#like how do films like this get greenlighted in this day in age

[popculturebuffet]

Evil Dead Rise: Mommy's with the Maggots Now (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hail to the king baby! It's halloween, it's this blog and that mean's it's time for me to pull out my volume of the Necronimcon Demento and review another chapter of the evil dead.

So for those new here

I'm Jake, I review stuff and things, and two years ago I did an evil dead retrospective, covering all 4 films. From that stupid bitch scotty to ash laughing madly, to the film of a thousand catchphrases to that one that had Jane Levy, some good gore and little else, it was a fun ride.

So naturally with a new evil dead film out, it's only natural that I returned to review the latest film in the franchise: Evil Dead Rise. It's also a special review as it's my belated reviewversry with friend of the blog and over time of the me, WeirdKev27.

Kevin was my first client and the one who made me able to make a living doing this, and while he has zero interest in ever seeing Evil Dead Rise, he's more an horror-action and horror-comedy kind of guy, this gives him a chance to see what it has. Plus really after covering the last 4 even if he didn't agree to sponsor it, I'd be doing this anyway as I both love this film and hate not having the complete set. It's thanks to kev I have all I do now, so thanks man.

Evil Dead Rise is the franchises second attempt at a soft reboot after Evil Dead 2013. The plan after that one was to do two sequels: Evil Dead 2, which would follow Mia, Jane Levy's final girl from the requel and the only character who wasn't huffing paint thinner the whole film, and Army of Darkness 2. This ended up falling through, with Alvarez moving on to other projects and AOD2 being retooled into Ash Vs the Evil Dead, a three season tv series on stars that sadly got cancelled but from all accounts fucking rocked and I definitely want to cover at some point.

From there Ash's story was seemingly done on screen. While Dynamite will likely publish army of darkness comics till the end of time, Bruce Campbell had decided he was aging out of the part and wanted to pass the chainsaw on. That said while Campbell was seemingly done playing Ashy Slashy, he wasn't done with the franchise, staying on as a producer alongside Sam Rami and Robert Tapert. Rami and Campbell were done MAKING the films, but still wanted the franchise to live on.

So in 2019 a new film got the greenlight, with Rami handpicking rookie director Lee Cronin for the part, having impressed rami while working on the short lived quibi series 50 States of Fright. Cronin easily took to the cast and once filming COULD kick off in 2021, he hit the ground running. The result is a fresh take on the franchise that was so well done that WBD decided it was too good to just pop on streaming and much like Blue Beetle, bumped it up to theaters. The result was a 19 million dollar film.. scoring nearly 150 million in the box office, a huge success that , unlike most films only GREW it's audience as the weeks went on, always a great sign.

As a result the franchise's future seems secure, with Cronin not only already having 4 ideas for a sequel, which i'll get to later, but the results were so Groovy Bruce decided he wasn't finished yet, meaning an ash film is also in the cards.

So the question is how groovy is this film and how does the franchise fair without it's iconic cabin setting or iconic catchphrase spewing chainsaw man? The answers to all of this is under the cut. So turn the page, wash your hands, and prepare for 1717 Gallons of Bloodshed as I look at Evil Dead Rise.

Evil Dead Rise starts off a day after the main plot, with three 20 somethings having gone to a cabin in the woods woooooooooooooo not realizing what franchise their in. They are Jessica, Teresa, Jessica's cousin and Caleb, Jessica's douchey boyfriend. Caleb annoys Teresa with a drone, nearly clipping her with it and mansplaning after she says it nearly clipped her head off that it would've ground her face up instead.

Teresa proves to be just as obnoxious as Caleb, berating Jessica for leaving her alone with him, fair.. but then also being mad at her for being sick, laid up in bed and thus unable to give her the keys.

Thankfully this is an evil dead movie so Jessica quickly ends our suffering as she wants to swallow souls, taking off Teressa's scalp in a gory, horrifying and awesome practical effect before putting the drone to her own face and jumping into the lake. Caleb proves he's both not a COMPLETE asshole but still a complete idiot by diving in after her and we get the films awesome opening shot: Jessica rising from the lake, drenched in water and blood as the title rises behind her.

While I do like that TITLE CARRRD and scalping, overall i'm not a big fan of this opening. While it's well shot like the rest of the film, it's too short to really make me care and feels like it was thrown in there because the main plot ran a tad short and was too tightly paced to add to. It's a how we got here sort of thing that dosen't really work and feels like i'ts just there so we can have a sequel.. depsite the film having MULTIPLE other valuable sequel hooks dangling around. It's unnecessary in a film that otherwise really dosen't DO unnecessary. It also feels tonally off, feeling like a 2000's era "Kill the douchebags" sort of film than the tightly paced well characterized film we get after.

Thankfully we soon meet our actual protagnist, Beth. Beth, played by Australian Actor Alyssa Sulivan, gets a great introduction that does a lot of nice exposition without actually saying any: we quickly find out from her being sick in a stall and having some douche she works with who can't do his job himself and just let her go to the bathroom for five minutes knock on it that sh'es a roadie, her hiding it tells us she's pregnant and doesn't want anyone else to know, and Suilivan's awesome facial acting tells us she has no idea how to process this.

We soon cut to LA in a high rise, a setting change I utterly love. Before this most evil dead works were in a rural setting: a cabin in the woods for the first, second and fourth films, artuhrian times for the third, and some small towns for ash vs the evil dead. We haven't seen the deadites in an urban setting before this and LA was a great set.

The choice of setting within is also great: an old crumbling high rise in the middle of a busy city no one would give two shits about or really investigate in the middle of the night. It keeps the isolation of the cabin but puts a new spin on it that allows for new set pieces.

The main one of these is Ellie's Apartment. Ellie is played by the stunning and talented Alyssa Sutherland, previously known for Vikings, which I haven't seen. Sutherland is the easy breakout of the film, the center of most of it's marketing and the most terrifying part about it... eventually.

Part of that terror is we see her first as a fun, responsible mom and tattoo artist dealing with three children, all creatives themselves in some way: Bridget (Gabrille Echoles) is an activist, her brother Danny (Morgan Davies) is a dj and their young sister Cassie cuts up her dolls to create staves to body check her sister with.

This family, which doesn't have a last name, is the core of the film and the first 20 minutes are really just setting them up as people: Beth is a tad snarky but clearly loves her kids and is tough but fair with them, Bridget is sarcastic to just about everyone but her aunt, Danny is a bit of a reckless fuckwit but has a good heart, more on the former later, and Cassie is a sweetie pie. Their not super deep characterizations, but the talented actors give them a lot of character simply by action, and one of the films best asset is how great these people are at facial acting.

Beth flies in and after scaring the shit out of Ellie. The two actresses have great chemistry and you can feel the tension as the two clearly haven't talked.. and Beth missed a lot as Ellie's ex husband abandoned the family and this high rise is condemned, with the family only having a month. So naturally Ellie isn't that excited to see Beth, both for Beth dodging her calls, despite getting her messages, and showing up at the worst possible time.

That said the film also does a really good job with the sibling dynamic: like me with my own brother Ellie may be annoyed with Beth.. but she's there for her, getting this visit wasn't just out of the blue and her sister really needs her and waits till the kids have left to pick up pizza to ask, but does so gently yet firmly. These characters feel like family and building up this empathy and character is key to everything being as horrifying as it is. It's something many horror films, including this very film in it's opening and the previous film fail to grasp: just because

Dosen't mean we should WANT them too. It's fine to throw in a few assholes to kill so not EVERY death is a downer, depending on the film, but when you can't empathize with most of your cast it makes the wait for the bloodshed tedious. It's why the previous film REALLY didn't work for me: outside of mia NONE of these idiots were likeable and as such having to spend a film with them being stupid and waiting for them to die while the only likeable one was turned into a deadite wasn't fun. Here by making everyone we encounter likeable, grounded, and interesting.. it makes the horrifying slaughter we're about to witness that much more tragic. It makes us WANT these characters not to be dead by dawn.

Anyways we're soon reminded this is LA as we get an EARTHQUAKKKEEEE, with the bathroom set our sisters are in having been rigged to shake really well. The kids thankfulyl weren't driving at the time and instead are trying to take the pizza back up when it hits. They drop it, but do live.

Sadly for them and everyone else on their floor Danny suffers from a terminal case of dumbass and upon seeing a giant crack in the ground leading to a mysterious old bank vault just HAS to investigate in the dark. He finds some old records, which.. fair enough, it's some neat historical stuff, could be fun to paly with soundwise and could help them fincally. Him taking stuff romt he hole is mildly stupid.. but I get it and I probably would. What I wouldn't do is upon finding a room guarded by a bunch of hanging crucafixes and seeing a book with teeth and bound in human flesh, take it with me. And I mean teeth as this Necronomicon has a nasty but awesome set of chompers. I praise the set design here on this, it's iconic as the original, still recognizable as being it's sibling, but the teeth give it it's own flair.

Anyways the kids get back to the apartment and Danny decides the best thing he can do during a dark night with quakes a poppin.. is to pry open his new book. Which granted is what i'd do, but my recent book is about a trans woman's first year post transition and is damn good...

Highly recommend it and it's sequel, which I got first. Also guarnateed not to summon the evil dead.. which I understand is a dealbreaker for some of you. Good news i'm pretty sure that manga about Joker raising a baby batman does, so have at it if that's what your after.

Sadly Danny is not taking my book recommendations and opens the things finding a bunch of spooky pictures and... being genuinely horrified. He's a LITTLE fascinated but it's clear his reaction is "shit this thing isn't good is it. Not hleped is that when he pricks his finger on the books mighty jaws, it drinks some blood Audrey II styles. Bridget sees this and has the right reaction.

Or rather chuck it back down the hole they got it from. Danny can't because their mom won't let them out of the apartment after the quake which is fair.. what's less fair is that he dosen't wrap the book in something or hide it. Keep it from trying to nible on some face. You have 4 other people in the house Dan be considerate!

That said Dan still takes the darwin award winning step of playing the wax records he got. NOw on paper Danny being this dumb shoudln't work.. but in practice Rise does an excellent job showing why Danny would be like this: we've seen he's an audophile, that he's reckless as he went down a crevice in an earthquake, and that he's curious to a fault, willing to take the book in a first place. So he's being stupid.. but it's in a way where it's a character flaw and not just bad writing.

It also helps that while playing the records is risky.. you can kinda see why. He found a creepy vampiric book in the basement. He probably gets he might not be able to just chuck it in a hole and have it not come back or have already infected them or something. it didn't, but he can't know that. So knowing what the FUCK this thing is might be a good idea.

As it turns out we get some exposition from a preist long ago: he found the book and proposed to his fellow preists to explore it. His Fellow preists didn't want to die today and loudly decired it as blasphemous.

So he decided to take it and study it because that's never gone horribly wrong and lead to about a dozen deaths in this franchise, along with cameo Bruce Campbell and some other guy. He also decides to read it and to Danny's credit, he tries to stop the record there... only for it to keep playing. The Evil Dead have come baby.

Before we move on I need to talk about the danny thing a bit more, mostly because not only was this whole inciting incident well done, being rooted in character stupidity instead of just bad writing.. but it also feels like a direct response to the last film. For those who either haven't seen it, you blessed people you, or need a refresher, in Evil Dead 2013 the Necronomicon was found in a basement full of rotting corpses and next to a shot gun. it was packed in a garbage back, covered with barb wire, and had bright red writing implicitly from ash telling you NOT TO FUCKING READ IT OUTLOUD.

So enter Eric, full time teacher part time fuckwit who hears about the corpses, sees all of this and not only cuts the barbed wire but READS THE BOOK.

So it's nice the followup decided to use the same plot device.. but actually use it instead of making a character brain dead.

So with that the evil dead has risen and the nightmare time has arrived. And the first victim of the Evil Dead is Ellie, whose experincing some ELEVATED horror while taking the elevated when some cables grab her.

The sequence is quick horrifying and also has her trying in vain to fight off the possesion before the evil dead kills her, and she returns as a deadite.. and as the real breakout of the piece. While Beth is the lead and Lily Sullivan does greath, it's Sutherland whose the main attraction.. and not just because a good half of the audience's reactoin to Deadite Ellie was

Which isn't me, but I entirely get. It's also intresting to have a horror film where the deadite is the real hammy star instead of our hero. Sutherland is iconic in this roll, from the creepy smiles to how unsettling she plays possesed elly: the pitched down voice HELPS.. but it's the unceasing smile, creepy grins and offputting behavior that make Deadite Elly so awesome and so electric to watch. There's good reason her possesion was spoiled int he marketing: She's the center of this film's horror. She's not the only deadite, we'll get a few more, but she's the main threat, the main focus and the main thing fucking with our heroes heads, starting with the brilliant egg sequence where Cronin and Sutherland make simply making eggs fucking unerving.

She's also the main source of black comedy in the film, from calling her children titty sucking parasites, to her game of eeny meeny miney you, to later making her daughter repeat the eyeball gag from 2, her haminess is well played: enough to keep the film from getting TOO bleak but not so overplayed it takes you out of how horrifying thigns are.

Deadite ellie is the biggest symbol of the films tone: Cronin keeps it pitch black like the requel, but unlike that film Cronin realizes that too MUCH bleakness overrides everything else. But giving us characters to root for and want to live through the night and some dark humor, it helps contrast the utterly bleak situation. It gives us something to go what the fuck at with the humor and something to cling on to. I hate that I keep making this review "Whyt his one works and why the remake didn't" as Fede Alvarez seems like a genuinely nice person. This film is good on it's own, not just because I like it more than the other... but it's also impossible to not bring up the two as they tried to do the same thing: bring back the franchise without ash, without contiuing the original story. I don't WANT to keep using the 2013 film as a punching bag... but it's hard not to when this feels like the better version of it, making an evil dead that's closer to straight horror.. but still gets what the franchise is. It keeps the frantic pacing of 2, it just makes it less of an over the top comedy and more an over the top nightmare our heroes can't escape. it's frantic out of urgency rather than out of throwing weird, hilaroius or horrifying shit at y ou constantly. Well except the last part.

Anyways at first everyone just assumes Deadite elly is sick, and they turn to their neighbors, Gabriel (Jayden Daniels) and his father Mr. Fonda (Mick Michelson). Gabe is a kind man implied to have a thing for elly while his father is very mildly crotchety but a kind cat owner , both helping: Gabe tries to treat Elly while his pop pop tries to figure out HOW to get her to help. As it did with the bridge, the Evil has taken out the stairs and already trashed the elvator, leaving a fire escape through a conedemed apartment as thier only escape.

So while gabe and his dad plan to run through, everyone else is left with Elly. We also get a really nice use of modren tech: in most films they usually have to do the "cellphones out" dance, which I understand but got old. Here... what we know about the evil dead from other films provides a nice way... they get no signal.. because it can control that because it can control anything in it's radius. If it can posses a moose head working the wifi shoudln't be that hard.And it thus has Ellie, trapped inside her deadite counterprat clal her sister for help before convulsing.... and whne put inj a tub crawwling out of it

Mayhem ensues as the family has to ward off Deadite Ellie, and we get a lot of nice iconic bits of violence: Ellie's now iconic line of "mommy's with the maggots now", going "eeneie meanie miney you" and using a CHEESE GRATER on her daughter while attacking her in the kitchen. Which while Cronin overhyped it before release, it's a nasty wound but in a film caked in blood, it's still a very creative gore moment in a film packed with them. The gallons of blood I listed before the cut were how many it actually took to make this film. It's another way the film works: it keeps the over the top nature of the series, it just emphasises the horror more, a way to keep the series fredsh but not ignore what made it good.

Our heroes are barely able to lock Ellie out and we get one of the best sequence sin the film: our heroes look in the peep hole.. and we see bits and pieces as Ellie masacres Mr. Fonda, gabriel and two local teens I didn't mention because they literally just hit on Bridget once and then die horribly here. Even Mr. F having a boomstick dosne't save him. And it's stuff like this that works: the high rise on paper is safter, less isolated... but in practice our heroes are nwo trapped in a cramped space, no way out with a bloodthirsty monster wearing their loved one's face. It's a brilliant take.

Naturally as is Evil Dead tradition, the group falls apart a bit: Danny is in tears taking the blame for this and it's again why I like him: he may be stupid.. but while eric just kinda hid we see the toll casuing this put on Danny. Bridget rips him apart for it and normally you'd think one would go outside and die.. but in a nice twist on the old formula Beth stops them: Danny MAY of caused this but they CANNOT turn on each other. It's what's out there that they need to fight.

Speaking of which Deadite Ellie prays on her youngest, gaslighting cassie by pretending to be "all better now"

Though i'll give them points for style. This force Beth and Danny to save her.. and thus leaving them open for Bridget as in a horrifying sequence we see the dead slowly flow thorugh her before she startsb leading black blood out her nose... and becomes the dead.

Another horrifying scuffle insues with her targeting danny and barfing blood on him and nearly killing him before cassie FUCKING IMPALES HER. God damn kid.

They tie bridget up in a sack and Beth finally gets Danny to spill about the book and comes up with a plan: since playing the record got them into this, playing the record will get them out of this.

It's a desperation move.. but like Danny's earlier shenanigans that lead to this blood party.. it makes some sense: they can't read the book, and frankly trying to may just make MORE deadites, and if the guy actually survived long enough to make a third album, it means they MIGHT have a way out. We also get a nice ash style montage of her getting the DJ equipment to work as at this point the power is out. It also nicely makes her music career into a hell of a chekovs gun.

Tragically.. they don't. HIs album simply outlines the horrors idiot priest man faced, what he's lost and how only complete and total dismemberment works. Granted we knew from the intro they probably wouldn't' make it but by this point, the film's got us too invested to care. I still dont' LIKE the intro making it clear this doesn't work from the get go, but at least the films well paced enough to compensate.

Things then get somehow worse as Bridget rises and stabs danny to death, coughing up blood and everything. It's brutal as it is amazingly designed. He does manage to fire her out of the impartment... with fire, while Ellie sneaks in through the vents, something set up by the old man's lost cast earlier.

Ellie attacks Beth and in a VERY unerving moment detects she has a baby inside her, mocks her as deadites do then tries to rip it out.

But before she can get that fetus, kill that feetus and before I can go to hell for that joke, Bridget saves her. And props to Gabrille Echoles for her excellent child acting, an alex vincent level performance.

With our party down to 2 1/3, our heroes ventur eotuside and now EVERYONE'S a deadite. Highlights include Mr Fonda grabbing Ellie's leg as she grabs his boomstick

And my favorite bit.. the two deadite children hovering over a seemingly prone deadite ellie, seemingly crying for thie rmom.. before it turns into dark.. piercing laughter. It's one of the most effective scares in the film and all the deaddites joining in is just chilling. It's a scaled back but effective version of the entire cabin laughing from evil Dead 2

The final girls hide in the elevator as what's left of their family fuses into The Marauder, our final deadite for the evening and a grotesque combination of their family, a grim reminder of what's happened and just a gross thing to look at. As is standard for this film, it's awesome and I love it.

SPeaking of awesome and I love it we then get another destined to be iconic bit: the elevator fills with BLOOD. What's more impressive is they got the scene in one: had they failed they would've had to clean up and start again, which given this scene involves a GIANT pool of pracitcal blood and leaves both characters drenched in it for the rest of the film, is a LOT to as and is a LOT of moving parts to nail on your first try. But they did and the result is a horrifying sequence as the elevator fills, our heroines barely survive..a nd then get tosse dinto the parking garage drenched.

The good news: now they can escape. The bad news is Deadites love final boss fights, so The Marauder is there to oand stalking them. The final fight is a tense sequence as Elly ducks it but thankfully noticces some landscaping equipment. You know what that means... CHAINSAW BLOOD MOTHERFUCKERS

So Elly takeas a fucking chainsaw to it, which gives her an edge, and later uses her fucking boom stick and tells it to "come get some". I like these little nods, obvious enough to notice btu not distracting enough if you haven't seen the other films.

What finally does it in is fucking aawesome though: a goddamn woodchipper. look is a woodchipper being here convient? yes. is the fact the deadites only sent one convient? yes. is Ellie putting a deadite through a goodamn woodchipper with her niece and now adopted daughter turning it on fucking glorious and goryious?

It's a great finale and with that Ellie, her unborn child and her niece head off into the sunset.. while our opening deadite comes into being.

Evil Dead Rise is a glorious new chapter in the franchise: still very much evil dead, but with a darker and somehow even bloodier spin on things. It's a worhty sucessor and very worthy of being the highest grossing film in the franchise, and with that acolade a sequel is hopefully inevitble.

LIke I said Cronin had four ideas, all of them brillian 1. Returning to the Cabin: While admitely I dont' care about those characters, a new cabin in the woods would be neat. This is my least faviorite as the NEXT one.. but I woudln't mind it eventually. 2. Focusing on Ellie: Seeing where she goes next, which I badly want. 3. A prequeL: focusing on the preist. another solid idea. And my faviorite 4. The cleanup crew: returning to the high rise to ask "how the hell would people react to the leftovers of the carnage we just saw".

their all great and with Bruce wanting to return now after this entry, the future is bright and this will likely not be the last time we read from the book of the dead. But it was a great return of it and I can't wait to read the next chapter. Until then hail to the king baby.. and thanks for reading

#evil dead #evil dead rise #lee cronin #halloween #alyssa sutherland #ellie #blood #deadites #hbo max #films #horror

[jatamansi-arc]

So, the movie Split. Let’s talk about that. And before I dump my spoiler-laden commentary about it beneath the cut, let me say this: about 60% of the problems I have with this movie were about how the clips they used manipulated the previews into a ‘Villain with DID Kidnaps Some Kids!!! CRAZY STUFF HAPPENS YEEHAW!’

Completely ignoring all my critiques for a second, what Split is actually about, is an allegorical tale on how complicated the nature of trauma is on the human psyche. But, with that, I’m gonna cut the rest.

Fair warning, talk of sexual abuse and violence and mental illness below. 

The trick with the trailer, is that what it shows you are exclusively things that happen within the first 20 minutes of the film. This doesn’t absolve it of any of its actual problematic elements, which trust me, there are still a lot of them. Like... I don’t even know where to start levels of ‘a lot of them.’ But I think if it had been more honest about the content of the film, people would have had a much better idea of what to expect going in. It plays on the stigma to get you in. That’s gross as fuck. But at least it’s not like... two hours of torture porn, either?

Like I said, I wanted to watch it without giving any money, because I’m trained as a historian and it’s like... they really push that whole ‘come to your own conclusions with what the source gives you’ thing. Which, while we’re on that subject?

What this film is actually about, is trauma, triggers, and respect (or that lack thereof.) The writing of the DID is ridiculous and grossly problematic, and I won’t sit and sing praises of M. Night for it. You’re not gonna find that here. There were a lot of things that could have been done differently -- much better -- so that we didn’t have to rely on an already stigmatized population to tell the message the story is getting at. Because while this film exists as an allegory, and a metaphor in and of itself, most people are too oblivious to read between the cracks to see any of that. Just ‘PERSON WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES IS TOTS CRAY AND KIDNAPPING WHEEE!’

So, I’m gonna just lay out what the trailer doesn’t as bluntly as possible. 

The actual breakdown of the character of Kevin is this: beginning in late toddlerhood, Kevin begins to be viciously abused and beaten by his mother. This trauma eventually results in a split, to which Dennis is the first, who studies and learns what behaviours will keep Kevin’s mother at bay and develops characteristics in line with several anxiety disorders. As they grow older, Dennis, despite protecting Kevin from his mother’s abuse, begins to show problematic paraphilias. How the rest of his “alters” come about is not said in film, but what is later implied is that, once Kevin learns what are healthy coping mechanisms are from his therapist (before the professional portion of the relationship goes belly up, but I’ll get to that later), that his “healthier minded” alters do not allow Dennis to front for this reason. Nor do they allow Patricia to either, who is another alter, because of her manipulative and aggressive behaviour.

The alters (which I’m not going to put in quotes beyond the above, because it’s 3am, but assume they are there) you see in the trailers? Those are Dennis, Patricia, and Hedwig (who is apparently nine and easily impressionable.) Who they don’t show, but you see in the film, are a few other alters in diary entries that last about 30 seconds to a minute a piece:

Jade: Shown that this alter has diabetes and has to take insulin. Their journal entry is complaining about how hard it is to obtain insulin, because doctors refuse to take their condition seriously at all. Barry: Enjoys fashion and “has control” of the system. Or used to. Seems to be extroverted and is the one that their therapist seems to have most contact with. Is coded as being a gay, overly feminine guy very overtly, which ughhhhhh. Orwell: You see this alter twice and literally, speaking as an autistic person, if Orwell is not meant to be read as autistic, I will eat my own shoe. Obsessed with history and Islam, from what I gathered.

That said? Here’s some other relevant... idk. Relevant something:

#1) The girls Dennis kidnap, outside of Casey, are the very same girls that ended up triggering Kevin into this downward spiral. Doesn’t make what happens to them okay, and it certainly doesn’t explain the behaviour of a grown ass man, but there you go. They ‘prank’ Kevin, triggering him and forcing him to confront his traumas without prior warning. This fractures the system he has in place and allows for Dennis to take control, and sick of being mistreated, him and Patricia set about unleashing ‘The Beast.’

The Beast, by the way, is literally the personification of the anger and resentment Kevin feels at being abandoned by his father, because I imagine it meant many more years of abuse that could have been perhaps been avoided. He exists not in the ‘room with the chairs’ where all the alters seem to metaphorically sit, but in Kevin’s memories of the train station his father left him at. Basically, I don’t think he’s meant to be an “alter” insomuch as just a feral combination of trauma and rage that wasn’t properly treated or healed because the therapist was too busy preening over her own career.  

( Which, well, I was abandoned with my stepfather by my mother and abused sexually/physically/mentally/etc. repeatedly for years by him -- which lead to partial fragmenting of my personality -- and honestly, I think that’s the hardest part of my trauma/PTSD component to reconcile with? So maybe that’s why I’m reading it that way. )

#2) Casey is a survivor of sexual abuse and the talk of being ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ has less to do with what those words mean and more to do with the fact that The Beast is relating that she understands what trauma is capable of doing to someone. Literally, he spares her because ‘oh, you get it.’ Then he walks away, laughing. Alrighty. If you say so. 

The good thing that comes about from this, is that by tearing her clothes in the climax (which you think is kind of pedo-y fanservice at first)  exposes the scars she has from years of dealing with her own abusive guardian. They are noticed by the medical staff in the ambulance, and through her reluctance to go with her uncle, it is implied that they take her somewhere safe for her to recover. Which may be the only positive of this entire fucking movie, and even then it’s like jesus christ. 

#3) The therapist in this is hella flawed. Like she sits and glorifies her patients as showing us what the mind/body connection is capable of and at first you think maybe there is going to be a decent rebuttal to the fuckery of how it’s portrayed in Kevin at some point. Nope. She projects her own problems and desire to be recognized for greatness onto her patients and Dennis in particular misreads this as cues about the Beast. 

( I actually liked the therapist character for all the wrong reasons because I recently had a fucking psychologist who started projecting her feelings about her daughter onto me as a patient and how confusing and frustrating it was for me to navigate as someone who had been recently diagnosed with PTSD and had literally just survived almost being strangled to death a few months prior. )

So, that said? Is it a good movie? The story is weak and problematic as fuck but also not as literal as the trailer implies but also like worse in other ways? The upsides are that the acting is actually good and so is the cinematography. Literally probably the entire reason I sat through the whole thing and didn’t get bored at the 45 minute marker. That and I literally was confused for two hours by how well James pulls off a South Philadelphian accent (I lived in Camden for awhile, so.)

Basically? I’ve seen worse film-wise, and the acting is definitely like 10 Beefy James McAvoy Arms, but the marketing relied on the whole ‘mentally ill people are always violent’ thing to bait you, but then gives you a bunch of other problematic shit to irritate you with until you, too, develop Beefy James McAvoy arms and an urge to smash shitty portrayal of mental illness in 2017. I would see it to draw your own conclusions, because I’m a big one about doing that sort of thing, but I would further suggest not paying for it if that’s possible. 

Side note: Wasn’t Taylor-Joy in The VVitch? I swore I recognized her terrified face from some other movie I’d seen recently. Idk. Speaking of movies that are basically torture porn. D:

#ooc #pls don't kill me #i wanted to write something critical about this #i'm sorry people w/ did #i'm bipolar w/ ptsd #and schizophrenia runs in my family #i hear you trust me #like how do films like this get greenlighted in this day in age #like my grandmother w/ schizophrenia *was* actually violent #and even still? #like pls stop #can you do a film about these subjects without exploiting and demonizing us further maybe

[thekatebridgerton]

The Economics of Bridgerton and why it got renewed so fast

So I’ve been seeing some people complaining about why Bridgerton got renewed so fast when other shows deserved it more, its not that great of a show blaha blah blah. And I thought I’d let you know a little something about the Economics of a TV show and how that translates to what gets renewed and what gets axed. Ready? here we go.

First of all viewer, get this straight, You as an individual don’t matter to the Network in the bigger economic scheme of things. What you do matters. What you consume matters, and ultimately how you spend your time matters, but you and your delicate sensibilities as a person? not so much. Because the only thing that matters to the Network and everyone involved in making that show is PROFIT

Networks obtain profits, from things such as Merchandise, advertisements and in Netflix case, subscriptions to their streaming service. 

The higher the views in a show, the more money those three things above bring. More people watching the show, means more ad revenue, more merch revenue, more subscriptions bought and renewed, more social media exposure, more people buying whatever Netflix has to offer. Which enables Netflix to produce more of that content you like to consume so much. And by produce I mean, invest in things such as sets, costumes, actors, screenwriters etc

You see why a Network who only cares about profit would be particularly eager to have many viewers already accounted for BEFORE a premier right?. But how do you gurantee that people will consume a product before it has even been released?

How does Netflix guarantee that Bridgeton season 1 will be watched by millions before it actually happens? don’t people need to try the product before forming an opinion about it?. It’s not like they can be 100% sure they will get enough viewers to justify the money already spent filming S1. Except that...Bridgerton already came with viewers guaranteed. 

Let me explain Julia Quinn has already built up a fanbase of millions of people who love the Bridgerton books. If all else fails for the Network they still have the safety net of all those millions of people who would tune in and watch Bridgerton S1 if only to support their beloved author, and their beloved series. These viewers were already guaranteed before S1 even started filming., even if Bridgerton had been a failure, the Network (Netflix) would still get enough revenue to cover production costs. 

Ever wonder why reboots are so popular these days? see the above. It’s not exactly because of nostalgia, it’s because of profit. Why invest in something new and original when you could do something that’s been done before and guarantee yourself viewers even before you start filming. A reboot or a retelling can give a bigger safety net to Networks and Studios who simply don’t want to suffer economic loss if a project fails. Of course reboots and retellings are kinda souless right? we can all see right trough their money making schemes. It’s not fun for the viewer and more risky for the Studio or Network.

You know which is the most lucrative option? A BOOK ADAPTATION. Like Bridgerton, and most recently, Shadow and Bone. This product comes with millions of viewers attached, the viewer is willing to be used for their money making scheme, because they want to be surprised, they want to see even a figment of the world they could only read about be put into a screen. And if it’s really good the viewer (consumer) will reward the Network (producer) with the profits they have been chasing so much. It’s quite frankly a brilliant business strategy. 

So if you ever wonder why things like the After series, fifty shades of grey, the kissing booth series and to all the boys series and even Twilight, got greenlighted so fast. Think about where the profit line is? and how many viewers were guaranteed before filming. It’s the same reason production hires big name actors or TikTok stars with cero experience in Hollywood. (The amount of viewers they can guarantee by being in the movie, that matters to the Network and the Studio.)

If people watch Bridgerton, it makes profit, if it makes profit, then resources used in other projects will be allocated to filming Bridgerton, possibly delaying the greenlight for other shows that did not bring in as much revenue during the same quarter. 

Cancelations occur when a show doesn’t make as much revenue in comparison to other things offered by the same network. It doesn’t matter if it was good, well written and beloved. If the show did not make as much profit for the network as other shows competing for their time slot and production resources. It’s going to get axed.

As far as I’m concerned, I know I’m very lucky that Bridgerton is extremely popular and that Netflix doesn’t need to spend much money doing promotional campaigns. Lots of people watch it and want more of it. I’m one of them, my favorite show will be on air for a long while and that makes me happy

Bridgerton can reach a demographic of diverse races, diverse nationalities and diverse ages, ranging from 15 to 60 year-olds. Which multiplies the amount of viewership the show receives by a million, at least compared to other shows targeted at smaller and less diverse demographic groups. 

So tell me dear viewer, how many guaranteed consumers does your favorite Tv show have? are you sure the competition doesn’t have more? I will leave that for you to think about

#bridgerton #bridgerton meta #this needs to be said #glad I got that out of my chest

[lauralikedthatmovie]

I wish I could tell you something profound like I was on a mission trip, or something tragic like I was in a coma… but the fact of the matter is I lost my bliss. I just plain old slacked off so hard, y’all. I can’t even tell you how many movies I took notes on and just never wrote up… and maybe I’ll dig those scribbled sheets out finally! 

So here’s a post that is the equivalent of me dipping my toe back in the (blog) water! 

I think I speak for all of us when I say 2020 was disappointing in so many ways. Movies being a major casualty of the pandemic, especially frustrating since we were cooped up for 80% of the year. I can only think of 3 mainstream films I saw and I’m not exactly over here singing their praises to anyone. (THE WAY BACK, PALM SPRINGS, THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND - for the record.) This was definitely the year of the miniseries, for me… Perhaps I’ll revisit that another time :)

I compiled this list to recap what has stuck out to me since I dropped off the radar. I have seen these 8 films more than once; I have recommended them several times; and I didn’t even have to Google what year they came out because they left such an impression! Honorable mention to ON THE BASIS OF SEX, THE HATE U GIVE, and A SIMPLE FAVOR.   From indies, to docs, to major award winners… there’s a nice crop of content for you to comb...

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBINGS MISSOURI Fox Searchlight, 2017 My Take: Jaded mama bear in the backwoods of middle America channels her guilt & frustration following personal tragedy to shine a light on an antiquated, sexist, classist justice system. Perhaps the most darkly funny and timely film to win an Oscar? 

MOLLY’S GAME STX, 2017 My Take: Could not take my eyes off Jessica Chastain as ex-Olympian turned bi-coastal private high-stakes poker hostess-with-the-mostest. Layered performances from a remarkable supporting cast (including Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, and Michael Cera) create a freaking symphony in this underrated adapted bio.

TO THE BONE Netflix, 2017 My Take: I can only think of one other film that unflinchingly highlights the taboo world of eating disorders and the oft-fatal road to recovery this particular avenue of mental health takes - and with all due respect, the Lifetime network wasn’t nearly as effective with their offering. Lily Collins carries this special film on every delicate, exposed vertebrae in her capable back. 

INGRID GOES WEST Neon, 2017 My Take: Sardonic assessment of the fringe demo between Millennial and Gen Z. Screen culture, inflated self-importance, and the dangers of filtered life are embraced then set aflame by Audrey Plaza… who is SO MUCH MORE than the weirdly charming yet frightening April Ludgate on NBC’s “Parks & Rec.” 

... .. . The only movie I cared about for the entirety of 2018 was A STAR IS BORN but I’m sure you’ve had about enough of the Gaga/Cooper talk . .. ...

BOOKSMART Annapurna Pictures/United Artists, 2019 My Take: It’s SUPERBAD for the woke #metoo femmefluid set. It’s fun, it’s evocative, it’s simultaneously timely AND nostalgic, and oh boy, it’s packed with a cast of young Hollywood faces you know and names you’ll learn shortly, as they’re all shining so bright I didn’t know where to look for fear of missing the next nuanced moment.  SOMEONE GREAT Netflix, 2019 My Take: Giving yourself a day to cry, do some scene drugs, and relive the glory days with your friends - set to a near perfect soundtrack - as you transition between major phases of adulthood is reminder we all needed. Gina Rodriguez is a goddamn treasure… Someone greenlight a sequel before I tear up thinking about it any more.  THE PEANUTBUTTER FALCON Roadside Attractions, 2019 My Take: YES to buddy road trip movies (this is a reimagining of Huck Finn if ever there was one!). YES to inclusive casting. YES to loving something pure & simple. YES to movies set in the beautiful state of North Carolina. YES to Shia LeBeouf in a vehicle that makes him seem much more tenderly human than we now know him to be. 

ATHLETE A Netflix, 2020 My Take: I get a fresh wave of chillbumps across my whole body just thinking about this documentary. As a woman… no, you know what? This is about common decency not gender issues. As a human person with working brain cells, this film is startling for several reasons: The inexplicable willingness to sacrifice tender-aged girls in order to protect a brand; the overwhelming, pervasive silence amongst the otherwise tight community of elite athletes; the lack of urgency with which any consequences were doled out to the dozens of so-called professionals culpable among several branches of Team USA; and the absolutely unapologetic, fierce judge who created a safer space within the walls of her courtroom for 175 women to be heard than National Gymnastics could ever have hoped to fathom let alone facilitate.

#don't call it a comeback #blogger #film #recap #back in action #hobby #countdown #links #recommedation #three billboards outside ebbing missouri #molly's game #to the bone #ingrid goes west #booksmart #someone great #peanut butter falcon #athlete a #the way back #king of staten island #palm springs #hulu #netflix #fox searchlight #neon #stx #annapurna pictures #roadside attraction #produced #distributed #year

[eat-the-richard]

Sonic’s 30th: What it could be and what it won’t be

Well folks, it's about that time again. Our beloved Sonic thee Hedgehog is turning the big three-oh this year.

I say that time “again” because, y’know, it seems like we just went through this. The last mainline Sonic releases, Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces, were both revealed as part of Sonic’s 25th anniversary. In a sense, that’s all us fans really have to look forward to anymore. Waiting for about five-or-so rotations around the sun to pass until SEGA can slap that big number next to Sonic’s mug to usher out as much celebratory marketing material as they can, all for the chance to get a smidgen of new video games to get our hands on.

This anniversary feels... different, though. Last anniversary SEGA had an absolute winner on their hands in Sonic Mania. There was no way the team behind that one could possibly mess up. And even if Sonic Forces turned out like... that, it at least made sense from SEGA’s perspective to greenlight a game like it during that time. But the five years since those games were announced have done little to assuage my worries about what exactly is planned for this year’s big game.

You see, Sonic has kind of vanished. He’s lost. M.I.A.. Which feels strange. Even during the supposed “dark age” of Sonic, he never really went anywhere. New games were still being produced like clockwork for a whole host of gaming systems. From mainline titles to spinoffs, dedicated Sonic fans had a lot to sink their teeth into back then. Since the release of Forces, all we really have to show for ourselves is a (personally) insignificant expansion to Sonic Mania and a new racing title which, frankly, didn’t set the world on fire when it was released. I suppose there’s a whole host of mobile titles that I didn’t mention but it’s difficult to get excited over yet another Sonic auto-runner. Perhaps most bafflingly, there haven’t even been many ports of older Sonic titles to modern hardware. If the mid-2000s were the dark ages of Sonic, perhaps right now we’re living in the “silent age,” where basically nothing is even happening and the franchise is at an eternal standstill.

The sole exception to this self-titled silent era was the Sonic movie, which I don’t think anyone anticipated being as big of a success as it was. Including the studio behind it. And especially including SEGA. It was utterly baffling to me that, upon the film’s release, there was nothing in the way of a tie-in game. Nothing directly associated with the movie. Nothing separate to release alongside the movie. Nothing. Some have speculated that SEGA was supremely unconfident in the film and it's hard to argue otherwise. It seems that, in a sense, the movie was a success in spite of the company the IP is linked with.

That’s why this anniversary feels more peculiar than the last one. At least Sonic was doing something in the early 2010s. Perhaps nothing groundbreaking, but he was at least around. If it hadn’t been for the movie, how in the world would the series be attracting new fans? This anniversary needs to be big. It needs to be the explosive re-emergence of Sonic to not only please the jaded oldies but the next generation of kids. And… I just don’t anticipate anything of the sort.

To me, Sonic Team has about four directions they could take the 30th anniversary game. Here they are, listed in descending order of likelihood.

4. A new “boost” game. Sonic Team ain’t opening that can of worms again.

3. A new “classic Sonic” game. While Christian Whitehead’s new studio has been deafeningly silent since forming, I believe that we’d have a bit more information about a Sonic Mania sequel by now if that was indeed in development.

2. Something entirely different.

1. Sonic Adventure 3 (or comparable analog).

Now, your reaction to that list may differ depending on your preferences and the year you were born. To me, something evoking nostalgia to the two Sonic Adventures is the safest and most likely choice for SEGA and Sonic Team. Just as classic nostalgia permeated through the 2010s, Adventure nostalgia will trailblaze full force through the 2020s. There are a lot of people whose only exposure to Sonic at all is playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on their GameCube. And the only way those people could potentially get funneled back into the series is through a proper Sonic Adventure 3, or at least something like it.

This, of course, says nothing about the overall quality of what this new Adventure title would be. And really, this is my main concern with the 30th anniversary. Can I even trust Sonic Team anymore to put out a good game?

Regardless of style, I’m unconfident to say the least. The staff that worked on the Adventure titles are not at SEGA anymore. The staff that spearheaded the “boost trilogy” of Unleashed, Colors, and Generations are not at SEGA anymore. And modern-day Sonic Team’s idea of something entirely different is, well, unappealing. Sonic Lost World proved that trying to change the core of the series for its own sake leads to a bland and uninspiring experience. And Forces? Oh… Forces.

Really, Forces is the main reason why I’m so disillusioned. Maybe it was that I was excited for the grand return of the boost. Maybe it was that I loved Generations so much that a proper sequel to it couldn’t possibly be bad. Instead of being a sequel to Generations, though, it tries to be everything at once. A game to appeal to the classic fans, the Adventure fans, the boost fans, those whole love complicated narratives, those who love the many characters this series has, and, obviously, the Original Character Artists™. Jack of all trades, master of nothing. A directionless, soulless game that in some instances is seemingly artificially-generated.

If this spectacular 30th anniversary Sonic game is something entirely different, it had to break an astounding amount of new ground. It had to rethink and reshape the series so drastically that, honestly, I don’t think it's very likely. I don’t think Sonic Team has even the slightest clue about what makes their flagship IP so appealing to so many people. If the nostalgia-fueled 2010s are any indication, SEGA only understands what makes Sonic so popular on a superficial level. 

They know we liked the 2D games, so now EVERY game has 2D in it! Oh, they didn’t like that Sonic has green eyes. Well, let’s bring back the CLASSIC version of Sonic. Let’s actually make him his own character who will also appear in every game! 

New zone ideas? LMAO how about we reuse the same set of classic levels over and over! Green Hill? YES! Chemical Plant? Of course! Let’s make an entire game that has both Sonics running around in a bunch of old zones. Wait, didn’t we just do that idea last year for Sonic 4 Episode 1? And aren’t we going to do that idea NEXT year for Sonic 4 Episode 2? WAIT DID SOMEONE SAY CHECKERBOARD PATTERNS IN WINDY HILL ZONE!???!!!! 

Oh wait, Christian Whitehead just pitched to us a brand new 2D Sonic game with classic physics and new levels? We’ll let him do it, but ONLY if it is ANOTHER nostalgia game that reuses old zones! 

Let’s inundate our fans with the same images of their childhood to activate their dopamine receptors! 

I can hardly wait for what this team’s idea of Sonic Adventure nostalgia looks like. Hope you really like City Escape.

Really, while such appeals to nostalgia are welcome the first few times, after a while it starts to get grating. Sonic Team leaning so hard into it during the 2010s reeks to me of desperation. As if the constant callbacks are the only thing the team knows how to do to link new games with the rest of the series. 

In actuality, fans don’t like Sonic because of the classic design or 2D-platforming or Green Hill Zone. They may like those things, but it isn’t why they continue to support the series. Fans love Sonic so fervently because, when he hits on all cylinders, he really hits. His games play in a supremely rewarding way where skill mastery is key. The better you are at Sonic, the better you feel while playing it. The personalities and designs of all of the different characters, from Sonic to Tails to Vector the freakin’ Crocodile, are not only distinct from each other but bleed through into gameplay in the way that they control and in how they are animated. Sonic’s best stories are ones that people can really relate to, dealing with a whole host of themes such as environmentalism, resisting fascism, surpassing expectations, and even the concept of free will among nonhuman entities. Not especially deep, but certainly thought provoking, especially for kids. All tied together with top notch visual and audio design that will stand the test of time. I’d posit that, while people like Sonic for a whole host of reasons, their starting point lies somewhere in the above explanation.

Hopefully, Sonic Team has realized by now that nostalgia will only get them so far. While a Sonic Adventure 3 would turn heads, it wouldn’t push the series forward. While a proper sequel to Sonic Mania would be a critical darling, it would continue to keep Sonic’s feet firmly planted in 1991. Sonic needs to evolve. He needs to change. And it seems like a change is happening. Roger Craig Smith, the voice of Sonic for the last 10 years, is no longer working with the series. The new TV series, Sonic Prime, is set to take place in a “strange new multiverse.” Even the Sonic movie refuses to lean on nostalgia too hard. 

So maybe the future will be set in unfamiliar waters. But if this is the case, I don’t want SEGA to half ass it. I want them to boldly step into that abyss with a vision of Sonic that appeals to the heart of the fandom. Because, even if it's been down recently, that heart is still beating, and after the abuse it's already taken, it’s going to take a hell of a lot to get it to stop. And if SEGA can get this heart pumping to its full extreme as it had in years past, we may have something legendary to look forward to.

They could also just release a bunch of old Sonic games on Switch. I’d like that too.

#sonic #sonic 30th #essay #sonic team

[d-criss-news]

With the film industry as we know it—A-list stars swanning around studio lots amid the swirling winds of an entire city bellowing buzzwords about makin’ pictures—essentially nonexistent at the moment, here’s an especially provocative idea as we contemplate its eventual return: What if Hollywood was... better?

Not in terms of quality of output, though if we’ve learned anything through the industry’s glacial inching toward progress, that will follow suit. But what if the industry was more inclusive? What if it was less afraid of change? What if it allowed gay people, people of color, women, and minorities to tell their own stories, to be in charge—and what if the people accepted it? 

Better yet, what if it was always that way? 

Like the loud, harsh clack of a clapboard coming down on 70 years of motion picture history, Ryan Murphy’s revisionist manifesto Hollywood arrives Friday on Netflix with blinding, blaring, technicolor confidence. Hardly subtle, deliciously ostentatious, and admirably mischievous, the lavish seven-episode series is a love letter to Hollywood by way of 2020 think piece. 

It is messy and thrilling, upsetting yet profound; as uneven and as enthralling as any of Murphy’s big-swing, genre-contorting efforts: Glee, American Horror Story, or The Politician. But as with his soapy historical study Feud: Bette and Joan, it is a fastidious celebration of a glamorized time in Hollywood that mines nostalgia for modern meaning—a fragile undertaking swaddled in the dazzle of unmatched production design and talent pedigree.

Hollywood flops as often as it soars, but never rests in its grandiosity and ambition. The result is something escapist and frothy at a time when a retreat to a Hollywood happy ending is as alluring a fantasy as they come.

There is brilliant acting and there is bad acting. There are ovation-worthy ideas and there are off-putting ones. But, above all, there is reason to watch: It is gay, it is sexy, it is Patti LuPone.

Hollywood is a revisionist history of cinema’s golden age. It’s the 1940s in all their glamour and art: Casablanca! Citizen Kane! Alfred Hitchcock! Jimmy Stewart! Rita Hayworth! Cary Grant! It’s an era that’s been romanticized for so long that we’ve internalized it, morphing our own lifestyle aspirations to conform to its very heteronormative, very patriarchal, very (very) white ideas about sex and gender roles. These were ideas, however, that the industry was telegraphing, but not living in real life. Not at all. 

Murphy and his team’s rewriting of history pulls the curtain back, exposing the sexually fluid proclivities of the stars—leading men sleeping with male escorts; Oscar-winning actresses in bisexual affairs—and the damning, racist barriers to inclusion fortified by studio heads thwarting any opportunity for progress. 

Then, and here’s the crux of the whole thing: Hollywood changes that narrative. We glimpse the power dynamics inside Tinseltown’s gilded cage, and watch them being dismantled. 

Some of the players’ narratives are real, and some are fiction. That makes for an amusing parlor game for viewers, attempting to separate the true history from the imagined one, and should birth a cottage industry of “The Real Story Behind…” stories in the weeks to come. But these are actual people who never had the opportunity to live authentically or see true, equal opportunity in the industry. Expect there to be a split among those who find happier, reimagined fates for them a sweet gesture, and those who find it in bad taste. 

The story trains in on Jack (David Corenswet), a World War II veteran arriving wide-eyed in Hollywood, hoping some gumption and a jawline God shed a tear after creating will be enough to get him into the pictures. But he’s got a pregnant wife (Maude Apatow) to think about. Until he catches the eye of a casting director, he has to find some way to pay the bills. That cash flow comes surreptitiously from a gas station owner (Dylan McDermott), whose dashed Hollywood ambitions leave a soft spot for attractive dreamers like Jack—particularly ones who prove lucrative in his under-the-table prostitution business. A customer comes in for a fill-up, so to speak, and whispers the code, “I want to go to Dreamland,” and, well, you know the rest—and hopefully get the hardly nuanced metaphor about sex, power, sacrifices, and Hollywood.

This gas station business is without a doubt inspired by Scotty Bowers, the notorious L.A. hustler who died last year at 96, following a scandalizing, dishy documentary and memoir revealing the brothel he ran out of a petrol stand, sleeping with (allegedly) Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Gary Cooper, J. Edgar Hoover, and Rock Hudson. 

McDermott’s character, however, is not actually Scotty Bowers, a distinction that’s necessary because Rock Hudson actually is a character, played by Jake Picking. So is Henry Wilson, the monstrous, closeted Hollywood agent played by Jim Parsons, who trades blowjobs for representation. Elsewhere, real-life trailblazers like Hattie MacDaniel, Vivien Leigh, and George Cukor show up. Their presence, on the one hand, lends credibility and grounds the fantasia of diversity and acceptance that Hollywood builds to. It’s also morally amorphous.

Hudson was closeted until the day he died of HIV/AIDS. He didn’t get the happy ending imagined here, publicly coming out of the closet by attending the Academy Awards with his fictional black, gay screenwriting boyfriend, holding hands on the red carpet, and staying on track on his ascension to Hollywood hunk. There’s also no evidence that Wilson, as caustic and self-loathing as the devil himself when we meet him in the show, had a change of heart and becomes a LGBT crusader seeking amends and atonement. 

The wishful thinking is nice. But the bleakness of the reality shouldn’t be forgotten. There’s no clean place to land there, other than to consider both. 

But these are just a handful of Hollywood’s players, and not even the true engine of the plot. In typical Murphyland fashion, there is a dizzying constellation of characters and their errant business to keep tabs on. 

At the forefront is Patti LuPone’s Avis, the bored wife of a studio head (a scene-stealing Rob Reiner) who is first introduced as a client of Jack’s—hence all the press about the Tony winner’s explicit sex scenes that you’ve likely been reading—and eventually put in charge of the studio itself when her husband is incapacitated by a heart attack. 

If it’s novel now to think of a female in charge of greenlighting projects and making commercial creative decisions, imagine it seven decades ago. And Avis shakes things up. With a casting director (Holland Taylor, perfect) and producer (Joe Mantello, heartbreaking) as her conspirators, she greenlights and positions as the studio’s next blockbuster a film called Meg, with its historically diverse creative team intact. 

That means half-Filipino director Raymond (Darren Criss), black screenwriter Archie (Jeremy Pope), black leading lady Camille (Laura Harrier), and Jack and Rock in supporting roles. It takes willfulness to bulldoze the fortresses that bar progress. That is invigorating and moving to watch, especially as Hollywood dances between comedy, camp, earnestness, and tragedy with all the glee, if you will, that you’d expect from a Ryan Murphy production. 

There’s sex—hot sex, gay sex, interracial sex, intergenerational sex—and there’s farce and there’s a wardrobe and set budget to sweep you away like a riptide. 

There are scenes from Parsons and LuPone that will win them Emmys. Mantello and Taylor have a two-hander together that shattered me into so many pieces I am billing Ryan Murphy the cleaning fee. I worry that even with his Netflix money it won’t be enough—that’s how good it is. 

Mira Sorvino and Queen Latifah give so much in their scenes as guest stars that you wish they were in more but are grateful for the flawless blips of bliss, while Michelle Krusiec as Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, is the epitome of an actor making a monumental moment out of limited material. 

Criss solidifies his leading-man status—he’s captivating in every scene, even without much to do—and Corenswet brings glimmers of gravitas to eye candy. But the rest of the kids nearly torpedo the whole damn thing, they’re so miscast. The scenes with the older generation are so rich and such an utter joy to watch, it only makes the woodenness of performers like Picking and Harrier all the more egregious. Thankfully, there’s a larger message to it all that acts as absolution.

If Hollywood were a treatise on how society interacts with movies and TV both then and now, then the thesis could likely be boiled down to an early conversation between Raymond, Criss’ director character, and Dick, Mantello’s studio exec. It’s Raymond’s dream to direct a movie starring Anna May Wong. Dick kills the pitch, saying no one will pay to see a movie with an Asian lead, or any lead of color. 

Raymond doesn’t stand for that. How does he know? No one’s tried. “Sometimes I think folks in this town don’t really understand the power they have. Movies don’t just show us how the world is, they show how the world can be. If we change the way that movies are made, you take a chance and you make a different kind of story, I think you can change the world.” 

It’s not a stretch to argue that as the mission statement of Murphy’s entire career. He’s proved it time and again, from Glee to Pose: Bring the marginalized out of the margins and watch how things change. Someone just has to be the one to do it.

In essence, Hollywood sees Murphy dramatizing the progress that he played a part in catalyzing today, but imagining if it had come at a different turning point in cinema history—70 years ago. More tantalizingly, he raises the question of what society today might be like had it actually happened then. 

Is it a little self-congratulatory? Sure. But, hey, that’s showbiz, kid. 

#darren criss #the daily beast #hollywood #press #hollywood spoilers #just in case #april 2020 #hollywood review

[agentnico]

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - Season 1 (2019) Review

Go on Netflix, hurry up and give us a season 2 already! Yesss?? Pleeeaaassseee? Mmmmmmmmmmm?

Plot: Return to the world of Thra, where three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis' power, and set out to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world.

I was never really a fan of the original 1982 The Dark Crystal film. Don’t get me wrong, the puppetry work behind it was really decent, but story wise the movie felt quite weak, as it was yet another fairly generic quest for a hero to take something from A to B and save the day. And what do you know, he does! Wow, big surprise there. But The Dark Crystal did introduce us to the fantastical world of Thra, and in the movie we only got little teases of the kinds of creatures and sights that could be found there. Now, courtesy of Netflix, we have ourselves a prequel series set quite a few years prior to the events of the original film, and I must say that this show is nothing short from spectacular. Not only do we now have an actually engaging story-line that is both interesting and filled with twists and turns throughout, which I need to give props to the writers, since this being a prequel means we know what happens at the very end already, so having a prequel that can actually offer the element of surprise is really something. I truly was immersed in this series right till the last episode, and now all I can hope is for Netflix to greenlight a second season, as this is a show that definitely is something special and different.

The puppetry work is incredible and very much pays homage and respect to Jim Henson’s legacy whilst also improving on the effects due to how technology has progressed. The puppets are masterfully rendered to sets and CGI backgrounds to create a distinctively unique world and the result is absolutely beautiful. So many shots throughout this show are like a painting. And the puppets themselves are incredible, with the various species like the Gelflings and Podlings all having their distinctive look, and of course we see the return of the evil Skeksis who look just as vile and horrible as before. Visually this piece is nothing short of breathtaking, and you can just tell how much work and effort was put into this, so I must congratulate the entire team behind this production for the time and passion that they have dedicated towards this. Also, speaking of technical things, the music score by Daniel Pemberton - my goodness! I knew the guy had talent back when I saw King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and here he proves it again with a gorgeous musical accompaniment that literally transports you into another world. Really the stuff of wonder.

The voice cast assembled her is also one to behold. The likes of Taron Egerton, Anya Taylor-Joy (who I will one day marry without a doubt!!), Jason Isaacs, Mark Hamill, Alicia Vikander, Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Strong, Lena Headey, Keegan Michael-Key....the list goes on. It’s really amazing how many people they got into this thing. But the two stand-outs for me was Nathalie Emmanuel as one of the main three Gelflins, as she was both adorable yet also very powerful, and also Simon Pegg who note-for-note recreates the voice of Chamberlain (one of the Skeksis) that if I didn’t read the cast list beforehand I would’ve thought they somehow managed to bring back the original voice of the guy from the original film.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a technical achievement and a fantasy epic like no other, that does incredible world-building with a strong voice cast, uniquely designed characters, an engrossing story full of surprises (there are actual stakes - a character can die any moment!) and overall one of the better TV shows of the past few years. Still dislike the movie though, sorry.

Overall score: 8/10

#the dark crystal #netflix #jim henson #the jim henson company #puppet #puppetry #skeksis #gelfling #the dark crystal age of resistance #the dark crystal age of resistance review #tv series #science fiction #tv show #2019 #the dark crystal age of resistance season 1 #fantasy #thra #adventure #drama #family #jeffrey addiss #will matthews #taron egerton #anya taylor joy #nathalie emmanuel #simon pegg #jason isaacs #mark hamill #keegan michael key #benedict wong

[dailydaveeddiggs]

Today, thanks to “Hamilton,” Diggs, 35, may be the more established half of the “Blindspotting” duo, but that wasn’t the case when he moved back to Oakland after earning his theater degree from Brown. Though four years younger, Casal had already made a name for himself on the Bay Area spoken-word scene, from which he was plucked to appear on HBO’s “Def Poetry.”

Casal had set up a recording studio with the aim of finding other musicians to collaborate with, reaching out to Diggs on the strength of a demo CD the rapper had recorded in his college dorm room. The friendship took hold almost immediately: That first night, they created a few songs, which led to albums, live performances (with a group they dubbed the Getback) and countless sketches and online videos.

“Rafael was the most famous person I knew,” Diggs recalls. “He had really tapped into the YouTube audience pretty early.”

Casal’s videos caught the attention of Jess Calder (then Jess Wu). The young producer, partnered in Snoot with her husband, Keith Calder, had seen a couple of his spoken-word performances and was struck by both Casal’s charisma and the fact that he appeared to be a natural-born storyteller.

“In my mind, anyone who can tell a great story can definitely translate that to film,” explains the producer, who contacted Casal and proposed they meet for coffee. She asked if he’d ever thought about writing a screenplay.

“I’d thought about theater a lot, [but at that age] you’re trying to get $5 for something at McDonald’s. A movie is millions of dollars away,” says Casal. But he was definitely intrigued, and began fleshing out a character that was loosely autobiographical. Things started to click about a year and a half later, when the Snoot duo asked Casal to perform at a screening of their documentary “Thunder Soul” at a January 2009 presidential inauguration event in Washington, D.C. Casal couldn’t make it but suggested they book Diggs in his place.

“Daveed came and did like 15 minutes of freestyle at the event and kind of blew our minds,” recalls Keith Calder. “We were immediately like, ‘Rafael, the movie’s gotta be about the two of you!’”

And from that moment forward, “Blindspotting” became the story of two friends of different races forced to consider the world from one another’s viewpoints, all set against the rapidly changing Bay Area backdrop.

Casal hails from Berkeley, the city directly north of Diggs’ Oakland. But they both attended Berkeley High School and later split a four-bedroom house with two other friends for $1,200. “I can’t even imagine what that place would cost now,” Casal says.

Gentrification, fueled by the tech boom, has transformed the neighborhoods they once knew. “Seventh Street is just a BART station and a post office now, but in the ’30s and ’40s, that was one of the jazz and blues centers of the world,” Diggs says. The last of the local music venues, Esther’s Orbit Room (where Diggs’ brother had been a bartender), finally shut down in 2010. His mother and father (also born in Oakland) both had to move, priced out by the newcomers.

Though not a musical in the conventional sense, “Blindspotting” was born out of a desire to translate spoken-word poetry into cinema. “There are versions where it was damn near a poem the whole time,” Diggs says.

From 2009 onward, he and Casal worked on the script together, huddling over the same laptop since they had only a single licensed copy of Final Draft between them.

“We were trying to find a recipe for a world where verse could exist without it feeling like there’s a deliberate shift every time it goes into a number,” Casal explains. “The Bay Area is known for slang and for turn of phrase. It’s the evolution of pimp culture, so heightened language is already very prevalent in the way people relate to each other.”

For the next several years, Diggs and Casal spent their time driving up and down Interstate 5 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, parking out front of wherever Snoot headquarters happened to be at the time and sleeping in their car if needed. They wrote draft after draft of “Blindspotting,” pitching the changes to the Calders while using Snoot’s facilities to work on music videos and other projects.

“I’ve always felt like our offices were a place where they should feel safe to create art,” says Jess Calder.

Before Diggs and Casal could complete a shooting version of the script, they were pulled away by other professional opportunities. Casal went off to teach verse-driven theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years. And, for Diggs, “Hamilton” happened.

“The thing about this business is you never know if something’s a break,” says Diggs. “I met Lin-Manuel Miranda because of a clerical error.” Diggs showed up for the same substitute teaching job as one of Miranda’s friends, Anthony Veneziale, who was also a rapper. They hit it off, and Veneziale invited Diggs to freestyle with his group, of which Miranda was a member. Later, when it came time to do an early reading of “Hamilton,” Miranda remembered Diggs and his rapid-fire delivery. “I was invited because I have this particular skill set that allows me to learn a lot of things very quickly,” recalls Diggs, who had just five days to memorize the show’s most demanding part. “I assumed they would replace me because they had plenty of Broadway performers to choose from.”

Except that Miranda didn’t replace Diggs, who spent nearly a year and a half with the production. “Before leaving ‘Hamilton,’ I made this comment to one of my agents,” Diggs recalls. “I was ready to go, but scared that I wouldn’t make any money again, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ and promptly booked my life with all these things.”

The day after his last “Hamilton” performance in mid-2016, Diggs found himself shooting the movie “Wonder,” starring Julia Roberts. The following week, he began working on ABC’s “Black-ish.” That was swiftly followed by a recurring role on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which had to be juggled amid a long-planned national tour with his experimental rap group, Clipping.

Into the midst of this whirlwind came the moment for which Diggs and Casal had long been waiting. Last March, the Snoot producers told them they had the greenlight to make “Blindspotting,” provided the duo could get their script in shape to shoot in June.

“What if I move to L.A. in two days and I write it for a month?” Casal recalls asking — and that’s exactly what he did, undertaking a page-one overhaul while Diggs’ fledgling screen career kept him busy.

“I was on airplanes every other day,” says Diggs, “so really the only through line were these midnight phone calls from Rafael to talk about this thing we’d been talking about for a decade.”

Excited about the prospect of finally making the movie, Diggs kept a rare 25-day window open in June for the shoot. Casal managed to get the rewrite done in four weeks. Reaching out to another old friend, they brought in director López Estrada, who immediately began pre-production.

The project’s Oakland focus attracted some production talent whom the producers normally couldn’t afford, including DP Robby Baumgartner, who had worked in the lighting department for Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and who brought the lighting crew from “Moonlight” aboard.

“We suddenly had this amazing team of people from the Bay Area,” says Diggs. “Doing something with your friends at a high level, that’s a dream.”

After production wrapped, Snoot submitted a rough cut to Sundance, which recommended the music-driven film for a Dolby Family Sound Fellowship. “Blindspotting” is one of two 2018 Sundance selections to have earned the generous post-production grant, making it possible for the filmmakers to upgrade their mix in time for its festival debut. (Past recipients of the grant include “Mudbound” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”)

Thanks to the grant, Diggs, Casal and other members of the production team — including López Estrada and the Calders — spent late December camped out on the Paramount Pictures lot on the same Technicolor stage where Michael Bay mixes his “Transformers” films.

On the same day of Variety’s visit, Diggs and Casal wrote a short piece of original music to replace a few seconds of temp score. Since they came up with the cue themselves, that means they can later expand it into a full-blown song for the soundtrack.

It’s the kind of on-the-fly challenge that has fueled the duo’s creative partnership for more than a decade — though “Blindspotting” is the first time they’ve been able to combine their writing, performance and musical talents to such a degree.

“As an artist, the only thing you ever want to do is something that requires every part of yourself,” Diggs says. “And it is so rare when that happens.” (x)

LOVE the insight as to how this all came together.

#daveed diggs #rafael casal #blindspotting #sundance #sundance film festival #2018 sundance film festival #variety #jess calder

[romancevsreality-blog]

the bachelorette, season fourteen, episode four: welcome to heteronormative summer camp!

This season is a car wreck, and not the good kind.

I know, I know. “Amanda, is there ever a good car wreck?” I don’t know, ask Holly Hunter and James Spader in Cronenberg Crash how they feel about that1. Ask insurance companies! They would know!

No, this season is a car wreck because not only are the men absolutely wretched - who would have thought we could get worse than the combination of Chad, Chase, Robb(ie) and Dean - but Becca is basically a nonfactor, and production DGAF about spoilers and the casting of literal sex offenders. This has all resulted in some of the most boring television I have ever had the displeasure of viewing.

But alas, I do it for y’all.

The episode opens up right before the third cocktail party, and those without roses are terrified. David / Chicken Man literally fell out of a bunk bed because this show has so many similarities to summer camp. Speaking of, Clay, who is a professional football player, hurt his wrist so badly he had to leave the show. This is the most fucked up summer camp ever, and we haven’t even gotten to Paradise yet.

Ugh. Paradise. Remember back when Paradise was the best part of my summer2?

Star of the Floptastic Fantastic Four, Miles Teller, takes Becca aside to make her feel better after Clay’s departure. And that conversation means talking about the number of kids you want! That’s totally how I relax. Blake wants 3-5 kids, which Becca reacts the same way I do - COMPLETE AND UTTER HORROR. Men always want a bunch of fuckin’ kids because they don’t have to do the work. They don’t have a parasite that feeds on your nutrients for nine months, then you EXPEL that parasite from your body and you’re expected to take care of that parasite for the rest of your lifetime, including using your body to feed them for a while afterwards. Like, it’s a vagina - not a clown car. I fully intend to approach pregnancy as “That Really Cool Thing I Only Want To Do Once, Maybe Twice, Just For The Shits And Gigs of It All.” I can’t wait for my kids to read this blog.

Becca wants to name her daughter “Stevie”, which… I’m not even going to get started on that one. No, wait, I’m going to. I am totally pro-gender neutral names3, but STEVIE? Stevie. You are robbing your child of an adult name if you name them Stevie. No one trusts a 45 year old named Stevie. They both also agree with “Charlie”, which is cute as a shortened version of Charles or Charlotte. I am not calling anyone named Charlie Charlie after the age of 23. Charlie is a fuckboy4. They make out after baby talk, which is not what it sounds like.

Jordan is relishing in David falling out of his bed, and Jordan believes that God willed David’s hospital visit into the universe. Is this what I sound like when I talk about willing shit into existence? I’m going to stop ASAP. Anyway, Jordan, despite being happy David is gone, doesn’t even think it matters - he can woo Becca in 5 minutes as well as he can in 30. Premature ejaculation is common in the Haus of Jordan. He goes off on some nonsense about wearing a tie but not wearing a tie so Becca can get a read on him?

Jordan is doing some Nathaniel Hawthorne-esque symbolism through sartorial choices and I would watch an entire series of Jordan trying to tell women how he feels about them using his clothes rather than his words. Becca presents Jordan with a pair of golden lame hot pants, and Jordan takes that as being the Golden Boy and that Becca clearly thinks his junk is gold. Seriously. Someone greenlight this series.

David comes back while this is occurring, and he looks a fucking wreck. Black eye, nose all banged up - David done fucked himself right up. Jordan acts like David can do anything about the way he looks with his broken nose. Becca does her due diligence and takes him aside, and she tells him how handsome he looks. Becca, you’re trying it. David schmoozes the FUCK out of Becca about how happy he is to be back and how this hurt more to leave her than him. Jordan, still banking on his looks and his looks alone, is completely focused on how terrible David looks. Jordan’s confident he’s getting a rose tonight and David will get sent home simply because of what he looks like.

Jordan is such a delusional monster, but he’s literally not even the worst person there.

Becca, being a saint, offers David a rose because there’s no way David can stand through a 4-6 hour Rose Ceremony.I feel like this is the one form of compassion we’re going to see from these people this season. David relishes in the fact that he gets to show off his bruised face AND his rose to Jordan, and skips off to bed.

And then, David goes, “Hey Jordan, what’s up?” and Jordan is so butt hurt about it.

We head into the Rose Ceremony. Chris, Colton, and David already have roses, so they don’t have to worry about a damn thing.

Jason / Andrew Keegan, Wills, Nick, Christon, Lincoln (BOOOOOOOOOO), Blake, Garrett, Leo, Venmo John, Connor (I think?), Jordan, and Jean Blanc Ralphio are all recipients of this week’s roses.

Bye, Mystery Hottie Ryan and Man Bun Mike. We literally never knew anything about you guys.

Oh, and we’re going to a winter wonderland. We’re off to Park City, Utah4! I wonder if they’re going to leave the country after Lincoln’s eliminated because they can’t travel with a felon!

Someone at the styling team really hates Becca because they put her in a bright red puffer jacket that must have been taken from the set of A Christmas Story: The Musical, LIVE! from last December. Hopefully that’s the closest Pasek and Paul make it to this disaster of a show, but knowing ABC, they’ll find a way. We learn that Garrett, who I hate, gets the one-on-one date.

Assuming they filmed this in February/March, making Garrett and Becca walk the streets of Park City could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. It definitely looks like one of those days that you think it’s warm because of the sun, but a breeze comes through and you think you’ve been slapped in the face. I don’t miss the cold. Becca brings Garrett to a an alpaca shop, which is not what I expected to be. Less alpacas, more sweaters. Becca sees her dad in Garrett, and honestly, this girl got her heart broken on national TV and doesn’t have a dad and clearly is going to look like that in a person.

And then we learn that Lincoln is a flat earther.

Okay, so Lincoln is:

Slimy

Rumored to have issues pooping in public

An actual convicted sexual assaulter

A FUCKING FLAT EARTHER?

AND HE’S BLACK???????????????

I hate being like “Man, this guy is making it look bad for everyone”, but I feel like if my friend Rae, who is also a Nigerian-American, heard any of this stuff about Lincoln, she would find him and chop his head off. He is making Nigerians look bad, and this is after Jackie Aina falsely accused another YouTuber of international bank fraud. Lincoln is worse than accusing someone of international bank fraud.

All the men are looking at him like he’s bonkers. He literally cannot fathom the idea of friction, gravity, or astrophysics. He invites an astrophysicist, the primary viewing group of The Bachelorette, to discuss it over hot chocolate.

I don’t even want to acknowledge Lincoln as a person anymore. Is he gone yet?

Back at the house, we hear Venmo John speak for the first time all season, and it turns out he has a weird voice. Is that mean? He’s talking with Jean Blanc Ralphio, who basically is this season’s anxiety bomb - he just needs to take a deep breath and chill out.

Garrett and Becca take a ski slope up to the top of a bobsledding track, and honestly, I really wish that they had just superimposed footage from Cool Runnings over this entire scene. We meet Shauna Rohbok and Valerie Fleming, who are silver medalists at the US Bobsled team, who also happen to be married to each other. My favorite part is Garrett putting two and two together than these two women are married to each other and that lesbianism isn’t a thing pornography made up and pretending to be super cool with that5.

Cue bobsledding montage.

Becca and Garrett sit down to “dinner”, and Becca immediately compares him to her dad. Garrett’s like “thanks dawg,” and then Becca’s like “okay, time to talk about your former relationships! Time to unveil your deepest personal traumas to me, this camera crew, and the rest of America!” Of course Garrett got married and divorced young - less than three years from dating to divorce, god damn - and he thinks it was to the Wrong Person. She was emotionally abusive and isolated him from the rest of his family, and he was the first member of his family to get divorced so he has Baggage. I mean, I still hate him. But that’s still unfortunate. Garrett reaffirms he’s there For Becca and he wants it to work for them, and that gets him a rose, and a dance in front of a band and a live audience. Again, do we ever hear from these bands again? Or the audience members, at that?

Back at the house, there’s a....

DATE CAAAAAAARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jordan, Chris, Star of War Dogs Miles Teller, Nick, John, Lincoln, Leo, David, Connor (I Think?), Christon, Colton, and Jean Blanc Ralphio are on the date card, which means My Boyfriend Wills is going on the other one-on-one date this week. And a ton of the dudes in the room are P I S S E D about that.

The guys all go to join Becca, who is wearing her best Lumberjack Chic outfit in a wheat field that’s somehow not covered in snow. Are they sure this is really Utah? They’re literally having a lumberjack bash, because… this show has a budget of $15 an episode, and they spent half of it on bobsledding lessons. They are literally going to throw axes and chop wood, because heteronormative activities on an arbitrary scale of masculinity is a great way to measure a man’s ability to be a good husband. Jean Blanc Ralphio, Frat Fink6 and He Who Shall Not Be Named are both disasters at chopping wood. I literally cannot be bothered to write anything positive about this because I do not understand the POINT. At some point the guys are literally lifting and pushing over logs?

This would never work for me. The guys, to make things worse, are split into teams to do a relay for Becca’s heart. There’s a ton of “separating the men from boys” things going on, and I thought that was determined by age and maturity, not by… being able to climb a 30 foot tall log. Maybe that’s just me? The final competition boils down to Venmo John vs Star of the Divergent Series, Miles Teller, and in a shocking twist, Venmo comes in first, and he gets a golden axe7.

If they wanted a date where the men wore plaid, I would much rather have all of them do their best Kurt Cobain impressions in a “grunge themed” group date. I had a much more insensitive punchline to that joke, so I’m just going to leave it at that for now.

It’s time for the After-After-After-After-After Party, and the first person to take Becca aside is Jason / Andrew Keegan, and basically he just talks about how nice it was to see Becca having fun. That’s it. He’s nervous because he cares about Becca so he’s finding it hard to be aloof, and agrees to just embrace that. Okay.

Is Jason working on me? Oh my god. He sounds genuine when he says this. NOOOOOOO, DO NOT LET ME FALL FOR ANDREW KEEGAN’S CULT!!!8 Colton tells Becca he’s been in love before, and this dude is a virgin who’s been in love? What the fuck? Jordan is wearing the hot pants Becca gave him under his clothes, and honestly, Aaron Samuels wishes. He takes off his pants to show her and kiss Becca, and she literally tells him she can’t take him seriously before sashaying away to the other men on the couch.

Jesus, Jordan is annoying. Colton and Frat Fink are irritated especially, and is the next to join the Jordan is Not Here for the Right Reasons camp. They think his behavior is disrespectful, and Colton wants his shenanigans to be over. Jordan asks if Colton thinks Jordan should be tired of all these men taking him aside to talk to him, and Colton’s like “yeah… because you’re annoying, dude.” He calls Jordan a motherfucker, a clown, all kinds of things. Colton calls himself “One of the Good Guys”, something I can certifiably say is unlikely to be true. Jordan is harmless and Becca clearly doesn’t see him as a real option, so this is all unnecessary.

Jean Blanc Ralphio takes Becca side to present her with a perfume, and it is at this moment that I realize his FIRST AND LAST NAME is Jean Blanc. This entire time I thought Jean Blanc was his first and middle name and I let out an entirely involuntary “THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.” at my office. The perfume is called “Miss Becca Blanc,” which is so weird. We don’t even find out what it smells like before Jean Blanc Ralphio tries to exchange the perfume for a kiss, which Becca is not about. She can smell something unpleasant in the air, and it’s not JBR’s cologne - it’s Desperation, by Calvin Klein. At this time, Leo comes in to interrupt9 and that basically starts Jean Blanc Ralphio on a shame spiral. He wants to turn that frown upside dizity, but he doesn’t know how.

He decides to take life by the balls and interrupt Lincoln’s time with Becca. He wants to affirm how he feels about Becca, and tells her that he’s falling in love with her.

Basically, this is Jean Blanc Ralphio:

Becca’s response:

Me, at home:

Also Me:

Becca doesn’t know anything about this person, or what brought on these feelings so quickly, but Becca is overwhelmed. Not just whelmed. She’s not even close to the same page, they’re in separate chapters. It may feel like it’s been a year, but it’s the fourth episode, Jean Blanc Ralphio. You feel NOTHING except a mild erection, and Becca’s allowed to not want you there anymore because she thinks your feelings are deeper than hers and she doesn’t know if she can get there with you. Becca asks if she can walk him out.

Jean Blanc Ralphio asks about his gift on his way out, and Becca offers to give it back. Uh, Becca? It was a gift. Likely it’s water with food coloring in it and a Microsoft Word label, he doesn’t need it back. And that’s when Jean Blanc Ralphio digs his grave.

Basically, Jean Ralphio expected to give Becca a gift and that would get her so aroused and turned on that she would fall madly in love with him straight away, and confessing his love to her was simply a tactic, not his actual sentiment. He fully admits to basically saying that because he wanted to stay there and because he thought that’s what she wanted from him. Uh, this girl just had her heart shattered on national TV from a dude’s insincerity, it’s the exact OPPOSITE of what she wants right now. Becca is so mad and basically shoves him out the door. Becca goes to talk to the other dudes in pure anger, and cancels the rest of the night. No one’s getting the group date rose.

The next day, My Boyfriend Wills has been prepped with the knowledge that Becca had a hard night the night before. Everyone saw Becca’s genuine, real anger the night before, and they have all realized Rebecca ain’t no one to fuck with. Becca’s an emotional mess from the night before still, and she feels weird.

Probably because you haven’t dealt with having your heart broken on national television, Rebecca.

My Boyfriend Wills approaches Becca in the snow, and he gives her a huge hug. They both talk about not wanting to talk about what happened the previous night, so of course that’s going to be the main focus on the evening. They’re going to go on snowmobiles so they don’t have to talk about anything, and Becca has a wonky eyelash. They have a snowball fight, My Boyfriend Wills has an ASMR voice, and it’s all pretty wonderful. They go to dinner, and Wills reveals that his Deep Romantic Trauma is from his ex-girlfriend wanting to open up their relationship and him not being game for that. He refers to this as a “Hall Pass”, which implies that it’s less wanting Openness, but her looking for an excuse to cheat. But Wills isn’t afraid of commitment whatsoever, he’s afraid of not being Enough.

Oh, Wills. I get that.

But that honesty and respect for Becca gets Wills a rose. Yas, My Boyfriend Wills.

Back at the house, the dudes who got fucked over by Jean Blanc’s fuckery cutting the group date short - Nick and Connor (I think?) - and Chris Harrison comes by for five seconds to reveal that Becca knows her choices and there isn’t going to be a cocktail party that evening, it’s going straight to the Rose Ceremony. Nick and Connor (I think?) are upset and fucked up about this.

Becca:

It’s time for the Rose Ceremony.

Leo, Colton, Blake, Jason, Connor (I think?), He Who Shall Not Be Named, John, Frat Fink, David, and Jordan get roses. Bye Nick, Bye Christon10. Jordan is shook he’s in last place, even though he’s been there before.11

Oh, and we’re off to Vegas!

Next Week: Tons of Vegas references! The Bellagio fountain! Becca is feeling amazing! Frat Fink is this guy’s “what about my attention? I’m better than these guys!” And David vs. Jordan in the desert for my favorite part of the season - the two-on-one.

See you then!

Random Assessments from the Desk of Amanda:

I’m so mad my hottie mystery banjo boyfriend is a MAGAhead, I cannot.

Oh my god, not only is Jordan’s identity Being Ridiculously Good-Looking, he also feels the need to bring up his crotch enough that I’m genuinely worried he might really be a Ken Doll down there.

The only good part of this week’s group date was the butts. Oh my god, the butts.

Seriously, was this season lit with the Benjamin Franklin’s lightbulb?

Okay, but god BLESS Jean Blanc Ralphio for having a name but also providing me with the opportunity to look at a bunch of gifs of  my Future Husband Ben Schwartz for this recap. #soloboloforevolo

I love that My Boyfriend Wills has a sweatshirt with his name on it.

Has the Rose Ceremony order always had the implication of favor? I didn’t know it was an official ranking of where you are to the lead.

Super Telling Of How Terrible This Season Is: this episode didn’t get a “funny behind the scenes moment featuring the guys while the credits roll” scene.

Or if you’re my mother, ask James Spader in general - she has this weird theory he’s a weirdo and it’s my favorite thing. Like, she cannot deduce whether he’s a weird person or he’s really, really good at playing weird characters. I love his sliminess. ↩︎

Now it’s Claws. Are you watching Claws? You should be fucking watching Claws, god damn it. It's on Hulu! Get on it! ↩︎

Hi Jordan! ↩︎

Fun Fact: for years, I thought Park City was named because they had an Olympic Park there. Text STOP to stop useless facts about my life! ↩︎ ↩︎

My other favorite part? Shauna Rohbok is a lesbian Mormon. ↩︎

My friends call Chris Rat Fink, but I think Frat Fink is an even better variation because he totally was the gross frat guy in college. ↩︎

Something tells me Jordan is having a conniption somewhere. ↩︎

Then again, it would be the biggest compliment to be hot enough to be offered a spot in this cult. ↩︎

He is so shrouded in darkness and his hair I literally had to guess based on a floral print and a voice who this is. It could have been anyone. ↩︎

God, I hope Christon makes it into paradise and they bring back Scallop Fingers / Christen / Krysten / Kiersten and we get their names confused. ↩︎

He also compares himself to a sponge, and Monet X Change would like a FUCKING WORD. ↩︎

#the bachelorette #the bachelorette recap #god this season sucks #drag race 10 isn't much better? #but at least we got #monet x change #and #monique heart #who are literal goddesses #these men can take note from them #okay? #let's do the damn thing #i've said that phrase so many times lately #and i hate myself every time #EVERY TIME #jean ralphio

[wildstrandsblog]

An Unconditional Love Story: Take Flight, Sisterhood

Issue 2 - May 7, 2021

(Suggested listening)

My original plan after hiring Fernanda to help around the home was for her to work twenty hours a week in the morning time for the first four months after having our third baby, but that idea changed as we approached the end date. I was neither physically or mentally prepared to take on the full breadth of childcare for my three young children, ages three years old and under, and all the homecare, too. Life, however, was offering up a different set of plans for us. After giving Fernanda the greenlight she could stay on indefinitely, she said that may be all the time she had. Her visa was running out and she was having to fly back to Brazil with hopes of getting it renewed. She explained how it was a very rigorous process. She was scared it wouldn’t go through and wasn’t ready to let go of her dream of coming to America fighting back the tears. I wasn't ready to let her go, either. Her love and her light were the best thing keeping my little family afloat. We had no choice, though. She had to go. So in my Christmas shopping I found something that caught my eye, something I thought might be the perfect gift to tell Fernanda how much I thought of her, perhaps something we both needed. It was a necklace with an engraving that read, “Be Brave” on it. She was in tears receiving it with feelings even a little misplaced, unsure of what to do with that kind of encouragement from a near perfect stranger. I’m sure it wasn’t common. I remained stoic, putting all my energy back into the hope that the little message in the necklace would somehow bring Fernanda back to us.

Those four weeks she was gone for me were long and brutal to be without her. It was a hellish Christmas working through my husband’s depression and anxiety which were in need of unhealthy attention and me not strong enough for all of it still. Fernanda, however, got through all her tests with flying colors at the Brazilian Embassy like doors suddenly opened. She even had enough time to go run into the ocean, their summertime, wearing white, the custom for the Brazilian New Year starting things off brand new. I received her back in Virginia with exhalation and praise for getting through all the tough parts. I suppose I silently praised myself, too. I was hopeful for the dawning of new days with my newborn son beginning to sleep through the nights. But the pressure of supporting everyone as the family’s lone caregiver had gotten too much for me. My forearms and hands were feeling like hot irons stuck in a fire. I was barely able to hold a glass of water to my lips, holding on to too much psychological debris like many Empaths. I had no one to pour it into.

“She was holding up the part of the sky I couldn’t, not coming into my space, as I called on the mountains, seas, skies, and all the galaxies combined to support me. It was all I had left getting me through, getting the worst from too many loved ones I had once considered home.”

I poured as much as I could silently into my art and writing but it could only support so much. I went in search of help again, this time through an energy healer and found a woman fifteen years my senior. She was a Yoga Therapist who was the most intuitively-gifted person I’ve ever met and had three children of her own. Through her conversation and massage therapy work to dislodge some of the emotional trauma, I began to see many of the cycles I had been missing. Having written about some of these illuminations in a previous post (see “Pulling The String”), I’ll progress [quickly] through what happened next once I made the choice to surrender and got sent full throttle like a rocket crashing into the sky inside - a three fold process.

With the internal pressure of everything I carried getting greater - caring for three very young children, supporting a depressed and anxious husband with childhood trauma, supporting my own severe childhood trauma, large psychological upheavals within the worlds of loved ones, and even larger unknowns still left for myself from an invisible world continuing to open up my heart and mind and wary not to repeat the same “almost-death” part - by May 2019, I was left with only two choices to release it. It was a pressure so great it had me crying for a full hour and half in the hands of the Yoga Therapist and I could’ve probably cried longer. I kept thinking, “How is she tolerating this?” It was that kind of cry only an unconditionally loving mother could love, moaning, gut-wrenching, curled-up-in-a-ball, body-practically-seizing kind of cry. I was unable to speak though encouraged. The only words I could get out by the end of the session were, “My husband is hurting me.” It was that kind of hurt that can’t be touched, far deeper than any physical wounding. It was wounding from abandonment in my greatest hour of need, a care I had long needed, for me to be loved and to be heard unconditionally, not with questions just expansive listening that only requires a nod to know the person is still engaged. I had loved myself fully and unconditionally already. It was what ferried me through my opening processes and completed my individuation during my spiritual awakenings. I needed more, though. I needed to be seen for how human I was, and am, without feeling I needed to use any superpower to make anyone love my human self, that part of me that has always been drawn to a person and their pain, even a stranger, and never running away. It is the human and the ether in those tears that they have manifested from I have always loved.

My spirit was cracking and I couldn’t put the pieces of a fragmented self and family back together even though I had been trying. Nothing I was doing was helping. Even asking for help from others went disregarded or downplayed, and I was reminded of the voice of my mother who told me as a young child after telling me the story of her assault and rape in a public mall parking lot as well as her own home in front of her two young sons, “It is better to yell ‘fire’ than to call out for help. People run away when you ask for help. They come running when you yell ‘fire.’” Undeniably, I was getting myself to a similar place where my pain had nowhere to go, nowhere to be heard, and I was scared for my safety. My two choices were to go nuclear or get some space. I chose space and called one of my best girlfriends who was happy to put me up for an extended visit over the Memorial Day weekend. I couldn’t have known, though, that even in choosing the more sustainable approach, the Universe only had one set of plans for me and wouldn’t let me go until I saw the entire picture way beyond myself. It needed me to be a witness to the fact that I wasn’t the only human suffering, in desperate need of a universal culture shift and it was calling me up on my best girlfriend’s phone.

I left my home in haste, though clear conscious, kissing my children’s heads and waving goodbye to everyone. A few hours later, I was received into my girlfriend’s home, who I’ll call Lauren, leaving a pool party she had been at with her husband and two friends, another couple, to come be with me. After a long vent-fest and both of us feeling clearer about each of our troubles, no sips even needed from the wine we broke out, Lauren and I headed from her home to go see our alma mater, get some ice cream, and were making plans to head to the beach the following day to play some volleyball with friends. I was in love, totally in the space I was needing. We got diverted almost instantly on our drive with a text from her friend, the other woman from the pool party Lauren had left to be with me, who I’ll call Crystal. Crystal asked Lauren to come back to the townhouse to come pick up her husband, who I’ll call Tom, in a vague text where Crystal wrote how her boyfriend had hit her and Tom was beside himself. When Lauren and I got there, Tom said, “Kayt! Sing me something! You used to be a singer!,” to help get his mind off things. With care, I obliged and began singing the first thing from the library of recent songs I had just been listening to. I pulled out Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust,” like an omen. Tom soon equalized and we all went inside the townhouse to collect the shoes Tom was missing - myself, Lauren, Tom, and Crystal - but something told me not to stray too far from the front door.

It was like a Hollywood film where all three white girls go inside the townhouse with the belligerent, drunk white guy without any reason, but the one thing different was than I had some. The unseen boyfriend off camera, who I’ll call Greg, was back on the scene within ten minutes. Greg walked back into his townhouse hitting me hard on my left shoulder with the front door I was standing in front of. The hit triggered something, remembering how I had just avoided a cataclysmic car collision on the drive down because of a surge of pain coming through my left shoulder that told me veer right, and right then a little sports car peeled out. I jolted as this unknown guy walked by with a strange feeling that said, “He’s got a gun.” I then saw him lunge for the door, his hand swiftly going for the lock. I reacted quickly by putting my left foot in between the door and the door jamb and had it slammed on looking the man square in the eyes. He left me to have it out again with Tom, a continuation from earlier, who was two sheets to the wind. Lauren, myself, and Crystal watched as two alpha males were facing off, ready to finish each other off this time in a drunken rage. I ran out of the townhouse and watched the rest of them stay inside. I was screaming for Lauren to get out of there but she wasn’t going to leave Tom behind. I looked down at my purse and had nothing to help me, no car keys, not even my phone. Do I just watch? I could already see what was going to happen next. I was going to hear and see more fighting, then a flash from gunfire, and a woman screaming. I couldn’t just stand there. I ran back inside the townhouse summoning up my big voice to tell Tom to back down. I was starting to get a response and he began to back away. The other guy, Greg, though, with shadows not keen on stopping, leaned in to raise the fight back up.

I turned to him, a black man with a white girlfriend who he had cruelly thrown down the stairs just hours earlier, was now aiming his sights at me. This was one of the unknowns not given in Crystal’s vague text while Lauren and I were off living carefree. Standing there, now, in the den of an unknown townhouse, I could feel how Greg wanted to believe I was there to help him. He was desperately hurting, fueled with anger as a mistreated black man and military veteran with mental illness whose mother, as well as his best friend, had just died a cruel death from cancer months before and he wasn’t coping. He had nowhere to go, just like me. Nowhere to be heard. He had made a choice that weekend, too, but he was going with nuclear. With racism, domestic violence, mental illness, gun violence, and a ceaseless cycle of blame and denial rampant, it was the inevitability I could no longer elude, darker than dark and beyond twisted. I found myself at the center of the Labyrinth, drawn to the Minotaur that looked more like a human to me with tears he hid.

I could feel how broken Greg was as I was yelling at him to back down. I was now standing inside his pain because he had let me in. He may have even loved me in that moment because someone was finally showing up to be with him in his great hour of need and he wanted to show his appreciation in the same way he had been shown love all these years. With me working to save Tom from annihilation, Greg decided he would now point the intended gun at my head and said “You’re a fucking racist!” and my life flashed. Bang. Episode 1. I felt my mind shift in that moment, in surprise I was able to walk away. It was a flashlight Greg was holding to scare me with his gun was too far away, although none of it I truly knew, it was all still just a feeling. Reality struck on my drive home with Tom while escorting him away from the scene he kept racing back into even after the police were called and Lauren stayed behind with Crystal to give testimony. Tom in anguish revealed to me Greg had pressed a gun against his head, repeating, “Oh my God!,” multiple times in his storytelling, after he had tried to stop Greg from brutally beating his girlfriend in front of him and almost died. Tom continued saying how the world was fucked and we might as well blow it all up. In the end, both men were eventually arrested. And in the alternative ending where my presence wasn’t there taking Lauren away from the pool party, I imagine things may have happened so quickly they might’ve even made it just in time for the 6 o’clock news.

After an explosive first part to the trilogy crashing me into the sky inside, Episode 2 began with the swirling mind of an Empath that got sent through the imaginal realm of time and space of personal traumas, ones I had experienced and further back that were not my own. None of the original pain I was carrying before I left my home that weekend got disposed off. They were all now amplified, carrying Lauren’s, Tom’s, Crystal’s, and Greg’s pain. Lauren, who I had hugged leaving her home the next day, both of us promising not to disconnect, was now avoiding me. I was struggling with the fact she was banging on her bubble, too, but in too much denial about her abuse from her husband’s alcoholism. I wanted to help her. I was also sad she wasn’t loving me the way I needed to be loved, too, even having gone through a shared traumatic experience. I was beginning to attract more negative energy at this point including my husband’s, direct from his childhood trauma. The psychological levies were broken and spilling. I called my husband’s father in a desperate plea for help again to talk his son out of his anger aimed at me. His father handed the phone over and I got told, once more, how I was the one spiraling out of control. I couldn’t deal with hearing it again. I threw the phone down. Not again.

Then out of nowhere we got a call from my father-in-law’s wife who was screaming over a voice message I could hear even through the standard audio of my husband’s phone. My father-in-law was dead, his wife finding him on the floor when she got home just a day and half later after the last words I spoke saying, “I need your help,” not even a week after having the Universal gun pointed at me. We were all in shock. It was an aneurysm with no symptom leading up that would’ve alerted us that took him. I lead my husband through each step of shock turned trauma and stepped up to lead the last rites of passage for my husband’s family through our completely unexpected loss. I had never done anything like that before. I felt called and my husband’s family believed I was the one to do it. Things were moving so fast there were only glimmers of Fernanda during this time. I imagine her watching a fallen woman, gray in skin color, pushing through severe episodes of apathy, still directing like she knew to do, unable to feel anything besides a rollercoaster of sensation, waking up in agony, and being thrown curve balls left and right. My reputation was now up for debate by my family and Lauren who had been talking behind the scenes during all of this. My family, with negative projections of my mother now placed on me, all thought I had gone crazy and were hell bent on fixing the situation. They believed I was out of control. In the midst of it all, Fernanda was there doing exactly what I needed her to be doing. She was holding up the part of the sky I couldn’t, not coming into my space, as I called on the mountains, seas, skies, and all the galaxies combined to support me. It was all I left to get me through, getting the worst from too many loved ones I had once considered home.

[Issue 3 coming May 14th!...]

SNEAK PEEK:

“One could believe that would be the end to the merciless saga, just like I did, but that was just the eye of the storm. Episode 3 still held a second wall to break through which opened up a month later while I lay on my front lawn and police showed up.”

#Spotify #writer #writing #Empath #unconditional #unconditional love #take flight #sisterhood #wildstrands

[ithisatanytime]

 Jewish people bought out disney decades ago, and they use the movies they produce to sabatoge gentiles so they can out compete us. sometimes that doesnt work as intended and its really funny.

  Disneys mulan is a story about a girl who cross dresses as a man, and fights in a war to spare her aging father from having to fight, i love that movie, and if you ask ten boys what their favorite disney princess movie is, 8 out of 10 will say mulan. girls are pretty take it or leave it about mulan, and thank christ for that. mulan is a terrible movie for young girls, there is a strong theme of honor throughout and girls dont give a shit about honor, nor violence, nor martial arts training montages, so they produced this film to sabatoge young women into pursuing interests that they will naturally suck at, and to confuse gender roles even further, but instead dudes just liked it.

  look i love that whole era of disney movies, but i always cringe when people talk abotu them like they were the good ole days. it was already getting bad, you were just a child so you didnt pick up on it.

Beauty and the beast; belle is a strong smart independent woman who dont need no man, and gaston is meant to be a parody of the prince charming type, unfortunately the execution was to subtle for people to pick up on, since we didnt get the message they redid it as  Frozen. there are also some undertones about interracial relationships.

The little mermaid. to be honest, i havent seen it in years, i dont remember it well, so i think of it as the least fucked up movie from that era, but that might be wrong. she definatley disobeyed her father to go run off with some dude though. and a big implication in this movie is that fathers who were trying their damnedest to protect their kids from this new fucked up direction society is heading down are in the wrong, king trident represents this archetype.

 Alladin, again disobey your father. note that so far all three princesses dont fit the classic image of what we imagine a princess to be like, many of those preconceptions themselves were disney creations before the company was taken over by a hostile minority. the subversion is already evident form this alone, and jasmine is no exception, shes bull headed and capable, the problem is a princess is an easy plot device, a princess who needs rescuing is immediately understandable to viewers, no explanation for motive needed for the hero. so despite being spunky and capable jasmine eventually gets kidnapped and chained up, but she does spit a bit of chewed up apple at jafar. girl power! princess jasmine is in many ways the prototype for that Megara, more on that cringe factory later.

the lion king, again, early in the film nala pins simba, girls can be stronger than boys when they are children, but still, and she does it again later. and again shes not really a princess in the classical sense, but like i said before, damsels in distress are a very handy story telling device, so our hero does end up rescuing her in the end, it should have been her kicking scars ass in that big dumb lion fight during the climax.

Pocahantas, here we go again, this is where they started going to far, you see pocahanttas was a strong capable independent woman who didnt need no man (seeing a pattern yet?) in fact she saves john smith not the other way around, again she disobeys her father, but she knows better. i love how simba suffered immediate consequences for disobeying his father in the lion king, but none of the disney princesses do. the funniest thing about pocahantas is i fucking bet you most children cried at the end of the movie, not in a good catharsis way, in a “fuck this” kind of way, you can subvert fairy tale tropes a little bit here and there, but eventually you change to much and fuck the whole thing up. in the end of pocahantas she watches her love interest, the romance that was the main focus of the story, sail the fuck away back to america. no matter how you tried to explain to your six year old daughter that pocahantas was a strong independent woman who didnt need no man, they just kept crying. this was the second to last princess movie of the second generation of disney films and the beginning of them changing so much, its no longer a serviceable fairy tale for children

mulan, i already spoke about but lets see here, strong independent woman who doesnt need no man? check. forcing typically male things onto little girls? check! fucking up gender roles as much as you can? check. saving all of china? check

  hercules wasnt really a princess movie, but Megara is fucking hilarious to me, fuck me, if you can, go watch some clips from hercules featuring megara, its embarrassing how hard they were trying. shes a dude in a dress, straight up.

  I love all of these movies, the music is great, and even though they were clearly already using them to subvert white western values, because we are now 30 years in the future, and our jewish establishment has been subverting that whole time, now it seems entirely wholesome to watch those movies today. while i know many of these stories are folk tales and true stories, and elements that i pointed out may have been in the original stories, thats beside the point. remember they pick what stories they make into movies, what elements ethey highlight and what they leave out all together, they knew exactly what they were doing. im not saying the writers knew or the voice actors, they obviously didnt, its the producers who greenlight what gets made. they are the ones who actually hate white people, and use their influential positions to sabatoge them however they can.

[aion-rsa]

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

https://ift.tt/37XgiEH

In the last half decade, D.J. McHale has noticed a significant uptick in interest in Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Nickelodeon anthology series he co-created nearly 30 years ago. Though he spent much of his career as a television writer, director, and producer, he’s had a successful second act as an author of sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural novels. When fans of his novels put it together that he also produced all 91 episodes of the original run of the Nickelodeon classic, he started receiving an outpour of appreciation. 

“Suddenly this wave of social media came to me about Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” McHale told Den of Geek. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t speak to someone in some way, shape or form about [the show].”

Are You Afraid of the Dark? premiered on Nickelodeon on Oct. 25, 1991. Each episode started with a member of “The Midnight Society,” a group of teenagers who gathered at a secret location in the woods, offering up a scary story around a campfire. The anthology tapped into a range of stories that touched on the supernatural, classic monsters like werewolves and vampires, and a nightmare inducing clown named Zeebo. The series kicked off a golden age (an upcoming documentary dubbed this successful time period the “Orange Years”) of live-action and animated shows for the network. Yet during the series’ original run from 1991 to 1996, McHale says there was “no mechanism to get feedback” like there is now for TV showrunners who are bombarded with instant social media gratification or scorn from viewers. 

“I wasn’t that kind of person who every week I’d try to get the ratings,” he says. “I was too busy making the show. Everyone seemed to like it. But I didn’t get any real feedback from viewers. I didn’t feel in the moment that this ground swell of this revolutionary thing was happening. It wasn’t until maybe the late ‘90s. It wasn’t until Nickelodeon stopped being that way, that I realized what we had back then.” 

These days, interactions with fans or media attention often comes with questions about what the scariest episode is. Initially Nickelodeon rejected McHale and co-creator Ned Kandel’s pitch out of fear that scaring kids would result in backlash from parents. It took another pitch meeting and three script proposals to convince the network that the tone of the series was not overly scary for a young audience. 

“Our goal wasn’t necessarily just to be scary,” McHale says. “Are You Afraid of the Dark? sprang more from the kind of short story spooky tradition, of which I’d put Twilight Zone in that category. I tried to come up with [different] types of stories, whether some be more dramatic, some maybe romantic, some flat out scary, some with vampires. Each season was crafted to have a whole range of stories. And that’s straight out of the Twilight Zone. They always made you think a little bit, and there’s always a little bit of a twist to it, and it was more unsettling and weird than it was flat out scary.” 

McHale notes that there was no traditional boogeyman in The Twilight Zone, though Willam Shatner might disagree. He suggests Are You Afraid of the Dark? was likely the scarier of the two shows. 

“I would argue that we were scarier than Twilight Zone, because we did have those episodes where there were monsters coming at you. But that was more the guidepost for me, to be able to tell a wide range of different types of interesting stories, and that was the big Twilight Zone influence.” 

Read more

TV

Inside the Return of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

By Rosie Knight

McHale’s direct homage to Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone is unmistakable. The storyteller in Are You Afraid of the Dark? begins each tale with “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society,” before midnight dust is tossed onto the campfire. The phrase “submitted for your approval” is closely associated with Serling and The Twilight Zone, though it was only used in the opening monologues of three episodes: “Cavender Is Coming,” “In Praise of Pip,” and “A Kind of a Stopwatch.” A 1995 American Masters documentary film on the television giant was titled Rod Serling: Submitted For Your Approval.  

The Twilight Zone and Are You Afraid of the Dark? are intertwined through more than direct homage and the anthology structure. The Midnight Society itself functions as a narrative device in the vein of Rod Serling as the narrator of The Twilight Zone. 

“I smartly created the Midnight Society that becomes a through line through the whole thing,” McHale says. “It’s amazing to me that The Midnight Society is as important to people as it is, because to me the Midnight Society was like Rod Serling.”

It’s been 61 years since Rod Serling first introduced viewers to The Twilight Zone. Its legacy is immeasurable. But even by the most basic metric, proof of its enduring longevity is in its revivals. After years of tussling with network executives over censorship, budgets, and advertising, Serling decided not to fight the cancellation of The Twilight Zone in 1964. Since then, the series returned as a feature film in 1983, and been revived three times, in 1985, 2002, and most recently by Jordan Peele in 2019. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Are You Afraid of the Dark? is following in the footsteps of its forebearer. The original run ended in 1996 after five seasons, but was revived with a new Midnight Society in 1999 and ran for an additional two seasons. In recent years, Nickelodeon saw an opportunity to bring back its classics for a new generation of kids whose parents likely grew up with grand dreams of being slimed. It led to revivals for ‘90s hits All That, Rocko’s Modern Life, Double Dare, and an Are You Afraid of the Dark? mini-series. 

The 2019 return for the horror anthology was a hit and the network decided to greenlight a second season. McHale himself is not involved with the revival and says was not asked to be part of it, which left some bittersweet feelings and bad blood with the network. But he did offer advice for the revival’s producers. 

“One of the things I said to the producer was, ‘Be careful because you’re making a show that people who are in their 30s have great memories of, and chances are you’re not going to live up to those memories.’ And those memories are probably better than the show was, frankly. You’re not really making a show for them because they’ve moved on. You’re really making a show for the same age group that we made it for. And they did. I think they’ve just hit the right tone. I think they’ve done the show a good service. I’d be really upset if they somehow ruined it, but they didn’t, so that’s good.” 

The new Are You Afraid of the Dark? is more of an anthology in the mold of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, a departure from McHale’s original vision. Yet The Midnight Society has become something bigger than McHale could have ever imagined during the early days of making the show, and clearly his creation still resonates with scores of fans around the world. And much like The Twilight Zone, the mark of a show that stands the test of time is that new storytellers continue to want to put their own spin on it. 

“I did see a Twilight Zone episode the other day, and it ticked me off,” McHale says with a laugh.  “Only because it went to a place that I wanted to go with Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and I couldn’t come up with a good story to do this. And it turns out they did it on The Twilight Zone.” 

The post How The Twilight Zone Influenced Are You Afraid of the Dark? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/35GDkN0

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[thorne93]

Lost and Found (Part 7)

Prompt: Imagine finding a lost dog, but it’s not just anyone’s lost dog. Who will show up at your door to claim the pup?

Warnings: maybe language, lost dog…

Word Count: 1519

Note: My precious doggie went missing on 6/10 and no one has spotted her or turned her in to the local shelters or anything. I miss her so much, but it inspired this fic. Texts are in italics. Thanks to my darling beta @like-a-bag-of-potatoes​

Tags: @amarvelouswritings​ @blackwidow-romanoff​ @cocosierra94​ @firstgal34​ @harleyquinnandscarletwitch @sebstan01 @camigt1999 @elleatrixlestrange​ @bittersweetunicorm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 5:30, there was a knock on your door.

 “Who in the fuck is bothering me on a Saturday?” you groaned out loud. As you were waking up, you realized it was Seb waiting for you. “Shit!” you exclaimed as you jumped out of bed. You didn’t want to leave him standing in the hallway so you ran and let him in.

“I look like complete shit, I’m so sorry,” you apologized as you tried to make sure your morning breath and knotted hair didn’t totally appall him. He stepped in with two coffees in hand before making his way to your sitting area.

 “Nonsense,” he responded with a laugh. “You look stunning. But we do need to hit the road. Think you can clean up in fifteen minutes or less?”

 “I’ll be as fast as Quicksilver,” you said before realizing how nerdy that sounded. “Uh, I’ll be out in a jiffy.”

 “Haha, okay,” he responded.

 You raced around, found your generic Marvel shirt, threw on jeans, ran a brush through your hair and threw it in a clip and zipped up your boots and met Seb back in your living room.

 “How did I do?!” you wondered as you slid into the room.

 “You’d give Pietro a run for his money, pun fully intended,” he said with a grin.

 “Excellent!”

 “Here’s your coffee, let's get going!” he cheered.

 -------

After a 30 minute luxury ride through NYC, you arrived on set.

“Jesus, what do I do or not do? I don’t want to get in anyone’s way! I’m not about to fuck up Infinity War,” you said in a whisper as you walked up, people working on lights, sound, monitors, cameras, wires being laid.

 “Just stand here, I’ll introduce you to everyone,” he said before running off. This was the most nervous you’d ever been in your entire life. You were sweating bullets and shaking. Your anxiety was flaring out as Seb came back with a whole tribe of actors.

 “Y/N, meet Chris Evans, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Anthony Mackie, Jeremy Renner, and Paul Rudd.”

 As he named everyone off, you shook their hands. Except for Elizabeth, you just had to hug her. She was like your idol. This was like a dream come true beyond your wildest imagination.

 “Cool shirt,” Jeremy noted at your shirt.

 “Oh, wow, thanks. This is...amazing. I can’t believe I’m here. This is...Just...wow.”

 Everyone laughed a little at you and he introduced you.

 “Everyone, this is Y/F/N, CEO and founder of Intercorp Tech.”

 “Oh, wow. That giant computer corporation?” Chris questioned.

 “Yeah, that’s the one,” you said, trying to remember how to breathe. You’d seen these people a hundred times on screen, in theater, in interviews. You felt as if you knew them but they had no idea who you were.

 “So you’re like a real life me,” Robert noted, smirking.

 “Don’t flatter yourself,” Anthony said with an eyeroll.

 “Are you going to be hanging around onset today?” Scarlett asked.

 “Yeah, I hope so, if I don’t destroy anything,” you noted, looking around at all the expensive equipment.

 “You can’t do any more damage than Robert,” Paul noted with a sneer.

 “Hey, I’m just making sure we always get the latest and greatest. If I have to smash a few cameras to do that, I’m willing to take one for the team.”

 Everyone laughed a little before being called back to make up or had to leave to read their lines. They each bid you a kind farewell to go do their jobs.

 “Oh my God, Seb, this is so perfect. I’ve loved Marvel since I was little. Getting to watch this come to life is...it’s...it’s a dream come true. Thank you so much.”

 “Anything for you. I gotta get in makeup. Just sit here. The director is over there and he’ll tell you to move if you need to, okay?”

 You nodded as he left, grinning at you.

 Watching them work was so amazing that at several points a tear was brought to your eye. They were all so talented, funny, and sweet. Seeing this come to life was making you nearly burst with joy. Whenever one of them was done with their scene or part, they would make their way over to you and joke and talk to you. Meanwhile, you were fangirling the fuck out. Each one was special and you couldn’t help but just stare at them while they talked to you. Anthony was a sweetheart who was easy going. Benedict was a smart ass. Robert was...well, Robert. You wanted to adopt Tom, he was so adorable it made you sick. You also got to completely geek out over him as Spiderman and you two swapped favorite scenes and lines from your favorite Spiderman movies. Paul was an absolute delight and yet again, you fan girled over him as Vision and poured on the compliments of him in other roles and he was a patient gentleman with you.

 The girls were hilarious and amazing. It seemed like you really clicked with each one in some way or another, all of them asking about your company and congratulating you on your success at such a young age.

 When lunch came, you offered to spring for it. Everyone kept telling you they had people for that but you were happy to do it. After taking several orders, most of them picky, you went to a restaurant just two blocks over and picked up the food, verifying that everything was there before bringing it back. The team seemed impressed.

 At the end of a long day of shooting, you told everyone goodbye (even though it killed you to leave their side). Sebastian took you home.

 “Do you wanna stay a little bit? I can order take out and we could hang out or…?” you offered, praying he said yes.

 “Sorry, not tonight. I’m beat. I should go home.”

 “Alright. That’s cool. You did great today,” you informed.

 “Yeah?” he asked. “Thanks, I’m glad you thought so.”

 “And your suit really helped where your acting failed,” you teased as you elbowed him lightly. He balked a fake offense and grinned at you.

“Is that so?”

 “Hey, I call ‘em as I see ‘em,” you stated.

 “Goodnight, Y/N,” he noted politely.

 “Night, Seb…”

 It was only 10, so you assumed Ida would be up. You gave her a ring.

 “Guess what I did all day?!” you said as you flopped on your Spiderman comforter.

 “Nothing?”

 “Even better! I went on the set of Infinity War!”

 “Holy shit, you did not!” she said, excited. “That’s amazing!”

 “Yeah,” you mused. “Ida, it was so dreamy and perfect and fun!”

 You proceeded to tell her all about the actors, watching them, interacting with them, seeing the most awaited film for you come to life.

 “I’m so happy for you.”

 “So what about you, what’d you do?”

 “Well...I spent the day with Chris.”

 “What?!” you exclaimed. “What the hell, Ida!”

 She chuckled on the other end of the phone. “What?”

 “Well, did you guys do it or what?”

 “No, nothing like that. Chris went home last night and showed up this morning saying they didn’t need him for the shots today and asked if I wanted to hang out. We grabbed breakfast, walked in the park, went shopping. It was amazing, Y/N.”

 You turned your mouth to the side. “I still think I had the better time,” you said.

 She laughed. “I bet you think you did. So how is Mr. Stan? Have you two sealed the deal or anything yet?”

 “No, not yet. But...last night, he did this weird thing. We were in the moment, about to kiss, and he just...dodged it.”

 “He dodged it?”

 “Yeah. He initiated everything and right as I thought he was about to commit to it, he just went to the side and hugged me.”

 “Wonder what that's about.”

 “I don’t know, but honestly, I’m not sure if I can keep this up.”

 “So just tell him.”

 You sighed as you laid on your bed. “I can’t. I don’t want to ruin this.”

 “So wait.”

 “I don’t want to wait.”

 “So end the friendship.”

 “I don’t want that either. You’re not very helpful!” you chastised angrily.

 “Chick, you’ve got to do something. It’s clear he’s not going to make the first move. Maybe he doesn’t think you’re into him and he’s waiting on you to give the greenlight.”

 “Maybe,” you agreed, but not fully accepting that.

 “Look, you’ve got three options. Tell him how you feel, wait for him, or end the friendship.”

 “That much is clear, captain obvious.”

 “I’m saying you need to act on one.”

 You groaned. “Why is life so hard? I’m in IT because I don’t like being around people…”

 Laughing, she said, “Well, you have to put on your big girl pants and deal with this one.”

 You didn’t respond for a while. Trying to figure this out. “I’ll think of something.”

#lost and found #sebastian stan #sebastian stan fic #sebastian stan x reader

[allaroundmelbourne]

A thorough analysis of the makeovers in Avengers: Endgame

Casual Thanos Viewers might be jolted by how quickly the Avengers dispatch their mortal enemy Thanos in the first act, but I found myself far more shook by Thanos rocking a casual T. Not armor, not spandex, not even a nice space henley: Thanos is straight up wearing a T-shirt, one that you or I could buy if stores made them in Size XXXXXXXXXXL. Is this a look better suited for the cover of Men's Health than for striking fear into the hearts of the Avengers? To me, Thanos becomes a touch less intimidating when you realize he shops for clothes at Old Navy, but perhaps there's just no stopping the Mad Titan when he sees the sign "50% off. Two-Tone Black Widow

Black Widow sports a mean two-tone highlight job in Endgame. Some question if its a tribute to the late feminist film-maker, Agnes Varda.Credit:Marvel Studios Marvel will soon shoot a prequel plumbing the back story of Scarlett Johansson's superspy, but what I'd really prefer to see is a stand-alone film explaining the thought process behind her two-tone look in Avengers: Endgame, where Black Widow's red roots and yellow tips collide with all the panache of a boardwalk Popsicle. What exactly is this look meant to convey? Is it a clumsy tribute to Agns Varda? Has Widow become so absorbed in her work that she hasn't bothered to do away with the bit of blond left over from her Avengers: Infinity War hairstyle? And are we really meant to think that the radioactive red growing out of Johansson's scalp is a natural color? Even the Marvel movies' convoluted approach to time travel somehow makes more sense to me than Black Widow's many hairstyles. Sensitive Hulk After several films where the adorably shambling Mark Ruffalo would transform into an inarticulate muscle monster, Avengers: Endgame springs one last surprise: Now that the Hulk and Banner have become better integrated, the big green guy can converse so naturally that you'll go, "Whoa whoa whoa, is that Noah Centineo?" When we catch up with the Hulk after a five-year time skip, he's also ditched his frayed purple-shorts look for a more sophisticated glow-up of Warby Parkers and knit cardigans, but it's his new personality that really completes the makeover. Hulk is no longer just a meathead hunk; now, he's a meathead hunk with a surprisingly nimble comic touch. In other words, they turned Hulk into a Hemsworth. Thicc Thor

Thor has "let himself go". Perhaps that's a fitting trade, as Chris Hemsworth's own Avenger has seen better days when it comes to his fitness. When Thor is reintroduced after the big time skip, the whole notion of the gratuitous Marvel shirtless scene is turned on its head: Hemsworth's unkempt god has let himself go, trading his superhero physique for a transformational beer gut. (You can almost picture Christian Bale leaning over to his movie date and whispering, "Only amateurs use special effects.") But this is a new Thor, one who won't let the occasional crack from Tony Stark get him down: The only tweak Thor sees fit to make to his new appearance is a nifty beard braid before the final battle. Thicc Thor is all about body positivity, drinking beer and reminding everyone that he once dated Natalie Portman, and who can blame the big guy? Mohawkeye It's tragic when Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) loses his family in the first few minutes of Avengers: Endgame, because they were clearly the only people holding him back from a full-on midlife-crisis makeover. Once Black Widow goes to find Barton in Japan after the time skip, he's traded his arrows for a sword, inked his entire left arm like he's about to hand you a flyer for his Dashboard Confessional cover band, and shaped his hair into an unholy faux-hawk. I'm told that in the comics, when Clint wore this haircut, he went by the code name Ronin. To me, it seems like a missed opportunity to call him Mohawkeye.

Brie Larson as low-maintenance Captain Marvel in the standalone movie. She ups her lipstick game in Endgame.Credit:Marvel Dual Looks for Captain Marvel After watching Brie Larson sport a bare-face image in her stand-alone Captain Marvel feature this year, it may be somewhat startling when she applies a dark lip and some blush for her second scene in Avengers: Endgame. It's like when a castaway goes au naturel for an entire season of Survivor, then shows up to the live finale with a smoky eye and lip gloss. She's well within her rights, but it just takes a little getting used to. Far more successful, to my mind, is Captain Marvel's five-years-later look: After the time skip, she rocks a bold, short pompadour that is the hairstyle equivalent of suddenly getting a DM from Kristen Stewart. As far as I'm concerned, it is the makeover of the film, and I would follow that hair into battle any day. Even Thanos can't resist, head-butting Captain Marvel during the final fight in a fruitless but perfectly understandable attempt to get closer to the movie's best new haircut. With Iron Man and Black Widow both dead and Captain America newly age-accelerated, will Captain Marvel's hair become the new leader of the Avengers? Endgame might provide rare closure for this interconnected saga, but for Brie Larson's quiff alone, I'm ready to greenlight a sequel. The New York Times Most Viewed in Lifestyle Loading https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/a-thorough-analysis-of-the-makeovers-in-avengers-endgame-20190428-p51i0l.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_lifestyle