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aion-rsa · 3 years

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F9 Post-Credits Scene Explained

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This article contains F9 spoilers.

So quick question: How many folks in your theater stayed for the end credits of F9, the 10th film in the Fast and Furious saga? I know I can say everyone did in mine. That’s because with summer blockbusters back, we’ve all remembered our training to be good little Pavlovian dogs and stay for a treat after the film fades to black. And F9 just gave a juicy one too.

In a nondescript gym/vaguely insidious lair, Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw beats a full-sized punching bag until his knuckles probably bleed. Only then do we realize he’s keeping some poor bastard wrapped up inside of the target. Full disclosure: I wasn’t sure if that was Otto—the sniveling silver spooned traitor who was working with John Cena’s Jakob in F9. He was honestly too smeared in blood to know for sure, but whoever it is, he’s having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Be that as it may, that’s not the point of this scene. It’s just to let you know Deckard Shaw is still up to Deckard Shaw shit. Even after saving the world with Luke Hobbs in the spinoff movie, it turns out Shaw’s still not a nice guy. But perhaps it’s good to be reminded of such things because a moment later, the one-time arch-villain hears a knock at the door. Who could that be?

None other than Sung Kang’s Han Seoul-Oh! The man he left for dead in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious 6.

If you don’t remember the ins and outs of their backstories, let’s just say they have significant beef. Back when the third Fast and the Furious movie was not set in the distant future, Kang’s Han died in a fiery freak accident during a Tokyo drifting race. Only later do we learn that his vehicle was sabotaged by Deckard Shaw as an act of vengeance for Han and the Family™ putting Deck’s little brother, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), in the hospital. So he runs Han off the road and calls up Dom Toretto so he can hear the sound of the explosion that is about to engulf poor Han.

BUT we now know thanks to F9 that was a double fakeout-blind of an accident. Deckard engineered it to kill Han in what would look like an accident to the other racers, but Han knew it was coming and in turn planned to use it to fake his own death while working for Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), who was helping Han protect a young orphan named Elle (Anna Sawai), whose blood contained the key codes to a satellite program which could take over the world.

Got all that?

So Han “died” and Deckard Shaw went on to get his face busted in when he engaged in a duel with Dominic Toretto wherein both men wielded wrenches like they were broadswords. Poor Shaw never realized that “in a street fight, the street always wins.”

And yet… even though the family sent Shaw to prison as their own act of revenge on Han’s behalf, in the next movie they would help Shaw escape because of contrived plot mechanics I will not recite here… and then they invite him to the cookout at the end. Granted, Shaw saved Dom’s infant son to garner that invitation, but he still murdered a member of the family. For at least two films though, Fast and the Furious wanted you to forget that.

It outraged a fair number of fans, and it frustrated Justin Lin too, who created Han with Kang way back before he even knew he’d make a Fast and Furious movie. Yep, Han first appears in Lin’s second feature, Better Luck Tomorrow (2002). To see the character just blatantly ignored by The Fate of the Furious is what brought Lin out of Fast and Furious retirement.

“That was a fucked up move on [F8],” Lin told Esquire last year. “Han is special. It really made no sense and, as an Asian-American, it kind of did shake me to the core. You’re like: ‘Wait, did we just get reduced to a fucking character that you don’t even address? That nobody fucking cares about anymore? Are we fucking back to Long Duk Dong shit again?”

So Lin returned to the series he made a phenomenon with the express purpose of bringing justice to Han. Strangely, however, it was not revealed that Dom and company knew Han was alive this whole time, which still makes their chummy relationship with Shaw in the last movie bizarre. Even so, the end credits scene promises bringing Han back from the dead is just the beginning of the franchise’s penance.

What does the post-credits scene set up? A heart-to-heart, and maybe a fist-to-fist, between Han and the man who tried to send him to the morgue. If Shaw wants to truly be family, it’s time for him to earn it. That look on his face suggests it’ll be a lot of work.

Maybe in Fast and Furious 10…

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zombeesknees · 5 years

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o benevolent angie bee, may i request your assistance in convincing a friend to give the fast and the furious a shot? my major selling points are a) gal gadot and assorted other gorgeous kickass ladies and b) FOUND FAMILY NARRATIVES, but so far she's not buying it. so: on a scale of one to leverage, where do you rank the trope-y, ridiculous, incredibly wonderful found family experience that is this franchise?

OOOOOOOOH BOY. Okay, so, this is absolutely gonna be a B-List column in the near future, but here’re the high points I use to sell this series on folks:

You like Found Families? This is the BIGGEST FOUND FAMILY EVER. You either die a villain or live long enough to join the Toretto/O’Connor clan, man. This family is so strong that it sucks people into it, redeems them, and then sits them down for Sunday BBQs and blood oaths.

Seriously. The Found Family trope was made for this series. These characters are so ride-or-die for each other it’s amazing.

Speaking of tropes, this series is full of ‘em. There’s the amnesia trope. There’s Robin Hood-ing left and right. There’s a cop who falls for a criminal (albeit in a brotherly fashion rather than a romantic one) and abandons his old life to join them. There’s secret babies. People return from the (assumed) dead. There’s epic romantic sacrifices. It’s wild.

The representation is OFF THE CHAIN. This is a series that has token white guys in it, where 95% of the cast are POC. The women are BADASS, and allowed to be pretty and feminine even as they drive cars through police blockades. Suki has a bubblegum pink car and drives in stilettos and KICKS WHOLESALE ASS. The aforementioned Gal (enough said). Mia is a mama bear who would kill a man to protect her family. Letty is self-destructive as fuck and the perfect partner for Dom. The characters are allowed to be messy and fucked up and can still redeem themselves later (see: Vince).

F&F constantly calls out the difference between legal and right. Cops are often the bad guys, because the system is often broken, bad people have all the power/money/etc., and sometimes POC have to do stuff society deems “illegal” in order to feed their families or protect their brothers.

You’re not a huge fan of constant car chases or explosions? Okay, that’s fair. But the great thing about the F&F series is that it encompasses almost every action sub-genre. Movie #1 is an undercover cop story. Movie #2 is a buddy cop story. Movie #3 is a teen drama (with YAKUZA!). Movie #4 is a revenge flick. Movie #5 (and my personal favorite thus far) is a heist movie. Movie #6 pits our heroes against an international terrorist. Movie #7 is a revenge flick from the opposite direction. Movie #8 has CHARLIZE THERON AS A CYBERTERRORIST and the Fast Fam become secret government agents to take her down. I MEAN.

They just keep. Getting. Better. I know that sounds crazy, because most series prove the rule of diminishing returns. But the Fast franchise is that rare beast that keeps satisfying every time. Each installment has made more at the box office than the last one, as they travel the world and cast more and more people from other countries, and the car stunts and action choreography just gets more polished and exciting with each new movie. And, sure, they get more ridiculous, too — we’ve gone from the Big Action Moment being out-racing a train in #1 to DRIVING A CAR THROUGH TWO HUGE SKYSCRAPERS in #7 and FIGHTING A SUBMARINE THROUGH ICE in #8, but that’s just the nature of action films. And it’s FUN, DAMMIT.

Re: the cast continuing to expand great: this franchise has Vin Diesel, The Rock, Jordana Brewster, Luke Evans, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel (aka Missandei of Game of Thrones), Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Elsa Pataky (aka Mrs. Chris Hemsworth), Gal Gadot, Don Omar, Kristofer Hivju (aka Tormund of Game of Thrones), Gina Carano... It’s really wild how many awesome people are in this.

The male characters are allowed to be emotional. You see the guys CRY, which is so goddamned rare in action films. There’s so much LOVE between the characters (and the cast, too; if you REALLY want to sob, look into everyone’s reactions to Paul Walker’s death and how Vin basically lost his mind in the aftermath and NAMED HIS DAUGHTER AFTER HIM). You can really feel the camaraderie in these.

When I’m trying to get people into the franchise, I actually skip the first three films — the tone changes so significantly after the first two and #3 is pretty much only good for Han reasons. #4 is dark, yeah, but it also sets the stage for the rest of the series and introduces the characters pretty well for first-timers.

And once that’s been seen, #5 is just SO DAMN GOOD!!! You get the whole crew together. It’s the one that really solidifies the Found Family aspect of the series. The Rock shows up. It’s laugh-out-loud hysterical at times. The action sequences are WILD. And it’s the Fast Fam vs. an awful dictator, pulling a huge heist via cars, so what’s not to love about that???

I hope this helps, and that your friend agrees to sit down and give them a chance, because I was reluctant, too, once, and now I’m so glad I let my eyes be opened to the Greatness that is the Fast Films (family motto: “There’s no problem that can’t be fixed with the judicious application of cars.”).

Also there’s a spin-off — HOBBS & SHAW — hitting theaters in August with The Rock and Jason Statham taking on IDRIS ELBA. And... If that ain’t magical, I don’t know what is.

#fast and the furious #asks #redbelles

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tisfan · 5 years

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Prompt: "Sorry, I don't speak skank." Anybody, but Tony walking in and saying "I do!" (Like he's offering to translate. ;-) )

You had me at Hello

“I just don’t get it,” Buckysaid, disgusted. He took a handful of popcorn and clearly considered throwingit at the screen, but Steve quelled that with a look. Just because Tony hadmade custom ‘bots that vacuumed the carpet was no reason for Buck to waste foodlike that.

“Don’t get what?” Natdidn’t even look up from her book, paying no attention at all to the movie.“It’s an action movie. It makes almost no sense, follows no laws of physics,and mostly exists to show off good looking people in improbable situations.”

“I… don’t get how thatguy-- that one, right there, like, he’s not even hot at all -- isgetting laid every time we switch scenes. I mean, I was smooth, back in theday. Wasn’t I smooth, Steve?”

Steve rolled his eyes.“If you could call it that.” Buck had been very popular with his dates, back inthe forties, even when Steve considered that he was constantly being dragged ondouble-dates. The ladies knew Steve was tagging along, and they still agreedanyway, so Bucky must have been some sort of smooth.

“And I was not shakingout the sheets like that,” Bucky gesticulated wildly. “What is he saying to getthat much quality ass?”

“I don’t know, Buck,”Steve admitted. “Sorry, I don’t speak skank.”

“I do!” said Tony as hecame in the room, his own bowl of popcorn balanced precariously on theomnipresent coffee mug. “What skank are we speaking to?”

“James wishes to knowhow he can have the sex appeal of Jason Statham,” Nat said. “I think it’s ahopeless case and he should just give up.”

Tony turned toward themovie and watched for a moment as Statham scored yet another pretty girl. Stevehad to admit, Bucky might have a point. Maybe he had a mutant power that wouldbe revealed later? No, too subtle for this sort of movie.

“Oh, well, that’s prettyeasy, really,” Tony said. “It’s only about fifteen percent actual sex appeal.The secret is in saying the right things, in the right way.”

“I have actualsex appeal,” Bucky protested, flexing just a little harder than usual. The wayhe always did when Tony was in the room. “He doesn’t. So what the hellis he saying that’s getting him into everyone’s pants?”

Tony set his bowl andmug on the table. “I imagine it’s something like...” He leaned over the couchuntil his lips were brushing right against Bucky’s ear -- which was totallyunnecessary; Bucky’s hearing was as enhanced as the rest of him -- andwhispered something, low enough that even Steve couldn’t hear it.

Bucky’s neck turned red,and then his ears, and then his whole face. He looked like a tomato that wasabout to combust. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Tony straightened, justa hint of a sly smirk on his lips, and winked at Bucky. “A little bit likethat,” he said, his tone easy and unaffected. He plopped down onto the couchbetween Bucky and Nat, and grabbed his popcorn.

Bucky swallowed hardenough that Steve could hear it from across the room. He couldn’t decide ifBucky had been turned to stone, or if his pants were going to spontaneously goup in flames.

“Really, Tony?” Natasked, nudging him with her elbow. “You’re being unkind to James. I mean,usually you just need to say hi.”

Bucky shook his head,trying to dispel the effects of Tony’s apparently overwhelming sexappeal (Steve had a hard time not mentally chuckling at that. Tony was so notSteve’s type.) “Uh… yeah, okay,” he said, finally. “That’d work.”

#prompts #winteriron #pre-slash #flirting #sex appeal #outsider POV #gilajames

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vanessakirbyfans · 5 years

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Vanessa Kirby is no Princess Margaret any more. After all, as The Crown star takes on her latest high-kicking role as an Mi5 agent in Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, the only crown jewels are the ones she’s kneeing between the legs. The Queen and Lord Snowdon are gone without a trace and in their place is none other than Jason Statham, her new on-screen sibling, and The Rock, her new love interest. Talk about a holy trinity.

In the talented hands of Vanessa, this is no damsel in a dress, or, in, fact distress. In between dangling out of a moving car shooting a gun and having The Rock caught in a headlock between her thighs, there is real depth to Kirby’s Fast and Furious wing woman. Finally, we have an action heroine we can actually believe in and root for.

Here, in another edition of GLAMOUR Unfiltered - the celebrity interview franchise where guest powerfully open up about the obstacles they have had to overcome– Vanessa discusses overcoming school bullies, body hang ups and how she altered her mindset to seek validation from within… GO VANESSA!

How did you get this high-kicking, badass on for Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw?

I channeled the inner Marge (Princess Margaret). It’s everything she wanted to do to her sister and anyone. It was the inner rage. It was very therapeutic!

When you were filming this, were you ever like, ‘oh my Christ, my life is in jeopardy!’?

Every day. I was constantly in pain, but my sister was in the production team and I had some of my favourite people from The Crown in the costume and makeup department too. So, we had a little crew and we just laughed the whole time at the absurdity of things we had to do.

What’s the key high kicking move you’ve learnt?

It’s the elbow move! The stunt team realised quite early on that my punches would knock nobody out and so they were like, ‘how are we going to make this remotely believable?’ Instead of doing a straight punch, which I tried to do badly, you rotate from the hips and use your whole body. You can’t do a follow through; you’ve got to reverb! It’s also a great dance move!

One of the best lines in the film is, ‘I am done with your alpha male bullsh*t.’ When you came to do a film like this, did you have any reservations about coming into a very male dominated space?

This is part of the reason why I chose to do it and I was really clear about what kind of female she should be. I felt like it was so important as the lead female that she wasn’t falling into any tropes like she’s never got saved by the guys, she was a capable fighter and she never got rescued. I wanted to make her a bit scrappy, weird and not some traditional version of female action we’ve seen before.

Do you have to deal with everyday sexism?

Less so now but for years, yeah! Before the last couple of years, it was on such a subliminal level and it was something that was so accepted. It definitely has changed. Everyday (on this film) I was like, ‘nope let’s not wear this costume, let’s do this!’ There were lots of ways in which we tried to take care of that presence in a movie that’s really about men.

What would happen and what would people say when they were being sexist to you?

Day-to-day stuff that every woman has experienced but also work-wise in terms of the scripts you read. Always without realising she would be the girlfriend. She’d never be out there fighting on the field. She’d be the woman waiting at home to see if the man survived and saved the world for her. That’s the difference now. People are really open to the conversation. Universal is run by a woman who is incredible and she’s so passionately hot on this stuff. Even having a presence like Hattie in a movie like this is unusual and that felt really important for me to take care of as an actress because you can talk about wanting to change things and wanting to represent someone on screen but can you go into a seriously alpha male world that’s generally regarded as testosterone and try and inject a feminine presence into it?

What have you learnt about your power as a woman through Hobbs and Shaw?

I was really hard! Every day we showed up and talked about it. I was able to say what I thought and made sure as a fighter, she got fights that were her own.

The body is looking banging in this! Did you go down the gym?

I did not go down gym! I was at the National Theatre doing this play and eating so much chocolate to get me through it because it was a really tough part and I was not down the gym. They would take me to stunt training in the morning and I would train but I’d be out of breath and all these stunt guys - like the world’s best stunt guys - would be really polite and gracious whilst I was tripping over stuff. I had to squat in front of mirrors and my legs would be wobbling. You feel like such an idiot. I couldn’t do a roly poly at the beginning. I kept going sideways and hurt my head loads. The very first day we shot, we’d finished the last show the day before. We finished on Saturday night and on Sunday morning at 7am, I was on set having to do this one long take in MI6 gear, so I was wearing a helmet, guns everywhere, a balaclava and I had to take out 6 guys and do this flip roll. It was my first day, so I was so scared anyway - no one knows anyone - it’s really awkward and it’s up to me to get it in one take. It was a nightmare. It was like a tortoise when you land on the shell.

You seem very in tune with your body image in Hobbs and Shaw? What has your journey with body image been like?

It’s just an act - I tried really hard to act it. On The Crown I was called Bambi, especially by the costume department - I fell over all the time! So, it was really risky doing a movie like this. With body image, I am always conscious of my bum - my sister is the same. But I have come to realise you only get one and you only get you. You can’t think your way out of it. You have to enjoy it for what it is. I have been trying to do that more and more. I didn’t feel more in tune with it filming this - I was aching so much and hobbling around a lot.

You have gone through a journey of empowerment in your life - you have been bullied at school – what has that road been like for you?

There was a drive in me to prove myself. I have always been really interested in where we feel like we are not enough is who we are. Especially when you are bullied you feel in yourself you are not enough as you are or try to be something different to please other. Whether it’s for friendships or relationships you need to find the best version of you that you are the most comfortable with.

What have been the turning points in your own empowerment?

Working with War Child has changed my life forever. I also think learning to be ok as you are. More and more I try everyday to practice self-care and self-love. I would summarise self-love as sometimes noticing the thoughts that you have about yourself are so negative and more negative than anyone would be to your face. You would never be that negative to someone else. It’s so bazaar we have this inner critic. I used to really struggle with it at work and in my life generally. I have had to really nurture that part and say, ‘why are you doing that, why are you saying that about yourself?’ The practice of catching it and replacing it with something positive is so simple. Would you ever say the things you say about yourself to anyone else? Absolutely never! If were talking to a friend about their fears or anxieties, how would you talk to them? I don’t talk to myself how I would talk to a friend. It’s a key to empowerment is catching that thought.

What do you tell yourself in those moments of self-doubt?

I talk to myself like how I would talk to a small child. If am doubting myself, freaking out or feeling super anxious I go, ‘you are ok, it’s all cool, remember you are enough.’ Because I think we look for outside sources to do that be that validation from relationships, affirmations from the outside too - be that owning things or being something more, achieving something - and those things are transient. They come and they go, they are not constant. But your mind could be if you practice it.

You have become an activist as an ambassador for War Child. Can you remember a moment during that experience that has changed you?

The very first trip with them when I met some of the Syrian refugees. When you actually meet those families, I just felt that parts of me shifted forever. I am so privileged. I am so lucky and live somewhere where I don’t worry about my life every day - as in danger of my actual life. We have freedom and we can choose what we want to do. The refugees come from the most horrific experiences, then they come to camps which some of them have been living in for six and a half years. They are stuck with nothing to do, like a prison. It’s unimaginable. Then you come back here and think, ‘What? Why do I worry about that! I can choose what I eat in the morning. I don’t have the same powdered food every day.’ That’s helped my inner critic. Experiencing the lives of others that are far worse than anything I deal with. It makes anything I have to deal with much easier.

#Vanessa Kirby #Hobbs and Shaw #Interview #Articles #Videos

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labrat-king · 6 years

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I’m just gonna yammer about Trench for a bit

~the transition~ You know what I’m talking about. (I also didn’t realize before how it lines up with the beat of Levitate? Very nice.)

Morph good. That all.

Damn I forgot how detailed their songs are. Listening with good headphones is a totally different experience.

My Blood was weirdly close to the beginning? It seemed like such a “second half of the album” song, you know? I thought it was going to be a few from the end.

Chlorine is going to be a favorite of mine. I can tell. I got the feeling it would grow on me, but then that end bit hit “I’m so sorry, I forgot you” let me tell you...

By Smitherneens, the “new sound” of the album had gotten a little too consistent and comfortable. And the lyrics weren’t anything special either. It was cute, I suppose, but probably my least favorite.

Neon Gravestones, though. That’s the Twenty One Pilots I know. It sounded newer, but still had that dark tinge. Like he was tapping into the same place again finally. I dunno, I could just feel it. It felt like them again in a way most of the other songs didn’t. And it was even better in that it was this outright opinion piece on celebrity suicide from someone with a very interesting perspective. I will admit, I teared up a little. “Promise me this...” Absolutely fucking not. No. I’m not going to do that. You don’t get off the hook that easy. No.

The Hype is a great little bop. Strong hints of traditional pop-punk sound with a dose of older-school Twenty One Pilots, RAB era, almost. Love.

Cut My Lip isn’t bad, but I felt like it went on too long with too little. Needed more melodic bits for variety, or another verse or something. Eh.

Bandtio... now that’s what I’m taking about. Excellent, subtle mixing. Lyrics reference the Trench world and are amazing in that you know but you can’t describe it and abstract stuff you’ll be picking apart for months. Lord. Also, there’s this effect where things sound reversed and it reminded me so strongly of this audio file that I loved were someone played Truce in reverse. “Where we used to bleed/ and where our blood needs to be” fuckin’... is that a double-meaning? With improving and also being there for people you care about? DAMN a rival for “fave song” appears!

Pet... Pet Cheetah, you guys. What the fuck but also the “mind blown” variety of “what the fuck”. I will bet you real money that this was a track they just did let themselves do whatever the hell on because they didn’t necessarily plan on making it a thing that people saw. But damn am I glad it’s on here. That song had a lot to live up to with it’s title, but BOY did I not expect him to double down on the whole pet cheetah thing by saying it’s name is Jason Statham. (Side note: taken out of context, this song is like a shitpost or nightblogging: “i have a pet cheetah in my basement his name is jason stratham and he makes sick beatz for me but they scare him” “...OP, are you okay?”)

Legend is sweet. Not my fave but I can’t say anything bad about it because it’s so nice and it’s also really important that it feels more like a celebration of a life rather than mourning, which I especially like because of Neon Gravestones.

Escape the City fits with the closing tracks of the past. It feels simultaneously like all the past eras, but also this one too and I can’t quite tell you why. I’m also taking this as absolute confirmation that a theory I had months ago was right. “In Trench, they know what I mean.” Trench is the shows. The cliffs and valleys of Trench in the music video looks like a stadium. People on the floor in Trench with you, people above watching you. You’re all together.

Whew. Okay. In conclusion: Some i’m probably going to skip over when I’m listening to it, but some that I’m gong to have tons of fun listening to so I can pick them apart and interpret them and hear all the cool effects they did.

Looking at just the really good songs, there’s a definite feeling to this new era: It’s more complicated as it turns from purely struggles with the self to struggles with the self in the context of others, but at the same time, it’s a little more optimistic. It’s not something I anticipated, but I think that’s an indicator of it’s authenticity: people grow and change in different, somewhat unexpected ways, so I take this as an indication that they’ve made the conscious choice to still be completely honest with us despite all that’s happened. It’s a certain level of maturity, practicality, and optimism that’s still them, but somehow feels both organic and new. Knowing me, I’ll probably be able to precisely pin down what it is and why I like it in a few months (and write you an essay on it to boot) but for now: It’s good.

#musings #TOP

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madegeeky · 4 years

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Giftening 2020: Obligatory Vote for These Post (spoiler version)

Want the non-spoilery version? Seriously, though, super spoilery for main plot points for a lot of these. Skip the ones you don’t want to know about.

Ones with * are my nominations, so you know where my biases lie. :P Ones in bold are my top pick for the categories. I did not include things that don’t need the boost (like Utena).

ANIME

Aggretsuko - A tv show about an unassuming shy red panda woman who works in an office building and deals with the stress of it by going to karaoke and screaming out death metal. The show largely deals with her making friends with two women who she admires and a dude who likes her. The dude who likes her is actually a geniunely interesting storyline because at the end of the first season (which I’ve not seen beyond), he basically admits that he’s built this image of her in his head that isn’t real and he wants to know the real her. (Which, fuck yeah.)

Fushigi Yuugi* - This is a story about two teens who used to be friends fighting over a man which is literally the antithesis of everything Jet is. And yet, Jet watched the whole damn thing. Watch her squirm as she has to deal with that in a liveblog format. You can get a preview of some of that in Doc’s liveblog of it that she did for Jet.

NON-ANIME ANIMATED

Archer* - This is an animated parody of James Bond made for adults. It's offensive as fuck because Archer, the titular character, is a James Bond stand-in and that character can also be offensive as fuck. In fact, one thing to appreciate about this show is that all the characters are shitty, awful people and the show never attempts to excuse their shitty, awful behavior. Plus, it's one of the few shows where half the main characters are women. I am a tiny bit hesitant to rec this for a liveblog due to the offensivness however, as far as I can tell it's not popular on tumblr, and those are generally the ones that cause the most trouble so...

Daria - The story of a misanthropic teenager, her family, and her best friend. The characters are specifically meant to appear to be tropes before slowly being unveiled as three dimensional people. It's got a dry sense of humor that I think Jet will enjoy. I actually didn't know until years after I watched this that it was a spin-off of Beavis and Butthead (which I hated) so don't let that dissuade you.

LIVE ACTION

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - I haven't seen past a certain point because it starts going super deep into exploring depression and that is one of my main triggers for a depressive episode, so I cannot speak of later eps. However, this show starts out funny and silly and evolves into a show exploring how toxic the main character actually is and how unhealthy her coping mechanisms are. It's amazing to see a character type whose actions are usually excused or written off as funny instead be specifically called out as being awful and toxic. (It was a Shit Show is still one of the best songs I've ever heard and Mr. Geeky and I sing it to each other whenever shit hits the fan.)

Hannibal* - If you know of Hannibal, you know the basics premise is that of a man who eats people and is chased by the FBI. The writing in this is some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in a piece of media: it's subtle, smart, and trust its audience to follow along without having their hand held. However, what's really great about the TV show is that it's not afraid to do its own thing. It constantly fucks with your expectations and deconstructs and explores tropes in ways I've never seen before. I haven't seen the ending yet but I highly doubt it's going to end in a place where Silence of the Lambs will happen. The acting is fucking great and even though Anthony Hopkins gives an amazing performance as Hannibal Lector, after seeing Mads Mikkelsen play him there's no going back to Hopkins. In general, if you're looking for something original (which is ironic considering it's based on a book and there are several movies) and smart, I cannot recommend this enough.

Russian Doll* - (Doc, please skip this one, as in 5 years when you're done with Two Storms, this is one of the things I'm considering nominating should I ever win a liveblog again.) I don't really know how to explain this show because it's so fucking weird and is so focused on character and ideas that the plot is both super simple and extremely complicated. It's a story about a woman who starts to relive the same day over and over again except, instead of the typical thing where it starts over when she falls asleep, it's only until she dies (so sometimes she lasts for hours, other times for a couple days). However, almost immediately there are signs that something else is going on, that something outside of the main character's repeating day, something has gone horribly wrong. (Count the fish.) It's a very thoughtful, character-driven show, more about exploring ideas than plot which I, personally, didn't mind at all. Another one I highly recommend overall with much less blood and gore than Hannibal.

Xena - IT'S FUCKING XENA PEOPLE! Okay, but just in case you don't know what the show is about is through cultural osmosis, Xena is a show about a woman who used to be a truly horrible murderous bitch and her continual attempts to make up for the wrongs she has done. The main relationship in the show is between Xena and her (girl)friend, Gabriel, and although the show can be ridiculously silly (time is made up and history doesn’t matter!), it also explores deep, dark issues. One of the best things this show explores is the idea of redemption and forgiveness and that perhaps nothing Xena does will ever get her those things.

LIVESTREAM

Crank* - Jason Statham plays a man who has been given a poison that slowly cuts off his adrenaline, meaning that eventually he'll die. He has to do increasingly ludicrous things to get his adrenaline pumping overtime to make up for it slowly being cut off. It's one of the most fucking bananas thing you'll ever watch but is just a bunch of fucking fun. (CW: Public sexual assault. I only mentioned because it’s a scene that last for a bit. It's a complicated scene so I won't get into it here but send an ask if you want more details.)

Dale and Tucker vs Evil* - Dale and Tucker, two hillbilly best friends, are going into the woods to fix up their vacation home when they stumble across some college kids. Random circumstances make the college kids think D&T have kidnapped their friend and so they decide they need to attack D&T to get her back. Hijinx ensue. I don't want to say much more because there's a moment that is, to this day, still one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen, largely because I did not see it coming.

GAMES

Doki Doki Lit Club - This is a game about games. You play a guy in a dating sim. Your first playthrough everything seems normal enough. You join the literature club, meet and talk to girls, and then one of the girls commits suicide. And then game restarts and the girl who committed suicide just... doesn't exist anymore. Your replay the exact same days but it's as though she never existed. Things only get weirder from there. This game does a great job of turning dating sim tropes on their head, as well as exploring games in general. (Content warning for a lot of things. Let me know if you want more details.)

Slime Rancher (stream) - There's really not much to spoil here. You play a woman who is in charge of a ranch full of slimes. There's some messages you'll find, left by the old owner, telling story about their romance. There also some messages between you character and a deliberately gender-ambiguous significant other. And that's about the closest to story you get. Otherwise it's just catching and ranching slimes.

Subnautica* - Fucking fuck I love this game. When this game first starts it appears to be your typical survival game with no real direction other than what you want to explore. But then you find an alien structure. And you realize that your spaceship didn't randomly crash. And you find out that there's no way get off this planet except to explore deeper and deeper and find out what the aliens were doing on this planet. A genuinely beautiful story, told mostly through entries in data pads and voice messages left behind, this ending is one of the most moving ends I've ever experienced and I never ever would have expected to be able to say that about a survival game.

We Happy Few* - In this alternate universe, the Germans invaded Britain during WW2 (although, through exploring the world, you learn that the differences started well before that). When the story starts up, the Germans have left Britain behind and Britain, for unknown reasons, appears to be cut off and/or abandoned by the rest of the world. The majority of the country is constantly hopped up on a drug called Joy, which is specifically used to help them forget something horrible that happened in the past. (I have theories.) The story starts when your character goes off his Joy and gets kicked out of society. There's a general sense of unease about everything and the more you learn the more that unease grows. The art style is great and the world building fascinating.

MISC (there’s nothing spoilery here but it feels weird to not have it)

Interactive Horror Story Livestream - Doc has talked a bit about this in at least one of her Xmas streams and it sounds amazing. Not only is Jet hilarious with horror stuff but knowing Doc’s writing skill, it will be something that we’d never want to miss.

Bean Boozle When Failing a Hard Game* - I am a sadistic bitch, I admit to this, and I love watching people eat Bean Boozle, the jelly bean of horrible flavors. One of my favorite videos content creators has done is playing an incredibly difficult game and then being forced to eat a random one every time they fail.

#giftening 2020 #giftening recs #spoilers for jetwolf

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popwasabi · 4 years

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Some 2019 movies that were...fine.

I watch a lot of movies every year and I try my best to make time to review all of them, not just because I like to write and to keep my blog running with relevant content but because it’s also just good practice.

I need to find creative ways to express myself and dissecting all the ways a movie does and doesn’t work is a great mental exercise for me. The great movies can be all about the complex writing highlighting the directorial shot design and thematic storytelling and vice versa while the bad films can be an autopsy of what exactly killed the whole production.

But there are some movies I just don’t get around to saying much of anything about because well…they evoke no strong feelings bad or good for me after watching them. They’re…fine for a lack of a better word and there’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve watched a ton of ok films that I forget about within days and I’m still pretty happy I got to see them.

I did want to talk a little about the ones I saw this year though because while I had no strong feelings about them I did have a few thoughts and I feel they are worth mentioning here. So, without further ado some “fine” films of 2019:

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

The first “Lego Movie” was a delightful smash hit back in 2014. A comedic meta-commentary on pop culture, Legos, and consumerism while a thoughtful look at family and imagination, the movie was better than it had any right to be and helped kickstart two more Lego film spinoffs before its eventual 2019 sequel.

Anchored again by its star-studded cast there’s a lot of good humor once again in this film and it’s a fun family comedy from start to finish. The thing is it doesn’t say anything particularly new and feels like a rehash of much of the same themes and closer to a “Direct to DVD” sequel in terms of imagination.

There’s a by the numbers feel to the plot compared to the more organically creative ideas that went into the first movie and it's just not as fun of a ride this time around. This said it’s still a fun one and kids and families alike more than likely will and have enjoyed it.

All in all, not a bad movie and worth a watch if you liked the first, perhaps on a long flight back from Honolulu like I did this summer.

Shazam!

I love Shazam. I think he’s one of the most fun characters in the DC superhero gallery and a character more than worthy of a big-screen film. He finally got one back in April 2019 and it’s frankly, a perfect take on a classic comic book character fit for the whole family to enjoy.

So why was it just fine for me?

Well, while I do like Shazam and his movie quite a bit there really isn’t a whole lot there beyond it being just that. It’s a superhero film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and the story, for the most part, doesn’t do so either with nothing truly profound to say. There’s a nice found family theme going on in it and the cast of child actors are shockingly great and when they all (SPOILER) eventually transform into their adult counterparts they play up their silly child-like demeanor perfectly. Zachary Levi is of course perfect but it’s Jack Dylan-Grazer who steals the show as Billy Batson’s foster brother delivering plenty of great quips and good humor throughout. But again, there’s not much beyond that than just being a fun superhero romp.

This is a great movie to introduce small children to the genre of superheroes and if I had kids this would definitely be a movie I would take them to see. I’m sure children of all ages probably enjoyed the hell out of it and though it’s no “Dark Knight” or “Endgame,” of course, that’s apples to oranges and frankly who cares? It did what it was supposed to do, which was deliver a nice friendly alternative to the brooding darker superhero takes of Hollywood and frankly I’m more than interested in watching more of Shazam in the future.

John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

The first two “John Wick” films are, for the most part, perfect action shoot’em ups. Stylish, creatively violent, and a perfect antithesis to the lazy, unimaginative, explosive-heavy movies that Hollywood normally churns out, the “John Wick” films are the smooth glass of chardonnay to other actions movie jitter-inducing Rockstar energy drink style of film-making.

Chapter 3 is still several notches higher than the average Hollywood action flick and Keanu Reeves is still delightfully dry and deadpan as the hyper-focused killer that is John Wick but as far as the bar set by the first two films “Parabellum” is a few steps below the standard they set.

For one, it’s more or less the same story as the last one. Wick breaks some law set by the underworld of crime and now every assassin, hitman/woman, thug, etc is out to kill him. There are still some fun as hell choreographed gun-kata sequences in this film and plenty of gnarly deaths but the story ultimately doesn’t advance much. Wick films aren’t known for their compelling narratives of course but Chapter 2 at least expanded upon what the first film started; Chapter 3 is content to keep much of the story arcs where they were before only seeming to go a new direction at the very, very end.

This said it’s still a fun movie and a worthy alternative to much of the action schlock Hollywood normally churns out but as far as a John Wick film goes it’s disappointing.

Always be my Maybe

Ali Wong has been on a comedic tear for a few years now. Her two Netflix stand-up specials are great where she talks about the realities of pregnancy, being Asian American, and of course “trappin’ his ass!” and she has even more on the way.

The “Fresh off the Boat” writer is quickly becoming more and more mainstream and her first major starring role came this summer in the form of Netflix’s “Always be my Maybe” alongside the highly underappreciated Randall Park. “Always be my Maybe” is a perfectly fine romantic comedy that fans of the genre will surely enjoy, with enough of a good sense of humor to keep even those who aren’t entertained from start to finish. Keanu Reeves’ cameo as an overly eccentric version of himself is of course the best part of the movie and worth the stream on that alone but the movie doesn’t lend much of anything truly memorable beyond that.

It’s a fairly by the numbers rom-com and offers few real surprises.

This said it does continue Hollywood’s new and long overdue upward trend of Asian American representation and certainly helped moved the needle in the right direction to make critical darlings such as “The Farewell” possible. In the past, a movie like this would need to be extraordinarily good to make Asian America feel relevant but if anything its greatest accomplishment is that it shows that Asian American can have a perfectly “fine,” average romantic comedy like any other white centric film in the genre before it and for that I’m grateful.

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

When the trailers came out for this I was really hoping this would be the kind of fun, over the top bad that films like “XXX” and other “Fast & Furious” films in the cool cars, hot chicks, and guns genre have been about for decades but instead, I got a mildly entertaining, decent dose of macho escapism for two hours with only some fun bad moments.

Many have discussed before how “The Rock” is in dire need of having his charismatic skills used alongside more talented directors and a film like this perfectly encapsulates how he has limited himself to these boring, one-dimensional, macho, stoic types over and over again. Jason Statham isn’t much better and frankly an actor who should do comedy more often as his early Guy Ritchie roles showed the guy can do a lot more than just scowl and throw some fancy martial arts at the screen over and over again.

My biggest problem though is the movie doesn’t go nearly far enough in being ridiculous and takes itself just seriously enough to make it a fairly mundane and uneventful action flick instead of being ridiculous, over the top schlock as it should be. This is a movie that features shirtless Samoans doing the Haka before fighting black suited, well-armed mercenaries using war clubs and yet still isn’t nearly as crazy as it should be.

This all said, it’s another “fine” movie for what it is and a decent escape from the doldrums of work life that you can turn your brain off to on a Friday night. You could do waaay worse than “Hobbs & Shaw” even if you’re only interested in the “so bad it’s good” camp of the genre but man, this could have been much more fun in the worst way.

Uncut Gems

This will probably be my most controversial choice on this list and perhaps it was my somewhat bloated expectations going in or maybe I’m just not too big of a fan of the “owe the mob money” genre but I just didn’t get a lot out of watching this movie.

For one there is not so much dialogue in this movie as there is just YELLING! So. Much. YELLING! Every line seems to be screeched at one another with a couple hundred expletives for good measure added for extra edge and its rather grating. A lot was made about it being a bareknuckle thriller that holds your captivation from start to finish but honestly, the best parts, for me at least, were when they slowed down and the characters spoke plainly without screaming at one another.

The film needed more moments where the story was allowed to stew and we got the characters to reflect on everything. These moments in the movie are more uncomfortable (in a good way) than the violence that chases the main characters around throughout the story. It just sprints from start to finish giving very little time to really understand the psyche behind Sandler’s character beyond he’s a fuck up who can’t stop making one more horrible mistake.

This said Sandler really is pretty sharp in this movie and showcases a bit of range that he’s been capable of for more than a while and the music in the film is great and plays greatly alongside each scene. A stylish 80s techno beat that highlights the criminal opulence of what’s going on around the characters, it’s almost hypnotic at times. The cinematography highlights this well with a great use of neon light and colors that make each scene truly pop in the best way.

It’s not a bad movie despite my issues, Sandler is, at worst, deserving of an acting nomination for this role and worth a watch if you get a chance to see it but “Best Picture” material as some viewers have stated? I don’t know about that.

So, there you have it some…fine movies of 2019 that are perfectly passable and worth at least one watch if you happen to enjoy any of these various genres. I think as audience members and people of an increasingly divisive society we like to see things in only two categories; very good or very bad. Explosive arguments seem to ensue anytime someone expresses an opinion that doesn’t fit neatly on one end of the spectrum or the other and it’s a shame because our digestion of art should be a lot more diverse than it being simply binary.

This isn’t to say you should be a centrist on everything or that every middling opinion is a good take (it definitely isn’t) but be open to the idea that some people are just not going to feel super strong about one thing or another sometimes.

Just because someone thinks a film you loved is just “ok” doesn’t mean they have no taste and certainly if someone thinks a movie you hated is “not that bad” doesn’t mean they have no standards either. Sometimes our pop culture yields no strong reactions and that’s ok. Fans, film-goers, and general people alike just need to be more ok with that because at the end of the day it’s not that big of a deal.

TL:DR be an adult. Just liking or being apathetic about a movie is fine and you should be fine with others feeling that way too.

Happy New Year, y’all!

*Begins typing long-winded dissection of “Cats”* (stay tuned)

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jacktaylorfansite · 6 years

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My writing background is not Joyce or Yeats but the Americans - Award winning novelist Ken Bruen

BY CHARLIE MCBRIDE Galway Advertiser, Thu, Nov 16, 2017 Photo by: Mike Shaughnessy

The Ghosts Of Galway, Ken Bruen’s 13th Jack Taylor novel, has just been published and to mark its arrival Bruen met me in the Hotel Meyrick last Monday to range widely over his eventful life and acclaimed work.Bruen has published 37 novels, a number of which have been filmed, including nine of the Jack Taylor series, yet he grew up in a ‘bookophobic’ household. “I was born just there, in No 9 Eyre Square” he says, pointing out the hotel window toward the building in question. “I lived there 'til I was 10 years old when we moved up to Newcastle. I remember my father putting me up on his shoulders outside O’Connell’s pub to see JFK as he passed by on his visit here in 1963. There were no books in our family aside from the Bible. When I told my father that I wanted to be a writer he asked ‘Why don’t you get a job that is respectable’.” Bruen’s passion for books and crime fiction was triggered by a fateful gift. “A wonderful man called Tom Kennedy gave me a library card when I was 10 and it opened a treasure trove for me," he says. "One day I noticed in one corner of the library, were all these American paperbacks someone had donated by the likes of Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, and James M Cain. I asked the librarian could I borrow them and she said ‘Take the whole box, nobody wants them.' Those books formed me as a writer; that’s where my writing background is – not Joyce or Yeats but the Americans. When I started writing The Guards I wanted to write an Irish crime novel with an American style.” By a strange coincidence Tom Kennedy was also the father of Ken’s future partner Phyl. The couple have now been together for 36 years and have a daughter, Grace. Though they grew up near each other, Ken reveals they never met until adulthood. “Phyl lived all over the world and so did I," says Ken. "We first met in the GBC restaurant when we were both home for a visit. I heard this woman giving out yards to somebody and I looked over and she asked me ‘What are you looking at?’ I said ‘God help that person who’s listening to you,’ and I turned away. She came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Do you want to go to the pictures on Saturday night?’ I told her ‘You’re the most formidable woman I’ve ever met.' In all my books the women are the strongest characters.” After getting a PhD in metaphysics from Trinity, Bruen spent more than 20 years working all over the world teaching English. In 1979 he was in Rio de Janeiro when he was arrested following a fracas in a bar and suffered six brutalised months in prison. I ask why his books scarcely draw on his globetrotting experiences? “Every publisher I ever had would ask ‘Why won’t you write a travel book?’" says Ken. "When I was travelling I even kept a diary and when I went to Rio I had 30 leather-bound travel diaries. But after coming out of prison I was so destroyed I burned every single one of them. The only one in all my books where there is travel is the series about Inspector Brant; he goes to Australia and the reason I did that was I was just after coming back from there and I liked it so much I wanted to put it in a book. I do use America as a setting for three novels and I was in America when I wrote them. There are three cities I love to write about; Galway, London, and New York and there is more than enough there.” After the trauma of Rio, Bruen settled in London where he began to write in earnest, partly as a catharsis. “I thought I was absolutely finished as a human being; I couldn’t get past what had happened in Brazil,” he states. “Friends suggested I go back teaching but I told them I couldn’t. They said ‘We have some really screwed up kids and no-one can relate to them, why not just come and talk to them’. So I went in and something clicked; they saw how messed up I was and I saw the same in them. "I started teaching them about books; they hated literature but they loved anything to do with crime so I decided to write a book set in Brixton and sneak in literature by having a guy obsessed with the poet Rilke. Lo and behold the book, Rilke On Black, took off. The kids loved it and it got nominated for best crime novel of the year. With both the book and the teaching I started to heal; while the nightmares never fully went away they became less intense. My books are dark because that was my experience – I wouldn’t be able to write a light book. But even with something terrible you turn the page and there’ll be something darkly humorous.” After 15 years in London, Ken and Phyl returned to Galway when their daughter Grace was born. “We moved back just before the boom happened,” he recalls. “Suddenly there was all this money, and there was dope and all kinds of problems that prosperity brings. I’d been thinking about the librarian and books and Galway as it was changing. My brother Noel had recently died as a homeless alcoholic in Australia, and they all came together in my head and I said to Phyl one day ‘It’s time I wrote an Irish crime novel set in Galway’. That was The Guards, the first Jack Taylor book. It was only ever meant to be this small Irish novel but then it took off in America. My publishers had wanted me to change the Irish style of the vocabulary because they didn’t think Americans would understand it, but I refused and the Irish argot was the very thing that made it sell because all the Irish there loved it.” With 13 Taylor books now in print, all of which feature familiar Galway landmarks I suggest it can only be a matter of time before someone starts doing a Jack Taylor city walking tour. “I’ve heard there is one already!” Bruen replies, “I’d love to go on it myself just to see where he goes. Some Japanese tourists came to my door a couple of years ago and they wanted me to give them a Taylor tour so I took them into Garavans at 11 in the morning and they started drinking whiskey. They wanted me to join them but I said it was a little early for me so I sipped coffee until four o’clock when I poured them into a taxi when they were all legless. Garavans were delighted because they went through six or seven bottles of Jameson in five hours.” In the Taylor books, Jack is constantly running up against priests, most of whom are deeply flawed individuals. “I was in Gormanston boarding school for five years,” he declares. “They were the five worst years of my life. I didn’t suffer sexual abuse but there was corporal punishment and the priests continuously told me that I’d never amount to anything. I knew if I ever wrote my priests wouldn’t be like the one in The Quiet Man, they’d be like the ones I had experienced and I’ve never had to exaggerate once; that’s what the priests were like in Gormanston; they drank like fish and smoked, yet presented this pious facade to the world. “The other thing I wanted to go against, and it caused me even more trouble than the priests, was that Jack says in every book ‘my mother was a walking bitch’. In Irish literature the mother is this lovely mother mo croí type. Even though my own mother was nothing like Jack Taylor’s, I wanted everything to be the opposite of what it usually is. I got tremendous grief from mothers about that, telling me ‘You can’t say that about an Irish mother’ and I’d reply ‘I didn’t say it. Jack Taylor did’.” Bruen’s novels and the Jack Taylor series in particular have been garlanded with praise and awards, while the film versions have boasted blue-chip stars like Iain Glen, Kiera Knightley, Aidan Gillen, Colin Farrell, Jason Statham, and Paddy Considine. For all the accolades, Bruen has been weirdly neglected by Galway’s cultural establishment, having never been invited to read at Cúirt or the Galway International Arts Festival ,or received any other official recognition. “It’s just one of those things,” he says, philosophically. “I’ve given up caring about it but I don’t know why I never get asked.” One hopes that injustice will be remedied soon. In the meantime readers can relish The Ghosts of Galway.

#ken bruen #galway advertiser #charlie mcbride #mike shaughnessy #ken bruen interview #interview

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Dog Soldiers: The Wild History of the Most Action Packed Werewolf Movie Ever Made

https://ift.tt/36IrB2A

There is no shortage of werewolf movies scattered across the century of horror cinema. Whether it’s the original lycanthropic classic The Wolf Man, which spawned the very first shared cinematic universe, or the genre’s still unmatched final form with 1981’s An American Werewolf in London, lycanthropes of all shapes and sizes have loped and howled their way into our hearts through the decades.

But even among those highlights, there’s a certain sameness to far too many werewolf movies: The tragic individual, the creeping dread as the full moon draws near, perhaps a prophecy detailing how the poor soul is doomed to kill even those they love the most when in the grip of the curse, the final fate involving something silver. You know how it goes.

But 2002’s Dog Soldiers dispenses with most of that, allowing the audience’s general pop culture knowledge of the genre to do the heavy lifting in service of something wilder, louder, and even stranger than what we’re usually accustomed to when werewolves are around. Instead of a movie about an individual laboring under the shadow of a curse, we get a whole pack of werewolves. And instead of that pack feasting on unsuspecting villagers or their loved ones, they’re up against a special forces unit, on a training exercise gone horribly wrong.

The result is one of the loudest, goriest, and unexpectedly funniest werewolf movies ever made.

Origin Story

The origin of Dog Soldiers can be traced back to 1995, when director Neil Marshall and producer Keith Bell were involved in a small film production together.

“It was fairly chaotic and people weren’t getting paid and it was the classic ultra low budget deferment based kind of production,” Marshall recalls. “It was great as a learning experience and a first feature to be involved with, but it was clearly not a way forward as a going concern of making features for a living.’”

It was there that the pair “made a pact” to work together on a feature of their own, with Marshall directing and Bell producing, and that ended up being Marshall’s “soldiers versus werewolves” concept. Marshall had a first draft script by 1996.

“I’d always wanted to do a siege movie, war movie, or a military movie, and combine that with my love of horror,” Marshall says. He did exactly that. If you were to walk in late on Dog Soldiers and miss its opening scene, you might be forgiven for thinking you were watching a war movie, as a group of young soldiers engages in a training exercise with their hard-bitten sergeant. But as their training progresses, and their unit gets picked off one by one, the true nature of their foes begins to reveal itself, before finally devolving into full “siege movie” territory, with the last survivors locked in a cottage, trying to keep the circling pack of werewolves at bay.

Despite the fact that so many of its characters are dispatched (in increasingly gruesome fashion) in its first act, Dog Soldiers is a rare breed of horror movie in which there are no easy victims, and virtually every member of the ill-fated special forces unit is distinct and fun right from the outset.

“I think that’s ultimately what made the story so lasting,” Marshall says. “It wasn’t just some two dimensional characters being killed by werewolves. I wanted to make those soldiers completely believable.”

But to achieve that, they needed the right cast.

Rounding up the Troops

Because of its remote wooded setting, Dog Soldiers has no need for extras, and there are no unnecessary characters. But the keys to the film are Sgt. Harry G. Wells (Sean Pertwee), Pvt. Lawrence Cooper (Kevin McKidd), Capt. Richard Ryan (Davos Seaworth himself, Liam Cunningham), and the mysterious Megan (Emma Cleasby). These are the film’s final four standing (for a while at least), and the rising tension between them once they’re looked in the cottage in the woods is a highlight of the film.

But the course of Dog Soldiers history could have been very different if some of the original casting had stayed in place. For one thing, the production had initially targeted Jason Statham for the role of Cooper.

“I’d seen him in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and I thought this guy’s got real charisma, he’s going to be a star, he’d be great for Cooper,” Marshall says. “He stuck with us for a little while, but then he got offered Ghosts of Mars. My advice to him was ‘We don’t know when we’re going to get to make this. You’ve got a chance to go and work with John Carpenter. Go and work with John Carpenter.’ He went off to the States and the rest is history.”

While casting what-ifs are always fun, it’s difficult to imagine Statham’s taciturn brooding having the same effect as the earnest forthrightness McKidd brought to the role of Cooper. But Statham wasn’t the only soon-to-be big name who almost made it into the film, as Marshall had offered the role of Spoon to Simon Pegg, long before the actor had his big screen breakout in Shaun of the Dead. And while Marshall describes his meeting with Pegg about the role as “charming and lovely,” the actor had already promised Edgar Wright that Shaun of the Dead would be his first film role. (Darren Morfitt, in his first film role, ended up a perfect fit for Spoon).

Despite losing two stars of this caliber, Marshall believes “the movie gods were on our side” throughout the casting process. Particularly with the arrival of Sean Pertwee as Sgt. Harry G. Wells. Pertwee had become aware of the project when a draft of the script was passed to him by none other than Jason Isaacs.

“I didn’t quite get it initially because it was dense, the dialogue,” Pertwee recalls in a Zoom chat with Den of Geek. “The syntax was dense and I didn’t understand a lot of it. There was a stream of these characters’ consciousness which I then later realized, of course, was how the British army speak to each other, constantly jibing each other.”

A meeting between Pertwee and Marshall went well, and the actor offered his assistance with the project.

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“I said, ‘Please use my name if that helps in any shape, way, or form,’ because I was working a lot at the time.”

Three years later, he got the call that filming would begin in two weeks.

“Now you look back and you just cannot imagine anybody else in those roles,” Marshall says. “What we got was this ensemble group of more experienced actors, like Liam Cunningham and Sean Pertwee and Kevin McKidd and then less experienced actors like Chris Robson and Les Simpson and threw them all in the mix together and they became very nurturing to each other. They were looking at Sean as the boss of the squad, and he looked after the other guys. I swear by the end of the shoot, these guys would have fought and died for each other. They were so tight.”

Despite the challenges of filming in cold, rainy conditions in the woods, Pertwee looks back on the experience fondly.

“On our first day we did the very first scene where you see us all piling out of this helicopter. It was a 12-page scene and we did it virtually in one take,” Pertwee recalls. “You get to know each other very, very well on a first day when you’re nervous anyway, and you don’t know the people around you necessarily and you’re supposed to be emulating a crew, a unit of people that have been together for many years, and we did by the end of that. We went to the pub and drank lots of beer and the rest is history. We became a family from that day, and that was all down to Neil and his impeccable casting.”

Action Men

With its tightly-knit strike force of heavily armed soldiers as its central characters, like Predator or Aliens before it, Dog Soldiers is as much of an action movie as it is a horror film, and that was always key to Marshall’s approach.

“I think the movie that made me want to make movies in the first place wasn’t a horror movie, it was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is my all-time favorite movie,” Marshall says. “I think the thing that links together the films that I love and the films that I make and the films I want to make, is action more than horror. I try to find ways for playing action into whatever I’m doing, because I just love doing action stuff. So I knew I wanted to do an action horror film.”

To help keep that action as authentic as possible, there was a consultant on set who was a former French Foreign Legion servicemember, who “told us what we needed to know” as Pertwee put it.

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By Guy Buckland

Dog Soldiers was filmed somewhat chronologically, with the first half’s scenes in the woods shot before they moved to the werewolf house. Those outdoor shooting conditions may have helped the actors cement their onscreen chemistry.

“It was wet and muddy and at one of our locations you just couldn’t stand up in it,” Marshall says. “Everybody was falling over left, right, and center. It was Luxembourg in the winter. It was a bit grim, but I think it lends itself to the way the film looks, the quality of the film.”

Pertwee is more direct.

“We were in the shit, we were in the mire,” Pertwee says with a smile. “From the moment we jumped out of that helicopter we had 70-pound packs and SA80s and we were literally jumping around shooting…You never really were aware that the camera was there, so it was a lot of no acting required because it was just a question of being there.”

The Nature of the Beast

While the idea of “soldiers vs. werewolves” is a compelling enough pitch on its own, Marshall wanted to make sure he didn’t get pigeonholed as strictly a horror director, nor did he want to get caught up in too many of the traditional werewolf movie tropes.

“I didn’t want to make a ‘curse of the werewolf’ movie, which is pretty much what every werewolf movie prior to this has been…except potentially The Howling which doesn’t really kind of deal with that so much,” Marshall says. “So I wanted the werewolves just to be essentially like the enemy…like the equivalent of aliens in Alien or Predator or whatever.”

Of course, the movie isn’t completely devoid of traditional werewolf elements, such as the full moon (of course) or the vulnerability to silver, but even these inclusions were carefully thought out.

“There’re certain tropes that you want to put in there, but that I wanted to play around with,” Marshall says. “If it’s the night of a full moon, when does that actually happen? Does it work as soon as the full moon appears in the sky or when it comes out from behind a cloud? Because it’s still there even if it’s hiding behind a cloud. That’s when I came up with the idea that they’re compelled to change on the night of the full moon, but there’s not a specific time that happens and they can try to hold it back.”

This of course plays out in a funny exchange between Kevin McKidd’s Pvt. Lawrence Cooper and Sean Pertwee’s Sgt. Harry Wells, describing it as “needing a piss…when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go.”

Dancing in the Moonlight

Even the werewolves themselves are unique among the genre. The werewolves of Dog Soldiers are disturbing, unnaturally tall, gangly figures with oversized lupine heads, rarely seen fully in frame for more than a few seconds at a time. It was all inspired by a sketch that a friend of Marshall’s brought to him.

“It was just this beautiful, almost elegant creature, rather than a big muscular lump…and it looked all very feminine,” Marshall says. “I took that idea and ran with it. When we were designing it even further it evolved a little bit along the way, but it stayed to that basic concept.”

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To add to the otherworldly, disturbing feel of the werewolves, Marshall hired dancers rather than stuntmen to fill the costumes. Of course, that led to its own unique challenges, especially since they had to wear stilts to account for their lupine leg extensions, which made them a little less graceful than that original sketch had promised.

“You come up with all these kinds of crazy ideas about putting dancers in costumes and things,” Marshall says. “They were on these foot tall stilts, which were really difficult to walk on. Then you’ve got to factor in the fact that when they’ve got the head on, they can’t see very well. All they can see is from a tiny little hole in the mouth of the werewolf. So they’re blind and staggering around on stilts. A lot of that grace kind of went out the window quite quickly as they tried to literally find their feet and learn how to move in the costumes.”

Mercifully, they also filmed some shots of the werewolves from just the waist up, so the dancers weren’t required to perform on stilts the entire time. But the offbeat werewolf appearance had some unintended results on set, as well.

“I remember there was a scene with Kevin McKidd and I watching the lycanthropes coming out of the woods, and we just got the giggles because the poor guys in these suits were standing en pointe, almost like a ballerina stands on their toes,” Pertwee says. “They had these weird wooden-heeled leg things, but they were around their feet to give them the dog’s bow back leg, so it was incredibly uncomfortable. They couldn’t go to the bathroom because they were sealed in this neoprene style rubber with these huge heads on and they were staggering around. We got the giggles because it was not remotely terrifying.”

Pertwee had a different reaction during one of the movie’s most harrowing moments, shortly after his character had been disemboweled by one of them.

“I take nothing away from the skill of these young men that were doing this because it was so insanely uncomfortable and they never complained,” Pertwee says. “They were in these costumes literally 12 hours a day, really horrendous suffering from heat exhaustion and everything. They were in cramped spaces, they couldn’t see where they were going. But when I saw one looming over me, coming to get me when I was in the bed, it was like what nightmares are made of. It was terrifying. They were extraordinary performers, so my hat goes off to them.”

“Sausages”

If there’s a record for most gruesome and frequent depiction of entrails on film, Dog Soldiers would certainly be in the running for it. And to hear Pertwee tell it, the process of creating a convincing disemboweling seems only slightly less unpleasant than an actual disembowelment.

“I think they used some kind of intestinal skin, which they rammed full of sausage or something, which probably went off,” Pertwee says. “It smelled to high heaven, and we’d break for lunch or whatever so they had to devise a way of holding my guts together. They built this cup kind of thing out of gaffer tape, which they strapped around me that I could put my guts in and then I’d sit down and have lunch with everyone.”

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And then there’s all the blood to consider.

“I was covered in so much blood,” Pertwee says. “It was very cold where we were shooting, it was freezing in fact. We used sugar blood, which is this really visceral kind of thick thing, but whenever it gets cold it sticks. It got to the point that it was very uncomfortable both because of the smell of my sausages that had gone off, and I would take off my trousers and stand them in my trailer and overnight they’d still be standing, literally standing, because the blood had frozen. The worst thing was putting the trousers on every morning, I have to say. It was deeply unpleasant.”

Pertwee’s “sausages” lead to what might be the most memorable (and gruesome) scene in the film is when McKidd’s Pvt. Cooper and Cleasby’s Megan have to perform field surgery on Pertwee’s Sgt. Wells, after he has been disemboweled by a werewolf. With nothing but a small cottage bed, some field supplies, a little morphine, and a bottle of scotch, they have the unenviable task of putting Wells’ “sausages” back in their correct place.

Pertwee’s performance seems like a study in spontaneity, blending the sheer horrific agony of the situation with the unexpected humor that comes from a man deeply in shock while also intoxicated by a vast quantity of painkillers. It was Pertwee who suggested a little method acting to move things along.

“I was supposed to be whacked off my head on huge amounts of doses of morphine and drank a bottle of scotch,” Pertwee says. “I said to Neil, ‘Can we experiment with some alcohol,’ which of course is a big no-no on set. Of course, absolutely we would be able to do it sans alcohol, but we just thought it would add a different energy to it, so we gave it a go. We tried it and sorry, but I think it really worked.”

Or as the director recalls…

“Yeah, he’d taken the edge off, definitely,” Marshall says with a laugh. “And I think that allowed him to just get settled into it way more.”

The scene culminates in Cooper getting frustrated with Wells’ ranting and thrashing, and knocking him cold with a punch. But it turns out there’s a little more to even this fun moment.

“I’d love to say I remember but I don’t,” Pertwee says. “[Kevin] went to knock me out so he could glue my guts back in. But I turned the first time and I went, ‘No, not like that you pussy! Really knock me out!’ He was so exasperated he caught me on the end of my nose, and all I remember was just going down hitting the pillow and all the props guys were standing next to me…He had actually broken the end of my nose.”

The director knew right away that something had gone a little wrong.

“I just saw this blood splash across the wall. And I was thinking, ‘Hang on, that wasn’t in the script,’ but it was Sean’s blood.”

It’s one of many scenes in the film where the dialogue and interactions between the characters feels so completely natural, despite the fact that they’re in increasingly absurd and horrific situations.

“Certainly the operation scene was the most significantly improvised,” Marshall says. “The big learning experience for me with this movie was just working with a really solid cast of experienced actors for the first time in this kind of context. I’d spent six years planning this movie in my head, [and] I discovered on day one of working with these guys that all my plans went out the window because of course they’re amazing collaborators and they want to bring something to the table, and that doesn’t necessarily always fit with what you had in mind. So a lot of the scenes that were in my head, kind of static, suddenly became much more lively and interesting, especially within the house.”

Gallows Humor

In a movie that’s already full of characters who fire off quips and wisecracks in the face of death, there are also unexpected moments of humor that make their way in. But remarkably, none of it feels out of place. “I wanted all the humor to come out of the characters themselves, but also just some of the absurdity of the situation,” Marshall says.

Notably, the moment when Pvt. Cooper is helping to nail the door of the house shut and suddenly a werewolf’s hand bursts through the mail slot, prompting frantic, Looney Tunes-esque hammering at the werewolf’s fingers.

“If you’re hammering a nail and a werewolf pokes its fingers through the door, you’re going to hit them with the hammer,” the director says matter-of-factly. “It seems logical, but it’s also funny. I wanted them to use whatever they had available. They attack them with frying pans, knives, axes, swords, and all sorts of stuff. I just wanted to use everything available.”

Despite that, or perhaps because of it, when characters die, audiences feel the impact. The unfortunate soldiers of this film aren’t mere cannon fodder…or werewolf chow.

“I wanted there to be realistic stakes,” Marshall says. “Making the characters so sympathetic and empathetic and lovable, we’d feel their deaths more, so that the threat of the werewolves is much higher. There’s always that sense of menace and it’s meant to be a horror film and a suspense thriller, whatever you want to call it. But the humor never undermines that, it just enhances it.”

Long Tail

There’s only a handful of truly classic werewolf movies, and Dog Soldiers is perhaps the only candidate for that title in the 21st century. There may be fewer werewolves roaming the cinematic hills than before, but Marshall doesn’t think the genre itself is cursed.

“I think the reason that werewolves aren’t so prevalent in horror movies is an expense issue more than anything,” Marshall says. “Vampires and zombies are a hell of a lot cheaper to do than to do werewolves well. They’re either going to do fairly expensive practical werewolves or you’re going to do fairly expensive CG werewolves. But either way there’s no cheap version of werewolves.”

And as for the time-honored debate between practical effects and CGI, especially when related to lycanthropes…

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“My gut experience from movies I’ve seen, I think the practical ones always look best and stand the test of time,” Marshall says. “Even on the bigger budget stuff, like the Underworld movies and things like that and where they kind of mix and match, but the practical ones really look good. The moment it becomes CG, it kind of looks CG and it’s just not so good. Given that werewolves are meant to be kind of half human anyway to me it makes sense to do it with a human in a costume. It’s just going to be better that way.”

Dog Soldiers quickly gained a cult following upon its release, and it’s the kind of film that would appear to be positively howling for a sequel. Originally envisioned as a trilogy, the sequels never materialized. “We would have loved to have done it,” Pertwee says. “Not as much as the millions of fans that incessantly ask me the same question, but I wish we had done it because a lot of people love the movie.”

As for whether it could ever happen, well, Marshall did tell us a little bit about that. “There’s more of a chance now than ever before,” the director teases. “There’s things in the works. We’re seeing what we can do.”

Perhaps everyone’s favorite Dog Soldiers will get to howl once again after all.

The post Dog Soldiers: The Wild History of the Most Action Packed Werewolf Movie Ever Made appeared first on Den of Geek.

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enchantedbyhiddles · 7 years

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Very good read and explains why movie star and good actor are terms to describe different things. And why saying an actor is not a celebrity and not a movie star is not an insult and doesn’t say anything about talent or longevity of a career. Not even about success. Great actors don’t have to be stars and stars are very often not the best actors.

(long article behind the cut)

Like many film critics, I started out to be a mortician, but got sidetracked. Yet vestiges of that childhood vocation linger on in my lifelong fascination with autopsies, particularly postmortems involving epic film failures.

In this context, I have thought a lot about King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, a colossal bomb. There are many things wrong with the film – the story, the directing, the fact that the screenwriter forgot to include Merlin – but the biggest problem is the casting. A few months before the film was released, I started noticing posters advertising a star I didn’t immediately recognise. Somebody named Charlie Hunnam. “Do you know him?” I asked my son.

“He’s the guy from Sons of Anarchy,” he replied.

Well, precisely. He’s not Matt Damon. He’s not Brad Pitt. He’s not James Franco. He’s certainly not Denzel Washington or Jamie Foxx. He’s the guy from Sons of Anarchy, a reasonably popular cable TV show most people have never heard of, much less seen. He’s the guy most famous for almost being in 50 Shades of Grey.

Hunnam reportedly talked his way into the starring role in King Arthur, convincing Guy Ritchie that he could carry the ball. He could not carry the ball, as we now know. Ritchie should have written Lady Guinevere into the screenplay and asked if Gal Gadot was available. One of the most annoying things about King Arthur was Hunnam’s thoroughly predictable turn as a cheeky working-class lad. That worked well in Ritchie’s early movies because cheeky East End lads were in vogue at the time, and Ritchie had rising star Jason Statham on the payroll. Statham brought an affable roguishness to rollicking gangster movies, a quality he has never entirely lost; he was the glue that held the whole thing together. In King Arthur, Ritchie didn’t have anyone to hold the whole thing together. He had the guy from Sons of Anarchy. So the cheeky medieval prole schtick fell flat.

Hunnam is by no means a dud – he is quite good in the art house film The Lost City of Z – and he may yet avoid the fate of Jason Momoa, the large but ultimately ineffective tent pole around which the abysmal 2011 Conan the Barbarianwas erected. Yet the similarities are startling: an actor best known for appearing on a popular cable TV show (Game of Thrones) gets into the ring with the big boys. And promptly gets his head handed to him.

Hunnam is a tad on the generic, nondescript side, especially compared to King Arthur’s nemesis, played by the emphatically non-generic Jude Law, who upstages the putative star of the movie at every turn. Bear in mind that the basic structure of motion pictures has not changed in 100 years: a man has a problem, be it shark, alien life form, loan shark or fascist pig, and he has to solve this problem in less than two hours. If the audience is not interested in the man or the problem, the movie tanks. This is also true of films starring women.

In King Arthur, Law’s problem – Oh, will no one rid me of this cheeky prole? – is more interesting than Hunnam’s problem because Law is more interesting than Hunnam. When the two share the screen, our eyes naturally travel to Law because our eyes aren’t stupid.

Hunnam comes off as a poor man’s Tom Hardy. But here is an intriguing issue. Hardy, remarkable actor that he is, is not an instantly recognisable star like Tom Cruise or Vin Diesel or Sylvester Stallone or the Rock. He has never got top billing in the kind of career-defining film that absolutely everybody on the planet saw: Top Gun, Thelma and Louise, Forrest Gump, The Matrix, Rocky, The Hunger Games. So, is Hardy himself a movie star? Well, if the criterion for being a movie star is the ability to light up the screen as soon as you show up, then there is no question that Hardy is bona fide. But this is different from being a matinee idol or a living legend or an icon or Jennifer Lawrence or any of those other words used to describe our celluloid heroes. Hardy, who has made quite a name for himself by vanishing into assorted roles, has a Zelig-like quality. He’s here. He’s there. He’s everywhere. He can do anything, play anybody: a dimwit New York bartender, a Russian copper, a cruel, atavistic London gangster. Make that two cruel, atavistic London gangsters.

Hardy has an amazing CV. He was brilliant in The Revenant. He was brilliant in Locke, where he spends the entire 85 minutes talking on a car phone. He was brilliant in Bronson, a tour de force about Britain’s most violent jailbird. He was brilliant in Child 44, Inception and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He was brilliant in good films, brilliant in bad films.

But does that make him a movie star? I’m not so sure. A movie star isn’t somebody film lovers rave about. They aren’t even somebody the general public raves about. They are somebody the ordinary person can pick out of a police lineup. Can you do that with Guy Pearce? Ciaran Hinds? Hugo Weaving? Outstanding actors, all. But movie stars? Hmm. In a way, it all comes down to the vaunted Thespian Brothers Conundrum. Owen Wilson? Movie star. Luke Wilson? Not a movie star. Alec Baldwin? Movie star. Anybody else named Baldwin? Not a movie star.

Let’s just leave the Quaids and the Afflecks out of this.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. Every time I talk to someone about how much I enjoy watching Hardy and how much I look forward to his next film, I have to remind people who he is. C’mon, guys, work with me. Tom Hardy. You know, the bad guy in The Revenant? Didn’t see it. OK then, the bad guy in The Dark Knight Rises? Oh yeah, him. But didn’t he have a mask on the whole time? OK, the guy who played Mad Max the last time around? Oh, yeah, him. The guy with the mask on his face half the movie. But mostly I remember Charlize Theron. And the rest of the girls.

OK, I continue, my hackles up because in my view not worshipping in the Church of Hardy is like refusing to genuflect in the Cathedral of Daniel Day-Lewis, did you see The Drop? No. Lawless? No. This Means War? No. How about the film where Hardy plays the Kray brothers so convincingly you cannot believe it is the same actor playing both Ronnie and Reg? Sorry, didn’t see it.

I don’t have to do this kind of stuff with Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, George Clooney. I don’t have to do it with Viggo Mortensen or Colin Farrell. I don’t even have to do it with John C Reilly. I certainly don’t have to do it with Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway or Angelina Jolie. So even though Hardy is a better actor than most of them, and in certain instances a much better actor, I never have to pull out my iPhone to remind people who they are. Hardy, like Mark Strong, falls into that category of actors that are simultaneously famous yet hard to describe from memory. Fans of these guys routinely imagine they are bigger stars than they are. They are like rock critics who want Alejandro Escovedo and Son Volt to be more revered than U2. But reality is reality, and reality bites. If you put Tom Hardy on the cover of People magazine, the public would say, “Wait a minute. Where’s Johnny Depp?”

There’s a term for people like this. They are all gods, but they are gods of a lesser order. They are the Working Famous.

Charlie Hunnam should be so lucky.

#link

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thezachrogers · 7 years

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SUMMER MOVIE RECAP

I know, I know; It’s been over two months since I have written anything and I am sorry! There are PLENTY OF MOVIES to go over. Half of this will be a rent list and half will be a theater list. This will be a different kind of post, it will be a “See or not to see” list. So, here we go.

IN THEATERS NOW:

Spider-Man: Homecoming PG-13 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.1/10 on IMDB

SEE THIS MOVIE IN IMAX!!!

Holy cow guys, what a great movie. Rotten Tomatoes is ranking it in the top 5 comic book film list ever. Tying with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, Fellow MCUer and the film that started the MCU 2008′s Iron Man, and Logan. This has definitely been the year of comic book films with five already released and one more on the way.

My wife and I saw this movie in IMAX and it did not disappoint. This is the first Spider-Man film I’ve actually liked in 13 years since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. The prologue of this film picks up following the events of 2012′s Avengers with a New York clean up crew led by Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) cleaning up the mess the Chitauri Army, Loki, and the Avengers left. Another time jump to Peter Parker filming on a go pro the events that took place during Captain America: Civil War in 2020. Then another time jump two months later to where this story takes place.

Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is a sophomore in High School and is considered a loser nerd. Nope there is no Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Harry Osborne, or J, Jonah Jameson in this version folks. This takes us back to the basics. Peter is just trying to navigate how to be a teenager and have powers. Interestingly enough, this is the first cinematic Spider-Man without an origin story, AND IT WORKED!

Yes, Hot Aunt May is the best part of the movie. Marisa Tomei stole the whole movie. I think she should get her own spinoff. She is a great mother figure to Peter. And Tony Stark (RDJ) cannot get over how unbelievably attractive she is.

The entire cast top to bottom, Holland, Tomei, Michael freaking Keaton, WOW WOW WOW; Jon Favreau, Zendaya, everyone is fantastic in this new take on Spider-Man.

Go see this movie in theaters. Excited for what we are going to see from the new Spider-Man, Mr. Tom Holland!

Wonder Woman PG-13 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.9/10 on IMDB

More babes.

Gal Gadot is the fox of all foxiness. She is also incredibly elegant, witty, and stands for unity and love in DCEU’s take on Wonder Woman.

She didn’t come to a fresh start in Batman v Superman. One of the worst comic book films of all time, the script was so bad they only gave her three lines of dialogue. She was the only thing that makes the film watchable because she stole the entire movie. With Zack Snyder at the helm of the DCEU, the Wonder Woman film was not so promising with three out of three bad movies already on the slate.

This film was shockingly good. All the characters were great. Chris Pine was amazing, Danny Huston was a great villain, and the reveal plot/twist of the main villain was also great. This movie was full of action, great visuals, stunts, and humor!

This movie was not full PC (politically correct) and try to push feminist agendas which I liked. It portrayed women as loving, caring, smart, and charming, but can be badasses and not over sexualized.

GO SEE THIS MOVIE BEFORE IT LEAVES THEATERS!!!

Despicable Me 3 PG 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.4/10 on Rotten Tomatoes

Universal looooooves milking their franchises. Mummy, Fast and Furious, Despicable Me, Jurassic...the list keeps on going.

Gru and the Minions are back for the 4th time in seven years to take on another evil villain who thinks he is badder than Gru, IMAGINE THAT!

Yes, it has its humor, yes its a great movie for kids, but unless you have kids, there is no reason to go to the theater to see this. Save your money for Dunkirk or Planet of the Apes.

If you love these movies, wait for rental, it will be out in September.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales PG-13, 29% on Rotten, 7.0 on IMDB.

Unfortunately in today’s cinema culture, if you do not have a good score on Rotten Tomatoes 24 hours prior to release, you’re not going to do well in the box office. Sad day for the swashbuckler franchise.

I honestly thought it was one of the stronger movies in the franchise. It was a whole lot better than the third and fourth installments. Unfortunately it did not do well enough to include a sixth installment, so it is looking like this is the final adventure for Captain Jack Sparrow.

I liked it, but didn't love it. What this film did was make my love for the first two films grow and appreciate the characters a lot more. I don’t care what anyone says, Geoffrey Rush is part of the heart and soul of this franchise, His character in this final installment makes him one of the most lovable anti-heroes (or villains) ever. Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann make their return and they get the ending we were all hoping for. Javier Bardem is 100x better than Bill Nighy’s awful CGI filled Davy Jones character. Due to the technology, this is the best film of the franchise as far as visuals go. With the new characters they could have easily renamed the film Pirates: The New Generation.

This movie honestly needed a lot less Johnny Depp. It was overacted and too much. I like him less and less every film.

This will be a great movie for rentals, probably your best renter this year. It is still in limited theaters, but don’t go out of your way to find it. It will be out on digital 9/19.

The Fate of the Furious PG-13 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.9/10 on IMDB

Guilty pleasure.

I hate to love these movies, but I do. We watched on Exodus KODI on digital and I was surprised at how good it was and how they can keep the plot going. I would rank it as third best in the franchise next to the original film and Dwayne Johnson’s debut in the franchise: Fast Five.

Following this film there will be a F9 and F10, as well as Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham getting their own spinoff from the franchise after studio altercations between Johnson and Diesel. Vin, we know you are Dom Toretto, but clearly you cannot smell what the Rock is cooking...step off.

Great renter, I wish we would have seen in theaters, but it will not disappoint in your living room.

Gold 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.7/10 on IMDB

It’s strange. Matthew McConaughey is one of my all time favorite actors, but since Interstellar in 2014, all he has done is crap movies. Makes me hesitant to go see The Dark Tower next month. I honestly think he believes changing his appearance and weight will win him Oscars and Emmys. I mean he did it for Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective, it will work again right?

No Matthew, it won’t.

If you want to completely waste your time, watch this movie. One of his worst films to date. Now on DVD and Digital.

Saban’s (Mighty Morphin reboot) Power Rangers 45% RT, 6.2 IMDB

It just keeps getting worse and worse people.

If you’re a 90s kid, you loved the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, if you go back and watch the nostalgic 3 season series on Netflix its so campy for its time. Its as bad as the 60s Batman series, but yes I understand it was made for kids, as this film probably was too. Its not made for grown ups who watched the series as a child, if that was their goal, they did a terrible job. Its such a campy 2017 movie. The CGI is not even that good and you can tell it was done a tight budget. Looked like a TV movie.

Sorry 22-30 year olds, but let the nostalgia on this one stay nostalgia and don’t see this movie. (Don’t worry the sequel wasn’t greenlit). Now on DVD and digital.

A Dog’s Purpose 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.7/10 on IMDB

All dogs don’t go to Heaven apparently. Nope, they get reincarnated into other dogs’ bodies. Yes people, yes that is the plot of this film, told from a reincarnated dog’s perspective who remembers all of his lives. What a retarded concept for a movie. My wife was watching at home and I caught the last hour.

It might be the stupidest movie I have ever wasted precious life on. No one should see this movie, I am not even going to let you know of it’s availability for rental because I would do a disservice to you.

Well that’s a rap peeps! Next review will be on Nolan’s Dunkirk dropping next weekend!

Thanks for reading!

#spiderman #spider-man: homecoming #iron man #marvel #wonder woman #f8 #fast 8 #the fate of the furious #pirates of the caribbean #pirates 5 #potc #dead men tell no tales #despicable me 3 #minions #aunt may

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fast-and-the-furious · 7 years

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Fast & Furious: Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Helen Mirren, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky, and Nathalie Kelley speak frankly about their characters, the series, and the industry

THE CHARACTERS

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How would you characterize your respective characters, and what do you think they mean within the context of women in the series?

MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ: Letty’s a strong woman. She’s a kid who grew up with a socio-economic background that makes you a little bit rough around the edges, I guess. I knew girls like Letty growing up. They’re attracted and loyal to guys like Dominic Toretto because it’s the only way to survive in a place that gets violent — Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. When people are poor, there’s a lot of crime and when there’s lots of crime, you have to watch your back. It gets physical and that’s why it seems like we’ve been stuck in the ’90s for the last [however] many years that we’ve been doing the franchise, because of the macho bravado involved, but that truly is the voice of the urban ghetto. I was hoping that at some point we’d evolve out of that vibe. We made some money — kind of like the rapper who starts reading books and next thing you know, you don’t have to worry about survival anymore, so you stop being so physical and start becoming more intelligent — but it seems that just as we start growing up as individuals, you have countries around the world who are still stuck in that mindset.

So, that’s why it’s perpetuated and so successful around the world. You got a place like China that just discovered the enjoyment of movies, of action movies — not Chinese action movies, but international ones — and they’re starting to get a good taste for that vibe and I don’t blame them. The grand majority of the population is boys and as they discover what they want in the global markets, they start to realize that that 1990s vibe is resonating with them, and it resonates with people in South America and in Africa. Two places that really amazed the hell out of me, I was at an eagle hunting festival in Mongolia, so the desert, and they knew the Fast & Furious franchise. It wasn’t tourists that came to visit that I was taking photos with. It was actual eagle hunters, guys who lived like bedouins in tents in the middle of the desert in Mongolia.

At some point I do hope — knowing a lot of these countries where this franchise is uber successful and that for the first time in recorded history, there are less women on the planet than men — maybe the studios starts to take a look at what the female voice is, because there are less women than men around the world today. Not in America; America has 51 percent female population, but that’s because of violence. It’s because of violence against women and it’s because of a lack of evolution in men in society. I do feel that heavy weight. I’m a complete, sheer, utter feminist. On day one, I [changed] the character from being something that I could not do in front of millions of people into a character that I’m actually proud of, but at the end of the day, what message are we sending out there for women? It does weigh heavy on my head — especially in the male-dominated environment that I work in.

JORDANA BREWSTER: In the fourth, fifth, and sixth [films], Mia was always this lighthouse. She was the one who was always like, “I’m going to be here, here’s what you guys have to do.” She’s always there when they get back from their missions. She’s the very sane, level-headed one. I had the most fun with Fast Five because that was the one where Mia was on the mission with the team and I got to be a part of the action, but I would definitely say she’s the voice of reason amidst all the chaos and in that sense she’s very maternal.

It was very cool to bring [motherhood] to the series once I was a mom myself. I actually played a mom before becoming a mom and I kind of got it, but not really. Then, the minute I had Julian I really understood. When I shot the scene with Jack and he’s in the car and there’s this massive explosion, everything became so much more visceral, the stakes became so much higher, so it’s really fun to bring that element to the series. Now, she’s a mom of two because in Furious 7 Mia told Brian she’s pregnant with a little girl.

[Editor’s Note: Brewster hadn’t seen Fate of the Furious at the time of the interview, but heard that Dom becomes a father. “It’ll be interesting to see Dom in that role.” As for naming his child Brian, a tribute to the late Paul Walker’s character, “I think it’s a beautiful way of continuing it.”]

NATHALIE EMMANUEL: The thing I like about Ramsey is that she’s an extremely talented hacker and she’s very intelligent and a problem solver. There’s a stigma about women in [technological] types of industries or in those types of jobs and I think that it’s really cool that Ramsey is so good at what she does. In a way, that character breaks certain stereotypes and also how you might perceive somebody who is into that kind of thing might look or how they might dress or how they might be as a person. I think that she is a normal girl who just so happens to be quite skilled at computers, hacking, coding, and all of that fun stuff. I think that’s a really cool thing that she represents within the franchise, and I also like that she’s sort of independent of this family that’s been established for so long. She’s come in purely on her own merit and her own specific skillset and it’s useful to this group and what they do. As much as she’s become a part of the group, she’s come in independently and I quite enjoy that.

What’s sort of fun about Ramsey joining that group is that she’s not a car girl, just the dynamic of that within these very high-action, car-racing, death-defying movies. She’s like, “This is crazy” and is always freaking out. Even though she’s doing it for the greater good, she’s still like, “Oh my God, I might die.” I enjoy that she’s that and not another car girl because it means that, in a small way, the audience lives through her eyes. In fact, in a car sequence — like what we’ve seen in all of the movies and especially in this one — most of us would be freaking out. Ramsey often is and I think she sort of represents the everyday person, who isn’t used to this lifestyle. I like that I’m the person who gets to do that.

NATHALIE KELLEY: I did [The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift] now over 10 years ago and people still come up to me and are like “Neela!” I ask myself, what is it about, not just my character, but her in the context of the third film that still resonates with people? I think the movie in itself was an outsider. It took place in a separate world in a separate storyline and Neela herself was an outsider within that outsider world. Who her father was was not really certain and she had this hazy background in this dark, underground Japanese world. [Japan has] a pretty homogenous society and she’s mixed race, so there’s something about this outsider status that she had, within the outsider movie in the franchise, that I think people who are a little bit on the outside looking in resonate with.

HELEN MIRREN: I’m a little [hazy on] the subject of women in Fast and the Furious. I just loved being in a movie where cars are driven because I love driving cars in movies. Ironically, I didn’t get to drive a car in this one, but hopefully, maybe in the future I will. In terms of the character, I met Jason [Statham]. He was in a film that my husband directed. I really loved him as a person, as an actor. His work ethic is spectacular and he’s a great guy. I loved that I would be playing a scene with him. Then, with [Statham’s character Deckard’s] background, we constructed this character, who’s a character I kind of know. She’s a very tough, London woman who’s strong, a little bit vulgar, and self-interested.

As this matriarch, how would you describe the role of parenthood in Fate?

MIRREN: One of the strong themes in the Fast and the Furious [movies] has always been family, that family is important. I think that’s one of the reasons they’re popular films, because that is the one element that everybody all over the world can identify with simply, easily, and directly, so it’s great to see this other level being brought in with the different generations of the family, the fact that family actually goes on through many generations over long periods of time. I thought that that was a nice thing to introduce into the storyline.

Elsa, what does it mean to you to play a woman within this major action franchise who’s very career driven and capable, as well as maternal? We find out in Fate that Elena and Dom have a son and see her, basically, sacrifice herself for the sake of their child.

ELSA PATAKY: It’s beautiful and really sad because I’m a mom too and it’s so difficult to see that story, how it started and how it ends. I think any mom in the world would sacrifice her life for the life of her son. It’s such a big love, and it’s so intense, all the scenes that she has with Dom. She’s a police officer, so knows the power of this woman that Charlize plays, how dangerous the situation is. She’s suffering and thinking about that helped me a lot with the scene because it breaks my heart. She knew something would happen to [their son] if [Dom] wouldn’t do whatever [Cipher] wanted. That’s what she focused on — just save our son.

It’s sad, but moving to see your character meet her end.

PATAKY: Yeah that’s what everybody was telling me, how sad it is that the character just leaves the franchise like that, but I was like, “No, it’s amazing.” It’s good because the movies are about that situation, how strong the love is between the three of them, so it was a really good way of ending. At the end of the movie, there’s that moment of Dom saying, “Elena, I’ll take care of our kid.” It makes me cry just thinking about it. Her purpose in the whole movie was to defend the son, which the most important thing for Dom is family. I think the moment they shoot her, she realizes that they’re killing her instead of the kid. She dies in a relaxed way, like okay, it’s not him, it’s me — just happy that it’s not him. Again, the whole story of her character is to have that kid in the movie, which will last forever, so that’s really beautiful in a way.

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bansheemilktales · 7 years

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Proof You Are A Dummy If You Think Jack Nicholson Is Overrated

People make too big of a deal about actors, don't they? They call some geniuses on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong, some are amazingly talented. But actors are told where to stand, what to say and what to do. They're people who are paid to pretend, okay? They're like hookers faking an orgasm. So maybe we could calm down on the genius talk. Some are good at it and some are not. It's that simple. And yet, as simple as this concept is, I have noticed most people don't understand it at all.

I've heard dumb people of my generation say that Jack Nicholson is overrated a million times. Here is why you are dumb if you say this: MATH exists.

With MATH, one can use the ancient art of counting the skills a person has at acting to determine whether or not an actor is good without having to rely on feelings which are an invalid way to form an opinion. I know we have a right to feel what we want, guys, but be reasonable. Feelings are for feeling, not for thinking. If you dropped acid this morning you might feel you are an orange. But you are not an orange. If you say, "I think ___ is a bad actor" you must back it up with evidence.

The reason I hear dummies of my generation (Generation X) give when they say Jack is overrated is that "All he does is use a nasal voice and twitch his eyebrows...he is always the same." And then they give nothing but examples from 1980 and on. Movies like Batman, Wolf, The Shining, As Good As It Gets.

Listen here, dumb folks. His career begins in 1958. That's when Eisenhower was President. If you only watch movies made when you were alive you are a fucking idiot. QUESTION: Why would Hollywood have waited until you were born to start making movies good? Answer: They didn't. They haven't even heard of you.

You see, even if you do not like a movie, that doesn't mean it is bad. It simply must succeed at the majority of it's goals to be good. Because you hated "that one part" does not mean the whole movie stinks. There have been good movies being made for over 100 years. Good meaning it succeeded at it's goal. Meaning a comedy that makes people laugh, a thriller that made people feel excited...etc.

Here is a list of the 5 things a great actor should be able to do:

1) Can they emote well? Do they convince you that they are feeling what their character is supposed to be feeling in the scene? Do they seem angry, happy etc.? Most actors who have been successful for more than a decade can do this at least competently whether we like them or not. People get tired of watching someone who cannot simply pretend they are feeling something. It is a useful skill and perhaps the most common among decent actors.

2) Chameleon Powers: Can they do accents, can they change their body language and physical tics, are they willing to change appearance drastically due to make-up, dieting, etc? This skill is a bit more rare. Good examples of this style of acting are Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Daniel Day Lewis, Robert Downey Jr, Al Pacino and Gary Oldman. In fact, Day Lewis and Oldman are probably the best chameleons currently working. De Niro, Nicholson & Pacino in the 70s and Brando in the 50s and 60s. (Yes, Nicholson has done it many times whether you saw the films or not).

3) Do they pick challenging scripts that will force them out of their comfort zone and into new territory as an actor? It is a good thing to do but sadly, dramatic actors and action stars are the worst at this meaning, once they are successful at a genre they tend to stick with it. Jason Statham does not appear to be interested in picking something out of his comfort zone. In the 70s, Stallone showed great range and was compared to Brando, James Dean & De Niro but then he mostly played guys who blew stuff up ever since. So with few exceptions like Copland and Oscar, picking challenging parts is not one of his best attributes. While many enjoy his action films, he desperately needs to do something challenging or his memory will always be as the guy who had a good relationship with the pyrotechnic crew. That gets boring.

4) Do they ever pick something that is a crowd pleaser? This one is tricky. We want them to pick challenging work, yes, but if they never pick a "fun" movie or a "popcorn" movie, actors come off as self important. For all the money actors make they owe their audience a good time now and then and, let's face it, a movie about babies dying in the congo doesn't cut it for most people. So I am referring to comedy, action, horror, sci fi...some kind of a tentpole picture. Do they ever even try at these things? Daniel Day Lewis for example, will not do a movie unless it has a disturbing death scene, and/or a scene where he yells needlessly. (We heard you say "Now" the first time, Lincoln) Is he good at these things? Hell yes. He is perhaps the best "intensity" actor working today. But since acting is not necessarily always about being intense, Day Lewis needs to lighten the fuck up sometimes. Makes sense, right? If you knew a great chef would you tell him to just make one type of meal all the time? Perhaps you criticize an action guy like Stallone for doing the same "type" of movie repeatedly. Day Lewis, like Stallone, is an great actor who needs a new trick. Look at Gary Oldman. Every bit the chameleon Day Lewis is but he will throw in a Batman or Harry Potter role to mix things up. Gary Oldman delivers to both his "artsy fartsy" fans and his "I wanna see something blow up" fans. Demand more from actors who have shown great skill. Don't let the Daniel Day Lewis types off the hook of responsibility to their audience if you are quick to ridicule the Stallones. Be consistent or you are one of the dummies I'm referring to in this article.

5) Comedy. Virtually every actor says it is the hardest genre to perform in and many people do not understand why. Allow me to show you why this is absolutely true. When watching a really good drama, one can have many reactions, right? You can cry, you can think, you can even become disturbed to a point you have to leave the room. For a comedy to be good, it is forced to try to get one reaction: Laughter. If it does not make you laugh, it has failed. Since the target they are aiming for is smaller, they are taking a more difficult shot. This is why so many comedies suck balls. Serious films are shooting at a bullseye the size of a battleship. Hence, whoever the greatest actor on Earth is, he or she MUST be able to handle comedy. Without some funny, you are at best, in the second tier of great actors.

So, all one has to do to form an opinion that matters is see how much of this criteria an actor fits. I won't tell you who the greatest actor on Earth is, but clearly they excel at all 5 things on this list. If it is 4, they are damn good, too. Just not the best.

Let's look at Jack Nicholson and see how he holds up: #1 is chameleon abilities and yes, if you have looked at his pictures as much as I have you will notice accents and characteristics changing (lesser so in the last 35 years which is why my generation fails to see this talent in him as they tend to only watch movies made after Star Wars. Seriously guys, it is a fact. He changes. Read up on it. He just became so famous after 1980 or so that audiences wanted to see a certain persona from him and won't accept another kind.). #2- He emotes well. Even his detractors agree about this. The man convinces you he feels what his character feels. #3- He has done every single genre. Seriously. So while I don't know what his comfort zone is, he definitely left it since he has done every type of movie under the sun. #4- Does he ever do one for the audience-a "crowd pleaser"? Yes, he has. Again, he has acted in every genre except perhaps silent. #5- Comedy? He has won Oscars for his performances in BOTH comedies and dramas. Think about that. Whoever you think is the best, did they win in different genres?

You don't have to like him if you don't want to. But he fits the bill. This is a great actor and you are just dumb to say otherwise.

Again, keeping emotion out of this, let's look at Daniel Day Lewis, who clearly holds up numbers 1 (chameleon) and 2 (emoting) quite well, perhaps better than anyone else alive. But if we are honest, he suffers in the other 3. This is the guy who everybody says is the greatest actor of his generation. Yet, he won't do anything outside of drama and he stays in his comfort zone of playing super intense dudes who make everyone else in the scene nervous. What's that? I forgot about that hilarious comedy he made? No, I didn't. Cuz he didn't make it.

But don't worry, Day Lewis fans. I will now go after someone else you probably love to hate. Let's look at Stallone. Yeah, Stallone may have proven he emotes well in films like Rocky, and he may have proven he has the ability to change up his mannerisms and voice in movies like First Blood and Copland, but, let's face it, he fails pretty miserably at #3 by making way too many action movies and he hasn't strayed from his comfort zone since 1997's Copland. What's that? 1997 is a real life date that happened? Wow, you're right. So while it has been too long, he has, in fact, strayed from his comfort zone. Maybe not enough but he has done it. What's that? He just made a comedy with De Niro and was lauded by many as being very funny? And did you just say that half of his lip and jaw and tongue are paralyzed from an accident at birth and this gives him the "snarl-like" smile and slurred speech that you so readily make fun of? So he has given ALL of his performances disabled and he never uses that to sell himself or ask you, the asshole public, to stop mocking his disability? Holy shit. You're right. Stallone is one of the greatest actors on Earth. Writing is a talent, as is acting, bodybuilding, doing stunts, painting and overcoming immense physical obstacles.

See what I mean? You thought Jack Nicholson sucked because you've seen 5 of his 100 movies and were disappointed. Now you know that he is awesome. You thought Stallone sucked and now, unless you are close-minded and screaming "No, No, No, No" you see that he is a disabled guy who manages to be way more talented than you, a person who judges actors by a "gut feeling". No? You disagree? You think feelings are more real than facts? So you really are an orange when you drop acid? Just a quick FYI: Another great thing about some actors is when they have other talents outside of acting that can inform their performances. Nicholson can write & direct. Stallone is a successful painter, directed 5 of his most successful films, a gifted writer (he wrote Rocky in 3 days and it won Best Picture), a talented body builder who was willing to throw that away and get fat for Copland, and you still are going to say DD Lewis is more talented than him? Is this because he is good at pretending? I agree. He is awesome at pretending. I also used the art of counting and it turns out pretending is only one talent. Sorry. MATH wins again.

Jack Nicholson: 5 out of 5 required skills in acting.

Stallone: 4.5 out of 5. I am taking half a point off because while he has gone out of his comfort zone it has been far too infrequent.

Daniel Day Lewis: 2 out of 5.

Dumb people of the world, stop saying people suck when you haven't given it much thought. You might be mocking someone with a disability you didn't even know about. Plus, it isn't your opinion that Day Lewis is the best since his skills end at pretending and being intense. It is your feeling that he is the best. And yeah, he feels like the best to me, too. We hear it being said so much on TV that we tend to believe it. Or some of you feel like agreeing with the masses so you won't get mocked. I have OCD. I obsess about my opinions and analyze them. Then I destroy people who say stupid shit. Seriously, every actor picks a stupid script sometimes. People used to say "Not Johnny Depp". You still saying that lately? It's been like 5 bad movies in a row. Day Lewis did a movie called "9". That movie is a fart of a movie. I am convinced the director was just a butt. Dustin Hoffman did Ishtar. De Niro made 3 movies about the "Fockers", each one more Focking stupid than the last. So, yes. Jack Nicholson and Stallone have made some stupid movies. But so did your favorite actor. And did your favorite actor WRITE his or her Best movie? No? Then shut the fuck up with your hand me down thoughts while the rest of us invent our own.

written by Michael Anthony (Tony) Santiago, painting by Michael Anthony (Tony) Santiago @BansheeMilk

#jack nicholson #daniel day lewis #sylvester stallone #funny article #writer

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