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dweemeister · 5 years

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Joker (2019)

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot and nearly killed United States President Ronald Reagan, wounded a police officer and Secret Service agent, and permanently disabled Press Secretary James Brady (whose death in 2014 was ruled a homicide from the gunshot wound thirty-three years prior). Found not guilty due to insanity, Hinckley obsessed over Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) while planning his actions. Like Taxi Driver’s protagonist Travis Bickle, Hinckley plotted to assassinate a famous politician. Besotted with Jodie Foster (who starred in Taxi Driver) and disappointed by not attracting her attention after stalking her, Hinckley planned the assassination attempt to impress the actress.

Hinckley and Taxi Driver were both on my mind when watching Todd Phillips’ Joker. Not only do they share thematic connective tissue and similar color palettes, but both films have been plagued by discourse about whether they will inspire someone to commit horrific violence – I respect Taxi Driver as one of the best films released in the 1970s, but it is not something I could rewatch easily. Filmmakers, indeed, should have a sense of social responsibility in their creations. Joker, as a character study first and foremost, paints its politics in broad strokes – preferring to submerge, as character studies should, the audience into the mindset of its protagonist. Joker invites the audience to empathize with a tortured soul who, failed by the state and refusing to hold himself responsible for his worst actions, consciously moves beyond redemption. That point, where the Joker is beyond redemption, is found where Batman fans know him best: murdering only to see if that murder is funny. Whether he reaches that point within the bounds of this film is up for debate.

It is 1981 in Gotham City. The city belches with urban malaise. A garbage collectors’ strike roils the city; socioeconomic inequality is rife; “Super Rats” plague the streets; the municipal services are overwhelmed. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a clown-for-hire living and caring for his aging mother, Penny (Frances Conroy). Money is sparse and one of the few joys Arthur and Penny have is Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro in a role not far removed from his turn in 1983′s The King of Comedy) primetime talk show. Arthur suffers from random paroxysms of laughter (a real-life affliction known as emotional incontinence, among other names) that, at the very least, invites disdainful looks from strangers who then avoid him. Arthur is seeking help for his depression and other unspoken problems, but Gotham’s social services are soon defunded by the city government and various other events force him to his breaking point.

Also featured in this film are Arthur’s hallway neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and cameos from Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), a young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson), and Alfred Pennyworth (Douglas Hodge).

The film does not glorify any of its hideous violence, but those who are not critical consumers of media will interpret this film how they will. Nevertheless, Joker is less on the side of its protagonist than the likes of Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange (1971) and will likely result in a similar reverence once this film has exited theaters. Within the film’s confines, there is nothing surprising about any of its violence; how the violence happens is shocking in its immediacy and realistic ferocity. It is contextualized as being the inevitable result of a sociopolitical system that cares not for the downtrodden, the mentally ill – to reiterate, Phillips is painting with broad political strokes. Arthur, who keeps on seeking professional help and ways to quell his silent rage, is attempting to stay his destructive behaviors long after his first homicide (as the film does not glorify violence, it also does not target those with mental illness; it directs its ire towards those without sympathy for the mentally ill). Those efforts are stymied by factors beyond his control – an almost-plot twist to shock even ardent Batman fans, the idolization of an unnamed clown who has executed three members or accomplices of Gotham’s elite.

It is here that Joker separates itself from the social cynicism and post-Vietnam War disillusionment and of Taxi Driver; it is here that Philipps’ film becomes just as much a reflection of the era it was released in and the nation of its origin as Scarface (1932 original with Paul Muni), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and The Dark Knight (2008) once did. Those films respectively capitalized on fears of Italian and Irish mafias making urban centers their criminal playgrounds, countercultural diehards claiming free-wheeling Jazz Age outlaws as their own, and a vast surveillance state crafted to declare war on terrorism. For Joker, the societal diagnosis by Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver (2010′s The Fighter) is double-sided, damning those with and without power. The film decries individuals and groups who deify charismatic or compelling figures claiming their actions and/or rhetoric to be indicative of the common person’s interests. These revered figures incorporate grievance into their persona, weaponizing the language of victimhood not only to bring attention and (justifiably or unjustifiably) force change on a problem, but to absolve themselves of their personal sins. They are, dare it be written, populists. Beware those who invoke “the people” to vindicate their crusades.

Arthur Fleck, as an underemployed clown, does not ask for the attention of the masses. He wishes, “to bring laughter and joy to the world,” yet finds fulfillment in making a handful of children’s hospital patients smile. During Arthur’s first appearance as Joker, he assumes the accidental and public mantle that has set Gotham aflame – legitimizing the homicides he has committed and the public’s brutalization of authority figures by playing victim. He is consumed in self-pity; his words become a simplistic screed. Notice how appealing his words are, how rapidly rhetorical animosity precludes political violence. In Joker’s darkest sequence, the protagonist will destroy the last remnants of Arthur Fleck and become the popular icon of violent upheaval rarely seen in any of his depictions in DC Comics. This is Joker at its most dangerous, if only because of how violence – whether in oppression or in resistance – is as integral to the United States as political compromise.

We hear these beats of populism elsewhere, too, mixed with capitalist can-do. It is present in Thomas Wayne’s television appearance announcing his candidacy for Mayor of Gotham City – “I alone can fix it,” this man of wealth implies. This is a departure from otherwise sympathetic depictions of Bruce Wayne’s father over the decades in Batman comic books. As a plot development, it (along with the “almost-plot twist”) seems unnecessary if only to ground Joker in the Batman mythos. Contrast this to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where ill-intentioned, humorless capitalists operating within the military-industrial complex are repelled by the wisecracking “good” capitalists within that same system (see: Tony Stark). Murray Franklin, as a talk show host, concocts a scheme to bolster his ratings by humiliating someone in a worse life station – no background checks needed, let alone any semblance of attempting to understand his subject. Thus, Gotham is subject to personality- and grievance-based politics wrung through the corporate avarice of Network (1976). Joker may not have to space to critique capitalism in its entirety – it is a character study, after all – but the entire apple barrel seems spoiled here.

The least controversial element of Joker is Joaquin Phoenix’s magnificent lead performance. Phoenix has made a living playing men whose lives contend with inner turmoil and unsympathetic worlds. His work in The Master (2012) remains has career-defining role, but as Arthur Fleck and as Joker – through the pained laughter spells, his bodily contortions with his ribcage jutting from his frame, and a brooding nature tempered by an initial gentleness – this will be the role that crosses artistic and popular boundaries that segregate filmmaking. Phoenix may now be defined by this role, as Cesar Romero (a solid contract actor for 20th Century Fox despite being typecast as a Latin lover) and the late Heath Ledger (whose work in The Dark Knight overshadows the rest of his filmography) have been.

Director Todd Phillips, best known for The Hangover series, does an excellent job making Gotham City a character. So often consigned to be the faceless and unfortunate city wracked by domestic terrorism from curiously-named villains, never in a film has Gotham seemed like a place with its own history and haunts. The scenes on mass transit alone sell the city. Phillips’ indulgence for slow-motion (with cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fawning camerawork) during dance sequences and almost constant dollying can be irritating. One montage between Arthur Fleck and Sophie – specifically, when he enters her apartment, confirming how unreliable a narrator he is – displays a lack of trust in the audience to make their own inferences.

Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir has crafted a score for her second film for a major American studio. Guðnadóttir’s career has been defined by an unpleasant mix of bass strings, percussion, and synth, droning repetitively, lacking the emotional catharsis that the films she has worked on are striving for. Her work on Joker is an improvement, but this is as difficult a listen as Joker is to watch. The score is almost entirely texture, not melody – melody is for those older films with sugary sentiment and Hollywood endings that do not reflect life’s ugliness, we are increasingly told. Outside of those with an ear for experimental classical music or instrumental music that groans amelodic passages rather than combining lyrical voices, this music has almost no life outside of the movie. Finally, Guðnadóttir’s style fits the film she has scored for.

As a psychological character piece, the only way that Joker could have secured a wide theatrical release in 2019 would be to tie it to bankable comic book lore. Even as Phillips pitched the idea, Joker faced stiff resistance from Warner Bros. executives – including former chairman Kevin Tsujihara and Greg Silverman – who still had the 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado on their minds (that tragedy took place during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises). Warner Bros. noting how poorly Zack Snyder’s vision of DC Comics adaptations was faring, needed to extricate itself from Snyder’s adolescent approach.

In the months before Joker’s release and even within the film, Warner Bros. has embraced its past. Of all of Hollywood’s major studios, Warners always seems to be the most conscious and celebratory of its history*. During the 1930s, Warner Bros. became known for the darker content of its films (its rivals MGM, Paramount, and Fox preferred spectacle, maximizing production values, and prestige pictures). The studio became the spiritual home of the gangster film and hardboiled dramas that pushed the boundaries of violence in American cinema – but not for the sake of depicting violence. Even in their musicals (a genre stereotyped as pure escapism), Warner Bros. layered progressive social commentary amid economic depression. Joker – though its own commentary could be more focused and succinct – inherits the legacy of The Public Enemy (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), and its numerous Warner Bros. ancestors.

How curious that a drama with origins from superhero comic books has been little praised for not following the assembly line production methods of numerous films from similar source material. Cinephiles fret, correctly, that movie theaters are becoming a home to superheroes/villains and explicitly-for-children animated features to the exclusion of everything else. The mid-budget character piece is endangered; certain genres have vanished from theater marquees. Joker, to some consternation, has it both ways. It is an excellent, arguably irresponsible, work to be seen with wary eyes.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

* Okay, okay you classic film buffs who have already recognized Joker’s references. Modern Times (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937) are from United Artists and RKO, respectively. But both films have long been part of Warners’ library by acquisition.

#Joker #Todd Phillips #Joaquin Phoenix #Robert De Niro #Zazie Beetz #Frances Conroy #Brett Cullen #Douglas Hodge #Dante Pereira Olson #Glenn Fleshler #Scott Silver #Lawrence Sher #Hildur Gudnadottir #My Movie Odyssey

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rafaelina-casillas · 6 years

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Flower Asks

@december-girl06 Thank you so much for asking me! *sending a bear hug*

Alisons: Sexuality? - Heterosexual.

Amaranth: Pronouns/Gender? - Sher/Her. Female

Amaryllis: Birthday? - 29th august

Anemone: Favorite flower? - Cala lily and white rose.

Angelonia: Favorite t.v. show? - BBC Sherlock, Hawaii Five-0, MacGyver, Hannibal

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger? - I don’t trust people so pointing the right direction 😁

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes?

Aubrieta: Favorite drink? - Coke, sparkling water.

Baby’s Breath: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? - Umm, I’ve probably kissed Mom so yes.

Balsam Fir: Have you ever been in love? - I had crushes but nothing more than that.

Baneberries: Favorite song? - The Point of No Return from The Phantom of The Opera

Basket of Gold: Describe your family. - Pretty ordinary with the occasional dosage of drama.

Beebalm: Do you have a best friend? Who is it? - That’s classified.

Begonia: Favorite color? - Black.

Bellflower: Favorite animal? - Wolves.

Bergenia: Are you a morning or night person? - Definetly a morning person.

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be? - A raven so I would what flying feels like.

Bloodroots: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? - (That’s embarrasing) Michael Schumacher or Batman or an astronaut.

Bluemink: What are your thoughts on children? - Little monsters, I don’t like them.

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why? - I’m afraid of snakes. Just look at them! Do I need a reason?

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood. - I made plans with best friend to run away from my parents. He was suppossed to get a job as a cooker. And, yes, we were 10 years old then.

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth? - Reading, I guess.

Buttercup: Relationship Status? - Forever single.

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go? - Hogwarts or the set of Hawaii Five-0

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved? - When people show me that they trust me.

Canna: Do you have any tattoos? - No, I don’t like tattoos.

Canterbury Bells: Do you have any piercings? - No, I don’t like piercing either.

California Poppy: Height? - 158 cm or 5′2

Cardinal Flower: Do you believe in ghosts? - That’s complicated. Let’s say I can’t simply ignore all the stories about people seeing ghosts.

Carnation: What are you currently wearing? - My home clothes: a track suit.

Catnip: Have you ever slept with a nightlight? - I can’t remember for sure but I don’t think I have.

Chives: Who was the last person you hugged? - Mom.

Chrysanthemum: Who’s the last person you kissed? - Mom.

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font? - All the academia made me like Times New Roman. I also like Gothic fonts.

Columbine: Are you tired? - Yes.

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to? - The next semester.

Coneflower: Dream job? - University professor, editor and writer.

Crane’s-Bill: Introvert or extrovert? - MAJOR introvert.

Crocus: Have you ever been in love? - Nope.

Crown Imperial: What’s the farthest you would go for someone you care about? - Protecting them at all costs.

Cyclamen: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? What was it? - I still have that animal! A small pink monkey, I love it too much.

Daffodil: What’s your zodiac sign? - Virgo.

Dahlia: Have you done anything worth remembering? - I don’t think I’ve done something that special.

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment? - Getting a place in a PhD programme.

Daylily: What would you do if your parents didn’t like your partner(s)? - I’ll answer this when (if) I have a partner because I honestly don’t know how to answer this.

Dendrobium: Who is the last person that you said “I love you” to? - Don’t know.

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at? - Trapping over my own feet 😁😄

Foxgloves: What’s something you’re bad at? - Singing, drawing.

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month? - Getting the news about my lecturing, seeing Venom and Bohemian Rhapsody, starting learning basic linguistics.

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today? - It’s 11 in the morning!

Gardenia: Are you happy with where you’re at in your life? - Not so much.

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two? - Writing the first two chapters of my PhD thesis and feeling more confident in academia.

Glory-of-the-Snow: What are ten things that make you happy/you’re grateful to have in your life? - Mom Friends My supervisor Books Movies TV Shows The pigeons on my balcony Music ... I can’t think of more

Heliotropium: What helps you calm down when you feel stressed? - Reading.

Hellebore: How do you show affection? - I’m very clumsy at this. Taking extra care. Telling stupid jokes.

Hoary Stock: What are you proudest of? - Winning my supervisor’s trust.

Hollyhock: Describe your ideal day. - Meeting with friends, going to the cinema, reading.

Hyacinth: What do you like to do in your free time? - Reading or watching a movie/a TV show.

Hydrangea: How long have you known your best friend? How did you meet them? - I met her 15 years ago when she was transfered to my class in 5th grade.

Irises: Who can you talk to about (almost) everything? - Mom and my friends.

Laceleaf: How many friends do you have? - Few but I love them very much.

Lantanas: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received? - That people liked my writing.

Larkspur: What do you think of yourself? - *censoring self hate* Not much actually. I know I could do better.

Lavender: What’s your favorite thing about yourself? - My kindness and intelligence (if such a thing exists).

Leather Flower: What’s your least favorite thing about yourself? - My looks.

Lilac: What’s something you liked to do as a child? - Colouring books!

Lily: Who was your best friend when you were a kid? - A boy with whom I’m still friends though we are not that close.

Lily of the Incas: What is something you still feel guilty for? - That I never got the courage to talk to my biggest crush at high school.

Lily of the Nile: What is something you feel guilty for that you shouldn’t feel guilty about? - Being rude to toxic friends.

Lupine: What does your name mean? Why is that your name? - It comes from the word for flower in Bulgarian. I was named after one of my grandmothers.

Marigold: Where did you grow up? Tell us about it. - I grow up in the same city I’m still living - Sofia.

Morning Glory: What was your bedroom like growing up? - Full with stuffed toys.

Mugworts: What was it like for you as a teenager? Did you enjoy your teenage years? - Not at all. I don’t like my teenage self, I cared too much about people’s opinion.

Norwegian Angelica: Tell us about your mom. - She’s the greatest person inhabiting this world, my best friend. I love her sooo much!

Onions: Tell about your dad. - A normal person.

Orchid: Tell about your grandparents. - I only know one of my grandmothers, unfortunately. But she was great when I was a kid, now she’s too old to have normal relationship with her.

Pansy: What was your most memorable birthday? What made it be so memorable? - Going to the cinema with all my school friends on my 15th birthday. Before the group feel apart.

Peony: What was your first job? - I was an intern at the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs

Petunia: If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your partner(s)? If you’re not in a relationship, how did you meet your crush/how do you hope to meet your future partner(s), if you want any? - I want to meet him suddenly, just starting to talk about different things.

Pincushion: How do you deal with pain? - I try to distract my mind.

Pink: Where is home? - Where the heart is.

Plantain Lilies: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would stop/change? - World War II

Prairie Gentian: Who is someone you look up to? Describe them. - Scientists like Alan Turing, Albert Einstein. Shakesperare, too.

Primrose: Describe your ideal life. - Having a stable partner whom I love and who loves me and who doesn’t want children. Being a professor with major works in her field who travels the world to read lectures.

Rhodendron: What is something you used to believe in as a child? - The kindness of people.

Ricinus: Who’s the most important in your life? - Mom.

Rose: What’s your favorite sound? - The atmosphere of a library. Quietude with the occassional hushed talks.

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory? - Every time when I’m with my best friend.

Sage: What’s your least favorite memory? - Visiting the Museum of Natural History and and all the snakes surrounding me.

Snapdragon: At this moment, what do you want? - To finish my PhD successfully

St. John’s Wort: Is it easy or difficult for you to express how you feel about things? - Rather difficult.

Sunflower: What is something you don’t want to imagine life without? - My favourite people.

Sweet Pea: How much sleep did you get last night? - 7 or 8 hours.

Tickseed: What’s your main reason to get up every morning? - Achieving my goals.

Touch-Me-Not: How do you feel about your current job? - I don’t have a job.

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing? - T-shirts.

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic. - Books, autumn, quietude, stationary, dim light.

Tulip: What would be the best present to get you? - A rare book.

Vervain: What’s stressing you out most right now? - The upcoming conference at which I had to make a presentation about a report I’ve written.

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called? - Too many, I can’t count them. But there are two kinds: 1) Literature that I enjoy and read for pleasure (I’ve read mostly Joanne Harris books during this time); 2) Literature for my thesis which includes many books on psychoanlysis, feminist thought and linguistics.

Wolf’s Bane: Where do you want to be in life this time next year? - Having a job and a confident lecturer.

Yarrow: Do you know what vore is? - No, I don’t.

Zinnia: Give a random fact about yourself. - I hate to be the center of attention.

#me #persona #answered

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shmisolo · 6 years

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i was tagged by @echoesintheforce thanks boo <3

rules: choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions, then tag 10 people you want to know better

i choose:

star wars ot

star wars pt

star wars st

(am i allowed to do this ^^^ too late i’m doing it anyway)

the first character you loved:

luke

padme (them. dresses.)

rey

the character you never expected to love so much:

probably 3po

anakin’s grown on me over time. the writing in the movies sucks generally so getting past that let me actually think about the character.

kylo fer sher

the character you relate to the most:

probably leia

padme again

depending on the day, rey or kylo

the character you’d slap:

idk if i want to slap anyone? palps i guess

ditto for palps

snoke

three favorite characters (in order of preference):

leia, luke, han

padme, obi wan, anakin

rey, kylo, rose

a character you liked at first but don’t anymore:

i don’t think i have one

man jar jar does not age well when you’re first introduced to him at the age of 9 and then have to confront how fucking racist his very creation is

at this point i don’t have one. i’m trying not to let fandom ruin some for me.

three otps:

han/leia...i don’t have other ships tbh.

idk if i have ships in the pt tbh. i have mixed thoughts about padme/anakin but i’m not sure i’d call them #feelz

reylo, finnrose, most of the others are too low-key to call an otp tbh.

tagging: @spacedarcy @daily-reylo @ever-so-reylo @tellcassiopeia @quillofstars @darth-zash and anyone else who wants in!

#about me meme

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nclkafilms · 4 years

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My 2020 Oscar Predictions

Last year was quite a downer when it comes to the Academy Awards. Controversy surrounding Kevin Hart meant no host (which in some instances worked and in some bombed completely). The overall field of films was very weak, which was clear on the night as mediocre films such as Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book dominated ahead of the few very good films present (e.g. Roma and The Favourite). Personally, it was also disappointing as I only managed to see 35 of the 53 nominated films.

But now, we are back! The final year of the decade gave us some truly brilliant films and I actually will say, that I think 2019 (and thus, the 2020 Oscars) to be the strongest year of the recently finished decade. Personally, it is also much better as I will have reached 49 of 53 nominated films when the show starts in the Dolby Theatre. I am quite satisfied with that count and it truly does make the show a lot more fun to see. There’s still no host, but a stellar list of presenters and performers might end up being enough to secure a great show. We’ll see, but let’s get to it: my predictions for all 24 categories. As always, the films I have seen will be marked with a * - films I will see on Oscar Day are marked with **. Here we go!

Best Picture

Ford v Ferrari *

The Irishman *

Jojo Rabbit *

Joker *

Little Women **

Marriage Story *

1917 *

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Parasite *

For the first time in recent years, the best picture race only features brilliant films. And I will say that many of these films, that do not have a chance of winning, could have been clear favourites in more recent years. Ford v Ferrari, Marriage Story and Little Women are the three film I think have the smallest chances of winning. Joker, Jojo Rabbit and The Irishman are long shots, but they could all cause an upset, but their divisive nature makes it difficult considering the Academy’s preferential voting system in this category. I think this will kick out Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood, too, leaving us with Sam Mendes’ one-shot war drama, 1917, and Bong Joon Ho’s critics and audience darling, Parasite. 1917 have swept the awards season so far, and I think that it will receive the biggest of them all too. However, should Parasite, Hollywood or Joker pick up some pace with writing or technical awards, look out for a late shock of Moonlight proportions!

It’s an incredibly strong line-up, but it truly is a shame that there was not room for bittersweet The Farewell or well-crafted Knives Out.

Who will win: 1917

Potential spoiler: Parasite

Personal Favourite: Parasite

I would have liked to see: The Farewell

Actor in a Leading Role

Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory *

Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Adam Driver in Marriage Story *

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker*

Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes *

Five stunning performances from five brilliant actors and yet there is no question here. I simply cannot see, who can prevent Phoenix from picking up the award and delivering yet another memorable acceptance speech. Driver is heartbreakingly good and DiCaprio is more charming than for a long time; had their performances been delivered almost any other year they would have been clear favourites. But this will be a HUGE upset if Phoenix doesn’t win for his simply astounding turn as Arthur Fleck in Joker, which would have been a completely different film without his nuanced performance.

Christian Bale, Taron Egerton, George MacKay, Adam Sandler and Roman Griffin Davis could easily have made up a second group of nominees for their performances in Ford v Ferrari, Rocketman (way better performance than Rami Malek’s winning turn last year!), 1917, Uncut Gems and Jojo Rabbit.

Who will win: Joaquin Phoenix

Potential spoiler: Adam Driver

Personal Favourite: Joaquin Phoenix

I would have liked to see: Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems

Actress in a Leading Role

Cynthia Erivo in Harriet *

Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story *

Saoirse Ronan in Little Women **

Charlize Theron in Bombshell

Renée Zellweger in Judy *

This category that has out beaten its male counterpart in recent years, is perhaps one of the weaker categories of the evening - among other things due to some brilliant performances that have been left out. Zellweger is the huge favourite here, and just as Phoenix she has swept the awards so far this season. She is brilliant in otherwise mediocre Judy, but I have to admit that - to me - Johansson is significantly better in Marriage Story. She might be able to cause a surprise, because people want to give her one of the two awards she’s up for, but there is also a risk that this will split her votes between the two roles/categories paving the way for Zellweger to complete her Hollywood comeback for her portrayal of Hollywood legend, Judy Garland.

But, Academy, where is Awkwafina? Where is Lupita?

Who will win: Renée Zellweger

Potential spoiler: Scarlett Johansson

Personal Favourite: Scarlett Johansson

I would have liked to see: Awkwafina in The Farewell

Actor in a Supporting Role

Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood *

Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes *

Al Pacino in The Irishman *

Joe Pesci in The Irishman *

Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

I will say that this (along with Cinematography) might the most safe bet of the evening! Brad Pitt has deservedly won every single award of the season so far for his already iconic performance as Cliff Booth in Tarantino’s love letter to Hollywood. It can be argued that he is a leading role, actually, but if we look at it that way, then it is actually only Hanks and Pesci who are truly supporting roles here. Song Kang Ho, Willem Dafoe and Sam Rockwell could have sneaked in here without anyone noticing for Parasite, The Lighthouse and Jojo Rabbit. To be honest, though, I don’t know who I would take out of the category.

Who will win: Brad Pitt

Potential spoiler: Joe Pesci

Personal Favourite: Brad Pitt

I would have liked to see: Song Kang Ho in Parasite

Actress in a Supporting Role

Kathy Bates in Richard Jewell

Laura Dern in Marriage Story *

Scarlett Johansson in Jojo Rabbit *

Florence Pugh in Little Women **

Margot Robbie in Bombshell

It’s close to being a disastrous snub that Shao Shuzhen is not here for ‘The Farewell’ and without having seen Hustlers the omission of Jennifer Lopez caused many raised eyebrows on nomination morning. Laura Dern has - just like the three other acting categories - swept awards season and the only thing that might prevent the hugely popular actress from picking up a golden statue on Sunday is if people fell Johansson deserves one of the two awards she’s up for. I don’t see an upset here either and we will end up with the usual suspects of Dern, Pitt, Zellweger and Phoenix come the end of the night.

Who will win: Laura Dern

Potential spoiler: Scarlett Johansson

Personal Favourite: Scarlett Johansson

I would have liked to see: Shao Shuzhen in The Farewell

Animated Feature Film

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World *

I Lost My Body *

Klaus *

Missing Link *

Toy Story 4 *

The final chapter of How To Train Your Dragon is the only of the nominees to not really win anything big in the lead in to the Oscars. Missing Link has more or less only won the Golden Globes and I Lost My Body might just be too small for the general audience here… It seems to be a two horse race between Netflix’ first big original animated feature, the charming Santa Claus origin story, Klaus, and the big players from Disney/Pixar with Toy Story 4, which never really managed to show that it was necessary to revive this franchise after one of the most satisfying endings to any trilogy in film history. To leave Frozen II out is quite a choice!

Who will win: Klaus

Potential spoiler: Toy Story 4

Personal Favourite: I Lost My Body

Cinematography

The Irishman *

Joker *

The Lighthouse *

1917 *

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Rodrigo Prieto’s classic cinematography in The Irishman, Lawrence Sher’s beautifully gritty take on Joker’s Gotham, Jarin Blaschke’s playful 4:3 black-and-white visuals for The Lighthouse and Robert Richardson’s mix of formats and colour palettes in Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood all have one thing in common. They will lose to Roger Deakins, who’s masterful and intricately planned work on 1917 is the main star of its very succesful one-take-construction. It is as simple as that.

Who will win: 1917

Potential spoiler: Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood

Personal Favourite: 1917

I would have liked to see: Ford v Ferrari

Costume Design

The Irishman *

Jojo Rabbit *

Joker *

Little Women **

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

It’s rare that all five nominees in this category are also up for Best Picture. This is, however, the case as obvious films such as Rocketman, Downton Abbey and Dolemite Is My Name (Critics Choice winner!) are left out of the race. Jojo Rabbit and Little Women has shared the awards between them so far, and I think that Little Women will win thanks to its more classic and obvious costume work. It is the most classic period piece. What The Irishman is doing here, I simply do not know...

Who will win: Little Women

Potential spoiler: Jojo Rabbit

Personal Favourite: Jojo Rabbit

I would have liked to see: Rocketman

Directing

Martin Scorsese for The Irishman *

Todd Phillips for Joker *

Sam Mendes for 1917 *

Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Bong Joon Ho for Parasite *

One of the most controversial line ups of the evening as yet again we see NO female director nominated in a year that has featured strong films by female directors (Little Women and The Farewell to name just two that could easily have been featured here). It is not to take anything away from the five nominees (or Taika Waititi and Noah Baumbach, who could also have deserved a nod, for that matter), but it is problematic that such films are not acknowledged more and greater by the Academy. The race seems to be between Sam Mendes and Bong Joon Ho, but apart from their tie at Critics Choice, Mendes has taken all the awards, and he will do it again here. Bong’s chance is that the Academy might want to spread the fortunes as in recent years (La La Land/Moonlight and Roma/Green Book).

Who will win: Sam Mendes

Potential spoiler: Bong Joon Ho

Personal Favourite: Bong Joon Ho

I would have liked to see: Lulu Wang for The Farewell

Documentary (Feature)

American Factory *

The Cave *

The Edge of Democracy *

For Sama *

Honeyland *

Once again, the Academy refused to nominate the biggest favourite, Apollo 11, leaving us with a category much harder to predict. In Denmark everyone is raving about The Cave, but I don’t think that is anywhere near the same picture outside of Denmark (the film is produced by Danish Documentary). And to be honest, For Sama is arguably a much better documentary compared to the more cinematic (and manipulative) The Cave. However, I think these two similar stories (because here the Academy typically votes story over film) will split too many votes between them for either of them to win. This will leave place for American Factory to swoop in and secure another documentary win for Netflix after Icarus.

Who will win: American Factory

Potential spoiler: For Sama

Personal Favourite: For Sama

Documentary (Short Subject)

In the Absence *

Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl)

Life Overtakes Me *

St. Louis Superman

Walk Run Cha-Cha *

I haven’t seen what seems to be the two strongest contenders and from I have heard about them, I cannot see any of the three others go near a victory. The one with the biggest chance must be In the Absence that might be able to profit from a general focus on South Korea thanks to Parasite.

Who will win: Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl)

Potential spoiler: St. Louis Superman

Personal Favourite: In the Absence

Film Editing

Ford v Ferrari *

The Irishman *

Jojo Rabbit *

Joker *

Parasite *

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood suffered a huge blow to its Best Picture chances on nomination morning when they - surprisingly - missed this typically important nod. It’s a bigger blow for Once than 1917, since the one-shot-construction of the latter made an editing nod hugely unlikely. The five remaining films are very strong and different in their editing feats and it is an interesting category for sure. Ford v Ferrari is the high octane, fast paced film that features the most cuts - something that have secured wins to Whiplash, Hacksaw Ridge and Bohemian Rhapsody in recent years. The Irishman is a completely different achievement; constructing a tight and focused story spanning way past 3 hours run time. Jojo Rabbit is a masterclass in comedic editing and Joker is the result of a huge amount of material thanks to Phoenix’ improvisational style in the main part. Finally, Parasite is the slick and cool option here combing both fast paced comedic, slow/dramatic and nerve-inducing, suspenseful editing.

Who will win: Ford v Ferrari

Potential spoiler: Parasite

Personal Favourite: Parasite

I would have liked to see: Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood.

International Feature Film

Corpus Christi *

Honeyland *

Les Misérables *

Pain and Glory *

Parasite *

This category is - as always - insanely strong! Corpus Christi and Les Misérables are hard-hitting dramas that deals with redemption, violence, what happens in the shadows of society and they both center on fundamentally human relations. Honeyland is historic by being the first film ever to be nominated for both Best Documentary (Feature) and International Feature Film - quite a feat for the almost meditative story about beekeepers in Marcedonia; a story that has a certain biblical sense to it. Pain and Glory is Pedro Almodovar’s take on a life in film and as such is a both hilarious, touching and overwhelming love letter to his field of work helmed by a brilliant Banderas. Sadly for these great films the fifth film is not only South Korea’s first nomination ever (insane!) but also nothing short of a phenomenon. If Parasite doesn’t win this one, it will be the biggest surprise of the evening. The only chance (risk!) of this happening is voters who want to acknowledge some of the other films considering Parasite already “has won it” with its Best Picture nod. But this will NOT happen.

Who will win: Parasite

Potential spoiler: Pain and Glory

Personal Favourite: Parasite

Makeup and Hairstyling

Bombshell

Joker *

Judy *

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil *

1917*

Hyper-realistic recreations of real life people, villainous clown makeup, a transformation into a Hollywood legend, fairytale creatures and blood dripping war injuries. The winner will be Bombshell’s seemingly very impressive work with especially Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and John Lithgow.

Who will win: Bombshell

Potential spoiler: Joker

Personal Favourite: Bombshell

I would have liked to see: Rocketman

Music (Original Score)

Hildur Guðnadóttir for Joker *

Alexandre Desplat for Little Women **

Randy Newman for Marriage Story *

Thomas Newman for 1917 *

John Williams for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker *

This is between first time nominee (and sole, female composer in the group), Hildur Guðnadóttir, and fifteen time nominee, Thomas Newman. None of them has won before and there is a feeling that it is Newman’s turn. However, Hildur has won everything up until now and I think her haunting score for Joker will secure Iceland an Oscar here. Desplat and Randy Newman have also composed beautiful scores, while I have to admit that the only compositions I remember from Rise of Skywalker are the old ones. But, alas, John Williams apparently has to be nominated if he has made a new score…

Who will win: Hildur Guðnadóttir for Joker

Potential spoiler: Thomas Newman for 1917

Personal Favourite: Hildur Guðnadóttir for Joker

I would have liked to see: Jung Jae II and Choi Woo Shik for Parasite

Music (Original Song)

“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from Toy Story 4 *

“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman *

“I’m Standing With You” from Breakthrough *

“Into The Unknown” from Frozen II *

“Stand Up” from Harriet *

Classic Oscar bait from Beyonce (Lion King) and Tailor Swift (Cats) were unsuccessful this year. Elton John gave the perfect reason for him and Bernie Taupin to win when they accepted the Golden Globs, which was their first ever (!) award together. Can the Academy resist giving them one more? Or do they want to apologise to Frozen II by giving it an Oscar for what is arguably NOT the strongest of its songs? In the background Cynthia Erivo is lurking with powerful, “Stand Up”.

Who will win: “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman

Potential spoiler: “Into The Unknown” from Frozen II

Personal Favourite: “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman

I would have liked to see: “Show Yourself” from Frozen II

Production Design

The Irishman *

Jojo Rabbit *

1917 *

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Parasite *

The Irishman is the odd one out here as its production design is not something that I think stood out in the film - much like its costumes. That leaves us with four great examples of production design that aids its film, though! Jojo Rabbits german town is ironically charming in the shadow of war, 1917’s production design team has created an intricate labyrinth of sets and in Parasite two homes have been built from scratch and, yet, they still feel alive and breathing. However, I doubt that the Academy will not recognise the beautiful, detailed work that has gone into the production design of Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood, which clearly is a work of love emerging from Tarantino’s heartfelt memories.

Who will win: Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood

Potential spoiler: Parasite

Personal Favourite: Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood

I would have liked to see: Joker

Short Film (Animation)

Dcera (Daughter) *

Hair Love *

Kitbull *

Memorable *

Sister*

Two classic animated shorts and three more artistic takes on the medium. While Memorable and Sister might very well be the two strongest contributions if you look at the complete package, I think that Hair Love’s universal story of family love and the bond between parents and children will grant it a victory. That it has been available for free on YouTube will certainly help its case, too.

Who will win: Hair Love

Potential spoiler: Kitbull

Personal Favourite: Sister

Short Film (Live Action)

Brotherhood **

Nefta Football Club **

The Neighbors’ Window **

Saria **

A Sister **

As per tradition, I will watch all five films on Oscar night, so I have not seen any of them yet. It seems like the winner needs to be found between the first three films, judged from buzz, though.

Sound Editing

Ford v Ferrari *

Joker *

1917 *

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker *

This category that is about the creation of the sounds that’s featured in the films, is always quite difficult to predict. Both categories seem like a two horse race, though, between 1917’s explosions and gun shots and Ford v Ferrari’s adrenaline pumping race scenes. I think it might be a split between the two films!

Who will win: 1917

Potential spoiler: Ford v Ferrari

Personal Favourite: Ford v Ferrari

I would have liked to see: The Lighthouse

Sound Mixing

Ad Astra *

Ford v Ferrari *

Joker *

1917 *

Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

When it comes to the sound mixing, we typically see action films, war films or especially musicals. With Rocketman surprisingly left out (for a suprise, yet well-deserved nod for otherwise underwhelming Ad Astra), it seems to be a race between Ford v Ferrari and 1917 here as well. The stressing sound mixing of Uncut Gems might a bit too extreme for the Academy, but it would have been a well-deserved nomination for an important aspect of that film’s language.

Who will win: Ford v Ferrari

Potential spoiler: 1917

Personal Favourite: Ford v Ferrari

I would have liked to see: Uncut Gems / Rocketman

Visual Effects

Avengers: Endgame *

The Irishman *

The Lion King *

1917 *

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker *

Three films in which the visual effects are huge and central to the film’s story, and two films where they play a more subtle, supporting role. The Academy have been going for the more subtle choices in recent years (think of First Man’s win last year). Thus, I think this will be between Irishman’s de-ageing technology and 1917’s one-take-vision that has only succeeded thanks to brilliant, but subtle visual effects. I might change my mind right up until the show for this one. If one of the three “loud” films were to surprise, I reckon it’d be Endgame.

Who will win: 1917

Potential spoiler: The Irishman

Personal Favourite: 1917

I would have liked to see: Ad Astra

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Steve Zailian for The Irishman *

Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit *

Todd Phillips and Scott Silver for Joker *

Greta Gerwig for Little Women **

Anthony McCarten for The Two Popes *

This is yet another two horse race between Jojo Rabbit and Little Women, who have shared the awards between each other so far this season. Jojo seems strongest right now having won both the WGA and Bafta. However, this is the option for the Academy to remedy the omission of Gerwig in the Best Director race. That might give her a slight advantage. It is very difficult to call, but ultimately I think the buzz from WGA/Bafta wins outweighs the other aspects.

Who will win: Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit

Potential spoiler: Greta Gerwig for Little Women

Personal Favourite: Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit

Writing (Original Screenplay)

Rian Johnson for Knives Out *

Noah Baumbach for Marriage Story *

Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns for 1917 *

Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood *

Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won for Parasite *

An incredibly strong category in which both Rian Johnson for his greatly constructed homage to Agatha Christie whodunnits and Noah Baumbach for his touching and very real divorce drama could deserve the award. However, it seems to be a two man race here, too, between Tarantino (a previous winner in the category) and Bong Joon Ho. Just as with Jojo Rabbit, Parasite comes with recent wins at the WGA and Baftas, and I think this gives it the necessary edge as well (although Once was ineligible at the WGA’s). 1917 would be a huge upset here as the screenplay might be one of its weaker spots.

Who will win: Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won for Parasite

Potential spoiler: Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood

Personal Favourite: Noah Baumbach for Marriage Story

I wish everyone the best of Oscar nights! May the best films win!

#Oscars 2020 #Oscar Predictions

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astudyinimagination · 7 years

Text

domestic Starlock Sherbeth ficlet

For @3rddoctor — who requested domestic Starlock Sherbeth. ^.^ (For those not in the know: Starlock = Star Wars + Sherlock Holmes, and Sherbeth = Sherlock Holmes/Beth Lestrade.)

This was actually quite difficult because while I’ve been writing Children of Time!Sherbeth (Doctor Who/Sherlock Holmes) for five years, I haven’t written much Starlock!Sherbeth. Sherlock and Beth—especially Sherlock—are both quite different in Starlock. So... here’s my first serious attempt at the two of them grown-up and married.

Beth L’Straid perched on her husband’s kitchen counter and picked up her mug of caf, letting the warmth seep into her cold hands for a deliciously long moment. She had two glorious days of furlough before she and the 221st had to ship out to Jedha to relieve the 337th, and she was spending as much of that furlough as she could with Sherlock at his flat.

“Where’s Njohn?” she asked after a long sip of caf.

“Ah, out,” said Sherlock, who was throwing ingredients into a pot on the stove and looking for all the world like one of those Holonet chefs, sans the apron. His hair was tousled, his sleeves were rolled up, and his eyes were focused on his task. Sherlock Holmes cooking in his kitchen, as it turned out, was actually a pretty attractive sight. Beth wasn’t sure whether it was the intent expression or the busy slender hands, or some combination of factors; she was content just to enjoy it.

“Out?” she echoed after a few seconds, chagrined that she had zoned out while admiring her husband.

He looked up with a raised eyebrow. “Mm-hmm. Out. Or in, depending on how you look at it.”

She was pretty sure he’d picked up his tendency to toy with people in conversation—however gently—from the chancellor. It was something she’d noticed that both men did. “Sherlock, I’ve been awake for thirty hours; don’t make me try to figure this out.”

His playful look melted into one of apology. “I’m sorry, love. Njohn is spending some time with a certain senator.”

“Oooo.” She leaned in towards him. “Okay, dish.”

Sherlock grinned wryly. “Well, you didn’t hear from me, but the good doctor has been spending quite a bit of time at 500 Republica lately.”

“And what’s his excuse?”

“Oh, sharing more details of the Ascendancy, you know the line. But he stays out very late. And one night last week, he didn’t come home.”

Beth’s eyes widened. “Wooow. Dammit, I’ve been away too much. Does it seem like they’re getting serious?”

“Njohn refuses to talk about it. But he shows all the signs of being moonstruck: tendency to daydream…”

“Irritable when called on it…”

“Humming while he works.”

Beth giggled. “What about Mairé?”

“Well, for obvious reasons, I don’t see her half as often as I see Njohn, but she seems to be… brighter… than usual. Happier.”

Beth hummed as she took another sip of caf. “Good,” she murmured. “She deserves it.”

“Yes, they both do, but, Beth, I swear neither of them are actually willing to admit their feelings to themselves. They certainly won’t speak of it to anyone else.”

Beth sighed. “Sounds an awful lot like somebody else I could name.”

Sherlock blushed as he began to season his soup. “Yes, well…”

Her eyes widened. “Hey, go easy on the spices.”

He made a clucking noise of exasperation. “You’re a Corellian, for stars’ sakes. Corellians love spicy food.”

“It’s not genetic, Sherlock!”

He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her. “Well, it should be.”

“It went into my personality,” she grinned. “Spiciness, I mean.”

He nodded as she kissed him back. “Well,” he murmured against her lips, “I can’t argue with that.”

#Sherbeth #Starlock #sky writes stuff #Sherlock Holmes #Star Wars #Beth Lestrade #Ranger

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newyorktheater · 4 years

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Below are a selection of the exciting starry theater that’s launching today through Sunday.

Shows I recommend that opened earlier this week and you can still see: Love, Loss and What I Wore; The Homebound Project, Tiny Beautiful Things, and Antony and Cleopatra

For more listings check out my Calendar of May 2020 Theater Openings. and my overview of ongoing series and platforms, Where To Get Your Theater Fix Online

Friday

By Jeeves The Shows Must Go On Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn’s musical comedy based on the Jeeves and Wooster stories by P.G. Woodhouse, in which young gentleman Bertie Wooster is frequently rescued by his manservant Jeeves. Starting at 2pm ET and for 48 hours after that.

The King and I BroadwayHD The subscription service is offering the Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical for free starting at 8 p.m. and for 48 hours after that. It stars Kelli O’Hara, Ken Watanabe and Ruthie Ann Miles, and it’s lush.

The Shape of Things Reading of The Shape of Things, a play by Neil LaBute that’s a twisty tale of manipulation involving two couples, benefitting The Actors Fund. Starring Lena Hall, Jonah Platt, Katie Rose Clarke, and Tim Realbuto Featuring a Q&A with the cast and Neil LaBute. Begins at 7 p.m. on Youtube. One-time only.

How To Load a Musket Play Per View Drawing on a series of interviews begun by playwright Talene Monahon in 2015, the play weaves together verbatim conversations with Revolutionary and Civil War re-enactors. Live, one-time only. $5-$50

Gruesome Playground Injuries Redline Productions A one-time-only live reading on YouTube of Rajiv Joseph’s play about dysfunctional friendship starring Rose Byrne and Ewen Leslie with music by John Butler, as a benefit for this Australian theater company.

Saturday

Blithe Spirit Plays in the House A reading of Noel Coward’s play starring Leslie Uggams. To view, go to Stars in the House YouTube channel at 2 p.m. One-time live only. (does not stay up on site)

Sunday

Much Ado About Nothing All Arts The Public Theater production in Central Park starring Danielle Brooks!

Human Resources Playing on Air In this audio play by by Jason Gray Platt, tech start-up Diddly has a problem: their staff is whiter than a Coldplay concert in Vermont. Fortunately, Human Resources has a plan to “improve” Diddly’s corporate culture —at least in theory.

Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin A one-time live stream from Florence, Italy to benefit 13 U.S. theaters, including the Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York,, where you’ll be able to purchase a ticket for $50. My review of the solo show when it was Off-Broadway in 2018.

What Theater To Stream This Weekend May 8-10: Kelli O’Hara in The King and I; Danielle Brooks in Much Ado; Leslie Uggams in Blithe Spirit Below are a selection of the exciting starry theater that's launching today through Sunday. Shows I recommend that opened earlier this week and you can still see:

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mchenryjd · 6 years

Text

2017 in Review

Necessarily incomplete, mostly for my personal record. I will probably regret this.

MOVIES

10. mother!

Got to a screening late, had to sit in the third show, could barely tell what was happening and spent most of the movie staring at J. Law’s flared nostrils. An ideal viewing experience.

9. Personal Shopper

Nothing captures the purposeful emptiness of spending time online like Kristen Stewart texting a ghost.

8. Get Out

I kept telling my dad this movie was funny to get him to see it, not realizing he didn’t already know it was a horror movie. Afterwards, he texted me, “that was not a comedy!” Feels like that’s enough a metaphor. Daniel Kaluuya for best actor.

7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

A Star Wars movie about loving Star Wars movies, which means loving the epic, silly struggle between good and epic, loving the spiral staircase that is John Williams’s force theme, loving it when character always do the coolest possible thing followed by the next coolest possible thing, loving dumb furry creatures and sarcastic slimy ones, loving it when characters kiss when you want them to kiss, loving the hundred-million-dollar sandbox of it all. After the constricted dance steps of The Force Awakens and Rogue One, give me this bleeding freestyle any day.

6. Phantom Thread

Finally, proof that everyone in a serious relationship has lost it.

5. Call Me By Your Name

I refuse to believe that being stuck in rural Italy would be anything other than deadly boring and if my father insisted on turning everything into a lecture on classical art, I would run away. Also, there’s a contrast between the book (vague on the details of place and time, vividly specific on matters of sex) and the film (more contextually specific, sexier, but less horny than the original). Also, who am I kidding, I was moved and unsettled by the force of the thing. *Michael Stuhlbarg voice* Pray you get a chance to fall in love like this.

4. Dunkirk

Having your tense, churning, clanking, thrumming, score transform into Elgar right when the beautiful, imperiled young heroes are reading a stirring speech (and Tom Hardy is heroically sacrificing himself in what looks like the middle of a Turner painting) is a level of craft so deft if feels like cheating, but it works.

3. BPM

A film about a community in danger that acts as both a memorial to and rallying cry for that community. Uncompromising, accommodating, queer in the best way, BPM makes you want to cry and go dancing at the same time.

2. Columbus

The kind of movie that makes you want to get in a car and keep driving until you find something beautiful, it has stuck and expanded in my memory ever since I saw it over the summer. Like the architecture that looms large in the setting, the plot can feel uncomfortably schematic – John Cho wants to leave and gets stuck, Haley Lu Richardson is stuck and gets to leave. The question is how people live within, and blur the edges of, those confines. John Cho has a winning, curdled decency; Haley Lu Richardson gives the hardest kind of performance, in that she often seems unaware of her character’s own wants. I’d watch her quietly assemble dinner for hours on end.

1. Lady Bird

A movie that feels less plotted and more prefigured – every fight between Lady Bird has happened before, every high school landmark lumbers by with inevitability, every boy disappoints in the way you expect. What redeems all this? Paying attention, which is also love, in this movie’s pseudo-religious sense. Between Lady Bird and Marion, between Lady Bird and Julie, between Lady Bird and Sacramento. Watch people closely, as Greta Gerwig does, and they reveal glimmers of themselves (I know so little, and yet everything, about Stephen McKinley Henderson’s drama teacher from a few moments that feel perfect, in the sense of contained, past-tense completeness). It’ll all so ordinary. Fall in love with it.

Honorable mentions: Regina Hall’s speech about friendship in Girls Trip, Sally Hawkins tracing a droplet with her finger in The Shape of Water, Meryl Streep on the phone in The Post, Cara Delevingne in Valerian, Rihanna in Valerian, the part where the ghost jumped off the building in A Ghost Story, the fact that Power Rangers was surprisingly good, the soldier who gasps as Diana whips out her hair in the trenches in Wonder Woman, Ansel Elgort’s jacket in Baby Driver, whenever anyone tried to explain anything in Alien: Covenant, Elisabeth Moss in The Square, Anh Seo-hyun feeding Okja in Okja, Lois Smith being in movies, the kids eating ice cream in The Florida Project, the Game of Thrones joke in Logan Lucky, Vella Lovell in The Big Sick, and finally, most preciously, the moment in Home Again where Reese Witherspoon kissed Michael Sheen and someone in my theater shouted “she’s not feeling it!”

TELEVISION

10. The Good Doctor

Listen, he’s a good doctor.

9. Riverdale

They’re hot. They’re angsty. They do drugs that look like Pixy-Stix. They never seem to do homework. They love to hook-up in weird locations. They have terrible taste in karaoke songs. They love hair dye, and a well-defined eyebrow. They have really hot parents. They’re TV teens! I love it.

8. Insecure

This is just to say that I am far too invested in Molly’s happiness as a person. I would also like to view a full season of Due North.

7. American Vandal

From Alex Trimboli to Christa Carlyle, the best names on TV are on this show. Also the best reenactments, and somehow the most incisive take on what fuels, and results from TV’s true-crime obsession. Jimmy Tatro mumbling!

6. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

More shows should take the opportunity to explode in their third seasons, rocket forward at full speed, diagnose their main characters, and give Josh Groban wonderful, unexplainable cameos.

5. Alias Grace

A show that conjured a performance for the ages out of Sarah Gadon and somehow made Zachary Levi palatable as a dramatic actor, this miracle of collaboration between Mary Harron and Sarah Polley is all the better for being binged. Down it in an afternoon, think of Grace under her black veil, daring you to disbelieve her, for years to come.

4. Twin Peaks: The Return

A show that drove nostalgia into itself like a knife to the chest. Totally absurd. The best revival/exorcism yet on TV.

3. Please Like Me

“Sorry about your life.” “I’m sorry about your life.” In a time when things tend to peter out, what a final season, in which everything goes to shit and then some. Maybe TV’s most prickly comedy, Please Like Me’s heart is of the “stumble along and keep going” sort and never does it test itself as much as it did with this bleak, pastel final statement.

2. The Leftovers

Do you believe Nora Durst’s story? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think it sounds ridiculous. Sometimes I relax in the comfortable, academic premise that it only matters that Kevin does. It’s a haunting idea, though, this image of world even emptier than The Leftovers’s own, where it’s possible to wander for untold time in darkness. Carrie Coon’s description of it is a kind of journey to the underworld – we’re there with her, maybe, and then we make it back, maybe. The trick of The Leftovers is the wound’s never fully healed.

1. Halt and Catch Fire

youtube

The world changes. People sorta don’t.

Honorable mentions: the twist in The Good Place, the Taylor Swift demon character in Neo Yokio, Claire Foy on The Crown, Vanessa Kirby on The Crown, the stand-up in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Cristin Milioti in Black Mirror, the televised Academy Awards ceremony, the weeks when Netflix didn’t release new TV shows I had to watch, Girls’s “American Bitch,” the fact that Adam Driver is both in Girls and Star Wars, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys performances on The Americans (and life in Brooklyn), the moments in Game of Thrones that were good enough to make me stop thinking about what people would write about Game of Thrones, season 2 of The Magicians’s resistance to any sort of plot logic, Jane the Virgin’s narrator, Nicole Kidman at therapy on Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon’s production of Avenue Q in Big Little Lies, Alexis Bledel holding things in The Handmaid’s Tale, Maggie Gyllenhaal directing porn in The Deuce, Alison Brie’s terrible Russian accent in Glow, Maya Rudolph in Big Mouth, Cush Jumbo miming oral sex with a pen in court in The Good Fight, the calming experience of watching new episodes of Superstore and Great News on Fridays, Eden Sher in The Middle, the fake books they make up for Younger, and Rihanna livestreaming herself watching Bates Motel.

THEATER

10. Indecent

History, identity, community all mangled together in something that’s both excavation and revivification. I’m so mad I didn’t get to see it with my mom.

9. Mary Jane

A nightmare that goes from bad to worse, which Carrie Coon performed with the endurance of a saint.

8. SpongeBob SquarePants

Highlights: The tap number, the Fiddler on the Roof joke, the many uses of pool noodles, David Zinn’s design in general, the arms, the volcano setpiece, the fact that somehow I kept laughing for two-and-a-half hours at something SpongeBob SquarePants. Tina Landau, you’re a hero.

7. Hello, Dolly!

I had a wonderful viewing experience like this, in that I sat alone on an aisle next to an older gay man who turned to me right when the curtain came down on the first act and said, “man, we love Bette.” (Shout out to any and all gags involving the whale.)

6. Groundhog Day

Proof you can dig deeper into the material you’re adapting and still find more. Sometimes, the funniest gags come out of old-fashioned repetition. Andy Karl has the Rolex-like ability to make it all speed by without revealing any of the ticks, and then wallop you in the second act.

5. The Glass Menagerie

A lot of unconventional ideas piled onto each other that go so far into strange territory that they loop back around to being immediate. Maybe distant to some, but enough to unsettle me. I can still smell the onstage rain.

4. The Wolves

A sign of a good play is probably that you remain invested in the characters long after you see it, and I’m going to spend so much time worrying about all the girls on the soccer team in The Wolves for the rest of my life.

3. The Band’s Visit

Katrina Lenk has a gorgeous voice. Tony Shalhoub is restrained to the point that he could move his baton with nanometer accuracy. The songs are transporting. But most of all, The Band’s Visit manages to capture loneliness better than nearly any musical I’ve seen. Everyone, audience included, experiences something together, and then it all, slowly, both lingers and drifts apart.

2. A Doll’s House, Part 2

What, you think I wasn’t going to include a play with a Laurie Metcalf performance? ADHP2 is perhaps clever to a fault in its set-up, but in the right hands, it turns into something both funny and moving – a story about what it takes to become a complete person, in or outside the influence of other people. Nora’s monologue about living in silence near the end is the full of the kind of simple statements that are so hard to act, and so brilliant when done just right.

1. The Antipodes

Both an extended meditation on what it means to run out of stories and a brutal subtweet of Los Angeles, The Antipodes is my kind of play, in that it’s mostly people talking, Josh Charles is involved and very disgruntled, and everyone eats a lot of take out.

Honorable mentions: the music in Sunday in the Park With George, the pies in Sweeney Todd, the ensemble of Come From Away, seeing Dave Malloy in The Great Comet of 1812, Alex Newell’s “Mama Will Provide” in Once on This Island, Cate Blanchet having fun in The Present, Imelda Staunton in the NTLive Follies, Michael Urie in Torch Song, Patti LuPone’s accent(s) in War Paint, Ashley Park in KPOP, and Gleb.

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sasskarian · 3 years

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#1 for the end of year meme, please!

What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year?

OH BOY I don’t even know

I’m working on the third (and probably not final, no matter how I try to kid myself) update for the Fairbanks/Inquisitor AU, and that has some good lines in it. But I think if I had to choose a favorite new thing, instead of a favorite continuation of things, it’d either be my Sith Warrior/Quinn Star Wars fic or the Fallout Series I started.

Malicious Compliance

He’s a brave man, your Captain. You know this well enough. It takes a brave man to fight back to back with a Sith, and a braver one still to betray a Sith.

But it takes a man with the courage of an entire fleet of Mandalorians to love a Sith, and oh, how he loves you. Like you hung the moons and the stars and all the spaces between. Like you are his other half, like loving you is his sole purpose in life, does Malavai Quinn love you. Your old masters spoke nothing of this, of this enraging hunger gnawing at your bones and curling into the hollows of your rib cage. This is something raw, something primal, beyond good or bad or right or wrong. This is love. This is all-consuming, a need that you lied to yourself about, that shakes your hands and glazes your eyes, that burns bright and fierce until you want to crawl as far inside him as you can.

Is it really even love if you don’t want to devour him just a little?

Wasteland, Baby

When she finally settles against him, her ankle resting trustingly between his and her hair tickling his nose, Danse squeezes his eyes shut against the prickling that is most definitely not tears. Paladins don’t cry, and especially not over lovers they can’t have. Loving Evelyn would be a betrayal of her trust, of his military discipline, and disrespecting the memory of her husband. (Wouldn’t it?)

But a smaller, sly part of him knows that he’ll tuck this memory in the depths of his heart: the way she feels, the heavy, reassuring warmth of her body against his. How she fits in his arms, and the silken, forbidden glint of sunlight on her curls. How soft her lips are, even in this dried out desert of horrors.

He’s not in love. He’s not.

But his final thought, before finally dropping into sleep, is a faint wish that maybe he could be, if he let himself.

Thank you! <3

#my fic #i did the thing #fallout 4 #sher does fallout #swtor #star wars #sher does star wars #malavai quinn #paladin danse #asaara-writes

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jacensolodjo · 6 years

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Alpha 17: Telling him, now that’s got real entertainment value. Sheres: Hmmm, he might even cry. On the other hand, there is the “do unto others” thingy. Alpha 17: Then I should definitely tell him! I’d want to know. Sheres: You want to know everything. There’s also the “keeping your promises” thingy. Alpha 17: Oh, you never run out of thingies.

#this is the last one for a while i promise #alpha 17 #sheres #r: are we going to have a problem?#incorrect clone wars #incorrect star wars #i die a lot a17 is a butthead and i love him #because he puts sher's behavior in such sharp contrast #original: house md #what does 17 want to tell someone? who knows #and who is it? who knows!!.

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sasskarian · 4 years

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@systlin can I offer you some inane Din/Cara pining fic in this trying time?

Edit: now on Ao3, because why not - >>link<<

“So. Let me get this straight.” Greef lifts his bad knee with a groan, settling it over his other leg so he can sprawl a little more indolently. Din’s HUD focuses in, shows the elevated temperature in the joint in a dark red, and he turns it off with a flicker of his eye. Greef lifts his glass again, takes a sip, and gestures with it before continuing. “You two. Not together?”

Greef isn’t precisely a friend, but they’d been shot at by Moffs and droids and troopers all the same, which, in Din’s line of work, made for something close enough to friends for a drink now and again.

Besides. Greef had never shorted him on a bounty or passed up choice ones for sordid favors, and aside from trying to kill him that one time, had never really treated him all that badly. And what mando didn’t have an ally turn on him now and again? That hadn’t been personal; just business is a phrase that gets a lot of legwork on The Way.

“Definitely not together,” Cara hisses, slamming her own tankard down and sloshing the oily-looking ale over her white-knuckled hands.

Under the beskar, Din’s neck warms. While true, she didn’t have to sound quite that offended by the notion, did she?

A new notice pops on the HUD: the kid—he never had settled on a name for him, had he?—gurgles sleepily, pulling the thin blanket over his head with a vague hand-wave. Ever since the little womp-rat had tried stealing the Crest for the second time, Din counts the pricey motion sensor security system as one of his best purchases to date, and it lets him keep an eye on his kid while he’s out.

He tunes back into the not-so-friendly argument in time to hear Greef splutter. “You trash talked while holding hands! If that’s not flirting, I’m a kowakian monkey lizard.”

“It was arm wrestling, not holding hands,” Din points out mildly. His own drink sits in front of him, untouched since sitting down; neither of his companions seems to find the mostly-symbolic tank odd in the slightest.

“And there was nothing flirty about it!” Cara says, and she is some shade of magnificent, with her eyes flashing dark brown fire and a flush riding high on her cheeks. She looks about one more teasing jab away from throwing a fist in Greef’s face and for one amused moment, Din entertains himself with how that fight would play out:

Cara has the speed and raw strength to take Greef to the floor, and with her economical, no-punches-pulled style, she’d have him begging for air or death inside of forty-two seconds. If that. She doesn’t so much fight as simply brawl her way through whatever obstacle dares set foot in her path, and damn if it isn’t some sort of fascinating. There’s a joy in Cara Dune when she fights that calls to the manda inside him, a flash and sizzle that tells him if Cara put her mind to it, she’d make a hell of a mandalorian.

He might kind of like that, if she'd ever stop running long enough to actually look at him.

But she hasn’t, and probably won’t, and Din isn’t exactly in the habit of making himself so vulnerable to every strong, capable fighter that stumbles across him. He definitely has never pined in his entire life, and isn’t about to start now. Even if Carasynthia Dune is as mandokarla as beings come.

“Sure,” Greef says. He salutes Cara with his glass. “I’ll believe that when you aren’t helping him raise a kid and getting all chummy with the mandos.”

The sound that comes out of Cara’s mouth is about fifty percent outrage and fifty percent embarrassed horror, and completely entertaining. Din laughs to himself as Cara doesn’t, as he’d thought, launch herself over the table but aims a vicious kick at Greef’s chair that sends him skittering backwards on two legs. Even after he falls to the ground with a painful thud, Greef shoots her a smirk and says something about going native that has Cara hauling him up by his jacket to snarl in his face.

***

“Little shit still sleeping?”

Din doesn’t jump when Cara looms out of the shadows, blending into the moonless Nevarran night; his HUD has 360 degree motion detection, and he’s usually got an eye on her anyway.

“Growing fast,” he replies softly, one nerve-simulated gloved fingertip stroking along the little one’s ear. “And eating everything in sight.”

“So I see.” Cara arches a brow at the small, furious imprints of baby teeth on the metal crib. For all her I don’t do babies talk right before things went to shit with Gideon, the strong lines of her face soften when the kid turns over and snuggles into a baby-sized pillow. “Maybe you should try some flash-frozen meat to keep him from gnawing on your ship. One’s gotta be cheaper than the other.”

Din points behind him at a chest that easily reaches his waist: Fresh Naboo Jella Gorgs; flash frozen for that perfect crunch!

“Huh. Don’t you just think of everything.” She reaches down, brushing a knuckle across the kid’s cheek, and a knot of tension Din refused to pay attention to in the depths of his stomach loosens. Most people wouldn’t forgive someone for choke-holding them, especially when she was almost two full meters and the kid was maybe a fifth of her size. But there was nothing but baffled affection in her face and Din settles his newest purchase—a small, raggedy stuffed doll with armor loosely, and inaccurately, based on mando designs—in the corner of the crib before nodding to the galley.

They’ve done this half a dozen times or more since Gideon and IG-11. Whiling away long hours while the Crest diagnostics run, while Din cleans his guns and Cara sharpens a knife with a wicked curve. While they wait, even still, for the other shoe to drop, for Stormtroopers to rush the ship or Gideon to rise from his grave yet again.

Din doesn’t look at the angled lightsaber hilt tucked in the bottom of his weapons cache, and Cara knows better than to ask about it, when she stops pretending to not see it. Until he decides what to do with the Darksaber, it’s just going to sit there and be patient.

The silence that falls between them in these slow, lazy hours is usually companionable, sometimes holy, and only broken by the sounds of bodies in chairs and a sleeping baby. Tonight, though, there’s a wire of tension strung between them, plucked taut with every overly-aware breath and movement. He wonders, idly, who’s going to break it first.

#baby yoda #din djarin #cara dune #Mandalorian #Star Wars #greef karga #Sher does Star Wars #favorite series alert #it's not like any of my one shots ever STAY one shots #they always go out and develop PLOT and FEELINGS

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sasskarian · 4 years

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The Mostly-Complete Rise of Skywalker semi-liveblog and reaction list that literally no one asked for

I really dig the parallels between Exegol and Korriban. The way both places felt massive and cramped at the same time, all ominous and tomb-like. Both of them are desolate, devoid of all life. They both feel barren, but not just barren. Korriban feels like history crumbling beneath your fingertips. Exegol feels like a place that’s actively trying to wound you with its desolation, like it’s sucking the life out of you to try and renew itself. (Which, given that Palpatine is there and what he does later, yeah, that tracks.)

When Palps tells Kylo to kill Rey, you can see the micro expression in his eyes. The way the muscles in his face tighten up for a second, the brows drawing down in an expression of disdain and repulsion. If we could have seen his mouth, I’d lay money down on there being a sneer flash across his face for a moment. And damn if Adam isn’t a good actor for being able to portray something that subtle.

There were definitely a few moments where Chewie bitches at Poe for the stunts he’s pulling, including a very definitive accusation of “Rey would never do this to me or the Falcon,” or something along those lines. (This is when Poe snarls, “Yeah, well, Rey’s not here right now, is she?”)

Kylo reaching out into the Force. We’re supposed to think he’s trying to reach Anakin/Vader, but I don’t think that’s what happened at all. I think that he reached for Rey specifically, possibly as a self-soothing gesture. The need to feel her alive, reassure himself. And because of Rey’s feelings and connections to his own family, he’s clearly struggling with his more monstrous acts, and with seeing Luke and Han as intrusive thoughts.

Rey failing the training course because of him makes perfect sense. Notice that this is also when she gets angry.

The Kintsugi vibe given off by Ren’s helmet repairs are fascinating.

Given the way Pryde keeps focusing on Hux during the meeting, I feel like he suspects Hux.

I find it interesting that Finn seems to be the peacekeeper in the OT3. Poe is definitely a hothead, even though he’s matured since TFA and TLJ. And Rey snaps back at him, indignant that he’s snapping at her. And Finn is the one doing the “Guys, guYS, we don’t have TIME for this” routine.

I like the quiet horror of Rey recognizing Exegol’s name. Whether it’s Force shenanigans, or from reading Luke’s books, or from the vision, whatever. The recognition followed by horror is Good Fucking Acting.

I wish that there’d been a little more of Luke or Leia reassuring Rey that a name is just a name. That the legacy is what you make it. And that as the children of Anakin Skywalker, they know that better than anyone. I feel like that would have been a good tie-in and highlight for the way the surnames are treated in the movies. Ben shunning both Organa and Solo, Rey having a last name at last but one that carries the same kind of stigma and Dark past.

I… kind of wonder if Ren surrounded himself in atrocities as a means of self-punishment. We know it’s canon that he keeps being pulled to the Light, and that every time he does, he tries something Dark. Maybe it’s his way of reminding himself how far he’s fallen and that he can’t ever go back home again (which we know is bullshit, but hey, abuse fucks your brain up, and Snoke was abusive af). Like, again, I know it’s mostly just in the comics so far, but we see him a lot saying, “I never wanted this,” “I don’t want to do this.”

The Pasaana dance in the festival seems pretty clearly modeled after tribal dances, and that makes me wonder if powerful dances like the Dha Werda and the Ancestor Dance shown in the film send ripples through the Force. And what that might be like.

I… kind of like the idea of Ben and Kylo struggling for control? I need to finish reading TLJ and read TRoS when it comes out, but there are things Kylo does—the almost-gentle banter with Rey, the way he reaches out in TLJ when she’s on Ahch-To, warning her about Palps—that doesn’t make sense from a purely Kylo perspective. I mean, I’m also an angst gremlin who enjoys the idea of Kylo losing more ground to Ben Solo, and having serious identity clashes.

The bond between Rey and Kylo has grown exponentially. Each movie, it gets bigger and more powerful. In TFA, it allowed her to look into his head. And he wasn’t able to really bring himself to hurt her. In TLJ, it bridges impossible distances of space, even so far as transporting physical objects across the distance. And in TRoS, we see that it’s gotten so strong, it literally blocks out the rest of the physical world. You could argue that the darkness in the bond is what’s overshadowing it, but I don’t count it that way. Rey’s surroundings on Pasaana are slowed down and muted, as if only Ren is her focus.

The trio is so drift compatible, it hurts.

The way the trio grabs for each other, though. It was beautiful. Disney may have decided that Poe/Finn wasn’t a thing, which we all know is a damn lie, but this movie ships the OT3 so hard. The way Poe catches Rey as she falls, the way they both turn at almost the same time to look for Finn. The casual touching.

Childish though it was, I did enjoy the “mine’s bigger” joke with Rey’s lightsaber vs Poe’s flashlight.

Rey shows an affinity for Animal Empathy. Ren has used Stasis more than once. I could even argue that there’s been some subtle Battle Meditation going on throughout the series. And I kind of? Like that we’re seeing some of the more obscure and subtle Force powers.

Also? The snakey slow-blink? I love.

Rey seems to have some psychometry abilities. And I love it.

The way Rey says “I’ll be right behind you” isn’t what it sounds like. It has a lot of layers to it. (Just like Han’s “I know” in ESB) It’s declaration of intent (“I’ll handle this”), it’s a request (“Trust me”), and it’s consolation and reassurance (“I’ll be fine.”). The way all that is conveyed with five simple words is. Ugh. My heart.

As Finn gets stronger in the Force, I’m enjoying seeing his instincts kick in. He senses Ren’s approach, which is a nice completion of the parallel to TFA when Ren sensed him as the traitor.

I don’t know who’s read the Rise of Kylo comic, but the way she slices his ship to bring him down is a direct parallel to the shot he made when he escaped the destroyed Temple. (I love all the tie-ins, honestly)

Rey was doing okay with trying to pull the transport down until Kylo stepped in to push her. The most likely scenario is less “force lightning is genetic” (because that’s crap) but more that anger clouded her mind and she already had a direct Force ability going.

When I asked my roommate why she thought Rey couldn’t sense Chewie’s life force, she gave me an interesting theory. Well, a few, but one I think makes a lot of sense. The first was that Chewie was already off-world and thus too far away (later debunked by her sensing him as the Destroyer is in orbit). Or that maybe the transports were shielded against Force Abilities, but given that they’re so rare in this era, I don’t think that’s the case. I agree with my roomie in saying that it’s more likely that Rey burnt out part of her senses and basically put herself in shock due to the feedback of casting a powerful and traditionally dark side ability for the first time.

The first couple of times I watched the movie, the entire Threepio arc bothered me. Why didn’t they just plug him into the navicomputer, the way they’d done before? Why the angst build-up? Then I remembered that they left the Falcon on Pasaana, and it’s possible that L3 is more equipped to talk to Threepio’s forbidden memory banks than a post-TCW era ship that’s almost certainly out of date.

…Zorii and Poe have A Past. I’d put money on them having banged like screen doors in a hurricane at least a few times.

“Who are you hanging out with that spEAKS SITH?!?”

I? love? Babu?

“Does she do that to us?” had me in tears.

Oh my God, the sheer #aesthetic and foreshadowing of her duel with Ren. The red fruit (cherries?) spilling across the floor, the stark color against the too-bright white. The way Vader’s helmet thunks on the ground like a sour note in a song, the way the pedestal shatters with their combined strikes. Vader falling from Ren’s worship (as the truth is revealed that it was Snoke/Palps messing with his mind and he never heard Vader), the dark glass shattering the same way the darkness in Ren dies with him.

Finn is… kind of a gossipy biddy and I love it. The way Jannah hands him the part and he just flat out abandons the work to talk, the body language as he hoists himself up to sit on the ledge. I love it. He’s precious.

I wonder if the Death Star echoes in the Force. So many brutal deaths in those halls. So many restless ghosts.

…okay, I’m not sure how to feel about the dagger lining up with the fallen DS’s architecture. Because like. There’s so many layers to that? That suggests that Palps had the dagger created after Endor/RoTJ. Which suggests that he may have had the Wayfinders created then too (though it seemed pretty comfy in the Vault, so maybe he already had them?) (Also, there was one on Mustafar. Was it planted there? Did Vader know about Exegol? I need more information than this!) And like. The Death Star is sitting in a violent sea. It’s going to degrade eventually. What if the horizon line had changed? What then? It seems flimsy, for all that it was dramatic and cool.

The sheer aesthetic in this movie, though. The symbolism is everywhere. Like Rey taking the skimmer. I love the aesthetic choices of her struggling against these giant, furious waves as a fantastic visual analogy of her struggle against the emotions churning away inside her. And how Despair and Fear and even Anger threaten to overwhelm her and drown her, but she keeps holding tight to that little skimmer the same way she’s clinging to Luke’s teachings and Leia’s love and faith in her. Their belief in her.

“You don’t know what she’s fighting.” “And you do?” I wonder if, as a Force Adept, Finn can sense the bond between Rey and Ren, and that she’s struggling against it. As well as the Palpatine name.

Theory (that may or may not have been explored in the Legends EU): Any place steeped in enough Dark emotion can become a place of visions like the Mirror Cave and Dagobah’s Cave. Rey comes face to face with her worst fear on the Death Star.

Speaking of, I wonder if some small part of Rey enjoyed the vision of her and Kylo as Emperor and Empress. I wonder if that’s where the abject horror comes from.

Speaking of more aesthetic, the on-screen contrast and history of the window where Vader and Luke dueled, and the shot of Palps’ throne over Rey’s shoulder. Sorry not sorry but I’m going to be forever in love with the cinematography in this movie.

Ren seems… almost exasperated that she’s still drawing her saber on him. That has fic potential.

That. Entire. Fucking. Duel. That entire battle. Just… oof. OOF. My heart. It blew everything in me wide open. Looking with the eyes of a writer and SW expert instead of the wide-eyed “my hEaRt!” first reaction, I saw So Much. Like Rey and Ren trading battle stances. IDK if anyone else noticed, and it’s happened before (the throne room battle in TLJ, notably, but also their duel in Ren’s quarters). But here, it’s so clear. They gave and took from each other as they fought, and that broke my heart. It threw me back to KotOR II’s echani battles, and the fight between Sun and Mun in Sense8. Here, unlike TLJ, they weren’t fighting in tandem with each other. This was back and forth. Rey starts out saber up, in what looks like shii-cho. Kylo, like always, starts out in Ataru, with heavy, powerful strikes trying to bludgeon down her defense. Rey switches to an offensive, then to fast, agile strikes holding her lightsaber Ahsoka style. Kylo then switches to shii-cho, and Rey enters Ataru, with the aggressive offensive. The way they switched between each other was fantastic.

Near the end, Rey starts giving up. You can see it. Her movements get sluggish, like she’s just going through the motions. Like she’s so tired of fighting the bond in her head, her reluctant pull to him, like she’s just. So Fucking Tired. She’s resigned.

Kylo Ren dying by his own lightsaber while Ben’s mother called to him. That symbolism. That symbolism, though.

The way he looks around, like he’s in shock. The way the battle just stops, and he’s sitting there, dying. You can see the change in him, as Ben wakes up and Kylo dies. There’s so much shell-shock and disorientation, like someone who’s been asleep for too long, waking up confused. And I’d like to believe that Rey healing him poured not just healing but maybe a little Light into him, and that, along with Leia reaching for him, is what gave Ben the strength to rise over Kylo and overpower him. (See also, my love of internal power struggles)

“I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.” Excuse you, I did not sign up for this feels trip.

Rey running away. I have… conflicted feelings on? Did she run away because she was grieving? To escape her own history? Did she run because she gave into the dark and struck down Kylo in anger? Or because she was tempted by Ben?

I know everyone says that Han was just a memory but I prefer to believe that Han’s just too stubborn to be a proper Force Ghost. And Disney and Lucasarts can pry Force Sensitive Han Solo out of my cold dead hands.

Luke, materializing out of the air and catching the saber. My heart screamed. Especially when he chided her (and himself) that a lightsaber deserves more respect.

“Leia didn’t tell me.” I think… I think Leia was trying to, without saying the words, “Rey, you’re a Palpatine.” She said, “Never be afraid of who you are.” And oh, God, that’s something Leia would know. In the EU she struggles with being Anakin’s daughter, with the legacy of Vader hanging over her. She struggles with it so much. And finally comes to terms with it. So if anyone knows what that’s like, it’s going to be her.

"She sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path." So... she had nearly thirty years to plan for it. Yoda says, “Always in motion, the future is.” I don’t believe for a single instant that Leia Organa shrugged her shoulders and said “Welp, guess my kid’s gonna die.”

Luke KNEW Ben would go to Exegol. He knew and no one will ever convince me otherwise. “Take both sabers.” She’d need one for Ben.

I wonder if Lando looks at the Falcon and sees all the little pieces of Han.

So. The arrival order at Exegol threw me for a while. Rey gets there, in Red 5. Using the toasted Wayfinder. Then the Resistance arrives, following her trail. We see Ben arrive in a TIE fighter. But… how? Rey’s trail was given to the Resistance on what I can only imagine is an encrypted wave data burst. We know it was technically given to Lando, so that the people joining the battle could find them. But Ben’s in a TIE fighter. Did he get the message from Lando? Were the coordinates already programmed into the TIE via the Final Order? Did he memorize the path from before (given that he’s a stellar pilot like Han)? Did Rey give it to him?

I hate Palps being a one-trick pony in the movies. We see him in TCW having other abilities, and mad saber skills. But in the movies, his schtick is the same every time: He seduces people to the Dark and makes them feel like they don’t have a choice, usually by dangling, “Look, you can SAVE THEM” in front of everyone. And then once he has them, he keeps them by constantly belittling them and reminding them that there’s nowhere else for them to go, because they burnt all their bridges. (Ex: Vader being reminded of what he did to Padme, and Kylo being reminded via Snoke of his own actions)

WEDGE. WEDGE ANTILLES. WEDGE.

Rey felt Ben’s approach, and you can see the change in her body language.

THAT IS THE MOST HAN SOLO THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND IT’S NOT EVEN HAN SOLO. Watching the changes in Ben (vs Kylo) is so fucking great. He’s lighter, he’s faster. He skids (Han/Death Star), shoots behind him (Han/TFA), and the Solo Shrug. Ugh. Seeing Leia and Han blended in Ben with the Solo swagger, and Leia’s grace is fantastic.

Also: he looks so Soft. And so much younger.

I wonder if they’re communicating through the bond? He knows she can see him, because he nods at her to give him the saber. And unless I didn’t see correctly, she mouthed/whispered his name. And again, we see the connections between them in the fighting style. They’re still acting and reacting like extensions of each other.

The way they meet, the relief on their faces. Relief that melts into stubbornness and determination. Also, the way they take up their sabers in the same stance, the same expression. It’s delicious.

We were ROBBED of seeing the Jedi around Rey. ROBBED.

I’m STILL SALTY that they weren’t there for Ben (that we can see anyway).

Ben proceeded to completely shatter my heart. When he pulls Rey into his lap, he looks around like he’s waiting for someone to tell him what to do. He’s actively seeking guidance and help. And because we don’t have an in to Ben’s head, we don’t know if someone told him what to do or how to do it, or if anyone comforted him. But we do see his face go from disbelief to despair to acceptance.

The face touch. Stop breaking my damn heart.

When the Core ships arrive, I’m almost positive I saw The Razorcrest and the Ghost. I need to check the disc where I can pause it, but I’d put money on it that I saw them.

The way the trio grabs for each other at the end is more movie-shipping-OT3. Finn holding the two people he loves most in the world, right where he can see them. Poe taking Rey’s hand. They don’t know what happened in the Citadel, but I’m pretty sure Finn can feel how tired Rey is, how wounded she is. And they’re There For Her.

Rey burying the sabers on Tatooine has so many emotions attached to it. Tatooine, where Anakin Skywalker was born of the Force, where Luke spent his formative years. Luke and Leia resting together in the Force, as their student moves on and tries to find her way in the galaxy. And the parallels and tie ins from TFA to now, like Rey building a dual saber from parts of her quarterstaff, the sand sliding, and the OT callback to the protag being silhouetted by the twin suns, were satisfying.

Rey’s saber being yellow is something I find… interesting. If you look at the newer movies, whenever a blue or green saber crosses with a red one, the light sparks and blending of the plasma fields look yellow. And Kyber crystals (in the new canon) aren’t colored. They take on a color when the jedi awakes the force in them. So for her color to resonate yellow as someone balanced in light and dark makes a lot of sense.

I have… Opinions on the surname controversy that I’m still trying to sort through. And I definitely have Opinions on Ben sacrificing himself (mostly that the entire sequel trilogy spent two and a half movies harping on about balance only to kill off half the balance and leave a Force Wound in their protag)

***

Was Rise of Skywalker a good movie? Eh. That depends a lot on your criteria.

Was it a successful Star Wars movie? That also depends on your criteria.

But for me, it felt like Star Wars. It felt like an ending to the Skywalker saga. Did I get everything I wanted? No. Am I salty about parts of it? Absolutely. Are there plot holes I could drive a Death Star through? You betcha. Were we robbed of a better, more cohesive movie based on the leaks from JJ’s crew? YUP.

But I found things to enjoy. I got things I wanted (OT3! Force Sensitive Finn! Bendemption! Lando! Hope for the galaxy!), didn’t know I wanted (Master Leia! D-O the anxiety droid! Generals Finn and Poe!), and things I definitely didn’t want.

#star wars #Star Wars Spoilers #Rise of Skywalker #Rise of Skywalker Spoilers #TRoS Spoilers #Episode IX spoilers #Episode Nine Spoilers #Reylo #Rey/Ben #Rey #Ben Solo #I will Cut a Bitch over a Skywalker #Sher does Star Wars #long post #look I have a lot of feelings okay

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