#why do source material to tv or film adaptation writers always feel the need to change the canon. why. why why why. did you want to subvert

[gojuo]

>no maelor in b&c

>no alicent in b&c

@ ryan condal K|LL YOUR$ELF

[wisteria-lodge]

Can you talk about the cursed child?

I have two main questions when it comes to The Cursed Child. The first is... why was this project made? Because it wasn’t for the money, and it wasn’t for the fans, so I have to assume it was for JK Rowling herself. And my second question is - who is Jack Thorne????

Because he wrote it. John Tiffany is a director who works with Thorne and it's based on a “story” by JKR. But Jack Thorne is a kinda highbrow, kinda indie English playwright, and he clearly wrote most if not all of it. The biggest thing he had done at the time was a stage adaptation of indie Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, so back 2016 I was asking myself - why is he attached to this project. (Is he related to JKR? Did he win a contest? Is he just that charming?) 

But now I’ve got a theory. See, Jack Thorne has one other very important credit. He is the showrunner and head writer of the well-regarded HBO His Dark Materials TV show adaptation… AND that TV show and Cursed Child were in production at the exact same time. There’s no real way of knowing which project came first - they were both announced in 2015, and Cursed Child was announced first, but then a stage play needs a whole lot less pre-production than three seasons of a prestige television show. 

What I think (but cannot prove) is this: JKR got wind of the His Dark Materials HBO TV series, and thought ‘I want one of those too.’ Especially because she is now in the process of getting exactly that.

I can’t actually prove that JKR is even aware of the His Dark Materials franchise… but I very much suspect that she is. Northern Lights/Golden Compass was released two years before Philosopher's Stone, and… a British author, YA , fantasy, seems like you’d want to read that for market research purposes alone - or at least keep tabs on it to make sure it was doing well. I also think there’s a similar vibe to the worldbuilding, a certain kind of ‘urban fantasy, but make it pre-industrial revolution’ that you don’t get with like, Edith Nesbit, the fantasy writer JKR most often credits as an influence.

Now His Dark Materials was a failed film series. They made one in 2007 with plans to make more, and it didn’t really go anywhere. I was a huge fan of both HDM and HP at the time, and I liked the film… but even then I thought it was hurting itself by trying so hard to be Harry Potter, when the tone of HDM was always darker and more sinister. It was nice to watch the HBO show treat the source material as basically a gritty adult drama (which it always was, just told through an intelligent child’s POV.) 

Marketing of movie vs marketing of TV show: 

Movie Lyra vs TV show Lyra:

HOWEVER. I think it would be very easy, if you were JKR, to see the new series as an adaptation of a children's book (comparable to Harry Potter), only marketed to adults. And you might think... that's kind of a cool idea. So I don’t know who approached who. But I do think that at some point Jack Thorne and J. K. Rowling were in the same room, and someone suggested… why don’t we give Harry Potter a little bit of the His Dark Materials treatment.

Because both vibe-wise and theme-wise, there are A LOT of comparisons you can make between the HBO His Dark Materials and The Cursed Child. They’re both fantasy with a kind of gloomy and oppressive feel. They focus a lot on bad parents, especially parents unable to communicate with their kids. They both feature alternate universes as a major theme, and the main plot of both revolves around a (doomed) attempt to resurrect a sacrificed innocent, and various adults attempting to separate a pair of friends. (The relationship between Albus and Scorpius is easily the best part of Cursed Child. Especially Scorpius, who is lovely.) But like… no one wanted a version of Harry Potter that felt like a knockoff version of His Dark Materials.

To me, Cursed Child feels less like an adaptation, and more of an attempt to recontextualize the original Harry Potter books into something more serious and more impressive. Cursed Child reframes Harry’s whole deal as being caught in a cycle of abuse due to the Dursleys… which the show frames so much more threateningly than the books ever did. (Harry himself is the titular 'cursed child,' which amusingly means that the full title is essentially Harry Potter and Harry Potter.)

This play also does not frame Ron/Hermione as the best marriage... which makes me think of the when JKR told the Sunday Times

I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it... if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility.

And then Cursed Child gives us a little Hermione/Snape, and we know how JKR feels about Snape. We revisit a lot of Slytherin characters actually, and it turns out they’re not just bad guys! Albus is in Slytherin (even though the end of Book 7 was written in a way that REALLY heavily implied he would ask to be Gryffindor just like Harry did.) The ‘all Slytherins are baddies’ thing seems to be an aspect of the worldbuilding that JKR is attempting to retcon. The earliest example of this is the 2008 interview where she talks about “Slughorn galloping back with Slytherins [to rejoin the battle of Hogwarts] but they’d gone off to get reinforcements first,” which… does not happen. That is not a thing that happens in the book. Also she was okay with the last three Potter films framing Draco way more positively than the books do, a trend which continues into Cursed Child. Draco’s easily the best parent in the whole thing.)

And (possibly the most important bit of recontextualization…) I think Cursed Child was supposed to make the Epilogue seem good, instead of something that all her fans either made fun of… or completely ignored. 

In a lot of ways, I think JKR is doing a George Lucas, but instead of going back and re-cutting, re-mastering and adding to the original work the way he is - she’s writing more and more sequels (and more and more additional material) in an attempt to make  the problems of the earlier books go away. 

I could talk for a very long time about The Cursed Child. Yes, everyone is out of character, yes it’s world breaking, it contradicts the original series all the time, it doesn’t work structurally, it's stupid that the villain is Voldemort's secret daughter Evil Tonks, and it reads like fanfiction (in the sense that it uses tons of fanfiction tropes, often not super well.) I probably will talk about that stuff more eventually, but first I wanted to make sense of why it even exists, in the first place. 

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Inside The Day of the Jackal, Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch’s ambitious new hitman series

GQ speaks to the cast and crew behind Sky’s reimagination of the classic Frederick Forsyth assassin novel

By Jack King26 July 2024

1973’s The Day of the Jackal is one of those classic thrillers that dads pass down as a rite of passage. Failing that, you might’ve caught it on ITV 2 on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Edward Fox plays the titular Jackal, a killer for hire who is commissioned by the French militant far-right to assassinate president Charles de Gaulle in 1963. The film’s first act savours his scrupulous attention to detail: buying a bespoke rifle that can be broken down into innocent parts, and fake documents from a forger, for example, who he murders with his bare hands after an ill-judged extortion attempt. He’s a shapeshifting lone wolf — well, jackal — we learn little about, aside from how good he is at killing people.

Such a rich character whose mark is felt on no end of hitman movies (see David Fincher’s 2023 genre homage The Killer) is ripe for reinterpretation. Not that it went especially well last time: the last, loose attempt to contemporise The Day of the Jackal came in 1997, starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere, and the critics called it a dud. But 27 years later, Sky & Peacock have armed up for their own present-day reimagination of the source material, thrusting the Jackal into our fraught world of political division and ever-present global danger. The script was written by Top Boy writer Ronan Bennett, and the series executive produced by Downton Abbey's Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant, alongside its stars Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.

“We both loved the book, and we saw the film when we were kids — I’ve seen the film many times through my life, and always really respected it,” Neame, alongside Marchant, tells GQ. While they were at first cautious to tackle source material that carries with it such esteem, to expand the story across episodic TV seemed too good an opportunity to turn down. “It’s such an iconic, gripping story, that to revisit that in a contemporary context, with all the benefits of a multi-episodic show … we thought that would be really interesting to take this much-respected IP and develop it this way.”

Marchant concurs. “I think that [this] kind of title is in so many peoples’ consciousness … And then yeah, what’s the benefit of telling this with a bigger canvas?”

Marcell Piti/SKY/Carnival

The most obvious difference about this version is that it takes place in the modern world. “If we’d stayed in the past, why do it? You can’t better the film,” Neame says. But in classic The Day of the Jackal style, Redmayne’s hitman still rocks up to more European cities than a gap year interrailer.

And so we begin the series with the Jackal in Munich. Not that we immediately recognise him: he is decked out in wrinkly prosthetics, fake hair, and wears contacts and fake teeth, disguised as an elderly German janitor. This is his way past security and into the campaign headquarters of a divisive far-right demagogue, for the purposes of a mission that we daren’t spoil further. Once he has done what he needed to do — ruthlessly dispatching half the staff with a silenced pistol en route — he makes a daring escape by absailing from the roof, just as the police arrive. So, to illustrate the vibe: think Mission Impossible meets Daniel Craig’s Bond, if he went really rogue.

It’s not a one-to-one adaptation, but fans of the original text and film needn’t worry — there’s a distinct air of reverence for them both throughout, and this version broadly covers the same plot beats, though the story is expanded for TV. As for the Jackal himself, Redmayne’s performance both evokes Fox’s classic turn and feels of his own making. “[Fox’s] performance will always be in my mind, because I loved it so much as a kid,” Redmayne tells GQ. “But at the same time, I wanted the audience to be able to oscillate between this sociopathic coldness, and a human being who wants a life, and happiness.” He points to Natalie Humphries’ costume design as an explicit example of homage. “She spoke specifically about the kind of dandy, slight peacock-y quality of the [original] movie, and how we wanted to keep those elements,” Redmayne says.

“If you know the original [film], you get these Easter eggs through the show — even some of the lines are exact matches, and scenes were shot literally shot-for-shot from the original,” Marchant says. “So there are treats along the way if you know it, which felt important to us [with] our love of the original as well.”

Some time after that first job, the familiar story begins, after a mysterious would-be client on the dark web offers the Jackal retirement-grade money for the biggest hit of his career. (Given the contemporary setting, the target obviously isn’t Charles de Gaulle, but that’s as much as we’re allowed to reveal.) And throughout the series, in another noticable departure from the source material, we delve into the Jackal’s backstory and the whys and wherefores of his chosen career path. (Again, I’d love to say more, but there’s a red laser dot hovering over my chest and I value my life.) Redmayne was initially cautious about digging too far into the Jackal’s background — traditionally, the whole point is that you know nothing about him — but was won over by the script.

“Edward Fox’s performance is so brilliant because it’s two and a half hours of [an] extraordinarily charismatic enigma,” Redmayne says. “So my challenge, as a fan of that, was to go, Wait, I only want to take this on if I feel like there is a way that unpacking [the backstory] doesn’t feel glib.”

The chance to explore the Jackal’s past, Neame says, was always the point. “We knew right from the beginning that we wouldn’t make a 10 part television series where the main character is only ever a ghost,” he says. “So that’s where the whole idea of the private life, the personal life — the fact that he’s trying to juggle this extraordinary professional world with a normal lifestyle [came from].” Later on in the series, Neame notes, another character tells him what should’ve probably been blindingly obvious: in this line of work, a healthy worThe Day of the Jackal isn’t just about the titular contract killer, of course. Much of the story unfolds as a thrilling cat and mouse, as hot on the Jackal’s heels is the Sherlock to his murderous Moriarty, French detective Claude Lebel, played in 1973 by Michel Lonsdale. In this new adaptation, the character is reimagined as a wily MI6 agent, Lashana Lynch’s Bianca, whose counter-terrorism training and firearms expertise make her the Jackal’s ideal foil. (Despite the connection you might make to one of Lynch’s more recent roles, this grounded, bureaucratic vision of His Majesty’s secret service bears little resemblance to Bond.)k/life balance just isn’t sustainable.

“When you have a character that is in either a powerful position, or works for a powerful organisation, there is this danger that happens whereby women get boxed into one of two things: either the strong one, or the damsel in some way. Both of them are actually unfair,” Lynch says. “The Bianca that I read in the first three episodes was someone who had a strength that was born from vulnerability, had confusion [around] her own identity and her meaning to her work … There was so much within her world, and within her being, that felt like a real person.”

Bianca is seen as an irritating disruptor by the people she works for; early in the first episode, her boss scribbles a mid-meeting note calling her a pain in the arse. But her unrelenting drive and commitment soon gets results. “She pushes people’s boundaries. She is annoying. She does not stop. And her boundary pushing gets very dangerous,” Lynch continues. “But [she is] also really well intentioned. She has a good heart, she just doesn’t know how to use it. Which is exciting to play, and exciting to watch.”

Ultimately, the Jackal and Bianca have more in common than they might initially realise. “The entire premise of these two protagonists that are deeply flawed human beings, and yet also compelling human beings who are kind of mirroring each other, and yet on a one way path to collision, I found that interesting,” Redmayne says.

“You’re on side with both of these people, despite the horrendous choices they’re making.”

The Day of the Jackal will premiere on Sky and streaming service NOW in the UK (and Peacock in the US) on 7 November.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/the-day-of-the-jackal-preview

[toonlegion]

I don't always agree with Nerdrotic, he can tend to just hate things instantly but I have been monitoring how works in Hollywood are going lately and this pretty much tracks from following reports I've heard. This D.E.I mess is getting out of hand. It should be a choice to include diversity in your works, not an obligation, and you sure as heck shouldn't be hired just based solely on your skin color, gender and sexuality.

Yes it nice you wanna give others a fair shake, but extremely unwise to shun writers with plenty of experience with people who've yet to prove themselves. Theres a reason writers use a round-robin system for this. Plus like Tyrone said, this is feeling very smothering to boot. In fact, I told a friend of mine it reminded me of that old South Park ep with Nurse Gollum where the town tried to celebrate her, but got the point of being very uncomfortable with it since they keep focusing on the dead fetus on her head that she eventually told them off when she couldn't take it anymore. This feels very similar but on a larger scale. Wanting to be sympathetic but eventually going overboard. Goes without saying, but people want to be entertained, not lectured.

And these practices feel so...cartoony it 's hard to believe. I legit fell ill at the part of "not reading the source material to make something for modern audiences". Okay just ALL THE NO on that. I don't mind a different interpretation but you do your work a disservice by not at least getting a grasp on what the story or how a character should be portrayed, if nothing else to at least give you a general idea TO make it your own. Yes going blind can work sometime, but that's a very narrow 50/50 chance. Heck I want to do a version of Dracula down the line for a comic that'll be different from the source material. It'll make some changes, but it'll still respect what came before and use what was written to expand on certain things. The main reason being graphic novels have done the comic justice so that can afford a different interpretation. But otherwise the story will still be similar AND respectful to the source. And I will have the novel on hand to help that along the way.

From what I'm hearing these idiots act all proud became "Oh it was my version and not what came before". People would KILL for the chance to do a film or TV adaptation of certain works and these people are squandering it for fanfic versions of these stories without even knowing the full context when they could make timeless definitive versions. Hey fun fact, did you know the director of the second Star Trek movie didn't know a thing about the franchise going in? You know what he did, WATCHED THE SERIES OVER A WEEKEND TO GET AN IDEA FOR THE CHARACTERS! And what happened? One of the best Star Trek films in the franchise. So no that is nothing to be proud of, its just laziness.

And then there's this "Male and Pale is Stale" creed. I was taught to just make good characters in general regardless of gender. But this is what they're peddling to potential writers these days (at the time of this writing)? Why? No one was oppressing anyone up to this point concerning that, if anything it's healthy to have variety on both genders (hell even moreso with non-binaries) take the lead. But these social media nuts (particularly around Twitter) decided we need more of an influx of females and ethnicities all of a sudden? Also ignoring that many people are still white skin regardless of nationality making that ceed extra stupid. I don't get it, we had a good thing before that was balanced and focused with your own choice how the character should be, now it just this messy blob of forced templates that can't tell its left from its right and the stories and characters suffer because of it. It's just frustrating to view.

Again I'm not against diversity but I'm not foreign to it either, I grew up on plenty of shows that had it and did it in a much more tactful and graceful way that was by the creator design, not forced, and were still very entertaining. That era had plenty of fairness to it, so I don't know why that same curtesy can't be used for today. If it's to right some slight in the past, then sure but there's the saying "Two wrongs don't make a right". From where I'm seeing in this current age, the so called "oppressed" have become the the oppressors themselves and don't even realize it and media is suffering for it. And as a creative myself who would love to get his work to that mainstream someday, that's just disappointing to see.

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: My Favorite Anime of 2020 Are All Music Videos

Image via ZUTOMAYO

  Despite the enormous pressures of COVID-19, 2020 has had its share of anime classics. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a stone-cold classic to the degree it now feels as if it’s always existed. Decadence channeled the creative spirit of 2000s-era Madhouse into an off-kilter riff on dystopian science fiction and Pixar movies. Akudama Drive, now in its second half, continues to translate the bonkers, heartfelt pulp style of Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka to TV anime. There have been big successes in film, as well — Demon Slayer Mugen Train scored the highest opening weekend box office in Japanese history, while folks I follow on Twitter are excited for the new Bones film Josee, the Tiger and the Fish.

  One of my favorite anime projects this year was something completely different. It’s "Gotcha!," a short Pokemon-themed music video directed by Rie Matsumoto and her friends at Bones. A sequence that takes all of Matsumoto’s strengths — her attention to detail, the way she depicts exciting and supernatural things bursting out of the walls of our ordinary world, and her obsession with cramming every layer of the screen with stuff — and turns them with the precision of a laser toward celebrating the series’s near 25-year history. As encyclopedic as a Pokedex despite being only three minutes long, it’s a glorious celebration of a series loved and made by passionate fans. 

  Image via Pokemon Official YouTube Channel

  But "Gotcha!" wasn’t even the only fantastic music video made by former employees from the historic studio Toei. Earlier this year, animator Koudai Watanabe collaborated with the talented Naoki Yoshibe — director of the opening sequences for Gatchaman Crowds — to create a music video for ZUTOMAYO titled “STUDY ME.” It’s a rich purple-and-green media landscape of TV screens, glitches, Undertale references, and desperately reaching hands, packed with enough wild ideas and visual iconography to fuel an entire season of anime. But it wraps up in just under five minutes.  You’re left watching the video over and over again in a daze, trying in vain to catch every little detail.

  The animated music videos being made right now represent the most slept-on creative success in modern anime production among English language fans. (That’s music videos that are animated, not AMVs! You could write an entirely separate article on those.) I need to qualify “slept on,” since hardcore animation nerds like Yuyucow and Catsuka have been stumping for these works over the past several years. There are viral successes like "Gotcha!" and the inevitable crossover that happens when an artist doing the theme song for an anime leads others to check out their back catalog of past videos. But on websites and in magazines, I see stories about Netflix’s aggressive production of new TV series, the renaissance of Japanese anime films after Your Name, and bemused reactions to the shocking popularity of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Talk about the newest music videos online is a lot rarer. Not to mention older videos. "Gotcha!" may have broken out as a celebration of a popular game series, but its predecessor — a Lotte chocolate commercial produced by much of the same staff — is just as good!

  Image via ZUTOMAYO

  "Gotcha!" isn’t 2020’s only spiritual successor to excellent early work, either. In 2013, Yoko Kuno produced the video "Airy Me" as part of a graduate assignment. Set to a song by Cuushe, it’s a hallucinatory epic that’s both starkly horrifying and bittersweet. In the years since, Yoko Kuno’s made a name for herself across several mediums — winning the New Face Award for her manga work at Japan Media Arts Festival, serving as a pinch hitter on Orange’s production of Land of the Lustrous and contributing a memorable sequence to Beastars. She returned this year with filmmaker Tao Tajima to produce another sequence scored to Cuushe’s music, Magic. Riffing on Airy Me's themes of bodily transformation and human ennui, it sets the action against real photographic landscapes. It's another haunting masterwork by one of anime’s most multitalented young artists and has been on repeat for me since it came up on my Twitter feed.  

  Image via FLAU

  Meanwhile, the Japanese vocalist Eve continues to commission new and excellent animated work based on his songs. This May saw the release of "How to Eat Life," a video by indie animator Mariyasu which repurposes Eve’s unique symbology of surly adolescents and freaky puppet monsters into a stylish and spooky carnival of carnivorism. It’s an excellent piece that stands tall among the work collected under Eve’s banner, many of which are stone-cold classics themselves. But "Promise," released at the end of this October, threatens to outdo them all. Directed by Ken Yamamoto and produced at Cloverworks, it plays as another greatest hits compilation of Eve’s works — broken promises, collapsing cityscapes, creatures powered by feeling that shake the earth with their footsteps. There’s a real visceral punch to it that beats out even its excellent predecessors. When the protagonist folds over himself in anguish, you feel it in your gut. When he steps deep into the water and the entire world around him is shredded into pieces, anyone who’s ever been a teenager knows exactly how that feels. When his friend reaches in and pulls him out of that water, that’s real joy rising like bubbles through your veins.

  Image via Eve

  Ken Yamamoto’s a bit more mainstream than Mariyasu — just last year he contributed some face-melting action sequences to Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia. But it says something to me that "Promise" — maybe his best work yet — was released as a music video rather than a new TV series. He’s not alone, either.  This August, the animator China (storyboarder for Encouragement of Climb’s third season) together with character designer Mooang (storyboarder for Sarazanmai) produced the music video "Sore wo Ai to Yobu dake." Like the reverse of Yamamoto’s "Promise," it’s the story not of a pair of teenage boys and their separation that devastates a cityscape — but of a pair of teenage girls who reach across time to recover the bond they shared in their high school days. A potent combination of FLCL-style faded nostalgia, careful attention to body language, and pure patented kids-falling-through-the-sky-while-frantically-reaching-for-each-other anime magic, it’s one of the best-animated sequences of this year. I’ve linked it to friends just to plead “Watch this thing!” And it ends in less than four minutes long.

  Image via Mafumafu

  I can’t help but think: Where is China and Moaang’s movie project? Where is Ken Yamamoto’s TV series? Why is it that Rie Matsumoto has produced two excellent music videos over the past two years that commemorate big franchises, but her rumored film project has yet to lift off? Perhaps the truth is that there isn’t room anymore in the TV anime industry for work like this. Many original projects seem to be tied to cellphone games or stage productions. Projects like Decadence are few and far between, and even those that exist play within a space already laid out by past successes. It’s not all bad, of course — Eizouken this year was a great example of an adaptation working in harmony with its source material. And we’ve seen studios like Orange employ weirder anime creators like Yoko Kuno or the stop-motion team dwarf to great effect in their projects. But perhaps animated music videos represent the future for artists like Matsumoto — a medium that pays well, rewards experimentation, and lets strong artists play around without having to dilute their style. A bite-sized format just outside of the soul-draining churn that defines the industry.

  Maybe this is fine, though. Short-form work is just as worthy of admiration as long-form work. I’d love feature-length projects from Ken Yamamoto or China, and I’d love for the world to see another Rie Matsumoto story told on a grand scale. But I can’t deny that Matsumoto rocks at putting together fantastic music videos and that I might even prefer the concise flow of "Gotcha!" to her TV series output. Either way, in this historically difficult year, I’m grateful to these folks for turning in career-best work and giving me hope for the future.

  Do you have a favorite animated music video? At the risk of getting off track, do you have a favorite anime music video? Do you still watch different fan edits of Hatsune Miku and wowaka's "Rolling Girl" on rotation, like I do? Let me know in the comments!

      Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't rewatching his favorite anime OPs over and over, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott

[fanbun]

Seuss Tales: From Page To Screen

Below the cut is an essay I wrote about Dr. Seuss adaptations after I was inspired by watching Green Eggs and Ham on Netflix. In the essay I examine the changes that adaptations have made to the original stories and how they have evolved over time. If you’re interested, please give it a read! :D

-

The tone of a Dr. Seuss book has proven particularly difficult to reproduce in any lengthened retelling. It is much like attempting to expand a poem into a novel. Somewhere during development, the original form will fall away to fit the new medium. And while artifacts of the original may still be present in the final product, such as a line or two, it is likely that those artifacts will feel disconnected from the product as a whole. In terms of Seuss, this is usually classic rhymes from the original stories that the audience expects to be included in the adaptation. Even if an audience member has had little exposure to the source material, they can usually identify these moments when a character starts rhyming for no particular reason. Of course, it must be said that some adaptations mimic the original tone better than others, and in those cases the product feels much more cohesive.

Since it is so difficult to expand a short story, the safest decision when making an adaptation is simply to be faithful. In the past, Seuss adaptations stuck much closer to the source material. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) set the standard for the many Seuss TV specials that came after it. These specials utilized a narrator that would read the book nearly word-for-word and had an animation style that stuck as close to the original illustrations as possible. Where padding was necessary to extend the run-time, it was usually done by including songs and extra animation sequences. This form of padding didn’t typically disrupt the flow of the story since the songs featured rhyming in them as well, and the added animations were used to bring Seuss’s world to life. Dr. Seuss himself even wrote the lyrics to many of the songs. Thus these first Seuss TV specials were as close to direct adaptations as the public was ever given.

So when did the trend change? Well Seuss died in 1991 and in the year 2000, a live action comedy film starring Jim Carrey was released based off of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Ironically, the very same title that started the initial animated Seuss renaissance. It was not only the first feature length film based on a Dr. Seuss property, but it was also a major financial success as it offered a new take on the familiar story. After all, the original animated special was already so beloved. The producers had to try something new to entice people to go see it. So what was created was a movie about the character of the Grinch, that followed the general story of the Grinch, but was entirely divorced from the classic tone and presentation of a Dr. Seuss book. Additionally, it made alterations to the characters and plot in an attempt to add depth and expand upon the story. This live action Seuss trend didn’t last for long, however, and it came to an end after The Cat in The Hat (2003) left a poor taste in the public’s mouth.

Jim Carrey would later return to voice the quirky titular elephant of Blue Sky’s Horton Hears a Who in 2008. This time animation was back in the form of trendy CG. The humor was modern but not quite as edgy as in the live action movies, and the trailers promised a more authentic Seuss experience for the youth at the time. Though the age of CG animated movies was an attempt to return to form, they couldn’t escape the adaptational dilemma of trying to stretch short stories into full movies. Horton Hears a Who (2008) remained faithful to the book’s plot but was padded with plenty of gags that tended to outstay their welcome. In contrast, Illumination’s The Lorax (2012) padded its run-time by expanding on the Onceler’s character and introducing new characters, including an all new antagonist. This, although showing clear ambition, ended up being a controversial decision as many viewed it as obscuring the book’s intended message.

Interestingly, Netflix’s Green Eggs and Ham series (2019) is mostly padding. In fact, there is hardly anything in the show that resembles the original book aside from the two main characters, Sam-I-Am and “Guy”, and the aforementioned Sam’s affinity for green eggs and ham. And yet it manages to feel more like a Seuss story than many of the adaptations that have come before it. No doubt this is partly due to its traditional 2D animation style, though the inclusion of many Seussian creatures and contraptions should not be overlooked as an important factor. It is terrible as a direct adaptation, but as an expanded retelling it is brilliant. The writers were given a book so simplistic, with such a straightforward moral, that they only needed to follow it loosely to deliver on its message. They took a couple characters, a handful of words, and rewrote it almost entirely. And really, that was the only smart choice for a series that spans 6 1/2 hours in total.

One of the most drastic departures from the book was the decision to make the plot revolve around Guy and Sam smuggling an exotic animal (named Mr. Jenkins) in a briefcase to return it to the wild. This concept alone turns it into a completely different story. So much so that I’d argue the title of “Green Eggs and Ham” hardly fits as a descriptor. Still, the theme of animal protection is entirely in line with the types of morals found in Dr. Seuss books. This recurring message is made even more evident since the villains work for a serial animal abuser who keeps live animals on display as status symbols. I could have easily imagined that a separate Dr. Seuss story existed with this same plot.

But what is perhaps most interesting to me about the rewrite is that, along with convincingly portraying a story based on Dr. Seuss, it also adds its own modern sensibilities into the mix. Not merely by way of adding humor and references like some adaptations before it, but through the story’s structure itself. First of all, it is a multi-episode animated series with emphasis on continuity. Secondly, it fleshes out the personalities and backstories of the characters over time. And thirdly, it at once represents and transforms the source material in something of a metatextual exercise. The narrator’s tendency of breaking the fourth wall is a perfect example of this. He even acts as an audience stand-in at times, commenting that he wasn’t expecting to see the events that occur during the opening scene from a Seuss adaptation. Or at another point humorously asking “Was this in the book?” This brand of meta comedy made me take note of the more daring writing choices like the shocking reveals about Sam and the B.A.D.G.U.Y.S. toward the end of the season. Once again, the writers deliberately added complexity where there was originally very little.

Crucially for fans of the book, the rewrite doesn’t betray the original moral of Green Eggs and Ham. Rather it adds a layer of depth to that moral’s execution. In the book, the plate of green eggs and ham represents the characters’ willingness to try new things. It is the same in the series, however the unexpected journey the two leads embark on is what is given the most narrative focus. After leaving his comfort zone, Guy’s emotional attachment to Sam is what makes him finally try the green eggs and ham. It is a symbolic gesture of how far his character has come from the beginning of the show. He initially wanted nothing to do with Sam or Mr. Jenkins, but then he got to know them and discovered how much he cared.

So although it is risky to create an adaptation that changes much of the source material, it can absolutely be worth the risk. There is boundless creative potential to be found in transformative works, and that potential may be realized if given the right amount of passion and dedication. Sure, it might upset the purist in us, but the original already exists. Why not make something new out of it? Cut up pieces of the poem. Rearrange the words and add a new perspective. Some people will always consider doing so to be ruining a classic, but others might view it as a masterpiece all on its own. In the end it is up to personal opinion whether an adaptation is good or not, but nonetheless I think we should celebrate the cultural significance of these stories that leads us to recreate and retell them time and time again.

[ginmo]

I’ve been sure since I read AFFC/ADWD that Jaime’s getting one of the better endings because House Lannister isn’t gonna be wiped out and both Cersei and Tyrion are now Too Dark To Live. But I’ve seen a lot of people rewatching bring up that awful sept fuck up and consensus is that it renders him irredeemable. The show is gonna have to WORK to avoid a million thinkpieces when he gets both power and a family. I’m not convinced they’ll pull it off.

That scene was gross af, but we’ve since learned that the intent of the scene was not for it to be rape. We also know that canon Jaime is not a rapist. So if the narrative intent was for it to NOT be rape (and ended up being just a really bad fuck up from writers, director, post production) then we can’t blame the non-rapist character for the shitty product. What’s gross is they didn’t realize they filmed a rape scene, so people need to shift their blame from Jaime to the filmmakers. If people are really stuck on Jaime being a rapist even though in canon he isn’t and wasn’t even meant to be on the show, then they’re going to really hate the outcome of this story, because there won’t be anything to revisit Jaime being a rapist in the narrative (such as redemption for that) because he isn’t supposed to be. This is why most of fandom acknowledges that scene was an oops from the production and don’t use it to judge the character.

In other words, since the show was doing a direct adaptation of a consensual canon sex scene from the books, thinking their adaption was also a consensual sex scene, then the narrative itself doesn’t need to, and will not, do anything to have Jaime redeem himself for something he didn’t do, but that the filmmakers stupidly did.

My friend Koops went off on this topic a while back, so I’m going to add a read more where I quote her posts. It’s way more than you asked about, and I already answered the question, but I just really love her rant over the sex scene lol. So for those who want cast, crew, and GRRM quotes, discussion of that D&D video people love to refer to, and a total take down of basically why using that scene against Jaime is completely moronic then here it is: 

In response to this D&D video:

I don’t think this video disproves anything. The girl is calling it “rape” but they are not once owning up to it. They’re calling it “this” and insisting that’s something Jaime would do in that moment, but it feels to me like what they were trying to do is avoid getting into a debate about whether it’s rape or not, because they know that can get them into all kinds of trouble. ETA: Also, notice how David rolls his eyes towards the end and the person who captioned the video interpreted it as him rolling his eyes at the girl who asked the question. I don’t think he is at all, that was 5 minutes earlier, talk about a delayed reaction. I think he’s rolling his eyes at KIT stepping in just as David had finished answering with that stupid comment calling it rape and saying how great it is that the show has rape scenes, when David had been so careful in avoiding using that word all along in order not to get into an argument. And they’re emphasizing how hard this was for Lena and so on (despite, IIRC, her always saying it wasn’t intended as rape), just to earn feminist points of “we know how tough this is for women, look at how distraught we all were filming it”.If that had been their intention, they would have followed up on it in subsequent scenes/interactions, which is something the show does with rape scenes (see Sansa). Yet it was never mentioned again and it’s like it never happened. I think D&D sometimes have a bit of a rape-style fetish when it comes to sex scenes because it makes them come across as “edgy”. See the way they wrote the broken tower sex scene in the original pilot script or the way they changed Dany and Drogo’s wedding night. But they refuse to admit it and hide behind nonsense like “this is something the character would do”. They want to see how far they can push it, basically.Even if we want to say they’re admitting to have it intended as rape, saying this is something Jaime would do is absolutely ridiculous since not only he saved Brienne from rape but in the books he even has one of his men executed for TRYING to rape Pia. It’s nothing to do about having a linear redemption arc or not, it’s about WHAT kind of “bad things” the character does and whether it’s consistent with its characterization or not. Rape, for Jaime, is absolutely NOT. Equating that scene to Jaime pushing Bran out of a window is completely insane since the two things are dramatically different in motivation and intention and while Jaime is a complex guy that can do horrible things for his family and for Cersei, he doesn’t do them out of his own selfishness, especially when it comes to sex when he even refuses women throwing himself at him. Not to mention the entire point of Jaime’s “bad deed(s)” is that he has to own up to them and deal with them and their consequences. If you just ignore that sept scene ever happened and never deal with it again then you either think it isn’t a big deal, or it wasn’t a bad deed in the first place. Otherwise it adds absolutely nothing to the character’s arc. It’s like they think that a “complex/not good guy” engages into all sorts of “bad behaviour” just by virtue of being complex/not good, which actually does precisely what they’re claiming they don’t want to do; i.e. making a clear cut distinction between good and bad guys, since they’re equating all possible bad actions as being equal and the same and stemming from the same psychological motivations, which is ridiculous. The bottom line to me always comes to the fact that, unlike most stuff post S5, we have the scene in the books, in written format, and we KNOW it’s not meant to be rape. It’s meant to be the kind of gross, rough, angry sex those two have. To change the intention of the scene just because you feel “that’s something the character would do”, to me is not really caring about really understanding the character’s intentions in the first place, since you have source material and an author you can check with. They simply didn’t care in order to get HBO points.

And for some quotes 

I find the idea that we are meant to read into Cersei’s actions after the sept encounter in the books as indicative of a woman who experienced rape, or that George did not come out to straight up say the words “I did not write it as rape” (he would never throw D&D under the bus that way, come on) as evidence that it was indeed intended to be rape all along in the books, even more of twisting oneself into a pretzel than trying to explain away the scene in the show as not rape. Neither D&D nor George have ever shied away from calling rape out for what it is in the show or the books. Why would they suddenly tiptoe around this one particular scene? I think it’s because the issue here is much more nuanced than just filming a rape scene; it’s about the grey lines of consent and it’s about changing something from the books to make it look much worse than it originally was intended to be, for a character they know it will be regarded as very controversial/OOC, which raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions about how far D&D are willing to go for shock value. This is what GRRM has to say on the issue (bolded and underlined for emphasis):

“I think the “butterfly effect” that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling.The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing. If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.”

Nothing whatsoever of what GRRM is saying above in explaining how he wrote their sept encounter even remotely hints at the fact that he intended consent to be even a question in his original work. He is not pointing out that he is writing from Jaime’s POV to build a contrast with Cersei’s, he is pointing out that he is writing from Jaime’s POV to build a contrast between the books medium and the camera medium and what each does or does not allow. And he goes further by saying that Cersei’s dialogue from the books might have helped giving a different impression of the scene: i.e. that it was NOT rape. What is happening is George trying to distance himself from D&D’s choice while at the same time being a professional and not bashing their botched adaptation of his work, by explaining why perhaps they might have decided to approach it differently from the way HE wrote the original scene and how maybe some of his material might not have fit because of the timeline.We actually have Cersei’s own POV later in the books, where she reminisces about tons of events from her close and distant past, and not once does she ever think back upon that incident in the sept in a way so as to indicate it was in any way a “traumatic” experience for her, while she does plenty of reflecting back upon her unpleasant sexual experiences with Robert, for example. Meanwhile, Cersei being disgusted with Jaime’s loss of his hand, or the way his looks are changing and his personality is changing, is very much a plot point that she comes back to over and over. “How could I have ever loved such a wretched creature?”, or getting up naked from a bathtub in front of Jaime thinking he still wants her and even taunting him with “Pining what you lost?” and then getting annoyed that Jaime pretty much tells her she’s a fool for thinking that? Hardly dynamics one has with their rapist. And also GRRM also says: 

The scene was always intended to be disturbing, but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.

“It has disturbed people FOR THE WRONG REASONS”, means that he wanted that scene to cause controversy because of how damn gross it all is, them having sex next to the corpse of their incestuous son, not because there was an issue of consent. So, no. The book scene was not intended to have consent be a central point, let alone rape. Yes, something happened in the adaptation to make it come across as significantly more forced, in a way that can very rightfully be interpreted as rape, while at the same time not being intended to be rape for plot point’s sake. But, when it comes to the filming of that scene, this is what the director had to say:

Of course Lena and Nikolaj laughed every time I would say, “You grab her by the hair, and Jack is right there,” or “You come around this way and Jack is right there.“ 

Yeah. Lena was SO distraught and it was so difficult for her to film that “rape” scene. They was totally totally totally directed to play it as such, and were so serious and affected by it. Give me a break, David. And also:

The consensual part of it was that she wraps her legs around him, and she’s holding on to the table, clearly not to escape but to get some grounding in what’s going on. And also, the other thing that I think is clear before they hit the ground is she starts to make out with him. The big things to us that were so important, and that hopefully were not missed, is that before he rips her undergarment, she’s way into kissing him back. She’s kissing him aplenty.

So there’s two possibilities here: either D&D intended it as rape from the start, but didn’t give clear instructions to the director, and, in turn, Nik and Lena, so that they didn’t set out to shoot it the way D&D intended, or nobody intended it as rape but something was messed up in the editing process (apparently after this scene, they made some changes to the editing process? Not sure how reliable this info is, but maybe someone can dig it out, if they remember). Regardless, what they ended up with is a scene that has some serious, serious issues of consent, and the comments afterwards, trying to downplay the consent in favour of highlighting the context or the way Cersei did give non-verbal consent, only ended up stirring more criticism of the director and actors being rape apologists. So, it doesn’t surprise me if they’ve just given up trying to defend their original intentions, since it only made things worse (and rightfully so), in favour of trying to explain it away the way GRRM did; by trying to make up explanations that the narrative required it and it made sense to be filmed that way.So, to conclude and link everything back to the reason why we are debating this (i.e. “NCW is a misogynist for disliking Dany when Jaime is a rapist and he excuses him”), while I can totally sympathize with a show-only person who watches that scene and sees it as rape, I also think this particular scene is not something we can use in the discourse about Jaime’s character and arc, given that not only there are huge question marks about what was intended with that scene in the first place, not only it is forgotten like it never happened to the point that you could skip it and nothing would change, but we know for a fact that it was NOT what was intended in the original source material by the original author. The one who decides where the characters’ arcs are supposed to go. You cannot say “it doesn’t make sense that Jaime does X and Y in his endgame because he’s a rapist” when that endgame is being decided by someone who never wrote Jaime as a rapist in the first place. All you can say is that D&D messed up big time with that scene because it literally does not line up or fit with anything else that is going on at the time or in the past or in the future when it comes to Jaime. 

- Koops (jaimetheexplorer)

[duhragonball]

Continuity

I’m still reading Star Wars comics from the original Marvel run of 1977-1986.   Last night, I made it to the Return of the Jedi adaptation, so now I’ve read all the issues set between that movie and Empire Strikes Back.   As I expected, these comics (#45-80) feel a lot more like authentic Star Wars stories than the pre-ESB issues (#7-38).   The biggest plot hole that I noticed was that Luke still has his lightsaber throughout this period, despite losing it on Bepsin. 

It occurred to me later that this wasn’t necessarily a mistake.   There’s a deleted scene from ROTJ which shows Luke assembling his new lightsaber right before the mission to save Han Solo from Jabba the Hut.   This strongly implies that Luke didn’t have a lightsaber of his own between Episodes V and VI.   This was further supported by the ROTJ radio drama, produced in 1996, which incorporates the deleted scene into the story.   There, Luke expresses frustration with how difficult it is to build a lightsaber, and then he finally realizes that he should have been using the Force to assemble the pieces.   I haven’t read the novelization of the movie, but maybe it was touched on there as well. 

  Later sources indicated that building your own lightsaber is the final ritual for completing your Jedi training.   This is shown in the 2002 Clone Wars cartoon, where Barriss Offee assembles her own saber on Ilum, under the supervision of Luminara Unduli.  I’m pretty sure this scene was inspired by Darth Vader’s line in ROTJ, when he observed that Luke’s training is complete after checking out his badass green lightsaber.   The implication is that building your own lightsaber is difficult enough that Luke would have to be a Jedi Knight just to pull it off.

But in the early 80′s, none of that lore existed, and it would be a simple matter for writers to assume that Luke had no trouble at all getting a spare.  What I find strange is that no one bothered to explain where this spare lightsaber came from.    It’s like the writers just assumed he never lost the first one, but that’s crazy.

Really, the artists on the original Star Wars comics never seemed to be able to keep track of the lightsabers to begin with.    In the early comics, they paid no heed to the color schemes or hilt designs at all.    Not that I would expect late 70′s artists to really worry about props from a movie that had just come out, but they kept coloring all the lightsaber blades at random, and drawing the hilts way too short and thick.  Luke and Vader looked like they were holding soda cans.   The art started to get more true to the movies when Tom Palmer got involved, but one thing I started to notice was how the artists would draw Luke and Vader’s lightsabers on their belts, even when they were holding them, ignited, in their hands.   It was like the artists recognized the lightsaber hilts as part of the characters’ costumes, but they didn’t understand what they were.    I can’t really blame them for this, since the big column of light was what really drew everyone’s attention in the theaters, and it wasn’t like they could look up hilt schematics on Wookieepedia like you can now.  

Anyway, it struck me as kind of interesting how something minor like that can start off as an oversight, and then be easily corrected, or magnified into a major plot hole.    It’d be pretty simple to explain Luke’s between-movie lightsaber. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi had a spare tucked away somewhere, and Luke had been keeping it in storage just in case something like this happened.

Yoda had a spare, and Luke took it with him when he went to Bespin, and put it inside R2-D2′s lightsaber compartment for safe keeping.

Luke found a new lightsaber on a mission.

Luke built a new lightsaber to replace his old one, then lost that guy, requiring him to build the green one in ROTJ.

Luke found/constructed a replacement weapon, but it’s actually a knockoff “laser sword” and it doesn’t work as well as a genuine Jedi design, but it got the job done until he could do the job right.

I find it curious that no one ever bothered to tell any of those stories, though.   The Expanded Universe era of Star Wars multimedia seemed determined to sew up as many continuity problems as possible.   Some writer in the 2000′s did a story to establish that Jedi would swap lightsabers as a gesture of mutual respect, just to explain why Mace Windu’s action figure has a different lightsaber design than the one he has in the movies.   I’m not too worried about this stuff, and I don’t think Jo Duffy or David Michelinie were too worried about this stuff when they wrote Luke carving up Stormtroopers in Star Wars #45-80, but between 1994 and 2008, there were people working for Lucasfilm who were paid to worry about this stuff.   I’m genuinely surprised that no one ever got around to penning Star Wars: Luke’s Spare Lightsaber: The Lobot Chronicles: Dark Tidings.

It’s the little things like this that get lost in the shuffle, I’ve found.   When you read a Star Wars novel or comic book, the major characters are always very consistently portrayed, and the story always sticks very closely to the groundwork laid down in whatever movies were around at the time.   Star Wars #45-80 excelled at this.   Every issue was either about the good guys searching for Han Solo, or dealing with a crisis big enough to pull them away from the search for Han Solo.   I was disappointed that they didn’t spend much time at all having Luke work on his Jedi training, or trying to make sense of Darth Vader being his father, but I think Marvel knew the next movie would address that, so they knew not to wade too deep into that stream.  

The stuff that gets changed the most is the minor characters.   I read one issue where they basically established that Wedge Antilles never made it off the base on Hoth in ESB.   He and “Nice Shot” Jansen had to take cover in the AT-AT Luke blew up, and then they lived in what was left of the base while they waited for the imperials to clear out.   He was stranded there for months, and it was a pretty cool story, but I’m betting that later Star Wars writers decided to ignore this, because they wanted to use Wedge in other stories during that period.  

General Tagge’s another interesting example.   He was the guy on the Death Star in Episode IV, the one who warned that the Death Star was vulnerable while the Rebels had the stolen plans.   Tagge’s kind of a walking continuity error to begin with, because everyone kept getting him mixed up with Admiral Motti, the guy who sassed Vader and got choked out for his lack of faith.  In the Archie Goodwin run on Star Wars, Tagge was killed in the movie when the Death Star exploded, but his brothers and sister turned up as recurring villains with a grudge against the Rebels and Vader alike.  Flash forward to 2015, when Disney took over Lucasfilm, and in the new continuity, Tagge survived the Death Star’s destruction because he happened to leave  right before it went to Yavin IV to get blown up.   This was done mainly to set him up as a rival to Darth Vader in the 2015 Darth Vader comic.    I guess they figured there was no reason to invent new characters when they could just salvage some of the officers from the movie.  Tagge feels more authentic than his siblings because we actually saw him on film.   He’s a “real” Star Wars guy, while rest of his family are just cartoons.    I think that’s the attitude anyway.    Back in 1978, they were probably eager to create new characters because they had tons of world-building to do.   So the 2010′s Marvel comics don’t square with the 1970′s Marvel comics at all, especially where the Tagges are concerned, but Darth Vader’s dealings with them feel pretty consistent.   

The reason I bring up all of this is because I used to think that the continuity in Star Wars was never terribly complicated.   When production of  The Force Awakens got started, Lucasfilm announced that they were rebooting the whole Star Wars canon, declaring all the Expanded Universe content as “Legends”, which no longer counted as official continuity.  The only hard canon sources from now on were the movies, the Clone Wars TV series, and anything published after that announcement.   Naturally, all the post-Return-of-the-Jedi stories would be off the board, which only made sense to me, seeing as Force Awakens would contradict it.   But I figured the other stories could still be made to fit together somehow, since none of them had anything to do with Rey or Kylo Ren or the First Order, or whatever.   

But really, it’s been like that all along.    The novels and comics would introduce some idea, and others would build on it, and then George Lucas would override it with his next project.   Then the writers would have to pick up the pieces.  The 2008-2013 Clone Wars TV series trampled on a lot of continuity from the 2002-2005 Clone Wars books and comics, primarily because George Lucas worked on the TV series, and he was the final word on this stuff.   That announcement in 2014 pissed off a lot of Expanded Universe fans (so much that they bought a bunch of billboards to complain about it), but it was kind of inevitable.   They’ll probably have to wipe the slate clean again around 2040 or so, because there’ll be enough new movies that the comics and novels won’t align with them.

I sort of half-joke about my own fanfiction getting this kind of treatment.   My goal is to write stories that could fit into the established continuity, but I can only work with the continuity I know.    With Dragon Ball, that was easy, until Dragon Ball Super got underway, and Akira Toriyama started writing new stuff.    It was pretty easy to write my own female Super Saiyan, until DBS introduced a couple of their own, and now I have to wonder if they’ll say or do something that might contradict my own take.    Likewise, this Broly movie might establish some new lore that I need to take into consideration.    I can write new material to work around those things, but the stuff I’ve already written is pretty much locked in.    My private joke is that in any of these new animations, a character will just stare at the screen and coldly announce that “Mike’s fanfic never happened.”  

But that’s pretty much what Lucasfilm has been doing to the novel and comics writers for over forty years.    “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” would have been the official sequel to Star Wars if Empire Strikes Back hadn’t been funded.   Instead, Dengar and Bossk looked at the screen and said “Alan Dean Foster’s novel never happened.”    Return of the Jedi killed every Luke/Leia shipper’s hopes and dreams.    “Oh, those fanfics never happened, my young friend,” Ben Kenobi said from beyond the grave.    Attack of the Clones wreaked all sorts of havoc on Boba Fett’s backstory.   The Force Awakens wrecked the Skywalker-Solo family tree.   “Han and Leia only had one kid, and I’m gonna kick his ass!” Rey shouted asskickingly.   And on it goes.    I read that one writer resigned after they retconned all the stuff she had set up about Boba Fett’s home planet, but that’s the way the game is played, unfortunately.   

Me, I’m just writing my stuff for fun, when it comes down to it.    I like to think all the continuity can be fit together, but the reality is that there’s too many redundant pieces, so they can’t all be part of the same picture.  You can either have Tagge or his brothers, but not both.   You can decide to keep Ben Solo or Jan and Jeice Solo from the EU novels, but not both.    Or you can do an AU, I guess.    They’re all AU’s when you get down to it.   

I suppose that, no matter what, I prefer my own assumption that Luke just didn’t have a lightsaber between Empire and Jedi.    I’ve read too many stories about how there’s more to a Jedi than his lightsaber, and how the best Jedi never use them at all, so it makes sense to me that Luke had to make due without one, and use the loss to force him to refocus on his training.    While the others searched for Han, he was doing cool Jedi homework that he should have been doing on Dagobah, and he purposely waited until he was finished before building a new lightsaber.   That just makes too much sense to me, even if some other version is presented.   But the other stories are still fun to read.   They don’t have to be canon to be enjoyable. 

[lizabethstucker]

Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore

Edited by Paula Guran

Twenty-three tales of fantasy and science fiction that contain libraries and librarians as well as the magic of books.  An absolutely wonderful collection, only one disappointment.  And that was more about style of writing than the premise of the story itself.  4 out of 5.

 “In the House of the Seven Librarians” by Ellen Klages  

When the old Carnegie library was closed and much of its newer content moved to a brand-new library across town, seven librarians remained behind, moving into the library to stay.  Their lives are changed when a baby is left as payment for an overdue book. A suspension of disbelief leads to a strange yet satisfying read.  4.5 out of 5.

 “The Books” by Kage Baker

The Show traveled around the badly decimated U.S., providing entertainment and trade.  In one larger city, three kids explore, stumbling on a library.  All of them are determined to take books back with them, but it might not be that easy.  This was almost like a section of a longer story, one that I'd love to read. Very intense.  Baker does a marvelous job with atmosphere.  3.5 out of 5.

 “Death and the Librarian” by Esther M. Friesner

Death has come at last for Miss Louisa Foster.  Yet even Death can be surprised.  This one came close to tearing my heart out, slamming it on the floor, and stomping on it repeatedly.  5 out of 5.

 “In Libres” by Elizabeth Bear

Despite her thesis being complete, Euclavia is directed to the Library Special Collections to read another source.  Accompanied reluctantly by her centaur friend Bucephalus, they dare to visit the dangerous place.  Definitely dangerous!  There’s a chill tap-dancing along your spine, especially for those readers who have been deep in the bowels of huge, older libraries.  4 out of 5.

 “The King of the Big Night Hours” by Richard Bowes

Memories and suicides in the library.  I’m not certain how I feel about this one.  The writing is exquisite, the plot is intriguing, but the emotions invoked are not comfortable.  If that was the author’s intent, mission accomplished.  3.5 out of 5.

 “Those Who Watch” by Ruthanna Emrys

The library marks Elaine on her third day of work. Already dealing with various health and emotional issues, she must find a way to adapt or leave.  Unusual and intriguing.  Definitely deserves further exploration.  3.5 out of 5.

 “Special Collections” by Norman Partridge

He went to work at the library as suggested by his court-appointed therapist.  He started taking Library Science classes as suggested by the college archivist where he met Daphne.  But there are secrets, deadly secrets swirling around the library and the narrator. More horror than fantasy, not one of my favorites.  Despite ticking off some loved trope boxes, I struggled to finish.  3 out of 5.

 “Exchange” by Ray Bradbury

Working in the library for forty some years is getting to Miss Adams.  Too many children, too many books, too much noise.  Then a former patron arrives after hours looking for a final goodbye before shipping out.  There is no finer writer of fantasy on this planet.  Or maybe it is more accurate to call him a weaver of magic.  5 out of 5.

 “Paper Cuts Scissors” by Holly Black

Justin struggles to find a way to rescue his girlfriend Linda from the book she put herself into after they had a fight.  His best hope is Mr. Sandlin, a man who can bring characters out of books.  Thanks to another, as well as Sandlin, Justin finds answers and a possible solution.  An intriguing premise handled with a delicate touch.  Lovely.  4 out of 5.

 “Summer Reading” by Ken Liu

When mankind left Earth for the stars, the planet was turned into a museum overseen by robots.  CN-344315 was the robot docent of the library.  It had been five thousand years since he last had human visitors.  The servers are gone, but CN-344315 had a tiny room filled with his favorite treasures: a selection of books protected behind an airtight glass.  A visitor reminds CN-344315 of why books are important.  Wow!  I’ve come across Liu’s work in my SF magazines over the years and have always enjoyed his stories.  I do believe this might be one of my favorites.  Short, sweet, and wonderful.  5 out of 5.

 “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link

I’m not certain how to explain what this story is about.  There’s a TV series and the characters in this story watch the series yet are also an episode of the same series.  Gave me a bloody headache.  There was so much potential, but it twists around itself until I finally gave up trying to understand it as a bad deal and just slogged through.  Weird beginning, no real ending.  Just a mess.  2.8 out of 5.

 “The Inheritance of Barnabas Wilcox” by Sarah Monette

Booth is surprised to hear from Barnabas Wilcox, a former classmate and bully.  Wilcox needs someone to catalog his late uncle’s library.  Booth senses something twisted at Hollyhill, the uncle’s estate. Creepy, horror of the emotions rather than blood and guts.  In other words, my kind of horror tale.  4 out of 5.

 “The Midbury Lake Incident” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

When the Midbury Lake Public Library burned to the ground, librarian Mary Beth Wilkins was upset, not only because of the fire, but that she wasn’t notified.  Grief would come later, once Mary Beth has left for a new life.  Very nice, just enough backstory to intrigue the reader. I do wish there had been more. 3.5 out of 5.

 “With Tales in Their Teeth, from the Mountain They Came” by A. C. Wise

After she loses her lover in the War, she goes to the Library on the Mountain, becoming an acolyte now named Alba.  She stries to find solace in the quiet, but mostly struggles. Then she meets a novice named Eleuthere who hides secrets beneath his robes.  Very magical, almost dreamlike.  4 out of 5.

 “What Books Survive” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

When the Invaders came, every electronic device died immediately, even battery-run ones.  Katie Scarlett Marsden was almost halfway through Wuthering Heights when her Kindle died.  Once the town built a barricade, she was separated from the school library.  Wanting more to read, Katie slips past the barricade one night, finding more than she expected.  A very weird dystopian story, enthralling and filled with twists.  4.5 out of 5.

 “The Librarian’s Dilemma” by E. Saxey

Jas was hired to bring libraries into the 21st Century.  Saint Simon’s librarian Moira doesn’t mind the security measures he can provide, but she isn’t interested in sharing the contents of their Special Collection outside the library’s walls.  I understand the dilemma in this story and, frankly, I’m not certain which side I would support in regards to the sharing of dangerous material.  4 out of 5.

 “The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar

There is little that I can tell you about the story without spoiling it, so I’ll live it with that it is a story about a mysterious green book and its contents.  I mostly liked it.  I think. Yet it felt like it was more a rough sketch than a complete story.  3 out of 5.

 “In the Stacks” by Scott Lynch

Magical student Laszlo Jazera discovers the dangers of the final assignment for Fifth Year, one he must pass to make it to Sixth Year.  It seemed simple enough, return a book to the Living Library.  The task will be more frightening and intense than he could ever have expected.  There is a tragic sadness throughout this story, but the universe created is horrifyingly compelling.  4.5 out of 5.

 “A Woman’s Best Friend” by Robert Reed

On Christmas Eve, Mary sees a stranger stumbling through the snowy streets of her town. George is confused and frightened, soaked from head to toe. Mary impulsively takes him back to her home in the library. A strange retelling of a classic Christmas film, a mixture of fantasy and science fiction. Interesting, a bit strange at the end. 3.5 out of 5.

 “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Xia Jia

A lonely librarian discovers a book of poetry that might expand his world.  There is magic about this tale that touches the reader’s soul.  I loved how the people who wanted the poetry read and appreciated on its own merits, not for the possible backstory of the author.  4 out of 5.

 “The Sigma Structure Symphony” by Gregory Benford

Ruth is one of many librarians mining for useful information in recordings from the SETI project.  After the death of a fellow librarian, Ruth is asked to take over his task, mining the Sigma Structures.  Math and music, language and love.  Are they simply human-based?  Weird. Confusing.  Engrossing at the time yet left a sour aftertaste.  3 out of 5.

 “The Fort Moxie Branch” by Jack McDevitt

Mr. Wickham, in the process of disposing of his privately published novel, is caught in a blackout. During that darkness, he sees a strange glow in a long empty house.  I love the idea of this story.  A fascinating premise from start to finish.  4 out of 5.

 “The Last Librarian” by Edoardo Albert

Books, actual physical books, have been ignored in favor of uploaded versions or neural inputs.  The librarian at the British Library finagles a way to direct traffic physically into the building.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t go well.  In today’s world, I fear this could happen.  Maybe not now, but very soon.  I was surprised that the narrator remained at the end.  4 out of 5.

[wessonba]

Okay, I’m tired of having to struggle to write about these episodes!  Last week, I struggled because there was too much to write about, too much to think about, and a need to write with the gravitas the topic deserved.  This week I struggled because I couldn’t find anything TO write about!  After viewing the episode, my reaction to what I watched was… that was nice…nice?  I’m not sure that was the reaction the writers were going for and it wasn’t the reaction my husband had when he watched Sunday night. He was FULL of questions. And, he wasn’t about to wait to get answers.  He mutes the sound to ask his questions and then misses everything that is being said while I’m quickly trying to answer! It’s a vicious circle and I’m thankful for DVR.  But, irritating as they are, sometimes his questions and observations lead me in the right direction. He said he was more intrigued by “the daughter’s story” than with Jamie and Claire and that got me to thinking and…to writing. (you can’t see me, but I’m sporting a really cheesy grin right now)

Why My Reaction Was…Nice

The Outlander fandom spends an exorbitant amount of time discussing the adaptation. The discussions range from fans lamenting the need for any changes from the source material because what Diana Gabaldon wrote was perfect, why change it, to true critique of what changes worked or didn’t work and why.  This week’s episode was a good one for book fans. The writer’s managed to successfully condense time and still give us iconic moments from the book, the minister’s cat, the lark at the Scottish festival, Roger and Bree on the floor on verge of …well you know, the ghostly time-traveling indian, and Jamie and Claire finding the strawberries and Fraser’s Ridge. I expect that overall most book fans will be very happy. As a book fan, I guess I should have been more enthusiastic and I wondered why I wasn’t.

A while ago, I wrote about adaptations. To prepare, I did some “lite research”, which means I read everything I could find in two days on the particular topic.  My “lite research” isn’t exhaustive or particularly scholarly, but I usually stumble upon some interesting stuff. The most interesting adaptation “stuff” I stumbled upon was an article written as a conversation between two TV/movie critics. Their focus was on the good and bad of being true to the source material.  One of the points they make is that sometimes an adaptation can be so true to the source as to be…unnecessary. The viewer can be left feeling like ” they’ve seen the book almost exactly, as if they didn’t need to see it at all.”  I think this is where I fell this week!  It is ironic I know, I started the blog because they were adapting my favorite book series and I was excited to see Jamie and Claire’s story come to life!  And, they made that happen and I thought it was…nice.  The writer’s and producers really can’t win, if they stray from the source or stay too close someone is going to criticize.  They really do need to stay true to their own vision because evidently, if I’m any indication, we fans can’t be satisfied, LOL!

Why This Episode Was Important

After answering my husband’s questions and upon reflection, I came to realize this was actually a very important episode. “Why do they keep flashing back to the future?” my pesky husband asks. “Because they are trying to tell Roger and Bree’s story!”, I respond. Huh…they are trying to tell Roger and Bree’s story. This show is no longer just Jamie and Claire’s story. This week’s episode was evidence that we will have more than one couple’s story to contend with and agonize over. This season, like the book it is based on, marks the official beginning of the multiple character and story arcs that will eventually result in Diana’s last book, Written in My Heart’s Own Blood, almost having an Octopus as its cover art. If you are tuning in for all Jamie and Claire all the time, sorry about your luck! Cue protest song…”The times and the story they are a changing! ”  Jamie and Claire become the matriarch and patriarch of a large cast of characters.

Ian Is A Man Ye Ken

One of the arcs I am most looking forward to is Ian’s story.  I think John Bell’s earnest and joyful Ian is perfect, especially for this part of the story.  We will need to remember him this way because his change from eager puppy to lethal wolf will happen.  He tells Jamie that the things he has experience have changed the way he looks at life. He believes his survival qualifies him for manhood and as a result he believes he has earned the right to choose where he will live and what path in life he will take.  Jamie recognizes an inevitable truth when he hears and sees one.  I like to think he always sees himself when he looks at Ian and empathises.  Ian wastes no time in taking responsibility for his choices and duties and runs off to write a letter to his parents letting them know their son is now a man.

Bree and Roger “Do All Frasers Have Issues?”

I was so glad to see Rick Rankin and Sophie Skelton get more time on screen.  With the longer scenes, I was able to actually see Rick’s Roger and Sophie’s Bree. The chemistry was good. They are different than the book pair that resides in my head, but I could have said the same thing about Sam Heughan and Cait Balfe’s Jamie and Claire. It didn’t take long to accept their version of the characters they were playing and I’m sure the same will happen with screen Roger and Brianna.  After watching the great scene in the “higlanders” cabin and the calling of the clans, my husband asked, “Do all Frasers have issues?”  I chuckled and told him yes, but added don’t we all?

Getting these two characters right is a big deal!  They are more than important to the rest of the books and hopefully, to the rest of the series.

I’ve talked to very few book fans who weren’t half in love with Roger. He’s very likable and an interesting mixture of strength and vulnerability.  I think we started to see that in this episode, “I’ll love all of you or not at all”.  Then there’s Brianna… she tends to inspire a variety of fan responses.  Some fans love her and some hate her. I have to say my husband was a bit irritated by her in this episode, hence the Fraser “issues” comment. I’ve always felt that Claire and Jamie were pretty easy to figure out.  It isn’t hard to understand what motivates them.  Claire is a kind woman who cares about the people around her.  Jamie does the best he can with his gifts and for the people he believes God has entrusted him.  I’ve come to see their daughter as a bit harder to figure out.  Sophie certainly has her work cut out for her in playing this complex character. After this episode, I’m looking forward to seeing where she takes Bree.

Jamie and Claire In A Place They Have Never Been

Watching the interactions this week between Jamie and Claire, I was struck by the thought that these characters are in a place they have never been. I’m not talking about North Carolina, although it certainly is rivaling Scotland for sheer beauty (I know it was filmed in Scotland, but you know what I’m saying).  The place they find themselves in is one where they are together making plans for a future.  I love that they are constantly touching each other’s faces as if to reassure themselves that it isn’t a dream.  The gratitude they feel is almost palpable.

Falling in love is exhilarating but, as we all know, this feeling must mature and ripen if it is to last.  Jamie and Claire falling in love was exhilarating, but the maturing of their love is intoxicating and inspiring.  Their love and attraction for one another is passionate, committed and mutual. Jamie wants what will make Claire happy and fullfilled and Claire wants what will make Jamie happy and fullfilled.  Their lives are never easy, but their love never fails. This mutual love is rare and few of us are ever lucky enough to find it and I’m proud to be a fan of a tv show that will present this kind mature love.  It is a rarity to be sure.

I guess I feel better about this episode being so much like the book (I’m currently giving my silly self a hard eyeroll). So, in conclusion, I’d like to borrow Fiona’s husband’s  toast. Here’s to all the honest men and bonnie lassies in Outlander. I’ll be watching all their stories.

Here’s to Honest Men and Bonnie Lassies…a reflection on Outlander 4.3 “The False Bride” Okay, I'm tired of having to struggle to write about these episodes!  Last week, I struggled because there was too much to write about, too much to think about, and a need to write with the gravitas the topic deserved.  

[aion-rsa]

The Rod Serling Christmas Movie You Never Saw

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A Christmas Carol is the definitive Christmas story. Yes, you might try and argue it’s the nativity, but the volume of movie adaptations begs to differ, and I can tell your heart’s not in it. And yes, I see those of you rushing to the comments to tell us it’s Die Hard and I think you’re very big and clever.

But A Christmas Carol has everything, all the trappings of Christmas, that sliver of darkness running through the whole thing, and above all a strong seasonal message to remind us what Christmas is about.

The story has been reimagined and retold endless times since Charles Dickens’ book came out, from textually accurate recreations such as A Muppet Christmas Carol (seriously) to modern-day reimagining like the Bill Murray vehicle, Scrooged.

And across all of these different retellings, the seasonal message is usually the first casualty. Scrooge’s lesson is often softened into “charity is good” or “don’t be mean to people”, or, at its worst, Scrooge’s sin is made out to be that he doesn’t like Christmas.

But A Christmas Carol itself is unflinching in its look at poverty, and poverty as a direct result of the actions of the powerful, and Scrooge’s argument for “decreasing the surplus population” still wouldn’t look out of place in several mainstream journalism outlets today. Very few adaptations of the book, even the faithful ones, capture the anger that runs through the original story. It’s not a general anger at the idea of “meanness”. It’s a very specific anger targeting political ideas and rhetoric that people held then and now.

Over a hundred years later, Rod Serling was another writer who wasn’t afraid of using his writing to express political anger. Anyone who’s seen even a handful of episodes of The Twilight Zone will know Serling used his platform to target McCarthyism, war, bigotry, and conformity.

The opening narration of one of the most famous episodes, ‘To Serve Man’, reads:

“The world went on much as it had been going on, with the tentative tip-toeing alongside a precipice of crisis. There was Berlin to worry about, and Indo-China and Algeria and all the other myriad of problems, major and minor, that somehow had lost their edge of horror because we were so familiar with them.”

That atmosphere of dull, routine, existential terror will sound familiar to anyone who has just lived through the post-2016 Hell Years.

But while Serling was determined that The Twilight Zone would tell stories about the issues he cared about, he also had to fight tooth and nail against networks and advertisers that wanted nothing less than to be associated with anything “political”. So Serling’s political messages were frequently veiled in magic, “Men from Mars” and hypothetical futures.

So it’s surprising that, in all 156 original Twilight Zone episodes, most of them written by Rod Serling himself, that the show never tried its own twist on the classic Christmas story that was in many ways tailor-made for the Twilight Zone treatment.

Except Rod Serling did write his own take on A Christmas Carol, as a TV movie featuring Peter Sellers, and it’s been almost completely forgotten.

A Carol for Another Christmas

A Carol for Another Christmas was a TV movie, aired on the American Broadcasting Company on the December 28 1964. It was the first in a planned series of movies promoting the United Nations. The final one of these films, about a UN narcotics agent, is believed to be the last story written by Ian Fleming before his death.

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That A Carol for Another Christmas was part of this series is probably why Serling was free to be far more openly and explicitly political than we’ve seen in even the angriest episodes of The Twilight Zone. It takes the line “Mankind was my business!” from Charles Dickens’s story, and turns it into a tale about America’s role on the international stage. It doesn’t linger on the trimmings of Christmas, instead taking a long, hard look at the dead, the dying and the suffering. At times it feels like a Christmas special from the makers of Threads.

The film also boasts a turn by Peter Sellers as a terrifying post-apocalyptic cult leader.

Peter Sellers appears in a modern remake of A Christmas Carol penned by the writer of The Twilight Zone and Planet of the Apes seems like a genuine piece of television history, and yet it’s virtually impossible to find today. Since its first broadcast in 1964, the film was only available to view at the Paley Center for Media in New York and Los Angeles and the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, and rare bootleg copies.

In 2012 TCM broadcast it for the first time since its original showing, and has done annually since, and has made it available for limited-time on-demand streaming via TCM.com. But there has never been a home video or DVD release and the film has never been broadcast elsewhere.

So as we go into a recap of the film itself, we’ll issue the standard spoiler warning, but also beware that if you’re waiting to watch it yourself you might have a long search ahead of you.

Three Very Different Ghosts

Watching A Carol for Another Christmas is a strange experience. The film is both frighteningly relevant but also weirdly dated, and extremely of its time. The structure of the story is the one you already know.

Scrooge- here called “Daniel Grudge”, is approached by his nephew, argues with him about Christmas, then is approached by three ghosts bearing the three usual messages, “You weren’t always this way”, “Others are not like you”, and finally “This is what will happen if you continue this way”.

Grudge, a wealthy industrialist, is approached by his nephew, Fred, who is furious because Grudge has put a stop to a foreign academic exchange scheme, and we’re already seeing here where Serling is leaving the source material behind.

Grudge’s sin isn’t mere miserliness. He’s an all-out American isolationist. He wants the foreigners to stay behind their fences while America stays behind its own, and Fred’s argument that America has no choice but to engage in the international community falls on deaf ears.

Grudge’s motive for this is that his son, Marley, is a soldier who has died fighting a war elsewhere (based on the timing we can reasonably guess it’s Vietnam). He’s angry that every 20 years the US gets dragged into a foreign war, and sees the UN and foreign exchange schemes and similar as getting involved in and giving handouts to places where it isn’t America’s business. His ideal is for the USA to stay behind its fence, building faster jets and bigger bombs so that other countries know to leave it alone.

After seeing a brief apparition of Marley, Grudge is transported to a boat, filled with coffins covered in the flags of different nations. The Ghost of Christmas past that introduces himself to us is as the war dead. Not just the American war dead, but an amalgamation of everyone who ever died in a war.

In a line that will have unexpected resonance for modern viewers, Grudge describes the war dead as a “sucker brigade”.

It’s a fascinating but confusing exchange. Serling, through his stories and his words, was openly against the Vietnam War, and yet his proxy, the Ghost of Christmas Past, makes a passionate case for America’s involvement in foreign wars “every twenty years” with a clear nod towards the combat in Vietnam. Ultimately, the Ghost of Christmas Past is arguing for the importance of talking. “When you don’t talk, you fight,” he says.

The most chilling moment comes when the Ghost reminds Grudge of his comment that other countries need to know America “isn’t too chicken to use the bomb”, and points out that they already know it.

The next scene takes Grudge back to his naval service, inspecting a hospital in Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped, and for a piece of 1960s prime-time Christmas viewing, it does not pull its punches. Rod Serling served in the occupational force in Japan and he has no time for sugar-coating this.

A doctor introduces young Grudge to Japanese children who looked up as the bomb detonated and had their faces flash burned off. The film lingers on these children and refuses to move on until you get a sense of the true horror of Hiroshima. It’s something you can’t picture TV doing today, and definitely not on ABC on the 28th of December.

“Watching Makes all the Difference”

The Ghost of Christmas Present at first seems far more like the one we remember from the Muppets. A man in a dressing gown gorging himself on a banquet. The Ghost of Christmas Present isn’t here to take Grudge on a rooftop flight, however- even with 1960s TV budget permitting.

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How The Twilight Zone Influenced Are You Afraid of the Dark?

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Instead, the dark background lights up to reveal this banquet table is right next to the barbed wire fence of an internment camp for displaced peoples, another image that is horribly resonant for modern audiences. As Grudge criticises the ghost for eating his feast while starving refugees watch, the Ghost simply responds that the “watching makes all the difference”.

Once again, Serling isn’t here to talk about “the needy” as some vague concept to make people feel better about themselves. He talks about giving people around the world vaccinations for their children, rolls off figures such as 13 million people with tuberculosis, 130 million with malaria, three billion suffering from hunger. He talks about people closing their windows as violent crimes occur in the street- mere months after the murder of Catherine Susan Genovese, the story which would eventually lead to the codifying of the “By-Stander Effect”.

The Ghost of Christmas Past says “You were not always like this”, the “you” is America, the “were not always like this” is (even with Hiroshima) a somewhat rose-tinted view of America’s foreign policy interventions.

The Ghost of Christmas Present says “Others are not like you”, and in this case shows us the suffering around the world and the USA’s responsibility to it.

Anyone who’s seen a version of A Christmas Carol before knows what comes next, and it doesn’t take a Ghost of Christmas Future to guess what the next vision will entail.

Grudge finds himself in his local town hall, a bombed-out wreck. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a far more verbose spirit of Christmas future than we’ve come to expect, points out that in this future people have “less need for a platform for debate”.

One of the things that most jars with a modern audience watching this film, aside from an oddly uncritical perception of America’s role on the world stage, is the film’s constant refrain that “debate” is a good thing. In this film “debate” is what you do instead of fighting, it’s a way to find compromise, to solve problems. It rings very strangely in a time when “debate” is mostly associated with rhetorical games played in bad faith, and the idea we have some sort of duty to listen to and validate even the most toxic ideas.

We learn, unsurprisingly, that when the talking stopped the fighting started, and now the last few humans are living in the radioactive ruins of the civilisation that came before.

Then we meet Peter Sellers’ character, the Imperial Me. This is Sellers at his most comic and sinister, dressed up like an 18th-century pilgrim wearing a huge hat with “ME” written on it in giant sequins. Sellers is leading a horde of post-apocalyptic cultists to war against a nearby community that wants to “talk” and “debate”. The Imperial Me takes Grudge’s philosophy to its ultimate extreme, all that anyone should look out for is themselves. The Individual Me is above all, and after this tribe has killed off all the other rival tribes, they will set to killing each other, until the last individual is alone in the perfect society.

I’ve friends who work in the NHS with patients who won’t wear a mask “because it protects you, it doesn’t protect me”, so this scene hasn’t lost any of its bite.

Anyway, you know how the story goes from here. Grudge asks if these are things that will be or things that may be. He wakes up at home on Christmas morning. He reconciles with his nephew, admitting that “no man is an island”.

Read more

TV

The Twilight Zone Forever: Celebrating 60 Years of Rod Serling’s Classic Anthology

By Anne Serling

But one thing this version misses is Grudge doesn’t then go on to eat a fabulous feast with his family. Instead, he takes his morning coffee in the kitchen, while his black servants work around him (and probably wish he’d sod off back to his study). It’s an oddly sparse ending compared to what we’re used to with our Christmas Carols.

Carols for Other Christmases

At the time this strange, didactic retelling of A Christmas Carol saw mixed reactions. It’s a film that doesn’t mind lecturing its audience, and quite a few reviewers took against it for that. The right-wing advocacy group the John Birch Society particularly took against it, organising a letter-writing campaign against the film before it was even broadcast.

Is the film preachy? Hell yes. But so is the source material. Where it differs from the source material is that it offers far less comfort, far less of the warmth we see with Fred and Fezziwig and Bob Cratchit, while the threats it warns of are a great deal more severe.

Perhaps it’s a film that is most interesting as an artefact of a particular time and the anxieties it had.

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But also it’s an example of the power of Charles Dickens’s story when it’s allowed to be more than a twee festive tradition. It’s a story that should have a sharp political bite as much as warm fuzzy nostalgia. As much as it’s a Christmas story, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story, and ghost stories are meant to be scary.

The post The Rod Serling Christmas Movie You Never Saw appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Ranked: Every Version Of Vampires On TV/Movies | ScreenRant

Vampire stories seem to have existed in one form or another nearly as long as stories have existed at all. It's an absolute classic piece of supernatural lore whose popularity has waxed and waned over the years, however, it's a genre of storytelling that has never and likely will never disappear from the world completely. Of course, that genre has changed and adapted with the times, going from classic legends to books, films, and television.

RELATED: Twilight: 10 Most Underrated Supporting Characters

There has been an almost incalculable number of iterations of vampire stories in film and television, or at least films and TV shows that incorporate vampire lore in some way. More importantly, clearly some vampire stories are better than others. Sometimes they're classic or modern, sometimes they're fluffy and light or completely horrifying, and sometimes they portray vampires as feral animals or as almost people. Here are all of the most well-known versions of vampires in films and TV, ranked.

10 Twilight

To be honest, Twilight is the vampire saga for people who hate everything about vampires. The vampires that populate this story are only vampires in name, and the only thing they seem to share in common with any traditional bloodsucker is just that, the fact that they happen to drink blood.

Twilight deserves to be acknowledged for introducing vampire lore to a new generation, but it's hard to say whether it deserves to be lauded or shamed for that fact, given it offers a rather underwhelming representation of vampires.

9 The Vampire Diaries

Oh, The Vampire Diaries. If The Vampire Diaries had ended sooner, then it would probably earn a spot much higher on this list, but sadly this show is one that presented itself as the anti-Twilight only to transform into Twilight as the years went on (with vampire babies and all).

Scream writer Kevin Williamson did a great job of balancing the romance and horror elements during the show's early years, but eventually, the horror elements all but disappeared. If the vampire version of 90210 sounds appealing, then TVD is probably for you. If you're a vampire fan, then it is probably best to skip The Vampire Diaries.

8 Hemlock Grove

For a few years, vampires were a pretty big trend, so it's no surprise that Netflix decided to jump on that bandwagon. Although it only lasted three seasons, their absolutely bananas original series Hemlock Grove was a fun and exciting supernatural show that tackled vampire lore from an unusual angle. 

RELATED: Hemlock Grove Characters Sorted Into Their Hogwarts Houses

Their version of vampires drew from the Eastern European legend of the Upir; Olivia and Roman, the show's main Upir mother and son, seemed to be in competition to determine who is crazier and more deranged. The special effects were cheesy, but the show and its vamps were undeniably entertaining.

7 True Blood

Twilight is probably the biggest vampire story juggernaut in recent history, but HBO's adaptation of Charlaine Harris' True Blood series took that trend and gave it some much-needed darkness and prestige. True Blood really leaned into the campy and fun aspects of vampire horror, and they certainly made it sexier and geared towards a more adult audience.

True Blood takes a lot of its mythology from classic vampire lore, but the show also adds a bit of fluff to make it more appealing to a modern audience. What the show really excelled at was not taking itself too seriously, which is tragically uncommon in a lot of vampire stories.

6 Being Human

It doesn't matter if you're talking about the original Being Human or the US adaptation of the hit UK series, the vampires in Being Human are actually some of the most fun and interesting characters in mainstream media of the last few years.

This pair of shows kind of flew under the radar, but they developed their own cult following, and with good reason. The story revolves around a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost who are all roommates, and clearly their attempts at "being human" don't always go as planned. It should go without saying, but Mitchell and Aidan will win over any vampire fan.

5 Interview With A Vampire

Anne Rice is kind of the Bram Stoker of the late 20th century. When it comes to writing her vampires, Rice goes for the absolute classics but she's also not afraid to make vampires as weird and creepy as they truly can be.

RELATED: The Vampire Diaries: 10 Most Underrated Supporting Characters

Many of Rice's big-screen adaptations have sadly fallen short of the source material, but Interview With A Vampire is an exception. It's hard to screw up when you have Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as your leads, but this decades-spanning story of Louis and Lestat is everything that any vampire fan can hope for.

4 The Lost Boys

If anyone is ever looking for a vampire flick that is spunky, fun, and oh so delightfully '80s, then The Lost Boys will undoubtedly tickle your fancy. If Kiefer Sutherland with a mullet isn't enough to catch your attention, then the story of this squad of teen vampires running rampant in a coastal California town while being hunted by some even younger comic book fans certainly should be an attention grabber.

The Lost Boys miraculously manages to feel completely dated as well as totally timeless, and it's a must-see entry into the edgy teen vampire subgenre of vampire TV and movies.

3 Blade

It's both a blessed miracle that the Marvel Cinematic Universe decided to resurrect and reboot Blade and a near Greek tragedy that it took them this long to do it. Yes, Black Panther was epic, but let's not forget that Marvel already had an epic black superhero with some smashing box office success thanks to the original Blade.

RELATED: True Blood Characters Sorted Into Their Hogwarts Houses

The tale of this half-vampire vampire hunter is a fantastic comic book adaptation as well as a fantastic movie. It certainly fusses around with traditional vampire lore, but the way in which its vampires adapt to modern life still feels creative, edgy, and relevant today.

2 Let The Right One In

As if children aren't terrifying enough on their own, why not make them into savage blood-sucking animals that are legitimate wolves in sheep's clothing? The Swedish film Let The Right One In understandably won worldwide accolades for its incredibly unique vampire story.

It's a surprisingly soulful tale, with the friendship between child vampire Eli and human child Oskar taking center stage, but that kind of classic childhood story is turned on its head due to Eli's terrifying violence and unsettling way of navigating through the world. And for any vampire fans who were bullied as a child, Let The Right One In is absolutely essential viewing.

1 Buffy The Vampire Slayer

It seems a little ironic that the best vampire adaptation in television or film is mainly focused on a girl whose mystical destiny is to kill vampires, but that is undoubtedly how Joss Whedon and the rest of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer squad wanted it.

Buffy and its spinoff Angel were masterful about both embracing the conventions of vampire horror as well as completely flipping those conventions upside down to keep the audience surprised and impressed. However, what makes Buffy's vampires so exceptional is that they were truly exceptional and unique characters in their own right.

NEXT: Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 10 Biggest Twists, Ranked

source https://screenrant.com/vampires-ranked-every-version-tv-movies/

[furederiko]

September 1st!!! And it's the first (of hopefully more) Random-News-Digest of the month...

Quick update before I start! Nope, my situation hasn't really improved since last time. Things are still going haywire and uncertain on my part. Which means I'm still not too sure if I will be able to post more frequently this month as well. But this is a NEW month, and I always want to start anything with a fresh and optimistic mind. So at the very least, I'm going to TRY to post more. Here's hoping... Also, expect this R-N-D to be more... 'Digest' than usual. After all, I actually decided to do this on a whimsy when I woke up this morning. You can expect things to be more shorter and compact this time around. So without further ado, let's start!!!

DC Films

The news in this category has been quite a shocker lately. Martin Scorsese wants to make a stand-alone "Joker" origin story without Jared Leto? And then there's that Leto and Margot Robbie's "Joker and Harley Quinn" movie, that is being fast-tracked to come following "Suicide Squad 2"? It's a new title that was first rumored to replace David Ayer's "Gotham City Sirens", though recent report suggests that all-female movie is STILL in development as well. To complicate matters, "Suicide Squad 2" already lost a potential director, and with Will Smith's busy schedule, it won't start production until late next year. Ouch!

Oh yeah, eventhough the movie won't arrive until April 5th, 2019, director David F. Sandberg teased that the most lighthearted DC Film movie "Shazam" will start production very soon. Yet we don't even know who's going to play Billy Batson, nor his grown-up version. While Matt Reeves is going back and forth his version of "The Batman", saying it's not part of the DCEU, and then it IS. Please make up your mind! Jon Spaihts was rumored to be re-writing "Justice League Dark", though said rumor has been cleared out by The Wrap. The irony in that, is because he was among the writer of "Doctor Strange" for Marvel Studios!!! First Joss Whedon took over Zack Snyder for "Justice League", and has officially been given a writer credit (his involvement is 33% of the movie!!!). And don't forget how Patty Jenkins used to be attached to the first Thor sequel. So Spaihts's name being thrown into the rumor zone didn't feel as 'strange'. What I'm trying to say is, I won't be surprised if more people related to Marvel Studios will end up doing DC movies for Warner Bros in the future.

Clearly, this proves that WB STILL doesn't have a plan nor idea of what they are going to do with their DC Films. A concerning truth, but is definitely far from being a surprise nowadays. I guess since the current DCEU doesn't really have a clear future (despite the success of "Wonder Woman"), WB is already thinking about creating another Universe to complement it. Perhaps, if this one works better, then they can simply erase the one that Snyder started. That's the point of "Flashpoint", right? We'll see. Yes, we'll see...

X-Men Universe

Can't believe it took this long for some people to realize that... as long as Simon Kinberg is still in charge (in ANY capacity), fans probably won't be getting the 'true' X-Men movie they have always wanted. People seems to forget that he was the writer of the disappointing "X-Men: The Last Stand", and supervised the dreaded "Fant4stic Four". Now his upcoming directorial debut, "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", which he also wrote... is already put into a giant question mark, thanks to Kinberg's recent comment.

I admit, I've grown to DESPISE the term 'grounded' in recent years, because it is (ab)used as an excuse to make shitty underwhelming products. But seriously, what good will a "Dark Phoenix" storyline get by making it... grounded? That arc is meant to be a galactic interstellar adventure, involving alien entities and otherworldly stuffs. "X3" was already its grounded version, and it did NOT work. So why bother going the same route? Is this movie 'doomed to fail' then? It's unclear. But I certainly won't be surprised if that turns out to be the case. Just remember how that grounded take on "X-Men: Apocalypse" performed...

Marvel Studios

Marvel is celebrating the late Jack Kirby's 100th birthday this week. Studio's president Kevin Feige revealed on Twitter that the upcoming "Thor: Ragnarok" is produced as a love-letter to Kirby's work. Not unlike last year's "Doctor Strange", that served as a clear tribute to Steve Ditko. Actress Evangeline Lilly also celebrated the occassion, by sharing the first official image of her character Hope van Dyne, wearing the updated Wasp suit from "Ant-Man and the Wasp".

About that last one... I totally DIG her hair-style, because Lilly always looks much better with a long hairdo instead of the one she had in the first "Ant-Man". The suit on the other hand? I'm a bit mixed. I don't know why. Perhaps because I was expecting more... yellow/gold in the color scheme? Then again, Peyton Reed and Marvel Studios might be going with Wasp's red-black scheme once again, because it's the one designed by Kirby. Especially with Janet van Dyne being in the movie (played by Michelle Pfeiffer), and the report that Michael Douglas' Hank Pym will be suiting up himself in the classic white-red costume.

The writers of "Spider-Man: Homecoming" are set to be back for the sequel! Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are also involved in "Ant-Man and the Wasp", so there's a possibility they might end up becoming the next Markus-McFeely of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Assuming all the stars are aligned, they will reunite with director Jon Watts (who was already in talks to return) to work on the first Marvel Studios after "Avengers 4" ends the current Phase 3. Here's hoping this team will keep deliver something better, without losing that irresistible youthful and innocent charm that the first movie exuded.

Marvel TV

When this post goes up, Marvel's "The Inhumans" should be arriving in IMAX theatres everywhere. Not sure if it will be available in my country, but it's surely a definite for the US region, because ABC will begin broadcasting the series on Friday, September 29th, 2017.

According to recent report, the response to its premiere was... much positive. In fact, it's a far cry to the supposed 'disaster' that occured at the Television Critics Association Panel. Is this surprising? Well... not quite. I mean, one man's trash can end up becoming another's treasure, right? So I predict that the overall review, when it officially hits, will be mixed at best. Remember, this is still Jeph Loeb's and Scott Buck's work. Each or both have ruined a show (or two, if we count that much-anticipated crossover that came out last month... or more if we put into account their past forays) before, so there's no assurance that they won't strike again. But I'm honestly glad to hear some people actually enjoying it. Hey, there's one for everyone, right?

As for me, as I said before, I personally won't be seeing this on the theatres. Based on the lackluster trailers and underwhelming clips released so far, I'll have to give it a hard pass. Beside, considering my current financial issue, wasting money for uncertain things can be considered 'suicide' anyway. I'll probably going to hold back on watching the series as well, until the reviews for all episodes are out. Thanks to my doozy experience with the recent Netflix 'crossover mini-series', I'm going to be extra cautious with Marvel TV now. Because really, spending 8 hours for a boring and/or disappointing show felt like a tremendous waste of time. Doing so isn't going to do me any good.

QUICK UPDATE: Embargo for the full reviews hasn't been lifted when I wrote and upped this essay into queue. Those reviews have been made available NOW on various sites, and well... turns out it's as BAD as many initially said. Since I'm too lazy to modify the entire category (although it's only 3 short paragraphs LOL), this note will do just fine as a follow up. My original writing sounded more 'positive' anyways. LOL.

Meanwhile, things are looking A LOT better for Marvel's "Runaways". It seems response for the first episodes was more than great. It is currently being praised as very faithful to the source material, despite its various 'tweaks' (for example, one character was a mutant in the comic, but the copyrights prevent that to exist in live action adaptation). Not that it should be a surprise anyway. When the writer of the comic is directly in charge as consultant, we know that at least things are going to be close to the comics. Might this be the Marvel show to wait for this year? Probably, but I digress. I'm still going to be approaching this one with extra caution. If recent Marvel TV shows are any indications, then we can't really expect it to be... evenly balanced. Some of them had okay to good run in the first half, only to falter into a massive dud in the later half. Yes, even "LEGION", and the 4th season of Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.". They started out strong, but ended rather... disappointingly. Considering the same people behind them are also supervising this, said similar treatment can also apply to "Runaways"...

Netflix

It's already September, and I haven't finished Marvel's "The Defenders" yet. How come? The mini-series surprisingly BORED the hell out of me! A full review for it was meant to go up as my first post of September (yes, this R-N-D is its last minute replacement). That's the initial plan anyway, because I still haven't seen the last two episodes. Seriously though, when you've already lost any single urge to do it, there's nothing else you can do right?

Thanks to that, the internet had already spoiled me about what's going to happen to Simone Missick's Misty Knight. I don't even need to READ the whole article to figure out what will become of her... right hand. Yes, the headline already gave it away, and my minor knowledge of the character in the comics was more than enough to lead me to said conclusion. And then the image spreading on social media solidified it. Mind you, I still don't know how or what caused her to lose that body part. My quick and easy guess? Likely by Bakuto, considering up to episode 6, Misty had only spoken with one particular supporting character from the other series: Jessica Henwick's Colleen Wing. And it's also about her... KATANA, as if it's not obvious enough. Expect Misty to be armed with a prosthetic arm in the 3rd Season Marvel's "Luke Cage".

Yep, if you're like me, hoping for a "Heroes for Hire" show that includes the Daughters of Dragon... then we might as well swallow that wishful thinking. Why? It probably won't happen until the 2nd Season of Marvel's "Iron Fist" is out. Going by math alone, that means we have to wait another 26 episodes, and at least another two years. New season for "Luke Cage" will likely arrive in 2018, while the one for "Iron Fist" might probably land in 2019. Yeah, two years indeed. This is why you can't really expect much when it comes to Marvel TV... *sigh*

"Stranger Things" released a set of character posters for its 2nd Season. They cover the returning cast, as well as the new additions. What's interesting about these posters, is the strong nod to Steven Spielberg! And being a series set in the 80s, that folded-magazine style is also pretty neat. I hope this 2nd season will be as great as the 1st, and unlike most other Netflix shows.

One more thing! It's a rather old news, but worth bringing up. Netflix is currently collaborating with TOEI Animation, to remake the popular shounen-series "Saint Seiya". Titled "Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya", the new series will be created in full CG style. If you're curious on how that might look, think of it like several parts of TOEI's "Precure Dream Star!" movie that was done completely in CG, or their recent "Sekaisuru KADO" series. The latter in particular, already has a character design that's looking VERY Saint Seiya-ish (could it be intended as the warm-up to this one, then? probably). First season will be 12 episodes of 30 minutes, and will cover the "Galaxy War" to the "Silver Saint" Arcs. Yoshiharu Ashino is directing the new series, Eugene Son is the story editor and head writer, Terumi Nishii will be handling the character design, while Takashi Okazaki is doing the armors.

This news is intriguing, because it can end up heading towards into two different territory: actually good, or downright Bad. The latest "Sailor Moon" reboot that immediately divide old and new fans, is a great example of said situation. "Saint Seiya" is among the beloved titles to those growing up in the late 80s, so you can imagine their negative reactions if this remake doesn't suit their taste. The series doesn't have a fixed release date for now, but I believe we can expect it to arrive on Spring 2018. My only hope is that it retains Shingo Araki's anime style compared to Masami Kurumada's manga ones, because it has been pretty much the 'signature' of the series for the fans.

Disney XD Series

I saw the one-hour premiere of the "DuckTales" reboot not long after it aired, and great goodness... I'm LOVING it. I used to have a minor issue with the voices of the nephews before, but that concern quickly faded away when the story started rolling. It's just so engaging and fun to watch! My only complaint, is that it takes too long for the next episodes to start airing. But we're now in September, so September 23rd is just around 20 days away. Shall we start counting down for more Scrooge McDuck's adventure, then? I wonder if Disney XD will debut the first episode of "Big Hero 6 the Series" in advance too? Hmmm....

Pocket Monsters

"Pokemon GO" has been greeted by Legendary Birds Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos, and Lugia last month. Starting yesterday, August 31st, 2017, Niantic has continued the streak with the Legendary Dogs Entei, Raikou, and Suicine. Unlike the Birds, these ones are going to show up as region-based for a particular duration. Entei will be in the Europe and Africa region, Raikou in the America, and Suicine in Asia-Pacific. They will then switch places on September 30th, 2017.

This is great news, right? NOT exactly. While I DID feel overjoyed when the Legendaries were first announced, what came next was nothing more than disappointments. The fact that Niantic is focusing too much on Raid Battles to debut these special Pokemon, had caused inconveniences to some (if not MANY) of its players. Sad to say, yours truly is included in this cluster.

Here's the deal. In order to capture ONE Legendary, it first needs to be defeated in a Raid Battle. Unlike normal Raids, it's a group effort that requires around 15-20 players to be on the spot at the same time, working together to take one down. So what happens when you're a player... living in an area, that does NOT have the privilege of having at least the minimum number of players? You can only bite your nails while grunting and sighing with disappointments, because there's really NOTHING you can do. I've lost count how many 'futile attempts' I've done, singlehandedly (seriously, because there's NOBODY around) trying to defeat one. I've now arrived to the point where I simply couldn't care less about any of them anymore. Which is sad, because I was sort of hoping "Pokemon GO" would be there to help me go through my current situation. I mean, when that role has been surprisingly taken over by a repetitive, kid-oriented game called "Magikarp, Jump!"... That's saying much, right?

Of course, this shouldn't be an issue if "Pokemon GO" is still enjoyable as a single-player experience. Players who can't capture a Legendary, could still focus on doing anything else. Problem is, there's NOTHING much to do beside that. Niantic is too focused on the multiplayer 'Team Gameplay' aspect of this game, that it neglects those who play individually (whether by choice, or who are simply forced by circumstances... like yours truly). The new 'Gym System' was nice, but lately I've noticed a concerning trend: the turnaround has gradually becoming very slow. Many Gyms in my area, have Pokemon with ZERO motivations. Worse, they are stranded there for days (I can personally attest to this, because mine are among them!). That means many players no longer visit the Gyms. To put it simply, this game is just not... FUN anymore for everyone. Only for the 'privileged'.

Niantic can actually fix this, by start releasing Generation III as soon as possible. Adding a horde of new Pokemon, even if not all of them (honestly, releasing 10 new species per month would be a fun options), will give these 'unfortunate players' a renewed 'purpose' to go out and play the game. Otherwise, it's really a dry boring-ish land. IMHO, Niantic could and should've tried another method with the Legendary Dogs by... I don't know... letting them in the wild, like what happened in the core "Pokemon Gold, Silver & Crystal" games. Then again, it's probably too much to ask for. I mean, Niantic doesn't even allow something as simple as having these Legendaries added as silhouettes to the Pokedex after encountering them. And that's the only thing I've been hoping for... *sigh*. For now, unless Niantic shakes things up big time, my days with the App is numbered. And I'm going to be just another entry to the long list of players who have already walked out due to disappointments...

One more thing for "Pokemon". A quick detour to the TV side! Kanto Gym Leaders and Satoshi's former travel companions Kasumi and Takeshi (or Misty and Brock in the US version)... are coming to Alola this month!!! Many fans are obviously pleased to hear this! After they have been unceremoniously snubbed in the 20th Anniversary movie "Eiga Pocket Monster, Kimi ni Kimeta!", they are set to show up in the series instead. Takeshi in particular, is the character I've been waiting for. After all, his VA Yuuji Ueda is still a crucial part in the series as the voice of Sonansu/Wobbuffet, so he could actually show up a lot more! This pair will be making their Alolan guest appearances on the September 14th and 21st episodes. Which got me thinking: How awesome will it be if Satoshi's other travel friends show up at the same time too, right?

Street Fighter

"Street Fighter V" has welcomed its 5th DLC character for Season 2. As speculated and rumored before, it's indeed Menat, the Eyes of the Future. She is also confirmed to be the apprentice of Rose, by the way. This makes her the first completely NEW character to the franchise, because Kolin, Ed, and Abigail have all showed up before in other games. Judging from her quick and... arguably pointless appearance in Ed's Story Mode, Menat has a fantastic Egyptian-themed design. The mummy queen alternate costume however? Yeeesh. You can check out her reveal trailer online, or you can just get her right away because she's already available since early this week.

Menat's arrival after Abigail, pretty much confirms the identity of the 6th and final DLC character: Guy's teacher, Zeku. His name was already leaked before by Event Hubs' Flowtron, and his report has been proven to be on point until now. So I guess all we need to wait is CAPCOM's official announcement, right? Seeing the release pattern (Ed on May 30th, Abigail on July 25th, Menat on August 29th), we can probably expect this last Season 2 character to arrive later this month, if not late October. So tell me, are you excited about Zeku?

[popcornbutterflymedia]

finding the heart of this story is a lot like falling in love.

there was absolutely no reason for this film to be on my radar. the festival drama did not help at all. putting this in, in place of a certain blockbuster hit wasn’t exactly indicative of the growth that the festival wanted to achieve. this was a suitor desperately vying for my attention, and i wasn’t giving it the time of day. it had appeal, but it was for someone else, just not me. still, like a potential beloved who is so sure of his affections, he enlisted the help of his friends, to put in a good word. social media was ablaze with such glowing commentary, it was difficult to ignore. even then, i refused to be blinded by its brightness. my friends, not being able to get over the film were incessantly asking if i had seen it. truthfully, it was baffling how such a seemingly unassuming film could merit such positive feedback. it was enough for me to grow curious. i combed through all the junket footage i could find, and it was in the press conference where a reference to one of my absolute favorite plays ever written came up. it was enough  for me to raise my brows. this suitor was daring me to say yes, knowing it had already won my heart. i had never intended to fall in the first place, much less, want to keep coming back. i had seen this just as the festival was winding down, at my cinema at least. i found myself missing the film, like a loved one who had gone and was never to return for a fair amount of time. how does one cope with the longing, then? you write a love letter.

consider this a love letter to vince and kath and james.

there is nothing particularly new to this love story. it is as formulaic as all love stories, and love triangle tales go. a boyish girl caught between a bad boy and lovable eternally pining boy next door. it is cheesy at times, the adorable kind of baduy, and is unafraid to be so. and yet, i found myself smiling, laughing out loud and crying. it is utterly simplistic, unpretentious, but whole, and all encompassing, which, when you think about it is quite contradictory. for such a little story it has a big heart. it was full, overflowing, even. this is a teen love triangle made compelling by its background of intricate family relationships, presented with such subtlety but was enough to make a powerful point. i came out of the cinema, with a lighter heart, feeling exhilarated. it was a high that lasted for days and days on end. even now, writing about it, brings me so much joy.

the cyrano de bergerac reference sold the movie to me. i had first read the play in one sitting after seeing a younger schoolmate reading it on the bus ride home. that was my senior year of high school. after my first encounter, i found every translation of the play calling at me: from the original french text, to rolando tinio’s filipino translation. it’s a play, that is a bit more progressive in language than shakepere. it’s a poetic masterpiece. i’m not sure if edmond rostand counted words and syllables…he probably did, but the lines never felt so rigidly measured. the language was modern, but classic. it was provocative, and sensuous. i am almost sure, that the cyrano comparison to this movie is attributed more to the similar nature of both narratives - that of hiding behind another person, speaking for another person, not being able to come into the light, maimed by personal inadequacies, but having so much love to give. i find that this reference also speaks to the language used for both works. ‘vince and kath and james’ is just as much a work of provocative, sensuous poetry using modern day language, with social media as its ‘stage,’ if you may. the direction, the blocking, the silent communication between the actors is also a form of physical poetry. verbally, it was music. physically, it was a graceful dance.

none of the three main actors was a selling point for me. i either liked them, was waiting for their break, or did not know much about them. to say then, that they were the biggest surprises of the film is an understatement. let’s talk about them one by one:

my initial reaction when ronnie got cast was ‘why him?’ i did not know much about him, and i haven’t seen enough of him in scripted material to know what to expect. i know that he dances, i know that he is a heartthrob of sorts. i know that he has such a strong presence, one that might be easily misconstrued as an off-putting edginess. truth be told, before seeing the movie, i had read quite a number of not so favorable reviews, that were so convincing, i was actually scared to even give this movie a chance. i saw the production number on asap, and thought there was something there. i held on to whatever that was. james, an athletic jock seems to be tailored to his personality, which is a good thing. he has his shining moments. he has a rawness that only needs to be guided and refined, if he really wants to be better. 

now, julia baretto: this girl is one of those who i expected so much from when she was launched. by virtue of her family name, i genuinely have always wanted the best for her. i was ready to be a fan, actually. it hurt every time i see her projects fail to do what it was supposed to do. i would feel tired and frustrated for her. on interviews, i would find myself listening intently to her, fascinated by how articulate she is, by her thought process. it was a mystery to me why a girl as smart as she is, isn’t able to breakthrough. i couldn’t be a fan, but for some reason, i could never dislike her, even if it was frankly, the norm. in the junket, she would always speak about her walls being broken down. i understood that, but never understood how…. vkj is her breakthrough! as much as the film speaks to the heart, i was relieved and so emotional for julia. it is in this film that i understood her acting choices, her style, and her heart she is definitely a baretto, she has proven that, but more importantly, she has come into her own. 

joshua garcia: to tell you that the beginnings of this boy was interesting, is an understatement. i did not understand the appeal, the demeanor, i just did not understand him at all. i honestly could not bear to watch him. that is, until ’the greatest love’ came along. it was a slow start for his character, that i had time to be nervous for the show. and then he turned out to be the biggest surprise of them all! i now i liked him. when feedback for the film started to pour in, and the name of john lloyd cruz was being thrown around to describe joshua and his portrayal, all i could think was, ‘okay, i already like the boy, but isn’t the jlc reference a bit too much? he is decent, but he can’t be THAT good!’ my friends who were begging me to watch the movie, even used joshua to sell the film to me. they were right! i find that the jlc comparison is just a reference point by which we could understand joshua as an actor right now but make no mistake, he is his own person, he has his own power. i tend to look at the actor’s eyes to know if he has it, and my God, this boy has it in spades and aces. his eyes speak, his silence is compelling, hearing him speak is captivating. he is the heart of this movie. overheard, after the screening, ‘parang si vince ang nagdala ng movie…’ i now love the boy, and am excited for what more is in store for him. i hope he never stops learning. he is proof to me, that people can grow, that people change for the better.

the chemistry of these three kids just makes me so happy. it works! this movie has done what it set out to do, in that, i now watch these three (two, because i am still waiting on ronnie on altl…) on tv and smile, and trust what they are able to do….

favorite vkj things:

vince and james’ relationship, their understanding of each other, how it was physically demonstrated….how their eyes speak…

james and kath at the feels cafe….kilig overload!

james looking on as vince was confronting his mother

vince’s quiet moments

vince in the car doing everything he can to spoil james’ game

the pool party, for the three of them

maris as best friend maxine, was hysterical, and adorable, especially jumping rope

the basketball court scene between the two boys

kath and her brother’s relationship

kath seeing her father after a long time (no dialogue, just feels and there were a lot of feels!)

julia’s physicality as kath….

vince confronting his mother (favorite joshua scene of all)

vince and kath’s banter, which goes back to the language/poetry of the film

how the unrequited love was manifested through vince’s eyes

the talyer scene (goodness! julia is so beautiful, and with joshua looking on is electric. it worked! the camera work on this scene wins!!!)

pabebe, in love kath with a maarte twang

the sisig scene

the ’got to believe’ scene, and how that movie’s dialogue was tied into this movie, kilig!!!!!! (and yes, juila is really tita claudine’s heir apparent!)

the messy pipe scene

the side walk scene

the ice cream scene, the kids nailed that one, i was a mess

the last scene, simple,but it hit hard

bottom line: i love vince and kath so much! 

i am not exactly this movie’s target audience. i had heard of the source material but did not care for it, so news of a film based on said material was a wonder to me. it turned out to be one of my favorite films. this is a credit to the creative team and the writers who adapted the material, and made it into a story that someone like me would understand, and to direk ted for directing it the way you did, for what you have done for your cast. i know it matters, because you have made the kids more accessible. thank you for not dumbing it down, which could easily be the case for kilig films like this one. it makes me miss those teen shows on tv that i grew up with. ‘vince and kath and james’ has single-handedly made the case for the resurrection of the teen genre on television. it is a mystery to me why there is no teen show on tv when there are writers and directors like the ones of vkj. consider it, please? thank you!

to close this, i came out of the cinema laughing and giddy through my welcome tears. it’s a feeling that i haven’t parted with til now. and it’s still a shock to my system. this is one film i am grateful i was able to catch. i did not know i needed it. by speaking to my heart with such sincerity, it gave me a chance to use my heart, and just my heart. i have a tendency to be so wrapped up in my head sometimes and this film has become a reminder for me to use my heart as often as possible. thank you, team vkj, for making it okay to wear my heart on my sleeve. i will forever be grateful.

~~~

(-p january 16, 2017. sorry this was awfully late, but i hope it is still worth your while. :<3 )

[pgcbooks]

Q & A with Michelle Frances, author The Girlfriend

A word of mouth bestseller in the UK, The Girlfriend is a tense and chilling psychological thriller about the potentially fraught relationship between a mother, her son, and his girlfriend.  

Author Michelle Frances graduated from Bournemouth Film School in 1996 and then from the Masters programme at the American Film Institute, Los Angeles, in 1998. Returning to London, England, she worked for several years in film and TV as a script editor and producer for both the independent sector and the BBC.

We spoke to Michelle about her debut novel, why she chose to write about the relationship between a mother and daughter-in-law, and how writing a book is different than writing for screen.  

Your debut novel is about different sort of love triangle, the girlfriend, Cherry, isn’t competing with a lover but the potential mother-in-law, Laura. What made you choose this dynamic to write about?

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion that two women who are complete strangers are suddenly thrust together in a very intimate relationship for the rest of their lives – just because one starts to date the other’s son. It’s a bit weird and great territory for emotional stress and anxiety. Will she like me? Will I like her? What about for the next forty years?!  

I really wanted to write a book that gave both the mother’s and the girlfriend’s point-of-view as each woman’s love for the same man is, although very different, of equal weight and importance. Pit these two loves against each other and who would win? I wanted to create a story that would get readers talking, debating which of the two women might be the more ‘wronged’ and the more justified in their behaviour.

There are times in the book where it’s easy to dislike Cherry and Laura! Did you feel empathy for them even though they both do some pretty bad things?

I find it hard to dislike either of them – particularly in the beginning. I want to shake Cherry and tell her to relax right at the start of the book and stop worrying so much! It’s sad really, she genuinely cares for Daniel (even though she does also like his money) and if she’d just stopped fretting about what Laura thought of her, things might have worked out very differently. And Laura does the most awful thing but she has been told by the doctors that Daniel has days – possibly hours – to live, and I can’t help but understand her actions as she’s about to lose her second – and only remaining – child.  Both women have moments of possession and jealously and they are ugly, dangerous emotions that make them do despicable things. But as people I feel sorry for them both in many ways.  

Part of the fun of The Girlfriend is trying to decide which of the characters’ behaviour is worse! Did you always intend for the story to be so morally ambiguous?

Yes, absolutely! I really wanted to test the characters, to see how far they would go, and importantly, try and make their actions justified – at least in their eyes.  I think that in some cases, particularly with Laura, even though she does some awful things, she genuinely believes it’s for the right reason. Sadly, with the combination of both Laura’s and Cherry’s individual backgrounds and the situation they now find themselves in, mixed in with the paranoia and nerves, things start unraveling quite quickly.  

What inspired you to write a thriller for your first novel?

Personally, I wrote a thriller because that was the story nagging at me in my head wanting to be told! The darker side of our psyche and how far we’ll go when pushed fascinates me. Also, the dynamic between mother / son / girlfriend is a universal story that touches on a lot of people. Plenty of my girlfriends had tales of woe about their mothers-in-law. During the course of writing the novel I also heard a radio program about the difficulties some women were having with their new daughters-in-law and one story particularly affected me. A heart-broken woman had phoned in and was in tears speaking of how she was excluded to the extent she hadn’t even known her son and his new wife had had not one, but two children. She had discovered that her grandchildren existed by accident.  It reinforced to me that it’s a universal relationship that can affect a lot of women and cause a lot of distress – to either party.

How was writing for a novel different from writing for film and TV?

Well in TV, someone else does all the work!  My work in television has been nearly all in producing and script editing (although I have attempted a script or two along the way). There are lots of key differences. The most obvious is length (!) – a script has about 12,000 words, a novel 100,000. Writing for television is also a very collaborative affair – certainly in the UK. There will be tiers of editors, producers, executives and commissioners, all with an opinion, that the writer will either embrace, or will need to successfully argue is invalid.

Things – mostly – happen on screen fast. A very respected UK producer once told me to ‘burn story’. Help, I thought, if I tell the writer to use that story beat in the first five minutes of the episode, what the heck are we going to do just before the ad break? But actually, it’s extremely liberating. It’s a bit like a natural disaster. The occurrence of one thing will set in motion other things, for example the earthquake will set off the tsunami. It’s the same with story – and more to the point, characters. Making things happen often triggers other things to happen.  

I’m stating the obvious here but television is a visual medium. But so is a reader’s imagination. In TV, you would look to cut scenes against one another that can help to tell the story. For example, a cop might be talking to a colleague wondering who could be the culprit. Cutting to a new scene featuring a particular individual can make the audience think that individual is the guilty party. The use of visuals – and descriptive prose – cut against each other can create all sorts of drama. It can build tension, create cliffhangers, increase mystery, explain secrets. This is true of novels just as much as of television.

What was your writing process like?

I tend to see writing a novel as a bit like completing a jigsaw puzzle.  After shaping up the characters, I generally start with the foundations of the story, the big plot beats and twists (which I liken to the straight edges of a puzzle). Then I will fill in some of the more detailed beats in the first few chapters only – and then go ahead and write them. Once they’re complete, the characters will be starting to tell me where to go next, and so I’ll write the next section, and this continues until I’m near the end, where hopefully the jigsaw pieces are slotting in faster than I can write them!

I write everything out by hand first in a series of notebooks and once I’ve completed the day’s word target, I’ll then type them up, doing a mini-edit along the way. I like the sensation of pencil on paper and find it more liberating.

The Girlfriend has already been optioned for a film adaptation (congratulations!). Are you excited to see how your story will be adapted for the screen?

Very much so. Having worked in TV for so long, I’m aware of how you can have two different writers take the same source material and end up with two wildly different scripts. I’m excited to see a filmmakers’ take on the novel and watch his or her vision take shape. This also applies to casting – it’s fascinating to try and imagine different actress’s versions of Laura and Cherry!

Are you working on another novel and if so can you tell us anything about it?

Yes, it’s another psychological thriller, which is set in the world of the maternity leave replacement. The mum-to-be is a TV producer who tries to like her temporary replacement, but can’t help thinking she’s got a hidden agenda.  Is she after her job – or something else entirely?

Thanks Michelle!

[oldguardaudio]

PowerLine 🔥 John Hinderaker explains the Grave Concerns of #ReleaseTheMemo 🔥 Hillary Doubles Down on Stupid

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Daily Digest

The FBI Has “Grave Concerns”? So Do I

The NFL kneeling protests: On MPR

Tet (2)

Hillary Doubles Down on Stupid

“The Right to Say Goodbye”??

The FBI Has “Grave Concerns”? So Do I

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 04:34 PM PST

(John Hinderaker)Most of us are eagerly awaiting the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo on abuse of the FBI by the Obama administration. It should happen in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, the Bureau is worried, as always, about its public image. The Associated Press headlines: “FBI clashes with Trump, has ‘grave concerns’ on Russia memo.” I’m so old, I can remember when liberals were in favor of revealing corruption in institutions like the FBI. Those days, of course, are long gone.

In a remarkably public clash of wills with the White House, the FBI declared Wednesday it has “grave concerns” about the accuracy of a classified memo on the Russia election investigation that President Donald Trump wants released.

Yeah, well, you know what? I have grave concerns about the politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI under the Obama administration, which I have been writing about since 2010.

“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said.

If there are “material omissions of fact,” the Democrats’ responsive memo no doubt will reveal them. Good: let’s lay the cards on the table. The relevant fact here is that the FBI is no longer claiming that there is a national security problem with releasing the memo, only that it will put the FBI in a bad light.

Trey Gowdy, soon to depart the House, gets the last word:

The Justice Department had said in a letter last week that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release the memo without first giving the FBI and the department the chance to review it.

After those complaints, Wray reviewed the memo over the weekend. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who was with him when he reviewed the memo, said the FBI director did not raise any national security concerns. Gowdy said the memo doesn’t reveal any intelligence methods but does reveal “one source.”

Heh. Christopher Steele, I presume. It’s time for some transparency. Let’s get to the bottom of the FBI’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The Bureau needs, at a minimum, to be reformed via a thorough housecleaning of senior bureaucrats.

   The NFL kneeling protests: On MPR

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 02:13 PM PST

(Scott Johnson)Minnesota Public Radio (91.1 FM in the Twin Cities) will broadcast the University of Minnesota Humphrey School symposium on the NFL kneeling protests tomorrow at noon and 9:00 p.m. Moderated on campus yesterday by Professor Larry Jacobs, director of the Humphrey School’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, the symposium panel included Professor Douglass Hartmann, chairman of the University of Minnesota Sociology Department, Frank White, coordinator of the Minnesota Twins youth baseball program, and me, blogger. MPR streams its programming live online here and has a panoply of listening options here.

I previewed the symposium here. John reviewed the symposium here. I’m still in the woulda, coulda, shoulda self-assessment phase of my part in the program. If you have any interest in the subject, I nevertheless hope you will be able to check out the program tomorrow.

Minnesota Public Radio is an outlet with incredible reach. Given the presence in town of NFL management and the league’s top two teams for the Super Bowl on Sunday, the program may even be heard by responsible parties. Professor Jacobs is, in any event, to be congratulated for putting together a program that attracted the MPR’s interest in such short order.

   Tet (2)

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 12:45 PM PST

(Steven Hayward)Continuing with yesterday’s excerpt about the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a little bit more from The Age of Reagan, vol. 1:

On the morning of January 31, the first full day of the Tet attack, Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and a Vietnamese TV cameraman employed by NBC were wandering around Saigon getting photos and footage of the battle damage when they noticed a small contingent of South Vietnamese troops with a captive dressed in a checked shirt. From the other direction came Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of South Vietnam’s national police. As Adams and the NBC cameraman aimed their cameras, Loan calmly raised his sidearm and shot the prisoner—a Viet Cong officer—in the head. Loan walked over to Adams and said in English: “They killed many Americans and many of my men.” (It was not reported at the time that the prisoner had also taunted his captors, saying “Now you must treat me as a prisoner of war,” and had been identified as the assassin of a South Vietnamese army officer’s entire family.)

Adams’ stunning photo of the prisoner’s grimace as the bullet struck his head ran on the front pages of newspaper all across America two days later. Only the Associated Press reported Loan’s remark to Adams that “They killed many Americans and many of my men.” Most news accounts of the photo ignored this context; the drama of the picture was just too irresistible for most news organizations to try to put it in any kind of balanced context. NBC, which had only a silent film clip because no sound man had accompanied its cameraman, went so far as to embellish its TV broadcast of the episode by adding the sound of a gunshot. Tom Buckley, a writer for Harper’s magazine, said Adams’ photo was “the moment when the American public turned against the war.”

The visual shock of the Adams’ photograph (for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize) was soon matched by the journalistic interpretation of events. On February 7, Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett filed a story from the Mekong Delta town of Ben Tre, where hard fighting had inflicted severe damage and high civilian casualties. The third paragraph of Arnett’s report quoted an unnamed U.S Major: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The phrase proved an immediate sensation and was picked up and amplified by the media echo chamber. The phrase came to be repeated countless times by other media outlets and was adapted into an all-purpose slogan to describe the hard action in other cities such as Hue. For many Americans and not just those in the anti-war movement, it became an epigram that captured the disproportion between America’s seemingly excessive use of firepower and our limited war aims. (Arnett refused to identify the source of the quote, but later revealingly referred to his source as “the perpetrator.” The New Republic identified the source at the time as Major Chester L. Brown.)

Arnett’s sensational quotation was only the beginning of the bad press the Tet offensive unleashed. “Rarely,” wrote Peter Braestrup in his two-volume analysis of the press coverage of Tet (Big Story), “has contemporary crisis journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality. . . To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other—in a major crisis abroad—cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism.” Braestrup later went even further, describing media coverage of Tet as “press malpractice.” Media critics, especially conservatives, have long charged that antiwar bias emerged openly in the wake of Tet. Former Los Angeles Times and Newsweek correspondent Robert Elegant, who covered Vietnam for ten years, wrote that “For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield, but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen.” The coverage of Tet can be charitably attributed as much to press incompetence and a journalistic herd instinct as it did to outright bias. . .

Several months later an NBC producer proposed to correct the record with a three-part series showing that Tet had in fact been an enemy defeat. The idea was rejected by higher-ups at the network because, a senior producer said, Tet was seen “in the public’s mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat.”

   Hillary Doubles Down on Stupid

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 10:52 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)The British politician Denis Healey is credited with the First Law of Holes, which holds: “If you’re in one, stop digging.” Hillary Clinton apparently never heard of the First Law of Holes, because she’s shoveling away over the story that ten years ago she declined to fire a campaign staffer for sexual harassment. Now Hillary wants us to know that she’s oh so sorry, writing a long apologia on Facebook. You have to read it, not to believe it:

The most important work of my life has been to support and empower women. I’ve tried to do so here at home, around the world, and in the organizations I’ve run. I started in my twenties, and four decades later I’m nowhere near being done. I’m proud that it’s the work I’m most associated with, and it remains what I’m most dedicated to.

So I very much understand the question I’m being asked as to why I let an employee on my 2008 campaign keep his job despite his inappropriate workplace behavior.

The short answer is this: If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t. . .

Now you tell us. After this, she reviews the incident from her point of view, and then piles on even more turgid self-serving pap:

It was reassuring to hear that she [the victim from 2008] felt supported back then – and that all these years later, those feelings haven’t changed. That again left me glad that my campaign had in place a comprehensive process for dealing with complaints. The fact that the woman involved felt heard and supported reinforced my belief that the process worked – at least to a degree. . .

Over the past year, a seismic shift has occurred in the way we approach and respond to sexual harassment, both as a society and as individuals. This shift was long overdue.

Um, one reason it was “long overdue” was your covering for your Predator-in-Chief husband 20 years ago, blaming the whole fuss on the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Funny that’s she silent about all this now.

We can’t go back, but we can certainly look back, informed by the present. We can acknowledge that even those of us who have spent much of our life thinking about gender issues and who have firsthand experiences of navigating a male-dominated industry or career may not always get it right.

You may question why it’s taken me time to speak on this at length. The answer is simple: I’ve been grappling with this and thinking about how best to share my thoughts. I hope that my doing so will push others to keep having this conversation – to ask and try to answer the hard questions, not just in the abstract but in the real-life contexts of our roles as men, women, bosses, employees, advocates, and public officials. I hope that women will continue to talk and write about their own experiences and that they will continue leading this critical debate, which, done right, will lead to a better, fairer, safer country for us all.

Now she’s just trolling us. Here’s a question I’d like to see her asked: If you had it to do all over again, would you still marry Bill?

A lot of people keep saying, Can’t this woman just go away? To the contrary, I hope she hangs around forever.

   “The Right to Say Goodbye”??

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 09:25 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)Did you know that you have a fundamental constitutional right to say goodbye? You do according to Federal District Court Judge Katherine B. Forrest (an Obama appointee). I guess that right was another one of those rights hiding in the emanations and penumbras of the 14th Amendment, or something.

On Monday Judge Forrest ordered the release from custody Ravidath Ragbir, an alien who ICE had detained and was preparing to deport. Judge Forrest twice notes that the government was in complete conformity with the statutory law: “The Court, in fact, agrees with the Government that the statutory scheme—when one picks the path through the thicket in the corn maze—allows them to do what was done here.” And: “The Court agrees that the statutory scheme governing petitioner’s status is properly read to allow for his removal without further right of contest.”

This should be the end of the matter then, shouldn’t it?

Not to Judge Forrest, who offers us this flourish of “legal reasoning”:

There is, and ought to be in this great country, the freedom to say goodbye. That is, the freedom to hug one’s spouse and children, the freedom to organize the myriad of human affairs that collect over time. It ought to be—and it has never before been—that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subject to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust [you mean like the Obama Administration arresting and jailing an obscure video producer after Benghazi??], regimes where those who have lived long in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home and work. And sent away.

Methinks Judge Forrest is angling for this year’s Anthony Kennedy Award for Most Emotive Judicial Writing. Prof. David Bernstein of Scalia Law School calls Judge Forrest’s opinion  “the most lawless judicial decision I think I’ve ever read.”

By the way, who is Ragbir? The Washington Post yesterday filled in some of the blanks:

Ragbir is the director of the immigrant advocacy group New Sanctuary Coalition in New York, a collection of 150 faith-based organizations. He became a lawful U.S. resident in 1994. In 2000, he was convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy for accepting fraudulent loan applications while working at a mortgage lender. [Yet Judge Forrest says Ragbir has lived in the country “without incident.”]

After serving a prison sentence, he was ordered deported based on his conviction. He spent about two years in detention but was released under supervision in 2008 while his case moved through immigration courts. Over the following decade, he became a prominent voice in New York’s immigrant community, testifying before the city council and once meeting with President Barack Obama’s transition team to discuss immigration policy, according to his attorneys.

In other words, Ragbir has been slated for deportation for nearly 10 years. Seems like that was plenty of time to arrange to say goodbye and get his affairs in order.

   PowerLine 🔥 John Hinderaker explains the Grave Concerns of #ReleaseTheMemo 🔥 Hillary Doubles Down on Stupid PowerLine 🔥 John Hinderaker explains the Grave Concerns of #ReleaseTheMemo 🔥 Hillary Doubles Down on Stupid…