for doing literally nothing wrong and would therefore want to avoid stuff that could get them in trouble with an all-powerful family? also no! however, seeing downstairs all working together for a common goal is content that appeals directly to me and i am thankful.

shoutout to the last scene which is the best way the movie could've ended it for me. use of first names AND walking home together? thank u fellowes.

tldr; team downstairs fan who was strongly anti-movie, went in with low expectations, was pleasantly surprised.  there are a shit ton of things i’d change but i just really loved seeing these characters who all mean so much to me again. obviously the only reason this film happened was for financial reasons rather than a desire to continue the storyline (cause the finale tied things up perfectly imo) but i wish they'd done a two-part miniseries instead to ensure everyone gets some screentime. two ninety minute specials every few years would work much better if everyone wants to keep downton going but i guess that doesn't bring the cash in like a movie does.