#ALSO what’s super funny is that right after it just ended epic ii just started playing

[giselles-dumping-hat]

Me: *puts on shuffle before I start drawing*

Spotify: YOUNG MAN...

Me: fuck

#hadestown #what the fuck was that jumpscare for Spotify #not cool bro smh #ALSO what’s super funny is that right after it just ended epic ii just started playing #so my hc in this shuffle au is that orpheus starts singing out of desperation to maybe avoid being beaten up #but he hasn’t got enough insight onto him yet so he still has his ii version #EPIC I JUST CAME AFTER THAT.. shuffle au Hermes just asked orpheus how the Fuck did he manage to stop the workers from attacking #orpheus’ response is just ‘fight or flight reflex b like that’ #and Hermes was like ‘yeah fair enough. show them your prev wips too maybe that way hades will let you out idk’ #edit: DOUBT COMES IN JUST CAME AFTER THAT??? well I guess hades did let them out damn

[itskyleeyo]

hadestown brain dump (songs)

SPOILERS FOR HADESTOWN/THE STORY OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

ok so it may have been more than a few days, but what're you gonna do about it?

so i wanted to do another brain dump, and i wanted to listen to hadestown, so i'm doing a song by song brain dump as i go along. this means that my thoughts are going to be even more stream-of-consciousness style (if that's even possible.) also i'm talking specifically about the original broadway cast recording bc i haven't listened to any other version. (also this was completed across multiple months so it is even more chaotic lmao).

also i highly recommend that you listen to the musical and/or pull up the lyrics as you go along! enjoy!

road to hell. the way andre brings in the chorus is flawless please. also the way that hermes is both a narrator and a character in the story he's narrating? beautiful. "the king of the mine." he sounds so nice here for some reason. also love his self-introduction "maybe it will turn out this time" no it won't but thank you for trying. also breaking the fourth wall to acknowledge the chorus and crew is so nice, here comes reeve ;) mans sounds like an angel. you can hear amber's voice stick out of the chorus and i literally love it so much. i'd die for amber gray but we'll get to that later.

any way the wind blows. the fates literally sound so perfect together. Eva's intro throws me off every time, she sounds so pretty. dear god the harmonies with the fates hit so different. can this cast please narrate my life? there's the wind comparisons ;D the "ooos" are so good. "and it ain't because i'm kind" idk i just like how andre sounds here. oh and the funny behind "so i took him underneath my wing" because hermes has wings on his helmet and shoes.

come home with me. orpheus is so oblivious but i love it. also eurydice is literally such a mood. the wordplay with "come again". the "oh, he's crazy" is my favorite part of the whole song. also eva's voice acting is so good.

wedding song. the way she says "lover"? my ass cannot handle this. eva sounds so smug in the beginning of this song and i love it. "sing the song ;)" eurydice is so fantastic. the chorus of "la" is so pretty. eva joining in during the end is just. so perfect.

epic i. hell yeah introduce the king and queen (both literally and figuratively). reeve's falsetto <3 the way orpheus looks to hermes for approval throughout the musical. hermes narrating over orpheus singing.

livin' it up on top. HELL YES THE QUEEN HAS ARRIVED. i love amber gray so much. the gravel and the rasp. please step on me. also i love the idea of persephone being the wine aunt, especially because media usually portrays her as soft and breakable. the way she says "haaard". the way the music gets more upbeat and energetic when hermes says "the world came back to liiife!" the instrumental/dance? break is so good. please kill me with that trumpet good sir. the leadup to when amber starts singing again. orpheus really knows how to give a speech. "i will ;)" amber please step on me i am not joking.

all i've ever known (intro). thank you for the intro king. the music is so pretty. the way it picks up with the piano part <3

all i've ever known. eva sounds so pretty dear god. yay more wind references! the wordplay with "hold". and also the references to hot and cold throughout the musical. "i don't wanna ever have to let you go." lol ironic because she ends up going with hades. "i knew you before we met, and i don't even know you yet." the fucking wordplay. like holy shit. the "love at first sight" feelings. this line gets me every damn time. the wordplay from 2:10 - 2:38 is so fucking incredible. i lose it every time istg. the instrumental portion is so pretty. the wind! "we'll always be like this" i fucking love irony so much. its so underrated and adds so many layers to the story.

way down hadestown. amber gray. that's it. "you either get to hell or to hadestown, ain't no difference anymore". i fucking love this line so much. not really sure why but the delivery is perfect. also the whole thing with it being a train? i love that so much. all the allusions and comparisons they can make are fantastic. more amber gray appreciation. and ofc. the fates. more fantastic instrumental breaks. "and you better forget about your wishing well." this line is so good but so sad because its literally persephone saying that "hey, fair warning, life is shit down there" and i feel bad for her. like the way she's super sassy and shit, but just stops singing when hades gets there, you can tell that she's definitely not ok. speaking of hades, holy shit patrick page. sounds so fucking fantastic. thank you for existing good sir. eva with the breathtaking single lines. and eva's voice standing out when she sings "ground".

a gathering storm. the constant references to weather and nature throughout the whole musical. eurydice with the common sense. the wind again! "did you hear me, orpheus?" he did not, in fact, hear her.

epic ii. the different names for hades in each epic make me so happy. hades thoughts: "i think my wife might not come back cause i'm super controlling. whatever shall i do? oh, i know! be even more controlling!" lmao dumbass motherfucker. that might not work out so well. i fucking love the transition into "chant" so much.

chant. this is one of my favorite songs from the musical. the wordplay within the entire song is so fucking fantastic. hades singing about desire and then orpheus singing the "song of love" was definitely done on purpose and i'm living for it. every single one of eva's lines make me emotional. ma'am why are you good at everything?? the band! more weather references! patrick page singing "lover" hits different. orpheus singing about hades and persephone being blind and deaf. lmao irony because he's not paying attention to anything around him. the wind! weather! "the song of love" is what brought orpheus and eurydice together, but orpheus' devotion to finishing it is what drives eurydice to hades. "did you think i'd be impressed" i was right ;) it didn't work out so well.

hey, little songbird. the strings <3 patrick page is a god (lol i'm so funny). how does he manage to make manipulation sound so good? bird references! the vocal contrast! eva's voice has this kind of "innocence" to it. especially compared to patrick. not sure if that's on purpose or not, but i love it. also the low note kills me every time. the octave jumps between patrick and eva's voices is just. ugh. and also eva's entire second verse is so fucking good. the emotion she portrays in her voice is so spectacular. seriously hades with the manipulation is so interesting and its so good. (manipulation is not a good thing i just mean that its done so well in the show. do not manipulate people!)

when the chips are down (intro). "your ticket ;)" yes pls sir i'll take a ticket cause life sucks ass.

when the chips are down. i fucking love the fates dear god. gambling references! eva has literally one line and still owns my heart. the band! "shoot to kill" sounds so good like i love it so much pls. also this fucking line "cast your eyes to heaven, you get a knife in the back" is so good. i'm gonna have to get into quite a few lines throughout the musical in a different brain dump because i have so much thought.

gone, i'm gone. darling eurydice. its not your fault that you're starving stop apologizing. "talk of sin" lol she do be going to hell. that's funny. the harmonies.

wait for me (intro). the piano. heremes trying to change the subject hurts my heart. and orpheus' reaction is so sad please. "no.." just rip my fucking heart out, why don't you?

wait for me. the transition. andre coming in clutch with the narration. reeve sounds wonderful, as always. the fucking fates. just kill me already. they literally sound so good. the strings' build up between the "la"s. the chorus. the buildup at the end.

why we build the wall. the total 180 in the vibes. call and response has a special pace in my heart. mr page killing it again. god, hades is such a piece of shit and its perfect. he really is a master manipulator. fuck capitalism. the chorus sounds so good. i want to platonically smooch all of them. jesus fucking christ burn capitalism to the ground. the end is amazing. also the not-so-subtle references to slavery/forced labor.

why we build the wall (outro). i'd die for andre. "anybody want a drink?" yes ma'am. yes please. (don't drink, kids) i love you so much.

our lady of the underground. its so jazzy! jesus fucking christ. oh my fucking god. i would literally sell my soul for amber gray. what did we ever do to deserve her? god the raspiness fucking kills me. also love that she breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge the band. when she comes back in after the instrumental break? consider me dead. "what the boss don't know, the boss won't mind" she sounds so good here. also i love that she straight up doesn't give a fuck about hades here.

way down hadestown (reprise). hell yeah i love reprises. the fates. andre. the chorus. i love them all. i'm such a whore for reoccurring lyrics. the strings! fuck capitalism! eva's emotions are just so fucking good. "you've already forgot?" holy shit. this shit hurted. the "ahh ooh"s are so good.

flowers. the intro <3. eva sounds so pretty. the fucking symbolism in this song is incredible. i'm gonna get into this in another brain dump bc it's a very sensitive topic. the fact that she can't actually fully remember orpheus makes me so sad. so pretty <3

come home with me (reprise). hell yeah another reprise. the way the music is much more upbeat when orpheus shows up. their excitement! eva's vocal emotions are literally so fantastic pls.

papers (intro). "young mannn" kill me patrick. train references! hell yeah persephone. the way andre gets louder when he says "raised up his voice." eva <3. reeve just always sounds so pretty. ohmygod the laugh. kill me good sir. mans straight up admits to owning people and is like "it's cool tho cause they signed a piece of paper. def not taking advantage of people that are literally starving or anything. it's fine." fuck you hades. go step on a fucking lego. orpheus is so sad :(

papers (instrumental). yes. sounds so good. i'm imagining an epic chase scene. the transition into nothing changes <3

nothing changes. respectfully? the fates could kill me any day and i'd thank them. the weather reference! that "anyhow" is so fucking good istg.

if it's true. another one of my favorites. pop off intro. the broken "is this how the world is?" sadly, yes. "but everybody knows that walls have ears." is literally such a powerful line to me for some reason. it does a great job of bringing in the chorus. and by calling the workers "walls" it shows that hades views them as "less than." they aren't even referred to as people. "what's the use of his backbone if he never stands upright." oh my god. because they literally cannot stand upright. anais mitchell is literally a fucking genius. fuck the 1%. gambling references! the chorus backing him is just so pretty. the way orpheus looks to the chorus for advice and support. "we're standing." ugh its so good.

how long. oh my fucking god. amber fucking gray. (that's it, that's the post). the way she sounds resigned/disappointed when she says "i've had enough" makes me so sad. there are no words to describe how i feel about 0:25 - 0:41. like their relationship is strained, and super mega fucked up, but it's obvious that they still care about one another. the emotion in their voices throughout this song is fantastic. the play on light and dark. also more bird references! how they view themselves/their self importance. hades is a most importantly king. persephone is most importantly a wife. it really show that hades views power as more important than anything else. "nothing comes of the songs people sing." holy fucking shit. cause their song is the "song of love," but they can barely stand each other and their relationship has fallen apart. persephone commenting on his love of power over his love of her. amber's voice during "the earth must die" is so nice and for what? god i love her. they sound so nice together <3

chant (reprise). another favorite hehe. the strings! it's all just so pretty. when the piano comes in i die a little. the self realization coming from the chorus when they're like "oh shit, this is wrong. i don't deserve to be treated like this." is so fucking fantastic. the "young mannn" again! hades really be like "manipulate her! make her depend on you financially! i've been ding this a while kid! i know how to successfully control women!" reeve sounds so pretty pls. the way that eurydice has basically become part of the chorus (since she's just another worker now). more self realization! the different ways that hades and orpheus view the "song of love." "sing before i kill you so i can use it to manipulate my wife and make her feel like shit." patrick's voice tho.

epic iii. reeve coming in with that falsetto like nobody's business. orpheus really about to bite you in the ass with your own damn song. amber gray <3. the "ooo"s in the background. the way the music picks up when reeve gets to the "la"s. it's just so fucking good. that falsetto again. orpheus really looked at the king of hell, a literal god, and said "i want to ruin him psychologically" and it fucking worked. which is some of my favorite irony because hades wouldn't have shit if it weren't for that fact that he's a good manipulator and takes advantage of the needy. that last line <3

epic iii (instrumental). i have no words for how fucking beautiful this is. i so desperately want an extended version. like for real love this so much. if i get married, i want this to be the song for the first dance.

promises. eurydice is so proud of him for finishing. the way that eurydice realized that she cares about him more that material objects. wind and weather references! "if we can do it so can they!" she sounds so excited. :( "hand-in-hand" lol nope. not them refencing wedding song, anyway the wind blows, and then giving their "i do"s. absolutely heart wrenching.

word to the wise. the fates. pls step on me ladies. the lyrics throughout this are so fucking good. lol hades being damned. cause he's the king of hell. honestly its solid advice tho. humans are really fucking stupid.

his kiss, the riot. give us them adjectives king. " how dare people want rights! >:(" hades is really trying to make himself the good guy rn. the music! 2:15 - 3:03 is so good pls. the lyrics are just so spectacular.

wait for me (reprise) (intro). hello again andre! hermes literally says "he's trying to psych you out and manipulate you. he wants you to doubt everything" and orpheus says "are you sure tho?" and then procedes to doubt everything. the way the music changes is <3. the song transition.

wait for me (reprise). my absolute fucking favorite song in this musical. the first fucking lyric is so good. it really sets an expectation for the song and i am not disappointed. lyrics that talk about how fucked up any single person's brain is are so fucking cool to me. god i love this song. how soft the first set of "wait for me"s are. the support/pressure from the chorus. the entire exchange between hades and persephone. the way amber's voice sticks out of the chorus. the fates coming in clutch again. train references! more brain talk! amber gray please end me. eva sounds so pretty. and the final note is so good!

doubt comes in. the long intro that builds up suspense. the first time that orpheus's "la"s aren't echoed by the chorus/music. wind! weather! the fates sound so pretty like always. reeve genuinely sounds so scared. the way the music picks up and the chorus joins in when eurydice starts singing. the music is so unsettling and i love it. god i love his voice. 3:44 - 3:57 always hits so different. you realize just how much she means to him. how it all goes to shit when the music reaches the climax. the fact that the music clashes on purpose. the sadness in their voices.

road to hell (reprise). it all comes full circle. god andre sounds so sad. the way you come to really hear the lyrics because there's no upbeat music to distract you this time, "its a tragedy" lol because the actual written story is a tragedy. "i learned that from a friend of mine" poor orpheus :(. the way the chorus slowly joins in and the music slowly picks up. the "can you feel it" is literally so fucking powerful. fuck yes amber. fuck it up queen. amber and eva sound so nice together. the "its a love song, its a sad song" is so sad. the final lyric is just. ugh.

we raise our cups. yes pls amber. this song is so pretty. good night queen.

#hadestown #eva noblezada #reeve carney #the fates #orpheus #eurydice #brain dump #hadestown brain dump #patrick page #hades #amber gray #persephone #hadestown musical

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy VIII Review

(A serious review this time, without spoilers.)

Year: 1999

Original Platform: PlayStation One

Also available on: PC, PlayStation Store

Version I Played: PlayStation One

Synopsis:

Squall Leonhart is a new recruit of SeeD, a mercenary team protecting the world. Rinoa is a resistance fighter against the Republic of Galbadia, led by the Sorceress Edea who is suddenly hellbent on conquering the neighboring nations. Squall and his team attempt to assassinate Edea, but the mission goes awry.

Gameplay:

Final Fantasy VIII throws nearly every previous battle system out of the window. It’s nearly as radical as Final Fantasy II’s battle system. Enemies around the world map average their levels according to your average level among your characters. You only need 1,000 EXP (experience points) to rise to each level, unlike the other games where the EXP needed rises after each level. But that doesn’t mean your character levels up all their stats – that all depends on the summons, known in this game as Guardian Forces.

 Unlike other games, summons are crucial to the gameplay, despite not being crucial to the story itself. The Junction System has you “junction” each character with a GF, allowing you to assign different battle commands (Item, Draw, Magic, GF, etc). If you don’t assign a character a GF, all they can do in battle is “Attack.”

That gets super annoying when you’re moving around GFs between characters a lot but you forget to assign that one character a summon right before a major boss battle, so then they can’t do shit.

The drawing system is my favorite aspect of Final Fantasy VIII’s gameplay. Instead of harnessing magic by a points system (such as MP), you draw magic from enemies. Magic is only limited by the number of spells. For example, you fight an enemy and draw 5 Curas from them. You now have 5 Cura spells. You can hold up to 99 of any spell. You don’t have to worry about ethers or running out of MP. I guess it’s an incentive to battle enemies, as they are resources for magic.

But the way the GFs work annoy me the most. You to call upon GFs at any time in any battle for an infinite number of times. This doesn’t give you any incentive to even try battling. If something annoyed me, I just said, “Fuck it” and spammed GFs. Not only that, but you have to sit through the short cinematic sequence of your summon every time you call them. I must have viewed Shiva’s summoning sequence ten-thousand fucking times before finishing the game. This makes battling feel repetitive, tedious, and unenjoyable. Battling was a chore.

The Junction System overall is so complicated that you have to go through a tutorial within the first twenty minutes of the game. It’s aggravating enough already to sit through Quistis going, “Blah, blah. blah” but it’s actually super important because if you don’t pay attention then this game will be tedious.

The final battle though? That shit was epic. Hard. But epic. One of the best final battles.

Graphics:

This game took a different route in giving realistic proportions to its characters. While that’s a cool idea on paper, the overall effect is. . .boring? Almost every other Final Fantasy game has a cast of very distinct characters, like various species, age groups, or wildly different clothing. To suddenly play a Final Fantasy game with what looks like real people – like Bob, Joe and Jill – seems drab. Selphie by far has been the least interesting character to me. When your characters look and feel like NPCs, it’s hard to become invested in them.

I wasn’t a fan of many of the backdrops because for whatever reason I had trouble discerning some doors. I couldn’t tell what I was looking at in the background sometimes, like if there was a switch or button that I had to press.

The cinematics are great though – some of the best in the series. It has the most memorable opening sequence of any game – the duel between Squall and his rival Seifer. The cinematics were a MAJOR step up from Final Fantasy VII.

Story:

Oh hey, so here’s a serious, non-spoiler, non-inflammatory review of Final Fantasy VIII.

Put this story side-by-side with Final Fantasy VII and you can see how they carried on the inspirations. Once again, the story is set in a more modern setting with cars, trains, etc. Squall is Cloud. Rinoa is Aerith. Etc., etc.

Squall Leonhart is the epitome of angst. You will spend the entire game rolling your eyes at Squall’s angsty introspective thoughts about the situations he’s in and people around him. Squall is essentially a bad version of Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Take Cloud but only take his cool design and angsty responses. That’s Squall Leonhart. Squall literally has no interesting qualities about him other than his physical design. He can rock that jacket and that scar on his face. Squall’s “romance” with Rinoa Heartilly is also a cardboard copy of Cloud and Aerith’s romance. Squall meets Rinoa by a chance meeting at a military ball. She serves as the optimistic, lively counterweight to Squall’s stoicism. But there’s hardly any depth other than Squall finding her pretty and Rinoa thinking he’s cute and handsome.

The cast of characters is bland, to say the least. They are composed of other students (Quistis being an instructor though) at Balamb Garden (except Irvine, who is a student of another Garden). They look boring. Their introductions are boring. Balamb Garden sounds like a cool idea – a mercenary school – except it plays off more like a poorly written high school anime drama, which is lame. At one point, Squall’s friends – Zell, Selphie, Irvine and Quistis – all try to conspire to get him to talk to Rinoa. You actually have to play through that of the plot and watch it unfold. But Squall tries to understand Rinoa’s upbeat attitude with lots of question marks in his thought bubbles and mumbling, “Whatever”. It’s jarring to sit through four discs of this over and over.

The plot is a butchered mess. After Disc 1 is when the plot gets strange like a fever dream. Plot twists happen left and right after Disc 1 without any rhyme or reason. Very little is explained and many twists are too convenient. Seifer is introduced as Squall’s rival and Rinoa’s original love interest, but then he inexplicably turns evil. In no dialogue or plot points do we ever learn why Seifer switches sides. None at all.

There’s a particular interesting fan theory that actually makes infinitely more sense than the story that Square gave us. Here’s a hot tip – when fan theories start making perfect sense, you probably didn’t write a good story.

The best part of Final Fantasy VIII is actually Laguna Loire. Throughout the story, Squall and his friends pass out for mysterious reasons and you are introduced to Laguna Loire and his two buddies, Ward and Kiros (who are reminiscent of Biggs and Wedge from Final Fantasy VII). They partake in events set in the past. Laguna Loire hearkens back to the pre-Final Fantasy VII heroes – heroes like Bartz and Locke. He’s funny and charming. I wish the game was about him and his friends instead of angsty Squall and his cardboard friends.

 So, for four discs you play through these parallel plots and then they merge by the end. The payoff isn’t so amazing. I expected something better. Time travel is involved, albeit in a way that doesn’t make sense. Time compression! The ability to compress time into a singularity because . . . because why again? I guess you don’t have to wait for the next season of Game of Thrones anymore. Is that what that means?  

Other notes I want to mention – Balamb Garden is an awful, clunky airship and the world map is the least interesting world map in the entire series. The only remotely interesting place is Fisherman’s Horizon.

 Final Fantasy VIII’s story is the second most radical departure from the series, the first being Final Fantasy X, which I will get to later. However, Final Fantasy VII lacks any meaningful depth or existential crisis for its main character to explore. There’s no grand critique on the meaning or life or anything like that. There’s one slight existential question that Rinoa faces near the end but it’s practically nothing. I admire what they tried to do but it fell flat on its face. It’s dull and insipid with its characters and the plot doesn’t steer in a clear direction.

Overall, I admire what they were trying to do by adding time travel to the story. But it became such a warbled mess that it failed to deliver. They took all the cool parts of Final Fantasy VII but didn’t bother to give them depth.

Music:

The music is the biggest highlight of Final Fantasy VIII. Laguna Loire’s battle theme is sexy as hell. It made me so sad to return to Squall’s timeline, because I wouldn’t get to hear that music again for a while. The world map theme irritated me. It has a jingle that didn’t jive well with wandering around. It probably also didn’t help that the world map is dull to run around in.

The game’s theme, Liberi Fatali, is damn epic. Liberi Fatali does have actual lyrics but the famous lines “Fithos lusec wecos vinosec” is actually nonsense. Maybe that nonsense reflects the nonsense that is the actual story. It would have been nice if they had actually incorporated those words into the story somehow, like some magic spell like “abracadabra”.

The love theme is Eyes on Me, performed by Faye Wong. It’s the first time that Uematsu composed a pop song for a Final Fantasy game. Its lyrics are nice and of course fitting for the love story. I like hearing it.

There are no other character themes in this score. The focus was all on Squall and Rinoa having their silly angsty romance.

The final boss theme is actually one of my favorites. It starts out eerie with the chorus singing “Fithos lusec wecos vinosec” but in this drawn out, ghost-like manner. Then the music picks up sounding like a typical Final Fantasy battle theme, then goes crazy from there on out.

Notable Score:

Liberi Fatali.

 Verdict:

My least favorite Final Fantasy game. I would place it right at the bottom tier. The story is absolute gibberish. The gameplay could be fun once you wrap your head around it, which I didn’t and so it was a pain in the ass for me. Finding all the Guardian Forces can be fun. Laguna Loire is the best part of the story, and that’s really it. At the end of the day, probably put this one off until you play the better, more important Final Fantasy games. You are not missing anything if you never play this game.

Direct Sequel?

No.

Keep it that way.

#final fantasy #final fantasy viii #final fantasy 8 #squall leonhart #squall x rinoa #rinoa heartilly #video games #onvideogames #fantasy rpg #sci-fi rpg #science fiction #balamb garden #quistis trepe

[in-a-cave-with]

can you make a list of every mavel comic you've ever read (good and bad) i just finished iron man (1998) and i thoroughly loved it with all its best and weird bits

GOOD™

iron man stuff:

tales of suspense (1963) – a classic. 100/10. would read several times

iron man vol 1 (1968) – i’m on, like, issue 20 out of 300 something but it’s also very very good! the drama..the action……..wig

iron man vol 3 (1998) – obv i know youve read this one anon but for anyone out there starting comics this one’s SUPER good, and also Love Is Stored In The Tonyru

iron man vol 4 (2005) – listen this comic. so great, so iconic. maya hansen! epic fights! director stark! good art except for, like, the 6 issues of execute program but execute program is such a good story arc that you wont even notice! 

iron man noir (2010) – INDIANA JONES AU TONY STARK, LITERALLY THE BEST CONCEPT MARVEL’S COME UP WITH. PEAK COMICS IRONFAM

iron man legacy (2010) – i enjoyed this one a lot! i’m kind of confused as to, like, what’s going on but it’s fun

iron man season one (2013) – ok so this is, like, a modern remake of tony’s origin story and it’s..kind of average imo but thats ok! bc you can just look at the very very pretty pictures

iron man fatal frontier (2013) – tony becomes governor of the moon and fights doom! also he takes down an ai with weaponized fanfiction somewhere in there. read this one with a .cbr reader

invincible iron man vol 2 (2015) – gonna maybe fuck around and rec bendis’ entire iron man run bc . the art is gorgeous and the story isn’t the strongest but tony’s characterization is v good 

international iron man (2016) – ok i dont remember what happens in this one but alex maleev’s art is literally god 

invincible iron man vol 3 (2016) – RIRI WILLIAMS!!!! AND ALSO AI TONY STARK (MY SON MY BOY WHOM I LOVE)!!!!

other stuff:

new avengers vol 1 (2005) – as i have said before. new avengers GOT the sauce. stevetony and caroljess on one team was too powerful so marvel had to break em up with civil war . also stop reading this comic when you get to civil war

civil war: casualties of war (2007) and civil war: the confession (2007) – these are both oneshot comics and also the Only Civil War Content You Need To Subject Yourself To

spider-man noir (2010) – a break from the avengers stuff to tell you that this comic is very brutal and also very good

secret invasion (2010) – ok avengers emh did it better™ but this is still very neat! also it’s pretty trippy so its got that going for it too

siege (2010) – i dont understand what’s going on but the art is very good. also the avengers get to beat up norman osborn’s bitch ass

avengers prime (2011) – apparently this is the “stevetony bible” and …honestly there isn’t anything i can say in objection to that

avengers vol 4 (2010) – this comic is SUPER fun. after the fear itself tie ins the art and story get pretty eugh though so be careful

fear itself (2012) – BEST BEST BEST!!! my favorite crossover event in comics, with cool art and a badass storyline

captain marvel vol 4 (2012) – can we get a yeehaw for CAROL DANVERS . hell yeah. this is her first run with the name captain marvel and it’s Very Good

avengers: the enemy within (2014) – captain marvel vol 4 ends on a cliffhanger and the storyline’s capped off here

avengers vol 5 (2013) – ok so *clown noises* i haven’t exactly finished it but…this is the One Was Life The Other Was Death comic and it’s super good from what ive read so far

hawkeye (2013) – matt fraction’s run! everyone and their dog wants you to read it and you absolutely should if you have not. not too sure abt the volume numbering but heres a link to download in TPBs, it’s volumes 1-4

captain marvel vol 5 (2014) – this is the volume featuring chewie (!!) and carol in outer space with the guardians of the galaxy (!!!). super fun in general, would read again

ms marvel (2014) – again i am VERY confused as to what the official issue/volume numbering is, but here’s a list of TPBs that collect pretty much every kamala khan comic pre 2019 (im gonna rec all of them bc kamala is a treasure)

doctor strange vol 3 (2015) – literally everything i want from a comic tbh, also chris bachalo’s art is amazing

marvel 1872 (2015) – no one actually calls this Stevetony Bible 2 but lbr it’s basically Stevetony Bible 2

all-new all-different avengers (2015) – BEST AVENGERS TEAM EVER. EVER. PLEASE BENDIS WHY DID YOU BREAK THIS TEAM UP IM SAD

the unbelievable gwenpool (2016) – oh god oh fuck it’s miss GWEN POOLE . this comic is super funny and also surprisingly heartfelt, plus the art is . mmm.

champions (2016) – the gen z superhero team, i love all of them so much. i can almost forgive marvel for ending anad avengers

hunt for wolverine: adamantium agenda (2018) – so this is, after 11 goddamn years, closure for the first civil war regarding tony and the new avengers that sided with steve. amazing.

the life of captain marvel (2018) – the carol origin retcon is…eh. but it’s still very good! think of it as carol’s international iron man

avengers: back to basics (2018) – kamala goes back in time and accidentally reveals tony’s secret identity and it’s the funniest fucking thing

captain marvel (2019) – the first issue is everyone bullying tony which sucks but DONT LET THAT GET YOU DOWN bc it’s, like, actually good and also tony appears more in later issues without getting bullied

war of realms (2019) – i guess it’s a marvel rule that all crossover comics having to do with asgard are Top Notch? anyway

loki (2019) – AMAZING loki shenanigans and also the REAL reason you needed to read war of realms tbh

ironheart (2019) – gosh i love riri williams so much she’s so GREAT and you should DEFINITELY READ THIS

QUESTIONABLE™:

invincible iron man vol 1 (2008) – matt fraction’s iron man run…it’s ..ok story wise? however the characterization is a lil off at times and the art is HORRIBLE

iron man vol 5 (2013) – ok so this comic is super weird ? because it’s nice that tony spends time out in space but also it confirms that he’s a furry apparently. pretty much the only truly average iron man comic

avengers vol 8 (2018) – okay so i really like the art and the story’s okay but there’s a bit where tony flirts w carol and it’s the most ooc thing ive ever seen and that’s enough to land it in the questionable category

tony stark: iron man (2018) – i debated over whether to put this here or in the Bad™ category BUT valerio schiti’s art is too beautiful and the rhodeytony content fuels me. also issues 12 and 13 (war of realms) written by gail simone are pretty good. unfortunately dan slott wrote the rest and it AINT IT CHIEF

gwenpool strikes back (2019) – it starts off strong in the first issue but goes downhill from there and tbh it’s not really respectful of the previous gwenpool run

magnificent ms marvel (2019) – ok listen i love kamala a lot but if theres gonna be a romance plot between her and bruno it’s the electric chair

BAD. AVOID AT ALL COSTS™

iron man vol 2 (1996) – just. don’t touch this. it’s a hot mess

civil war (2006) – i hate this. so much. it’s unreal. all you need to know is that steve was real close to killing tony in the end but surrendered when he saw that he no longer had the moral high ground. and also steve got assassinated right before he was going to be put on trial

mighty avengers (2007) – this comic had the potential to be SO good. unfortunately the artists for the actual avengers issues don’t respect women at all

superior iron man (2015) – they made tony evil and i could not be more angry with it. who even fucking wants to read this theres not even any emotional payoff for any of this

civil war ii (2016) – i would hit this stupid comic in the knees if i could. there is not a single c*vil w*r with rights. all you need to know is that carol put tony into a coma and it’s super ooc

iron man 2020 (2020) – listen i know this comic hasn’t come out yet but it has all the ingredients to be EVEN WORSE than superior iron man which is saying a lot.

this took way too much effort

#long post #tony stark #iron man #comics rec #i have read..many comics

[glassprism]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but did you have any (well, strong) opinions on the Greece production? I guess since most of the visuals aren't new there's not much to say, but maybe more cast-wise, like Amy who came pretty much straight from doing a flagship replica? I hope you are doing well during this time and are able to stay safe, I saw the batman(I think???) paper fam and thought it looked super cute

I actually watched through the videos I have of the Norway and Greece productions a little while ago, so I definitely have some opinions on it, though less on the cast, since I was watching to view differences between the original and non-replica productions, not so much for the cast.

This ended up being long, so under the cut.

Overall, the Norway and Greece production clearly seem to take some inspiration from the original and the restaged tour and use it to build off the foundation of the Romanian non-replica. The key thing is that they do it terrifically well and definitely make it their own thing or incorporate neat touches that I liked. The Overture, for example, features the cast members from the past running out, setting up the show, etc., just as in the tour. Something else I liked was the beginning of ‘Think of Me’, where you can see cast members growing frustrated with Christine’s shyness and starting to leave, only to reappear in awe as her voice strengthens. It’s also clear that some inspiration from the original comes into play with the ‘Think of Me’ blocking; instead of Christine just standing there as in the Romanian production, she actually has a scarf and plays with it throughout the song. I’m still not that huge a fan of ‘The Mirror’, where the Phantom appears at the window, but I will admit it gives us a nice visual of the Phantom “looking in” to a world that has rejected him and which he cannot inhabit, done effectively with Espen Grjotheim’s body language.

Another big similarity with the restaged tour is of course the drum set during the title song, with the Phantom and Christine going down the steps. This felt a bit wasted in the restaged tour, as the tour has the pair spend a lot of time with the pair just hovering at the top aimlessly, followed by a boat ride that lasts all of five seconds. The Norway/Greece production, however, have the pair walking down the steps throughout, and actors in both really enhance Christine and the Phantom’s feelings, with Christine alternating between following the Phantom or cowering against the wall and the Phantom coaxing her after him. Probably the only flaw is that it looks kind of funny to have the Phantom yell, “Sing for me!” while simultaneously rowing the boat (though you have to admire his breath support, I suppose).

‘Music of the Night’ is another that appears to have great similarity to the restaged tour, with the Phantom handing Christine his music and singing to her while she looks over the sheets (which is also a holdover from the Romanian production). What sells it, though, is the way the Phantom actors play out the scene: Espen Grjotheim in particular sings to Christine almost in desperation, his arms constantly reaching out to her, at one point crawling right up next to her; it’s clear that music is the only thing he feels he can give Christine and that by accepting it, she is implicitly accepting him. This is an element that I did not see in the restaged tour (maybe because it spends so much time with Christine blindfolded or waltzing about), where it seems the Phantom cares solely about his music, not Christine. Put simply, in the restaged tour Christine is just a vehicle for the Phantom’s music; in the Norway and Greece production, the music is a vehicle to Christine. It’s kind of amazing how just a few changes in the blocking and acting can make that change much more palatable. (Also, at one point the Phantom leaps on his chair and it’s kind of hilarious in an enthused-puppy sort of way.)

I have to admit, I did not watch much of ‘Notes I’, ‘Prima Donna’ and Il Muto, partially because there’s only very short clips of it, though it looks a bit reminiscent of the 2004 movie, with the full cast running around at points. Buquet’s death plays out similarly to the original, only with no shadows, just a reveal of the body. The rooftop scene also plays out pretty similarly to the Romanian production, with Christine and Raoul utilizing the drum set to run up to the roof. In terms of set, it is a bit boring to see the same one again, but the symbolism is very apparent - with the Phantom Christine descends down, with Raoul she ascends up. ‘All I Ask of You’ is sweet but not too memorable, though I still find it very funny that Raoul proposes then and there. (Slow your roll, Raoul, you’ve only been singing for ten minutes.) The Phantom’s reprise is nice, and the Norway chandelier fall is epic. Can’t say the same for the Greece one, sadly.

‘Masquerade’ as a scene works well enough; the fact that it takes place in a mirrored hall is reminiscent of the restaging, while the stark color scheme seems inspired by the 2004 film / Polish production. Christine’s costume is pretty, even if the symbolism is a bit on-the-nose (yes, Christine is an angel! She is a savior, etc.). ‘Notes II’ and ‘Twisted Every Way’, as far as I can tell, take place in the same hall. Christine sitting on a chair for part of it feels direct from the original; the rest of the cast leaving when she breaks down feels a bit from the Polish production. Having Christine and Raoul alone in that moment gives it some nice intimacy. I’m still unsure about ‘Wishing’ taking place on the rooftop (the production is really lacking some set changes), as it looked rather cramped for the actress, though I suppose there is some symbolism to it (Christine running upwards, perhaps to get closer to her father in heaven). As others have noted, I am glad that the Greece production changed ‘Wandering Child’ so that the Phantom stands over Raoul and Christine, whereas in Norway it was Raoul who initially appeared at the top. The height difference adds a lot more to the Phantom’s threatening presence.

‘Point of No Return’ is probably the scene I get most nervous about, as many productions will either have too little intimacy or too much. For the most part, I thought the production did a good job of walking the line between the two, though the first half did err a little on the side of too little; however, the actors kind of made up for it by focusing their attention on each other and not running around the stage too much, which can make the scene feel too confused. This did a good job of building the tension, which when finally resolved, also did well at not becoming too sexy; the two basically just grabbed and held each other. The “unmasking” was a bit strange though, with the Phantom seeing something offstage (the police) and then unmasking himself as a distraction. I did like that you can hear Raoul (I believe) shout, “No, don’t shoot her!”, emphasizing that it’s Christine’s safety, not the capture of the Phantom, that’s foremost for him.

‘Final Lair’ opens with the Phantom rowing Christine to his lair (having previously been chasing her down the steps in ‘Down Once More’); Christine subsequently spends much of the first part of the scene in the boat, and it isn’t until Raoul is caught and tied to the boat’s mooring pole that she gets out, or rather is flung out by the Phantom. The Phantom (Ben Forster in this case, since I lack footage of the Norwegian productions for these scenes) spends a lot of time ranting, while Christine (Amy Manford) alternated between huddling against the wall and pleading with him. At one point she picks up the music sheet (”You deceived me!”), which feels inspired once again by the tour. But with the context from ‘Music of the Night’, it also plays out better, as if Christine had been lured into thinking that he was a good person, with a beautiful world, because of his music, only to find out, nope, he’s a terrible person. Kiss plays out like the original, but after the Phantom frees Raoul he and Christine row off really fast, so there’s no last scene where Christine returns the ring. Instead we are left with the somewhat ambiguous image of Christine in her angel costume.

Overall, this is probably one of my favorite non-replicas, because of what they changed but also how well the changes work. It’s definitely a bit of a mix of different ideas, some of it’s own but some also clearly inspired from other productions, but melded together so that it’s still cohesive and coherent. The cast is uniformly great, though the Norwegian cast stood out a little more to me, maybe because Espen Grjotheim’s body language and Astrid Giske’s warm voice and clear facial expressions were just that good. I only wish I had more than just clips so I could get the full experience.

#gp reviews #Anonymous #GP gets asks

[anais-mitchell]

hadestown 7/3/19

Here are my extremely extra, barely coherent, thoughts on seeing Hadestown live on a song by song basis! Nobody asked for this and it took forever but I’m nothing if not embarrassingly extra. 

Road to Hell: The way they walk onstage with zero fanfare is just amazing. Andre took like 30 seconds to start the song, he looked out at the audience and unbuttoned his coat and it was sooo funny. He owned this song as always, the energy was so high and the audience was having the best time! One detail I loved was when Hermes introduced Orpheus, Persephone looked so proud like “that’s m’boy.” Then he waved his hand super excitedly and it was the cutestt. 

Any Way the Wind Blows: First of all, Orpheus is watching Eurydice in awe during this whole song. When she says “anybody got a match?” he starts frantically rifling through his pockets for one before she gets one from Hermes. Eva portrays Eurydice’s scrappy, emotionally guarded nature so well during this song, you can really feel how rough her life has been and why she’d be hesitant to trust someone like Orpheus with her heart. When she first lights her candle, Clotho blows it out immediately and gets such a vicious joy from it. The next time Eurydice lights it, she cups her hands around it and glares at Clotho which was SO GOOD. 

Come Home With Me: This works way better live than in audios and is 10x better than the previews version. The audience cracks up after “cOmE hOmE wItH mE.” Also, before he goes over to her he’s trying to craft a paper flower for her (which she looks at like “wtf is this.”) It’s clear Eurydice isn’t really taking him seriously but is still intrigued, and she’s having a good time with him so why not humor him? Also Reeve’s movements as Orpheus are super fast and jerky which just makes the awkward humor even better.

Wedding Song: AHH SO FLIRTY AND FUN. You can tell they really challenge each other with their polar opposite worldviews. When Eurydice says “you wanna take me home?” she flashes her shoulder under her coat and poses dramatically which is the most Eva thing I’ve ever seen. The turning point comes hard when Orpheus sings his song and procures the rose, and Eurydice’s admiration and wonder are so real it hurts my heart. Also the way Orpheus perks up at “when we’re wed” kills me. Eva went up on “and the trees gonna lay the wedding table” which I like better than taking it down. 

Epic I: Amber looks absolutely radiant when she stands up and stares out in the middle of the song, that is all. But Reeve sounded lovely and the staging wasn’t what I expected, I always thought he was sitting during this number. 

Livin’ It Up On Top: The Biggest Bop To Ever Bop. Everyone is so excited to see Persephone and she is So Drunk. I’ve heard the kiss goodbye to Hades is often different show-to-show; at my show, she kissed him on the cheek and he didn’t really look up at all. Then when she was towards the stairs she looked back to see if he would be looking at her and he wasn’t so she looked pissed before descending. Amber���s energy and dancing are on fire during this number, it really just has to be seen. Before Eurydice was pushed into dancing by Persephone, she was chatting with John’s character and it was really cute. Also ORPHEUS’S TOAST!!! It’s such a sobering moment in the middle of the party and everyone can find some truth in it in their life. But right after, the music springs back to life SO LOUDLY and made me ridiculously happy. What a fun number.

All I’ve Ever Known: SOFT SOFT SOFT SOFT. Eurydice’s vulnerability throughout this song and Orpheus’s constant reassurement of how much he loves her,,, chef’s kiss especially considering how the plot develops after. When Orpheus begins his part, Eurydice is turned away from him and when he sings “who am I that I should get to hold you?” she does a tiny head shake like she’s not deserving of it :(( but then when he sings his next line she turns around and starts singing with him. The interlude is so beautifully choreographed and intimate (but #EurydiceTops) and the ending + the kiss just melt my heart. They continue kissing into the train whistle for WDH. OH ALSO!! Persephone is off to the side watching them for the whole song with a very bittersweetly romantic expression… she’s definitely thinking about when she and Hades were young and in love like that… 

Way Down Hadestown: Everyone’s reaction to this song starting is so fucking funny, Hermes and the Fates look so excited for the Drama™️, Persephone is pissed and needs a goddamn drink, and Orphydice just want everyone to go tf away so they can cuddle. (Seriously though Orpheus and Eurydice are so ridiculously cute in the background of this number) I’m obsessed with Amber’s bent over exorcism dance and her energy throughout the song, it’s such a last hurrah for Persephone above ground and she’s going to make the most of it damnit. Eurydice’s curiosity grows throughout the song and she starts drifting away from Orpheus until Hades’ entrance, and his entrance is SO COOL. As annoyed as Seph is to go back under, you can see a glimmer of excitement at seeing Hades again especially since she doesn’t realize how much he’s changed Hadestown. The ending of the song is so good and Eva’s belting kills me.

A Gathering Storm: Orpheus and Eurydice are staring up into the audience at the “storm” which adds a really cool ominous effect. What was even more ominous was all the ensemble finding different exits from the stage (I was mostly watching John who exited through Hades’ balcony door, but they all used a different one) and backing off the stage completely dead eyed. Definitely a nice visual symbol of them becoming the workers. Eva conveyed Eurydice’s fear and anxiety so well, especially with the Fates bringing back the “wind comes up” motif; the return of this motif, especially after Eurydice’s vulnerability during All I’ve Ever Known, is a great manifestation of Eurydice’s doubt in her decision and her security with Orpheus.

Epic II: Reeve’s voice Big Pretty. I love the staging of this Epic with Orpheus all alone on stage, it’s hard not to believe in the power of his song once the music picks up with “king of mortar.” I also really love how the workers come up as a visual representation of the evolution of Hadestown. + the transition to Chant makes me NUT.

Chant: Seph’s look of absolute disgust as she enters Hadestown is soo good and I LOVE the workers choreo. One thing that really surprised me was that while Amber brought a lot of anger to Persephone, there was also so much sadness? Especially when she was listening to Hades justifying his actions, it was like a devastated horror and despair rather than unflinching anger. (Also her mic went out a tiny bit during her lines but it’s barely noticeable listening back to it) Orpheus is so in his own world during his bits and we are ALL Hermes yelling at him to “look up!” The most iconique part of the song though is 100% “the gods have forgotten the song of their love” where everything stops and Persephone rips her hand away from Hades and then Orpheus goes right back in with the la la las. As for Eurydice’s verses, Eva’s vocals may not have been as strong as they could be but her acting killed me. You really got the sense that she wanted to believe in Orpheus, she wanted to believe that she could be optimistic like him but the world was dragging her down into her jaded ways. The Fates were so vindictive grabbing her bag/jacket and she was crying when she fell on the floor :((

Hey Little Songbird: My mom as soon as this song started: “Did he win a Tony?” I really didn’t get predatory vibes from this which I liked as a directorial choice, it was a lot more like Hades was just laying the offer out and not like he had underlying sexual motives. (That being said... the way he skulks around stage... Big Hot) My favorite dumb detail in this number though was definitely how after “they’ll take you down, they’ll pick you clean” the Fates lined up and gave Eurydice a little wave with the most sinister smiles on their faces.

When the Chips Are Down: This song starts with Hades walking offstage and leaving Eurydice alone (except for the Fates and Hermes as the narrator) to consider his offer, and she’s standing at the front of the stage in the same pose from the Tonys performance with the two coins in her hand. Eurydice seems extremely overwhelmed and emotionally tortured by the Fates; they taunt her by twirling her around and pretending to include her in their dances which distresses her a lot. But you can tell that they’re just confirming what she’s already thinking. And man are the Fates GLORIOUS. They’re so much fun and their harmonies are incredible. I still can’t believe Jewelle Blackman just exists with a voice like That... HOW.

Gone, I’m Gone: Eva sang this a lot differently than I’ve heard in usual audios? It was still excellent but I guess she was just trying some new things with it. (Not to harp about how much I love Eva but her acting is just so fluid and adaptable depending on what she’s feeling that performance, no two performances are the same with her for sure) She was so heartbroken but also very resolute :((

Wait for Me: STUNNING SHOWSTOPPING BEAUTIFUL PERFECT NEVER SEEN BEFORE NEVER THE SAME- Yeah this was good. Orpheus’ pure panic at seeing Eurydice gone and how he immediately throws himself into rescuing her THAT’S LOVE BITCH. When the workers start rotating on stage during “how to get to Hadestown” their lights are shining straight out into the audience and it makes you feel like you really are a part of the number. Not going to harp on the staging too much considering we’ve all seen the Tonys performance but the swinging lights took my breath away and when the stage opens up with his la la las and the lights of Hadestown shine so brightly and the workers are staring up in awe? (Hadestown absolutely deserved best set design don’t @ me) The best moment in the whole show. All the fuss about this number is so justified. It’s utterly incredible.

Why We Build the Wall: The staging of this is so simple yet so effective. The workers stand up ramrod straight and resume their dead eyed look as soon as Hades (and Persephone) enter the stage. This song hits so hard in 2019 and I’m so grateful it exists. Tbh though I COULD NOT take my eyes off of Amber the whole song, well at least until Eva ascended lol. Her barely masked horror and despair are so well conveyed yet she has to sing this song she couldn’t believe in less. After seeing it live, I much prefer the lack of a Eurydice solo- in this version, Eurydice doesn’t sing at all until the final line, rather just taking in the entirety of Hadestown wide-eyed and almost scared until she assimilates. It doesn’t really fit this characterization of Eurydice for her to have already internalized the mantra of the workers and I much prefer seeing Eva’s face journey up until she reluctantly sings the final line. By far my favorite part of this song (which I could honestly write an essay on) is the moment right after Hades calls Eurydice to his office; Eurydice and Persephone share the longest look that I couldn’t put my finger on for a while, but I think the best way to describe it is just utter powerlessness. Eurydice is powerless to refuse Hades and is scared of what might happen, but her looking at Persephone for help does nothing because she’s equally as powerless to stop her husband from fulfilling his power trip. It’s such a subtle moment between the two women at the mercy of a man and gahhh I could talk about it forever.

Our Lady of the Underground: I WOULD DIE FOR AMBER GRAY, I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE I SAW THIS SHIT LIVE. She’s one of the greatest performers of our lifetime and deserves every award ever. She enters the stage arm in arm with Hermes which is so cute but homegirl is SCHWASTED. She keeps on taking swigs from her flask and her dancing is just so ridiculous but works so well?? Her life is falling apart but she’s having the time of her life which is honestly relatable. One cool thing about this number when I saw it is that half the band was different so I got to hear some different names than usual when she introduced them. My soul fucking ascended on “you want stars?” and didn’t come down until the song ended. God bless Amber Gray.

Way Down Hadestown (Reprise): Ahh I was surprised by how much I dug the staging for this number, the way the Fates dance through and around the workers is so cool. Eurydice’s face changes throughout the song to reflect the sense of dread that keeps building up, and at the end she tries to run away and is blocked by the workers :((

Flowers: Eva actually cried through this whole song it’s fine I’m fine. She’s sitting down on her knees the whole time and just looks so small and sad my heart. I feel like Eva’s changed the way she sings this song from London a lot and she’s sacrificed a lot of vocal tricks and notes for a more helpless, lonely, devastated performance and it’s sooo good.

Come Home With Me (Reprise): THEY’RE SO HAPPY TO SEE EACH OTHER KILL ME. They literally do not let go of each other the whole time and you can see how much they each blame themselves for how things happened and how much they don’t want each other to blame themselves and it all just hurts a lot. But Eurydice’s face just falls and becomes fearful when she remembers Hades and realizes they can’t leave :(

Papers: Hades is LIVING for the drama in this song. The whole time, Eurydice is just trying to get Orpheus to go because she doesn’t want to break his heart anymore than she already has. Hades is still on his power trip for sure and relishes telling Persephone to stay out of it and telling Orpheus about his deal with Eurydice. Eurydice has to be physically ripped away from Orpheus for the fight scene and you can see how much her heart is breaking thinking about what Orpheus might think of her now. OKAY AND THE FIGHT SCENE, I’ve heard criticisms of it for being cheesy but I honestly think it’s really well choreographed and engaging. It’s not just the workers mindlessly beating up Orpheus as I previously thought, most of it is in retaliation to Orpheus trying to get back to Eurydice or make his way up to Hades (I guess to fight him which would be HILARIOUS) Persephone and Eurydice are both watching and the powerlessness of the female characters definitely comes back as a theme.

Nothing Changes: Harmonies!!! Acapella!! This is such a short song with such little staging that I don’t have much else to say than these women’s voices are incredible.

If It’s True: At the beginning of the song Eurydice reluctantly joins the workers and looks away from Orpheus as he sings the song, which clearly hurts Orpheus. He starts at such a low place but his process of inspiring the workers and exposing the truths of Hades’ façade is sooo well done and I love the response from the workers. This song is such a good turning point for Orpheus of realizing the world is shitty but also realizing there are more concrete ways to change the world and change people than just writing songs. Also this is a recurring theme in each song but AMBER’S FACE JOURNEY DURING THIS SONG. In this version of the show, Persephone actually knowing who Orpheus is adds a new urgency and purpose to her pity for him which I love (more on that in the next song.)

How Long?: Hi as everyone’s favorite How Long? Stan™️ I was SO THRILLED WITH EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE. Amber and Patrick are just so fucking good at understanding what drives their characters it’s insane. The staging is basically just them on either side of the lift (which is under the stage at this point) with a literal chasm between them as fog pours on the stage. Patrick barked out some of his lines in the intro as if he was insecure and threatened by Orpheus and Persephone’s investment in Orpheus which was a new layer I hadn’t considered. I think older versions of this song have been more conceptual and less urgent; Persephone used to be arguing for the concept Orpheus represented (love, freedom, idealism) but now her argument is deeply personal after a whole show of watching Orpheus fall in love with Eurydice, toast her bringing summer back, and suffer in Hadestown. She really plays it as Persephone’s last stand and that if Hades doesn’t relent, he stands no chance of getting her back emotionally. And Hades is SO STUBBORN AND SMUG up until Persephone pulls the “just as long as I am your wife,” at which point he realizes just how endangered his marriage is. The final chorus is just so heartbreaking as they realize how irreconcilable they are but how desperately they love each other anyways.

Chant (Reprise): The shortest summary of this is Hades Has Feelings And Hides Them Under A Power Trip x20 ft. UNIONIZING. Hades really feels like he’s lost control over Persephone, the workers, and himself and has to flex on Orpheus by belittling him and Persephone as well as building his ego up. So yeah, not a great look but damn is it fun to watch. The workers rising up is so good, they’re doing their work when they suddenly start breaking off and questioning the status quo. Persephone is also seething the whole song and just extremely pissed off that Hades is reacting like this after she tried to talk some sense into him. But as for her verse (RIP in peace), as much as I love it, I didn’t miss it all that much seeing it live. I actually didn’t even th ink about it until a few hours after the show. I think the song is stronger with it, but now I guess I can see why they cut it? BUT BOY OH BOY WAS I NOT READY FOR THE MOMENT™️. The lights of Hadestown get so bright you can’t even look at them and “I conduct the electric city!” is so LOUD you feel it in your bones and then everything is dark. It’s such an indescribable moment live and is also Hades’ most arrogant moment in the show which is Fun considering he’s about to get emotionally rekt.

Epic III: NO SONG HIT ME HARDER THAN THIS SONG. Some details from the beginning I loved was Eurydice grabbing Orpheus’ hand and giving him A Look showing how much she believes in him and his song, and how nervous Orpheus was at first with the high stakes. But as soon as the la la las started I was TOAST. It was clearly the last thing Hades was expecting to hear and shook him to his core. Amber started crying as soon as they started, and her “let him finish Hades” was so soft and sad. Also Orpheus is looking at Eurydice during the whole “it was like you were holding the world when you held her” bit which is just as painful as it sounds. You can just see Hades’ whole world he’s built coming down around him as the music swells and he and Orpheus go up on the lift and THE NOTEEE. It’s as perfect live as it is in audios. Also the workers individually standing up and taking off their skullcaps is such a good touch. But seriously I could not take my eyes off Amber this whole song, she was crying almost as hard as I was tbh. When the song slows down and we get to “where is the treasure inside your chest?” Orpheus is clearly just reading Hades so hard, and Hades is just slowly walking over to Persephone without breaking eye contact. Hades’ la la la is so so so soft and barely a whisper, but Persephone just breaks down as he takes her hands. The moment is so tender and well acted I nearly died seeing it I swear. PLUS HE PULLS OUT THE FLOWER!!! CINEMATIC PARALLELS!!!

Lover’s Desire: I loveee the new instrumental for this and the use of the la la las. I always expected the dance to be extremely tender and reverential which it somewhat was but I was SO pleasantly surprised by how FUN it was. They had their emotional moment at the end of Epic III but this really just shows you what they were like when they were young, you just watch them and think about how much fun they must have had years ago. They’re smiling and teasing each other the whole time until they end with Persephone’s head in Hades’ shoulder and stay that way all through Promises.

Promises: This song is way more happy than it has any right to be considering it made me cry again. Eurydice is so in awe of how Orpheus brought the gods back together and they strip away every promise of finery and security and just relish in how much they love each other plainly. Also the workers are on the side the whole time, Afra and John are clinging to each other and so are Ahmad and Kimberly, but with Timothy hugging the both of them. Eurydice actually directs her line “I don’t know where this road will end, but I’ll walk it with you hand in hand” tot he workers and goes down the line grabbing their hands and singing to them individually. And the vows at the end!!!! That’s always been one of my favorite parts of the show and they delivered so well. Orpheus lays everything out on the table and gives Eurydice the choice of whether or not she wants to stay with him, and I love the fact that he does this after he literally came down to the underworld for her. He recognizes that he fucked up and she doesn’t owe him coming back with him, but she reassures him of how much she loves him right away. They can’t tear themselves away from each other when they ask Hades if they can go, and when he says “I don’t know” Persephone pulls away with the most betrayed look on her face :(

Word to the Wise: I have nothing to say except the Fates are perfect and have never let me down.

His Kiss, The Riot: Patrick’s portrayal of Hades’ inner conflict in this song…. *chefs kiss* The way he stares at the flower as a symbol of Orpheus and love and redemption but can’t make himself surrender to it completely… The “all my children” verse really makes you feel like he thinks he’s helping the workers. Also I love the way he shouts “who makes WORK for idle hands.” It’s just such a good villain song, especially when the cacophony of instruments swell around him so eerily. He sings the final part of this song straight to Hermes, almost like he’s hoping he’ll give some input but Hermes is tragically confined to his position as the messenger. Also the way he looks straight at Persephone during “nothing makes a man so bold”….

Wait for Me (Reprise): The way Hermes delivers their instructions at the beginning is so resignedly sad like you can tell he knows what’s going to happen but is trying to give them hope :( They just want to make it out together so badly, but you can already tell Orpheus’ anxiety and doubt is kicking in. Not sure if this was intentional, but the staging of Orpheus and Eurydice at the front of the stage singing the wait for me melody and looking up at the audience reminded me of A Gathering Storm; instead of facing off against the literal storm, they’re preparing to face off the mental storm to come. The workers are so desperate for them to make it out, the “show the way” bit is so impassioned and breaks my heart. AND THEN HADES AND PERSEPHONEEE. They start on opposite ends of the stage and make their way to each other as they sing, and then come closer until they’re holding hands but then the turntable turns them apart. This scene just perfectly shows how much they’ve both grown throughout the show and how they know that their love isn’t perfect, but all they can do is try. The entire cast harmonizing on the wait for me melody at the end is SO transcendentally beautiful, and then Eva jumps in and belts for the GODS!! I love this number so much, especially how the workers and Persephone are so emotionally invested in their success but in the end Orpheus and Eurydice are just left alone.

Doubt Comes In: This song is BRILLIANTLY staged and I’m so glad Rachel Chavkin has her damn Tony. The whole stage is dark and filled with fog and you really feel how lonely and scary it must seem, especially with the sinister music and malicious singing from the Fates. Eurydice is in our view at the beginning and when she is singing, but other than that, Orpheus is literally walking this road alone. Reeve does such a great job conveying not only how anxious Orpheus is but exactly why he is anxious, and it’s SO hard to watch especially compared to how optimistic he was at the start of the show. As they reach the end, the walls begin to close back up and cover the lights of Hadestown, and then It Happens and my heart just DROPS. The light flash back on and illuminate everything so horribly- it takes so long for either of them to even form words as they realize what happened. When Eurydice drops she drops FAST and it’s so viscerally upsetting watching her go down as Orpheus runs to her. His face absolutely shatters :(( also my mom and her friend had no idea how it ended and they were so shocked and upset lmao.

Road to Hell (Reprise): Andre takes a really long time to just take everything in and let the audience react before he even starts with “aight.” He walks all the way over to the pit and looks down at where Eurydice was for a long time, and Orpheus is just sitting there shell shocked and gutted. The whole first half of this song is just so slow and purposeful, recycling the motifs from Road to Hell and then you finally get what they mean by “it’s a sad song, but we sing it anyways.” The catharsis I felt seeing Eurydice come out for “anybody got a match?” and Persephone rising up on the lift to symbolize spring coming back with a look on her face that I can only describe as tired but grateful was so strong. Andre carries this finale so beautifully and the swelling music and harmonies just make me CRY. The song ends with Orpheus coming out again in his apron with a smile on his face which is so lovely.

We Raise Our Cups: This song just grounds the whole show and gives Persephone (and Eurydice) the chance to reflect on the show’s themes of love and perseverance which I adoree. Amber’s voice is so lovely and this is such a perfect reciprocation of Livin it up on Top and just made me so happy :’)

#my posts #hadestown #take a shot eveytime i repeat the same exact phrasing or talk about amber's acting lmao #n e ways i hope someone likes this hehe it took a long time and i want to go back to the show #nyc trip 2019

[katrou1894-blog]

Frozen 2 Movie Review (No Spoilers Until Partly Through)

*All rights to this photo belong to Walt Disney Studios Hi Everyone!

Welcome back to Katie’s Messy Little Blog! I want to do something different (again) for this blog post. A movie review!

I, like many others, flocked to the movie theater the weekend before Thanksgiving to see the greatly anticipated Frozen II. (Sorry it took me so long to get this review out btw. The end of November and beginning of December has been super busy! 😅 )

[FYI the first half of this blog will be spoiler-free, so it is safe to read the first half of my blog if you haven’t seen the movie yet and you don’t want spoilers. It will be super obvious when we hit the spoiler part of the blog 😉]

I’m going to start by sharing, I LOVED this movie! I think it is one of the best films that Disney has produced this decade! (Not quite the best because I actually think that spot belongs to Coco, but this would be a close second!) Although Frozen II is a sequel, it really didn’t feel like one to me. Frozen II, of course, has the same cast of characters (with a couple of great additions like Lieutenant Mattias and Bruni), but this film also had almost an entirely different feel to it than its predecessor. Everything from the high fantasy elements of the film to the (at least in my opinion) much more mature soundtrack felt very different, but “good different.”

Frozen II also did an excellent job of tying the two films together. There are quite a few specific call back to the first film, both serious and humorous, which makes the jump from the first to the second film much smoother than it might have been without these specific references. Plus the storyline of Frozen II really is just a continuation of the first film, full of plausible and likely next steps for each of the characters.

Other then plotline, I also really loved some deeper Nordic cultural references and influences that Frozen II includes, the absolutely gorgeous animation (seriously one of the visually prettiest movies I have ever seen!) and the incredible, heartfelt and meaningful music. I could go on about all of these topics for a bit, but I strongly encourage you to go out and see the film and see what I mean for yourself!

SPOILER WARNING!!!!

(If you read past this section and you haven’t seen the film yet it is your own fault that you got Frozen II spoilers 😉 You have been warned.) For those of you who have seen Frozen II or to those of you who don’t care about reading about spoilers, welcome to the spoiler section of this blog! I am going to start my spoiler section by sharing my only real complaint about the film.

Frozen II leaves some VERY IMPORTANT sections of the film unclear. They chose to vaguely tell/hint at major reveals, leaving (I believe) many moviegoers somewhat confused until they later explain what happened in the film. There are two key moments, in particular, in which this happens.

The first being when Elsa awakens the spirits of the forest. This supposedly occurs at the very end of Elsa’s song, “Into the Unknown,” when she reaches out to the phantom voice that has been calling to her and she conjures the weird floating, ice-diamond, element symbols throughout Arendelle. Although this scene was showcased in promotional materials for the film, I was still very confused by this moment until Elsa tells Anna a few minutes later (after the entire population of Arendelle is evacuated to the nearby cliffs) that she had summoned the spirits of the forest (okay…). Admittedly, upon the second viewing of this film (Yes, I have seen it twice already. Judge all you want, I am content with my life choices. 😂) this series of events made much more sense because through the course of “Into the Unknown” Elsa actually dances/interacts with each of the elemental spirits which (at best) hints at Elsa potentially awakening the spirits. (I guess…) I think this really didn’t make sense the first time around because the film hadn’t yet explained what the water horse, hopping flame, the rock giants and the gust of wind were (it had only implied). So (I believe) between the overall vagueness of the scene and the lack of prior explanation of what the spirits are that’s why at least I was (perhaps many others were too) scratching my head at this point.

The other key moment that was unclear was when Elsa discovers that she is the fifth spirit. This occurs during Elsa’s other show stopper tune, “Show Yourself.” I really just don’t think this scene is very clear because one moment Elsa is in the large ice room surrounded by images of her memories, then she is singing with one of her mother’s images. (Who turns out to be the voice calling her?? Also unclear about this, however, the actress who voices Queen Iduna for Frozen II, Evan Rachel Wood, is credited for singing this song so I guess so??) Then suddenly the elemental shape appears (which not so discreetly is in the shape of a snowflake (We all see what you did there Disney)), Elsa steps into the center of this shape, and then she gets, yet another, dramatic makeover while she is singing an epic song. Don’t get me wrong, this is a stunning sequence and a super cool moment, but other then the makeover, a giddy face by Elsa, and a glowing snowflake, but there is no direct explanation on what is happening in this scene until about 20 minutes later when Elsa explains it to Anna. When I first saw this scene I guessed that they were trying to imply that Elsa is the fifth spirit, but it just wasn’t clear.

Now, in defense of this scene, I really am not sure how they could have made it more clear other than maybe Elsa saying to herself, “Of course, it was me all along!” However, I understand why the filmmakers may not have wanted to do this since it would seem quite narcissistic if Elsa had stated this, especially at this exact moment. Nonetheless, this scene did lose some of its power because of the lack of clarity.

I will also say that the overall spirit plotline/origin story is very vague and it leaves me with quite a few questions, specifically about the spirits. I am willing to, for the most part, overlook most of this vagueness because I did overall enjoy the film that much and I think that Disney is really striving for a different kind of storyline with this film because of the spirits and high fantasy elements. [However, if Disney actually answers my questions about the spirits (especially more on why Elsa is a spirit) I would not be opposed to a Frozen III. Assuming, of course, that they stay true to their commitment to high-quality storytelling. Seriously Disney, please don’t just make Frozen III for the money. If you do it well then you can both make great art and make a ton of money.]

Okay, now that I have shared my only real frustration with Frozen II, I want to get back to sharing about the film’s strengths.

The character development in this film is truly amazing! The majority of the film’s focus was, of course, on Elsa and Anna, but there was some really great character development for the beloved side characters in the Frozen gang. Both Olaf and Kristoff really grew in this film and took some maybe slightly unexpected, but interesting and crucial roles within the film.

Olaf in this film is “growing up” and “maturing” which leads him to ask a bunch of questions, to research, and to essentially become a walking and talking fun fact machine. Olaf represents children that have endless questions about the world and how everything works. I love that this is the direction that the filmmakers chose to progress Olaf’s character. Plus they use Olaf’s curiosity of life as an important vessel of key information that the film needs to explain in order for other parts of the film to make sense. This primarily being the concept that “water has memory” which Olaf shares with the group and keeps insisting on throughout the film. (And which he turns out to be right about, at least according to the film.)

[Also I really love Olaf’s silly line, “Samantha?” Towards the beginning of his song “When I Am Older.” It has been reported that Josh Gad, the actor who voices Olaf, did, in fact, improvise this line and the filmmakers loved it so much that it stayed in the film. However, I am burning with the question of Who is Samantha??? For now, I choose to believe that it must be the name of the promised, but not delivered upon, girlfriend of Olaf which was suggested during early discussions of the film who clearly was cut from the end result. ‍💁 ] Kristoff also has some truly incredible character development himself! Kristoff has always had an interesting role within the world of Frozen. He starts off as the brutish, but lovably dorky companion of Anna in her original search for her sister, then through the course of their journey he turns into the true love interest for Anna (leaving Hans already not looking super great before he reveals he is evil). Essentially, this is his entire arch for the first film. Naturally, Frozen II deals with Kristoff’s next character steps. It was absolutely no surprise to me that Kristoff spends the majority of the new film attempting to propose to Anna, however, what is so revolutionary about Kristoff in this film is both his open expression of emotion (since society has for generations and generations told men the bull crap that it “it isn’t manly to have emotions”), the fact that he doesn’t actually journey with Anna through the entirety of her journey and that Kristoff is also extremely supportive of Anna and he really doesn’t try to “save her.”

Kristoff has this amazing love ballad, “Lost in the Woods“ about halfway through the film. I love this scene for two reasons. Firstly, because this is a scene where Kristoff is free to express his emotions and frustrations. Secondly, because this scene is ridiculously funny! Kristoff sings in the woods with the help of his reindeer friends (especially Sven). This song pokes fun at pretty much every boy band ever and every weird and overly dramatic music video ever. Plus, I love the subtle hint at Queen’s famous “Bohemian Rhapsody” music video where Kristoff and his reindeer friend’s heads are highlighted on a black background.

I also love the fact that Kristoff very much has his own journey in this film. He is left behind by Anna, Elsa, and Olaf for the majority of the primary adventure of the film. Now, to be fair, the group (or at least Anna) didn’t want to leave Kristoff behind and the only reason why he was left behind was his own fault because of his weird proposal scheme with a bunch of reindeer. Yet, Kristoff’s alone time allows for his dramatic, but powerful emotional expression. This separation from the rest of the group also allows for Kristoff’s key positioning towards the end of the film in which he is able to help Anna in her mission to destroy the damn.

Kristoff’s unique positioning in the film not only allows him to help Anna destroy things, but it also allows for a subtle, but powerful moment in film history. It is not very often that a female lead is “allowed” by a male lead to go off and just be able to do what she needs to do without the male questioning her. Kristoff in this epic battle sequence does not question Anna at all. He allows her to take control of the situation and supports her in her efforts. This is HUGE! Now, don’t get me wrong, there are other films that have allowed for this before, but not many.

Kristoff also gets huge kudos for delivering (at least in my opinion) the best line in the film. After Anna apologizes for leaving him behind on their journey, Kristoff states, “My love is not fragile.” I love that Disney chose, in this moment of potential conflict, to show the strength of love and a solid relationship, rather than show a potentially distracting fight. I hope this moment will sink into young children’s heads and hopefully help them understand what a healthy and strong relationship could look like.

Anna also has a powerful and interesting journey in this film. Anna is incredibly protective of Elsa throughout the majority of the film. It is clear that Anna is struggling with a massive amount of change that she is facing in the film and she desperately wants to cling to her strong bonds (which she finally got at the end of the first film). Anna is this sort of overprotective, semi-controlling mess throughout the majority of the movie and it isn’t until she loses a couple of these dear bonds that she starts to face and accept her new reality of change. This leads me into possibly my favorite part of the movie, Anna’s song “The Next Right Thing.” This song is directly after Anna loses both Elsa and Olaf, two of the people (I guess I and counting a snowman as a person in this…) that she is most close to. I LOVE the fact that Disney actually dared to create a song about grief and the realities of loss. This is such a powerful and honest song about grief and the grief process. Anna mourns and struggles to find motivation to go on, yet still keeps stepping forward (both metaphorically and physically). This song acknowledges so many of the thoughts and struggles of losing loved ones, but also the active choice to keep pressing on, to do “the next right thing.” This scene is so full of meaning! Everything from the fact that Anna is trying to find her way through a cold wet cave through the course of this scene (stumbling towards the light at the end of the tunnel), to the fact that her costume changes slightly at this point, she loses her purple cape which she wears through the majority of the film and is now left in her black dress (a morning dress perhaps?), to the deeply meaningful lyrics. This is, by far, one of the most powerful scenes in the film and I so deeply value that Disney included this scene about such a difficult topic in such a high profile film. This scene (at least for me) made an already good movie, into a great one. A movie full of meaning and one that genuinely reflects life in many ways. Another favorite aspect of Frozen II that I really love is that each of the major characters in this film goes on their own paths of discovery. I have already discussed most of them. Olaf deals with “growing up” and how to process the world around him. Kristoff struggles with his emotions and feelings of rejection (although he is not actually being rejected, but sometimes we can feel like that even when it is not true). Anna struggles through her co-dependent nature and loss of control. Actually, looking at all of these major themes in the film really makes it quite clear to me that Frozen II is not only an enjoyable film but is also a very mature one.

Now, I’m sure most of you have noticed by now that I haven’t yet discussed Elsa’s journey in this film. I have saved this one for last primarily because Elsa’s journey is, of course, the primary journey of the film, but also because this is the journey that resonated the most with me personally. Elsa experiences this call, one that in the film is literal, but in real life can be a concept that might deeply resonates with some people as this kind of internal call. At the heart of Elsa’s call is the call for deeper meaning and a greater purpose in life. A call “Into the Unknown” of our lives. A craving to go out there and do what we are meant to do. I love that a children’s film brings up this “call.” I know (although I don’t have voices in my head) I personally have experienced a similar kind of craving to go out and do what I am “meant to do.” I believe that this very much can and does exists, although maybe not everyone has it or listens to it. I love that Disney also chose to include this kind of call in a children’s film. Perhaps this will help people to better understand this concept and help to motivate those who hear it, to pursue it. (Such as a young writer working on pursuing her dreams 😉 )

Before I conclude this blog post, I would love to just bring up a few short notable mentions of various other things that I really loved about Frozen II.

1. First off, I deeply appreciate that Disney did NOT take the “long thought to be dead parents are suddenly alive” approach in this film. This is done just a little too often in children’s film and I don’t like it (although some do it better than others, How to Train Your Dragon 2 for example I believe did an excellent job with bringing the long lost mom back, but I digress...). If Disney had taken this approach then it would have totally ruined the blow of the parent’s death in the first film. Plus it would have personally really pissed me off. Primarily because why would parents (especially ones that really needed to be there for their children (particularly a child with special needs) and their kingdom) just not come back? Or at least fight and work their butts off in order to get back to their loved ones? It just wouldn’t have made sense and I am really glad that Disney did not take this root. If anything they confirmed that Anna and Elsa’s parents did, in fact, die at sea. This is tragic, yes, but necessary. (I’m also a firm believer in the concept that the mentor has to die in order for the protagonist to grow to the point they need to be. Frankly, Anna and Elsa’s parents had to die in order for both of them to grow.)

2. I also love the fact that Anna and Elsa don’t actually stay together at the end of the film. They both have larger responsibilities/calling that they have to tend to. Although they, of course, love each other, sometimes physically staying in the same place as your loved ones hold you back from what you are capable of. The end of the film also shows a good example of how to stay connected even when you don’t live together anymore.

3. Okay, this one isn’t directly connected to the film actually because it is about one of the songs that got cut from the final product. So if you listen to the full Frozen II Deluxe Edition of the album (Available on Spotify if you are wondering) then you will come across the song “I Seek the Truth.” I have found this song quite delightful and I highly encourage people to go check it out! This song has intriguing lyrics and gorgeous music. It doesn’t quite have the powerhouse quality that “Into the Unknown” and “Show Yourself” have (which I am guessing is the main reason why this song was cut), but it does have a clever tune, plus it is very enjoyable and meaningful (at least in my opinion).

Overall I LOVED Frozen II and I am super excited for it to join the Disney library. The film is both highly enjoyable and deeply meaningful. Kudos to Disney for yet another masterpiece!

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#frozen ii #disney #blogs

[semi-imaginary-place]

KH3 is like half a game, it feels incomplete and clunky. It sets up events that never happen and tries to force moments without having the build up to support them. The game does some things really well and reaches some truly heartfelt emotional beats and solid character moments.

3:48 PM - 31 Jan 20191 reply0 retweets1 likeReply 1 Retweet  Like 1 View Tweet activity

The Disney (and Pixar) worlds were pretty well incorporated and mostly able to contribute thematically to the game unlike sometimes in past games were the worlds were kind of just dropped into the game.

The Toy Box much like Halloween Town brings up how dolls/toys/those who begin as inanimate objects can gain hearts. Monstropolis allows a plausible  entry point for Vanitas with the connection between fear induced scream  energy and the negative emotions of the unversed.

Of all the worlds, I enjoyed Sora's time with the Big Hero 6 gang the most. Their interactions felt genuine and I had a lot of fun watching them. It also had the most complete arc of the worlds with the continuation of the movie's theme of living after loss.

Most of the worlds' story arcs felt incomplete. Starting in Olympus we are left hanging with Pete finding Pandora's box and the city in ruins. The story just kind of ends. There also was not enough time and build up to give significance to Hercules' choice to rejoin the mortals.

In Twilight Town, with all the discussion surrounding hearts and data from Coded to KH2 to KH3, that a whole other Twilight Town exists was completely dropped. It felt like the game was leading the audience somewhere and then never followed through.

With the Toy Box, the Sora, Goofy, and Donald leave and don't come back with Woody, Buzz, and the others still stranded in another world just hoping to one day meet Andy again. The search for Andy and the other toys is the main arc for this world and its never resolved.

While some worlds aren't quite as obviously half a story arc, all of them could have used more time. Many of them assume you have already seen the source material. In Frozen, Hans being the villian is the big twist but with the first half of the movie cut, there's no impact.

Pirates of the Caribbean makes no sense to anyone who hasn't seen the movies. I wish there was a scene of Sora unlocking Tia Dalma given how it was setup to happen. There was good characterization for Sora here though on how both he and Jack are free spirits.

The Winnie the Poo part while sweet (because I love Winnie the Poo sections) doesn't go anywhere. Sora just loses his connection with Poo and disappears from the cover, and then a few mini games later he's back. Sora's comment on how their bond has weakened never goes anywhere.

In the other games you search for lost pages or help Poo regain his memories, here there is no story. It's a lost opportunity to do, well something,  but that can be said of much of the game. They could have used this part to talk about how relationships must be nurtured.

The ending also fell a bit flat because of the buildup-payoff problem. The game tries to show the characters despairing only for someone to swoop in and give them hope. The problem is that in the Keyblade Graveyard they do this so many times it loses its impact.

Given the amount of stuff this game should have resolved, not enough time was spent on that. Instead precious time was spent trying to create sequel hooks. In doing so, the cohesiveness of the game as a unit was compromised. The game was too short for all they tried to achieve.

At times the narrative would point "Look! its a  happy/sad/intense/etc. scene", but without a proper build up, these  scenes lacked emotional weight.

I'm conflicted on KHUX in KH3.  I liked Chirithy reuniting with Ven, Laurium possibly remembering, and Strelitzia's maybe cameo. The black box stuff could have been cut. Its to connect  KHUX with future games, but it does nothing for the Xehanort saga and bogs KH3 down.

Then there is the mysterious girl with connections to Lea, Isa, and Ansem that we are only hearing of now. Who is she? Is she Ava? I don't know but they should have saved it for another game.

I thought all the keyblades of the Union members coming to help was a nice touch, but why did Ephemer of all people show up? He was a Dandelion; the player was the one who chose to stay (except the player has no canon appearance in khux which makes them hard to depict).

On one hand I got really excited looking for my KHUX username but on the other hand it was a little too 4th wall breaking and took me out of the game. The other 4th wall leaning scenes with Axel didn't do it for me either.

I did like the definitely-not-instagram loading screens. They were just this side of absurd to be amusing. It was cute. Humor is a subjective thing but I didn't like the increase in jokes in this game. It broke immersion for me.

Some were funny like Verum Rex. Others though felt forced. KH3 had more Donald, Sora, and Goofy poking fun at each other. At first it was fun, but then they kept doing it and it got old.

Maybe its because of all the jokes and narrative problems broke my immersion in the game or maybe its because I'm older now, but KH3 wasn't as magical an experience for me as the other games.

I don't mean magic in how many spells Donald can cast but in that sense wonder, that the extraordinary is possible. That sense of magic is why the Roxas prologue of KH2 is one of my favorite parts of the franchise.

Part of it also is that the section where Sora goes saving everyone's hearts from the Lich after they "died" didn't reach me emotionally. Which is a shame since the part right before where Sora runs around in the Final World and talks with the stars is one of my favorite parts.

I was surprised we didn't see more Dives to the Heart and battles at the center of the heart given the Terranort, Ventus-Vanitas, Xion, etc. After Sora got the power of awakening I was expecting him and Riku to use that to free Xion and Terra.

And then we would get an epic battle where Terra finally kicks Xehanort out of his own body. I also wanted to see Aqua beat up Xehanort. Aqua's suppose to be super strong from spending 10 years in the Realm of Darkness.

Kairi deserved better. Kairi deserved more. 3 games (II, 3D, III) on how Kairi trains to become a keyblade wielder and she doesn't get to do anything. Why was she kidnapped anyways? The answer is to give an excuse for Sora at the end to have a "I must do this alone" moment.

Kairi was kidnapped just so Sora could angst over her and so he could go save her. She deserved better.

The developers really pushed the Sora-Kairi romance this game. I was disoriented since we since the last game we saw a lot of romantic indications was 17 years ago in KH1. Riku got third-wheeled this game.

Enough complaining, parts that worked pretty well/were well executed: Big Hero 6, Monsters Inc, Sora finding the Door to Darkness in Destiny Islands and Aqua returning to the Realm of Light, Sora's interaction with other characters(Rapunzel, BH6, Jack, etc), the Final World.

Visually the environments are amazing! I was so happy running around everywhere. Its pretty. (and the heartless are cute)

KH3 was on the low side for number of worlds visited. Again, I'm surprised how (comparatively) short the game is. There was a lack on Final Fantasy characters as well (or well videogame characters given how TWEWY was in 3D).

I would have loved to see a Moana world. Moana, Maui, and Sora interactions would have been great. Thematically it would have worked too since Moana's plot centers on how Te Fiti losing her heart changed her.

In every KH there's always been some wham moments and that didn't happen to me at all in KH3... until the every end with Luxu. Many of us have been suspicious of Xigbar for a very long time. His organization chair height is too high. He seems to know more than he should...

As much as I am complaining, I do like the Kingdom Hearts III. Its a good game.

I've said it before, but KH:coded is a thematic summary of the entire series and one of the important points in that game is how Data Sora understands hurt. Data Sora understood how to live through hurt and this is something we see Sora learn as well through the games.

In CoM Sora did not understand this. All the way to 3D he did not know how to deal with hurt so when Roxas shared all his pain, that contributed to Sora sinking into darkness. In KH3 though Sora has grown and can accept hurt.

I would have though liked to have seen a more overt conclusion to Sora's relationship to darkness. Sora has always had darkness in him, he's not a princess of heart (or Ven) and there were hints before KH3 that he was falling to darkness.

Anti/Rage form are a manifestations of that darkness. Maybe this was just sloppy character writing, but Sora is noticeably meaner during KH2 and at the end he says "maybe the darkness has gotten to me, too". In KH3, besides rage form Sora's darkness isn't directly addressed.

Back to UX. The devs connected the epilogue, the secret reports, and UX well. That's all that was needed really. From Backcover we already know the black box is important. KH3 shouldn't have wasted time focusing on it.

And about X girl )Shuld?? idk). It really is awkward how they bring her into KH3. If she's the reason Lea and Isa got into this mess they should have dropped a line in 358/2 or one of the other games something like "Don't forget we're doing this for her"

Another good scene was Aqua giving Ven head pats. This gave me life.

Scala ad Caelum was built inverse on top of Daybreak Town. I didn't notice! Never mind what I said earlier, there's the "oh shit... what" moment. I'm just going to sit here mind blown thinking of all the implications...

#kh #kh3 #kh3 spoilers #spoilers #i really did like the game #kingdom hearts

[hannewk]

The (not very concise) story of our Arcade Fire adventures (Chapter 21: Two go crazy in Berlin)

I should probably note at this point that it was raining as the gig started. It had been raining on and off during the support act and we were quite enjoying being cooled off a bit. We had adorned our super sparkly tops and were ready to go (or ‘start’).

We were enjoying the cooling rain and the familiar pre-gig playlist when suddenly the volume went up and Stevie Wonder’s 'Pastime Paradise' started playing. We weren’t really sure what was going on, this hadn’t played at previous gigs and we didn’t know a start time but all of a sudden they appeared on the screen. They were stood on a small stage towards the back of the crowd doing their lovely group hugsie. The crowd grew louder as they approached and made their way onto the stage in front of us. And so it begins again!! AGAIN!! I’d like to think it maybe finally felt like it was real at this point but I really don’t know!!!?? It was all so intense and vivid and emotional and colourful and LOUD!! (I really need to cut down on the exclamation marks don’t I?). Anywhoooo, the rain was falling, the crowd was cheering, the atmosphere was electric and the fuckers decide to start with ...

WAKE UP

WOW a ‘Wake Up’ opener! They did this at the Isle of Wight festival and have played around with it a bit in the states over recent weeks but I wasn’t quite ready for it on this occasion. Blog fans (all two and a half of you) will know this is an emotional one for me. I somehow manage to hold it sort of together until the clouds decide to part and reveal a beautiful rainbow. I’m the least spiritual person in the world but that’s definitely my dad waving. Yes dad, I see you, I'll dance my fucking arse off for you tonight!!

POWER OUT

Funny having this one early on too, but it’s a great way of getting the crowd going. We completely lose it towards the end, we leap about like two mad women with our sparkles flailing; Jules drops her glasses on the floor - will they survive the gig?? Some of our sequins end up at our feet and on the other side of the barrier but we don’t give a shit.

LAIKA / HEADLIGHTS LOOK LIKE DIAMONDS

Two tracks that they don’t play regularly but that we’ve been lucky enough to see already this tour. This obviously doesn’t stop us in the slightest. Headlights particularly is a special track for us (for some reason I had it going round in my head as we were queuing here and in Dublin, where they last played it for us).

DEEP BLUE

Okie doke, Deep Blue happened. I didn’t mention the soundcheck we heard while we were queuing in the last blog but this was one of the tracks they practiced, along with both Half Lights and Cars and Telephones. We obviously figured they’d play at least one of these and were over the moon when Deep Blue appeared. Win got the words wrong (there seemed to be some distraction going on at the centre of the crowd that was throwing him) but Regine helped and it was WONDERFUL and EPIC and a few other relevant adjectives thrown in despite the false start. Something about them not always being ‘perfect’ makes them more perfect weirdly.

ELECTRIC BLUE / PUT YOUR MONEY ON ME

Wonderful as always - Regine is sassy and sexy and the queen of everything (now)!!!

CARS AND TELEPHONES

They wouldn’t do this to us would they?? Oh holy fuck they would. This was performed delicately and beautiful; I really want a recording of the mature Arcade Fire performing this track because it really is special. The only problem is, it kills Jules. She crumples into a tear soaked glittery wreck, so much so our neighbours in the crowd seem quite concerned. Because I’m an understanding and sympathetic friend I put her in a headlock and let her sob it out with a ‘deep pressure hold’ (although apparently this actually tipped her over the edge - I really can’t win!!)

HALF LIGHT I / HALF LIGHT II

Wow so we’re getting Deep Blue, Cars and Telephones and both the Half Lights after all?! What have we done to deserve this? I just …. how do I ….. no words …. okay moving on ……..

ROCOCO

I’ve always loved Rococo, but it’s become particularly special this tour. They just seem to like to play it when we’re there!! Lots of leaping and sky punching (I think Jules has recovered now).

THE SUBURBS / READY TO START

We’ll never tire of this familiar duo. I think this was our most epic Ready to Start to date, Jules jumps on the toe of a man behind us several times and elbows the lady beside us in the face - oops! Then we have the wonderful extended ending to Ready to Start and we know that’s leading us into a costume change for Regine and …..

SPRAWL II !!!!!!

Oh god!! I think I’ve said this on previous blogs but this was by far our most energetic Sprawl II. We’re whipping about our sequinned tops and ‘Regining’ it up big time. Regine is wearing skin tight black sparkles and it’s just us and her and she’s loving it!!! (Well not exactly, but she’s definitely clocked us a few times this gig).

REFLEKTOR / AFTERLIFE / CREATURE COMFORT

Regine puts on her ‘Han and Jules stylie’ sequinned top and dances in the crowd during Reflektor. Afterife is wonderful as always, and then we have a new transition into Creature Comfort. Our beloved magical music man, Stuart Bogie, is a bit slow on the uptake with the CC arm wave so Jules and I start doing it anyway. We don’t seem to have the influence he has!!

EVERYTHING NOW (CONTINUED) / EVERYTHING NOW

Post encore this is a new experience for us, Everything Now has always been the first (or on one occasion second) track of the gig. It kind of feels right though. This was the first track we saw them perform live so it should be near the end of the final chapter of this era. During Everything Now Regine marches off stage and tells someone in the front row off; we both agree we wouldn’t want to be in her bad books!! Also around this time a security guy in a EN jacket comes over to us and drops a folded setlist into my hand and an EN plectrum into Jules’ hand before marching off. This is somewhat surprising but we don’t really take it in at this point; the plectrum ends up clamped in Jules’ hand for most of the rest of the night, she’s worried that if she opens her hand it won’t be there or it will be taken away. I think there are tears at this point but in all honesty I can’t remember, my memory seems to have only logged shapes and sounds and colours and emotions but nothing concrete and clear.

REBELLION

By this point we’ve both (without consulting) come to terms with the lack of Tunnels. It seems a fair trade off to be honest; I mean what a setlist! It comes full circle again during Rebellion when Will runs in front of us backwards and forwards before mounting the stage.

It’s the perfect conclusion; we can tell because we don’t feel too hollow when they eventually leave the stage at the end. We know this will take some processing and we’re not sure it’ll ever feel completely real, but it was an evening of joy, beauty, emotion and fucking wonderful music, and we are leaving feeling lifted (and yet also strangely emotionally fucked). Surely there’s no other experience in the world quite like this!!!!!!

#arcade fire #berlin #zitadelle spandau #emotionally fucked #arcade fire you fuckers #to be fucking continued

[metavanaj]

What the hey, AJ? | First Assault [Volume: January 2019]

YES, THE TITLE IS COMPLICATED.

Hi - if you’re reading this, you know the drill. My name’s MetaVanAJ, insert quirky catchphrase and/or ‘your mum’ joke here. Welcome to the first volume of ‘What the hey is AJ play...ing?’ Yeah, the title isn't the greatest but hey it rhymes...mostly. I just thought I’d use this as quick way of communicating what I’m playing (or going to play) at the moment, & hopefully give some quick recommendations, to pique your interests in some really good stuff. As much as I would love to do a video version of this, I feel I would lose the spontaneity behind the idea; once I get my shit together I’ll do one of these in video form, someday. The only reason I’m writing this now is because January 2019 is so jammed packed with excellent NEW titles (despite most of this article being about ports & remakes), that I literally won’t be able to keep up. And I can’t even keep up in an off-season so this is just exponentially worse. So, ‘what the hey is AJ playing’ in January 2019?

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes

(Platform(s): Switch | Release Date: Jan 18th)

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is taking another core title hostage so please buy this game. Joke aside, I am still looking forward to this title. Like everyone else, I’m a bit iffy and uncertain about how the gameplay is shaping up but I’ll be picking this up day one. Why? For one reason only, of course: Suda51. You see Goicha Suda is a brand - he is a different, ‘special snowflake’ and he makes different ‘special snowflake’ games. His name has been slapped on various works the past decade, and then some, but he actually hasn’t directed a game since 2007’s No More Heroes, on the Nintendo Wii. Travis Strikes Again marks his return to the directorial seat, albeit an odd-way to do so. But hey, this means pure unadulterated Suda-vision, the same vision that gave us Killer7 and No More Heroes; meaning narrative-wise we’re up for, what the kids call, some wacky shit. That and being able to blast through this with a bud, in co-op, will ease any of the pain, if the gameplay isn’t to mechanically engaging. Pain divided...is worse - why would you subject your friend to that?

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

(Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC | Release Date: Jan 11th)

I saw someone call the ‘Tale of’ series the McDonalds of JRPGS - I don’t think that’s an accurate metaphor but hey it’s an interesting way to open up a paragraph, no? Tales games tend to be a bit ‘same-y’ but it’s a bloody excellent formula and the fact they’ve released so many of these over the years just goes to show the formula works. Don’t like the characters, story & setting of one Tales game? Play the next one - gameplay remains the same, fundamentally. I won’t dive into the gameplay deep here but let's just say the ‘action’ is pretty decent in this ‘action-RPG’. Personally, you can’t go wrong with any Tales after Tales of the Abyss (Symphonia didn’t click with me, my bad). Apparently, Vesperia is one of the best in the series, so if it’s half as good as Abyss, and what I’ve seen of Xillia, then this is definitely worth a buy - especially on Switch, so you can take this bad boy on the go. Don’t worry, high-frame lovers: it was 60fps on the 360 in 2008, it’ll a good time, trust me. And this is one also has a dog with an eye patch in it...and a pirate midget. The definitive edition also adds all the extra goodies from the japan exclusive PS3 port, which is all the more reason to pick up a copy now. LIKE RIGHT NOW.

New Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe

(Platform: Switch | Out now!)

Eh, I’m not super excited about this game in particular but moreso the idea of the game itself. Shocking fact: New Super Mario Bros. games have been decent this entire time. The games have no spunk, in terms of story and presentation, but boy is the level design tight & fun. If you’re looking for a good 2D platformer on Switch, get Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, or hey even Shantae ½ Genie Hero. The other big 4-player party-style offerings however, have been kinda meagre offerings. Super Mario Party looks boring and soulless, Kirby: Star Allies is patronisingly easy to a point of being ‘unfun’ (and that’s for a Kirby game), and I forgot how to casually play Smash without crushing people’s dreams. Super Mario Bros. U is a great platformer and even greater with a few buddies but I’m not clamouring to get it at full price. I still strongly recommend it though if you’re just looking for some 4-player platform ‘em up fun. Comes with Luigi U too, that’s nice - surprised they didn’t charge us for it, all over again. That’d be almost as bad as charging a full 80 Australian dollars for it...oh wait.

Resident Evil 2 [2019 remake]

(Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC | Release Date: 25th Jan)

Legitimately thought, I don’t need to sell you this one. You saw the trailer, you’re probably already hyped that Resi is ‘returning to its roots’; whatever that means. Personally, I haven’t touched Resident Evil up until recently, as I am a big baby when it comes to jump-scares. I know their coming but I still go through the physical shock of getting scared by set jumps. The titles I have been delving into (and loving) of late, have been Resi 4, 5 & 6...all at once - and I wonder why I can’t tame the backlog? Anywho, that’s why I am excited for the Resi 2 remake. Why should YOU be excited? The Resi 2 remake takes from all the best components of the series, and smooshs them together to create something extraordinarily beautiful -  the actual horror elements and sense of claustrophobia through environmental design from the first three classic games, the tight gameplay formula from the modern Resi formula (4, 5, 6) and the beautiful new engine from Resi 7. Resident Evil 2 (2019_ is like a best hits album of everything the series has achieved so far. Play it, yeah - you owe it to yourself.

Kingdom Hearts freaking III

(Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One | Release Date: 29th Jan)

At this point, you are either on the Kingdom Hearts hype train, or you live in beautiful bliss of the Kingdom Hearts hype train. I got in an abusive relationship where whenever I thought about Kingdom Hearts 3, I would angrily playthrough the entirety of Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix again. I’m better now - I spend my days now complaining about Dream Drop Distance like a good boy now. That being said: I’m a fan like everyone, I’m getting this Day 1, and I payed an extra 20 Australian dollars, on top of full price, for the deluxe edition. If you’re wondering why you should buy Kingdom Hearts 3, all I’m going to say is it’s going to be epic. It’ll have a rippling behemoth impact on anyone who’s touched a game from the Eastern shores, like Final Fantasy XV did, at its release. If you’re a newcomer, obviously start with Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, as they are the finest action-RPGs I’ve ever played, in my short time on this earth. But if you’re even remotely invested in the series, you’re already drooling - that fabled release of KH3 is so close I can practically taste it. It tastes so good. I SWEAR TO GOD THOUGH IF I SEE ‘FLOATY COMBAT’, I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’ll DO. I’ll see you at the end of it all...

Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal

(Platform(s): PS4, PC | Release Date: 18th Jan)

Woah, that last one got a little emotional there. Anyways, this one’s an easy sell: BOOBS, BUTTS, ANIME BABES, & BODACIOUS BLADES. Senran Kagura Estival Versus was a interesting musou that showcased some promising gameplay elements; I actually had to activate more than two brain cells at once, during my playthrough. Shocking, I know. Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal is a remake of a 3DS game (Senran Kagura Burst), which consists of gameplay more akin to a 3D-Beat-’em-up. It simply looks like a bit of a meatier Estival Versus so I’m keen to check it out & see how deep the game mechanics well is. If you’re looking for a fun light action romp too, you should as well. The presentation, which I won’t delve into here, is often what is a bit of a turn off for newcomers - I personally have never been swayed by it either way it. Sure, it’s a bit saucy but it doesn’t detract from the fact that whatever the Senran Kagura series tries its hand at, is often a pretty fun & polished experience, albeit a slightly shallow one. This one isn’t necessarily a ‘must get’ but they’re not charging full price so it is definitely worth an investigative playthrough, if you can get past the ‘fan-service-y’ presentation.

Well, that’s it for the first volume of ‘What the hey, AJ?’ Next time, I hope to adapt this into video form & hopefully spin in a few funnies, as well as just tighten up the structure. Next time, probably won’t be all new releases either - I’ll probably end up doing another just if I find that everything I’m playing, at any given time, is amazing. I have, and always will be, MetaVanAJ - stay cool, fools. Actually, that was mean calling my audience fools. Stay cool, individuals.

[adambstingus]

5 Directors That Should’ve Stopped After One Movie

Some filmmakers are like marathon winners; they stay consistently strong and fast for an inconceivable amount of time, and when they finish, you are left inspired by their existence. And some directors have careers like my performance in my second grade’s three-legged race. I fell at the start, busted my nose open, and writhed on the ground for a while as my partner walked away from me. The following five directors did similar things in their own metaphorical three-legged races. What began as a burst of glorious potential devolved into something hideous and often embarrassing.

5

Zack Snyder With Dawn Of The Dead

Zack Snyder has always been the Mountain Dew Code Red to Christopher Nolan’s iced coffee. They both direct grand adventure movies, but while Nolan’s philosophy is that of the kid in the back of the freshman year writing class with the scarf, Snyder’s is frat bro existentialism. Snyder is pretty great at examining the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men, but only when those men are grunting at each other, “HOLD ME BACK BEFORE I LAY THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUT, DUDE”-style. In any other case, it’s a toss-up. For example, in Watchmen, he totally got the plight of radioactive superman Dr. Manhattan. But the only female on the team, Silk Spectre, was shot like she was in an impromptu Axe Body Spray commercial.

Read Next

5 Superhero Movies That Are Only Worth It For One Scene

The only movie that Snyder has done that’s consistent throughout is his first, the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of people being eaten by zombies at the mall. It’s also fantastic in a way that few remakes actually are, mainly because it does not seek to replicate or expand upon the original. A lot of times in horror remakes, directors try to cram in “answers” to questions that they think viewers have, which totally robs the movies of their potency. We’re scared of the things we don’t know. When we say “Oh, man. He uses a chainsaw? What the hell?” we don’t want the director to respond with, “Well, he got his chainsaw from the old slaughterhouse he used to work at.” There’s nothing terrifying about learning where Freddy Krueger shops for his sweaters.

Instead of that route, Snyder actually chops off any of the rough edges of the source material. The original ends with a bunch of bikers attacking the mall that the heroes are in, which leads to a lot of cool gore effects, but bites the face off of the movie’s sense of pacing. It robs us of the intimate climax that Dawn Of The Dead could’ve built to. Snyder’s version doesn’t have that problem, as it’s a horror/action film from the very beginning. Sure, it’s not as satirical as the original, but it doesn’t need to be. Snyder is not interested in creating a horror film that’s also an allegory. The zombies don’t have to represent anything. They can get by when they’re just being spooky zombies. Constantly reminding me that “The real villain … is man” is the best way to get me to hate both zombies and English teachers.

Sadly, Zack Snyder’s next project would be 300, which had cool action scenes but was the movie equivalent of a guy whispering motivational quotes to himself in the mirror at the gym. And since then, all of his films have either been bloated epics or that thing about warrior owls. It’s a shame. Because when Snyder makes films that aren’t really about anything other than what’s on screen, he shines.

4

Terrence Malick With Badlands

Terrence Malick is the #1 “Well, I appreciate his work” director in the world. “Well, I appreciate his work” directors are a rare breed, as they’re usually either obsessively loved or “appreciated.” And by “appreciated,” I mean “I know a lot of time probably went into putting all of those pretty colors on screen, so I can’t hate this one too much.” I truly appreciate Terrence Malick, even though his films feel like staring matches with an old computer’s screen saver.

His first film, though, is a refreshing take on a genre that needs all of the fresh takes that it can get. Badlands is a serial killer movie, and the biggest problem with the serial killer subgenre is that very rarely do such films actually make us disgusted with a serial killer. Instead, we marvel as the killer says awesome quips and performs super sweet serial killer melee moves. Silence Of The Lambs is a great movie, but it’s hard to feel bad about a guy who eats other guys when he’s Jason Bourne-ing his way out of police custody. Yeah, the hero should be the person who hasn’t wantonly killed multiple innocent people, but I saw the killer do a double backflip off the diving board once, so my vote is set.

Badlands makes serial killing look really awful. Like, “Dude in front of you doesn’t know how to work the self-checkout lane” awful. It’s the story of a 15-year-old girl who becomes enamored of a 25-year-old man, and then gets swept up in a life of theft, violence, and cross-country travel when he decides to start murdering South Dakota. So we see the killer through her eyes, and as her opinion of him grows sour, any chance that we have of admiring Martin Sheen’s sweet bangs slowly evaporates too. Sheen is a shitty dude in this one. Like, “Friend who doesn’t put your Blu-ray back in its case and instead just lays it bottom-side-down on the floor” shitty.

3

Roland Emmerich With Universal Soldier

From the mid ’90s to the present, Roland Emmerich has been a constant source of the loud and mediocre (Independence Day, White House Down, Stargate), the loud and dull (Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), and the loud and very, very historically inaccurate (The Patriot, 10,000 BC, Anonymous, Stonewall). He is the “Hold my beer” to Michael Bay, and no matter what trends are popular in Hollywood or how financially successful his previous film was, we can always count on Emmerich to deliver something that somehow damages the intellectual standard of the explosion.

Emmerich started as a filmmaker in Germany, and most of the films that he made there are either impossible to find in America or were released years later and just on video. His first American film to receive a theatrical release was Universal Soldier, which features Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme as soldiers who get resurrected to become … universal soldiers? I’m not sure what the “universal” thing means, but I guess it’s because, now that they’ve been brought back to life, they’re not limited by the earthly definition of “kicking ass.” They can now kick all the ass in the universe. Side note: This theory is remarkably unconfirmed.

For Emmerich, Universal Soldier is amazingly subtle. And that’s not just because Van Damme is given the emotional range of a yam in this film. It’s mostly a big chase movie, and not just the typical Emmerich “Leave nothing in this major American metropolis un-fireballed” fare. Van Damme and his reporter girlfriend stop in a town, Lundgren catches up to them and shouts, Van Damme escapes, and Lundgren responds with more heavily accented shouting. Compared to Emmerich’s other stuff, Universal Soldier is Driving Miss Daisy.

I don’t know if “limiting the scale” is the key to fixing Emmerich, as he doesn’t have much luck in crafting personal tales. So maybe the key is Dolph Lundgren. Maybe Emmerich made a movie that was one big combustion, but Lundgren absorbed it all, and then released that energy by yelling. I’m no professor, but I think the science works out.

2

Seth MacFarlane With Ted

Seth MacFarlane is a comedy titan. Not satisfied with ruling Fox’s TV animation division, he’s also branched out into movies. And he’s made three so far: Ted, A Million Ways To Die In The West, and Ted 2. Guess how many of those were pretty solid? A hint is hidden in the title of this column.

Ted, the story of Mark Wahlberg and a talking stuffed bear, has some heart in it. There are plenty of movies about dude friends who have problems with each other whenever one of them gets in a serious relationship. They want to drink beer and fart out their dicks, but SHE likes organizing the apartment! Whatever will they do? Ted is still crass, but in centering the conflict around Wahlberg not wanting to abandon a literal stuffed bear, it truly nails home how infantile the whole “bros before respectable type-A females” struggle is. You can still have a fun life and chill with your bear, even if you’re married. And those who don’t understand that are the true dick-farters.

After Ted, MacFarlane made A Million Ways To Die In The West, which most closely resembles those Leslie Nielsen jokes-every-ten-seconds comedies, with the problem being that MacFarlane doesn’t have the warm presence of Nielsen. Nielsen was the comedy genre’s beloved uncle, while as an actor, MacFarlane is still its odd half-cousin. Ted 2 is about teddy bear rights, which expands a few jokes into a two-hour movie. It never ends up being as funny or likable as Ted, and feels like it was made not because MacFarlane wanted to make it, but because a Hollywood executive decided that Ted 2 was their only means of finally getting a third Jacuzzi installed.

1

Eli Roth With Cabin Fever

I’m always hesitant whenever a horror director says they’re making a homage to a certain era of horror films. This is usually because they let the homage aspects outweigh the actually-being-a-good-movie aspects. “But it’s a homage to ’80s slasher films! It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece!” Yeah, but it’s supposed to be competent and somewhat exciting, instead of a 90-minute declaration that you’ve seen Sleepaway Camp multiple times.

One of the only really good ’80s homages is Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, which is sort of styled after The Evil Dead, but mostly does its own thing. Now, Cabin Fever isn’t perfect. Eli Roth’s writing would actually peak with Hostel Part II, which is a statement that no man should be forced to make. But Cabin Fever feels less like a guy trying to remind you of how great 1983 was, and more like a guy who’s trying really, really hard to make a fun, gory horror flick. Plus, it manages to pull off some gross-out moments that are sincerely shocking. Even in the age of things like The Human Centipede trilogy, which is edgy middle-schooler humor brought to life, Cabin Fever can still make you feel weird.

Roth’s next film, Hostel, desperately wanted to be like one of the graphic Asian horror films that Roth is a fan of. The biggest difference is that stuff like Takashi Miike’s Audition and Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil manage to place interesting stories and dynamic characters around their torture setpieces. Roth’s characters are a couple of dumb guys, which is meant to say something about how young American adults kind of treat other countries like playgrounds that they can fuck in, but it mostly comes off as Roth needing characters who explicitly won’t grow or change, because an arc doesn’t really vibe with a drill to the chest.

Roth would later make The Green Inferno, a movie that I saw on opening day because I can’t be trusted with my own money or schedule, and his next movie is a Death Wish remake. Remember that series, the one about Charles Bronson putting bullets in crime and crime-related activities? I don’t know whose idea it was to give that movie to the guy whose most famous scene involves cutting someone’s Achilles tendons, but I feel like it might have been a bad call.

Daniel has a Twitter. Go to it. Enjoy yourself. Kick your boots off and stay for a while.

Watch Independence Day right here if you’re a true American, and get one of the cool aliens in adorable Funko form and pity Daniel Dockery for hating everything amazing in the world.

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Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. A young woman from the trailer park and her very smelly cat. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, a new novel about futuristic shit, by David Wong.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-directors-that-shouldve-stopped-after-one-movie/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/177815193117

[samanthasroberts]

5 Directors That Should’ve Stopped After One Movie

Some filmmakers are like marathon winners; they stay consistently strong and fast for an inconceivable amount of time, and when they finish, you are left inspired by their existence. And some directors have careers like my performance in my second grade’s three-legged race. I fell at the start, busted my nose open, and writhed on the ground for a while as my partner walked away from me. The following five directors did similar things in their own metaphorical three-legged races. What began as a burst of glorious potential devolved into something hideous and often embarrassing.

5

Zack Snyder With Dawn Of The Dead

Zack Snyder has always been the Mountain Dew Code Red to Christopher Nolan’s iced coffee. They both direct grand adventure movies, but while Nolan’s philosophy is that of the kid in the back of the freshman year writing class with the scarf, Snyder’s is frat bro existentialism. Snyder is pretty great at examining the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men, but only when those men are grunting at each other, “HOLD ME BACK BEFORE I LAY THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUT, DUDE”-style. In any other case, it’s a toss-up. For example, in Watchmen, he totally got the plight of radioactive superman Dr. Manhattan. But the only female on the team, Silk Spectre, was shot like she was in an impromptu Axe Body Spray commercial.

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The only movie that Snyder has done that’s consistent throughout is his first, the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of people being eaten by zombies at the mall. It’s also fantastic in a way that few remakes actually are, mainly because it does not seek to replicate or expand upon the original. A lot of times in horror remakes, directors try to cram in “answers” to questions that they think viewers have, which totally robs the movies of their potency. We’re scared of the things we don’t know. When we say “Oh, man. He uses a chainsaw? What the hell?” we don’t want the director to respond with, “Well, he got his chainsaw from the old slaughterhouse he used to work at.” There’s nothing terrifying about learning where Freddy Krueger shops for his sweaters.

Instead of that route, Snyder actually chops off any of the rough edges of the source material. The original ends with a bunch of bikers attacking the mall that the heroes are in, which leads to a lot of cool gore effects, but bites the face off of the movie’s sense of pacing. It robs us of the intimate climax that Dawn Of The Dead could’ve built to. Snyder’s version doesn’t have that problem, as it’s a horror/action film from the very beginning. Sure, it’s not as satirical as the original, but it doesn’t need to be. Snyder is not interested in creating a horror film that’s also an allegory. The zombies don’t have to represent anything. They can get by when they’re just being spooky zombies. Constantly reminding me that “The real villain … is man” is the best way to get me to hate both zombies and English teachers.

Sadly, Zack Snyder’s next project would be 300, which had cool action scenes but was the movie equivalent of a guy whispering motivational quotes to himself in the mirror at the gym. And since then, all of his films have either been bloated epics or that thing about warrior owls. It’s a shame. Because when Snyder makes films that aren’t really about anything other than what’s on screen, he shines.

4

Terrence Malick With Badlands

Terrence Malick is the #1 “Well, I appreciate his work” director in the world. “Well, I appreciate his work” directors are a rare breed, as they’re usually either obsessively loved or “appreciated.” And by “appreciated,” I mean “I know a lot of time probably went into putting all of those pretty colors on screen, so I can’t hate this one too much.” I truly appreciate Terrence Malick, even though his films feel like staring matches with an old computer’s screen saver.

His first film, though, is a refreshing take on a genre that needs all of the fresh takes that it can get. Badlands is a serial killer movie, and the biggest problem with the serial killer subgenre is that very rarely do such films actually make us disgusted with a serial killer. Instead, we marvel as the killer says awesome quips and performs super sweet serial killer melee moves. Silence Of The Lambs is a great movie, but it’s hard to feel bad about a guy who eats other guys when he’s Jason Bourne-ing his way out of police custody. Yeah, the hero should be the person who hasn’t wantonly killed multiple innocent people, but I saw the killer do a double backflip off the diving board once, so my vote is set.

Badlands makes serial killing look really awful. Like, “Dude in front of you doesn’t know how to work the self-checkout lane” awful. It’s the story of a 15-year-old girl who becomes enamored of a 25-year-old man, and then gets swept up in a life of theft, violence, and cross-country travel when he decides to start murdering South Dakota. So we see the killer through her eyes, and as her opinion of him grows sour, any chance that we have of admiring Martin Sheen’s sweet bangs slowly evaporates too. Sheen is a shitty dude in this one. Like, “Friend who doesn’t put your Blu-ray back in its case and instead just lays it bottom-side-down on the floor” shitty.

3

Roland Emmerich With Universal Soldier

From the mid ’90s to the present, Roland Emmerich has been a constant source of the loud and mediocre (Independence Day, White House Down, Stargate), the loud and dull (Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), and the loud and very, very historically inaccurate (The Patriot, 10,000 BC, Anonymous, Stonewall). He is the “Hold my beer” to Michael Bay, and no matter what trends are popular in Hollywood or how financially successful his previous film was, we can always count on Emmerich to deliver something that somehow damages the intellectual standard of the explosion.

Emmerich started as a filmmaker in Germany, and most of the films that he made there are either impossible to find in America or were released years later and just on video. His first American film to receive a theatrical release was Universal Soldier, which features Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme as soldiers who get resurrected to become … universal soldiers? I’m not sure what the “universal” thing means, but I guess it’s because, now that they’ve been brought back to life, they’re not limited by the earthly definition of “kicking ass.” They can now kick all the ass in the universe. Side note: This theory is remarkably unconfirmed.

For Emmerich, Universal Soldier is amazingly subtle. And that’s not just because Van Damme is given the emotional range of a yam in this film. It’s mostly a big chase movie, and not just the typical Emmerich “Leave nothing in this major American metropolis un-fireballed” fare. Van Damme and his reporter girlfriend stop in a town, Lundgren catches up to them and shouts, Van Damme escapes, and Lundgren responds with more heavily accented shouting. Compared to Emmerich’s other stuff, Universal Soldier is Driving Miss Daisy.

I don’t know if “limiting the scale” is the key to fixing Emmerich, as he doesn’t have much luck in crafting personal tales. So maybe the key is Dolph Lundgren. Maybe Emmerich made a movie that was one big combustion, but Lundgren absorbed it all, and then released that energy by yelling. I’m no professor, but I think the science works out.

2

Seth MacFarlane With Ted

Seth MacFarlane is a comedy titan. Not satisfied with ruling Fox’s TV animation division, he’s also branched out into movies. And he’s made three so far: Ted, A Million Ways To Die In The West, and Ted 2. Guess how many of those were pretty solid? A hint is hidden in the title of this column.

Ted, the story of Mark Wahlberg and a talking stuffed bear, has some heart in it. There are plenty of movies about dude friends who have problems with each other whenever one of them gets in a serious relationship. They want to drink beer and fart out their dicks, but SHE likes organizing the apartment! Whatever will they do? Ted is still crass, but in centering the conflict around Wahlberg not wanting to abandon a literal stuffed bear, it truly nails home how infantile the whole “bros before respectable type-A females” struggle is. You can still have a fun life and chill with your bear, even if you’re married. And those who don’t understand that are the true dick-farters.

After Ted, MacFarlane made A Million Ways To Die In The West, which most closely resembles those Leslie Nielsen jokes-every-ten-seconds comedies, with the problem being that MacFarlane doesn’t have the warm presence of Nielsen. Nielsen was the comedy genre’s beloved uncle, while as an actor, MacFarlane is still its odd half-cousin. Ted 2 is about teddy bear rights, which expands a few jokes into a two-hour movie. It never ends up being as funny or likable as Ted, and feels like it was made not because MacFarlane wanted to make it, but because a Hollywood executive decided that Ted 2 was their only means of finally getting a third Jacuzzi installed.

1

Eli Roth With Cabin Fever

I’m always hesitant whenever a horror director says they’re making a homage to a certain era of horror films. This is usually because they let the homage aspects outweigh the actually-being-a-good-movie aspects. “But it’s a homage to ’80s slasher films! It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece!” Yeah, but it’s supposed to be competent and somewhat exciting, instead of a 90-minute declaration that you’ve seen Sleepaway Camp multiple times.

One of the only really good ’80s homages is Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, which is sort of styled after The Evil Dead, but mostly does its own thing. Now, Cabin Fever isn’t perfect. Eli Roth’s writing would actually peak with Hostel Part II, which is a statement that no man should be forced to make. But Cabin Fever feels less like a guy trying to remind you of how great 1983 was, and more like a guy who’s trying really, really hard to make a fun, gory horror flick. Plus, it manages to pull off some gross-out moments that are sincerely shocking. Even in the age of things like The Human Centipede trilogy, which is edgy middle-schooler humor brought to life, Cabin Fever can still make you feel weird.

Roth’s next film, Hostel, desperately wanted to be like one of the graphic Asian horror films that Roth is a fan of. The biggest difference is that stuff like Takashi Miike’s Audition and Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil manage to place interesting stories and dynamic characters around their torture setpieces. Roth’s characters are a couple of dumb guys, which is meant to say something about how young American adults kind of treat other countries like playgrounds that they can fuck in, but it mostly comes off as Roth needing characters who explicitly won’t grow or change, because an arc doesn’t really vibe with a drill to the chest.

Roth would later make The Green Inferno, a movie that I saw on opening day because I can’t be trusted with my own money or schedule, and his next movie is a Death Wish remake. Remember that series, the one about Charles Bronson putting bullets in crime and crime-related activities? I don’t know whose idea it was to give that movie to the guy whose most famous scene involves cutting someone’s Achilles tendons, but I feel like it might have been a bad call.

Daniel has a Twitter. Go to it. Enjoy yourself. Kick your boots off and stay for a while.

Watch Independence Day right here if you’re a true American, and get one of the cool aliens in adorable Funko form and pity Daniel Dockery for hating everything amazing in the world.

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Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. A young woman from the trailer park and her very smelly cat. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, a new novel about futuristic shit, by David Wong.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-directors-that-shouldve-stopped-after-one-movie/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/09/06/5-directors-that-shouldve-stopped-after-one-movie/

[rememberthattime]

Chapter 32. Move II. Part III. Sydney

Whew! Made it.

Writing this trilogy has been a massive project, written over four weeks and across several countries. From the start, I knew this was going be a long process given the epic, exciting, exhausting, and wonderful three months these posts had to capture.

Thankfully, with heavy use of bullet points, I’ve finally managed to post Parts I & II. That leaves me with one last post: our arrival.

Part III. The finale. Welcome to ‘Straya.

Technically “our” arrival was actually at two different times: Chelsay landed in Sydney on 1/31/18 while I didn’t arrive until 2/5/18. This keeps happening for one reason or another, but Chelsay & I never end up taking these 8+ hour cross-oceanic flights together. Over the past two years, we’ve combined for 13 flights over the Atlantic or Pacific, but somehow only been together for TWO of them!

Oh well, we bought enough Tylenol PM in the States to knock us out for the entire 24 hour journey anyway. Plus, Chelsay’s early arrival gave her a chance to scout neighborhoods before starting work, and she hit the ground running! Over a series of four days (and as documented in 857 texts), she covered nearly every neighborhood in Sydney, sharing valuable details such as commute times, home quality, and potential for spider infestations. She didn’t just settle for house hunting either, she also set up our bank account, arranged cell phone plans, AND found six Din Tai Fungs near our temp housing.

Most importantly though, she found her way to Sydney’s beaches. We were moving in early February, so everywhere we’d been over the past eight weeks was cooooold. London, Tokyo, Kyoto, Dallas, and Seattle, all in the middle of winter. I never want to forget FaceTiming Chelsay in the few days before I arrived… It was busy season, so I was calling late at night at the Expedia office, looking out at the dark, cold, and wet Bellevue skyline. Meanwhile, on the other end of the screen, Chelsay was in 85 degree sunshine, sipping acai smoothies at Bondi Beach, with the sound of waves crashing & tropical birds chirping in the background. It was an awesome light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel, but it also might’ve been the most jealous I’ve ever been. Thinking about it, the only comparative jealousy was when she ordered ribs at our 2016 Valentine’s Dinner in Copenhagen…

Alas, it wasn’t long until my arrival, and my flight in was a beaut. The connection was a disaster (delayed in SEA so I literally sprinted through LAX to barely catch my next flight). But with clear skies, these 30,000 foot views of Sydney reminded me why I was running. 

The day I arrived was actually Chelsay’s first day at work, but I didn’t mind being alone because the Eagles-Pats Super Bowl kicked off right as I walked into our temp housing. Is there a better way to shake off 24 hours of travel than watching Tom Brady lose in the Super Bowl?  Only if you follow the Philly Special with a jet-lag fighting coastal run immediately afterwards.  (Experiment: as I’m writing this, my guess is I’ll look pretty pale in this first few pictures. I haven’t checked, but watch this space throughout the post).

That first night, Chelsay and I met up at the pristine Royal Botanic Gardens, where we walked through magnificently manicured paths towards my first glimpses of the Sydney Opera House. With the Harbour Bridge in the background, Chelsay and I looked out in awe as we reflected on all the effort it took to get to that exact moment. Late night interviews, visa sponsorship stress, Primrose Hill celebrations, BuzzFeed article and YouTube Sydney research, rushed moving logistics, and most recently, airport sprints. An exciting but challenging past couple months, but we’d finally made it to our new home.

So, status check: I’ve finally arrived in Australia. Yes, technically that’s where this post was meant to begin, but it took 500 words to set the scene… Chelsay had now started working too. Meanwhile, I was very much unemployed.  Chelsay didn’t find out about Sydney until December, so with Christmas holiday, my US busy season, and the Aussie school summer break in January, I pretty much hadn’t connected with anyone in the city. Like I said, very much unemployed.

Networking wasn’t my only priority though. Chelsay and I also needed to decide on a neighborhood, find a house (and furniture, electronics, etc), WRITE THIS DAMN BLOG, and most importantly, plan our first vacation (Western Australia, which I’ll save to discuss in my next post).

All in, there was certainly enough to keep me busy for a few weeks. Despite being unemployed, I was genuinely “working” the same hours as Chelsay. I’d roll into Starbucks at 8, take a break at noon to work out and eat lunch (a deli chicken & pickle sandwich -- the unemployed man’s Chick-fil-a), then head to the park and hop back into emails, or cover letters, or letting profiles, or Western Australia logistics, or this stupid Six Sigma course I signed up for. It’s more fun to write about the “Welcome to Straya” stuff we got into (which I’ll do further down), but I also want to remember how I used my days these first few weeks. (Note: tan)

One more moving logistic-y thing before the fun: our neighborhood decision. With the London move, I spent a whole post discussing how we decided on St John’s Wood. I don’t need to do that this time. What I’ll say is that we knew Manly was the neighborhood for us all along, but spent a week or two trying to convince ourselves that it wasn’t.

Remember the post about Chelsay waiting to hear back about her interviews? About how I’d researched potential neighborhoods even though she hadn’t been offered yet? ...Yeah, I’d picked Manly all the way back in November. It’s a laid back coastal town, filled with friendly young families and expats, and a self-sustaining number of shops and restaurants. Actually none of those factors matter... Manly Beach is TripAdvisor’s Best Beach in Australia, so I could’ve just stopped there.

There’s one downside to Manly though: in a country that’s already remote, Manly might be the most isolated neighborhood in Sydney. The town, which was literally a quarantine from 1820 to 1980, is on the very edge of Sydney Harbour’s northern peninsula, right at the mouth of the Pacific Ocean. It would be an hour drive to CBD, but the more efficient commute is by ferry, which:

Only takes 20 minutes

Passes the Opera House each way

Gives you the chance to see the occasional whale or dolphin on your way to work

Costs $7.50 per person per trip, or $30 per day total

For about 10 days, that last bullet was a deal-breaker... We actually moved on from our dream neighborhood and started looking in Coogee, Bronte, Bondi, Surry Hills, and Double Bay. By the time our first day of tours rolled around, we’d narrowed our options to Bondi & Coogee, and Chelsay & I felt okay about a few of the homes we toured. We’d gone through all of our Eastern Suburb options in the morning though, so with half the day left, our agent proactively scheduled a few tours in Manly.

When we arrived, it was just so obvious that this was the place for us. It comes with all the perks of a slowed-down, chilled-out beach community (beautiful beach, best surf in Sydney, and I can walk around without shoes on), but still has all of the activities we wanted nearby (shops, restaurants, tennis courts, running trails, and access to all 20 of the Northern Beaches).

Chelsay and I had to make a big decision. We knew we needed to live by the beach… Genuinely, this might be our only chance to ever live by a beach, so we really don’t have a choice. Well, what is the best beach town for us? Manly. Okay, then that’s all that matters and we’ll flex our spending to make the commute work. …That said, you get what you pay for with these views every day.

So, we decided on Manly, and then we took the best property available here. It’s on a hill and might be the highest point in town (no need for a gym membership), but it’s also two blocks from the beach, has amazing views of Manly and Watson’s Bay, and is entirely renovated. We moved in, unpacked all the US boxes we hadn’t seen in two years (it’s crazy how much useless junk we owned), and made an infinite number of trips to furniture outlets. We’re still not completely settled, but very happy with our sunrise views, runs up & down the mile-long beach, and back-breaking wipeouts while boogie boarding (maybe I shouldn’t have been all the way out by the surfers?).

Now. Enough logistics - on to the activities. In our first month, how have Chelsay and I taken advantage of living in Sydney?

Well, it all started very touristy, with routine trips to the Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opera House, and Royal Botanic Gardens. These might be obvious, but there’s a reason they’re so popular, and these views could never get old.

After the established favorites, we started getting into more local cuts. On Valentine’s Day (which is not celebrated here at all), Chelsay and I saw the very funny An Act of God in Darlinghurst. Some of the play actually relied on audience participation, so of course Chelsay got picked (she’s a magnet – the same thing happened at the Robot Restaurant in Tokyo). Like literally every audience participant ever, we were awkward and so God (or at least the actor playing God) playfully joked around with us. We used an intermission bathroom break to dry off our sweat.  

Speaking of performances, we also saw an outdoor movie (I, Tonya) in Centennial Park. The movie was great but the real show came beforehand. As the sun set, while laying back in our bean bags and eating Oporto (the new & improved Nandos), Chelsay and I looked on in awe as beautiful reds, oranges, yellows, AND BATS filled the sky. WTF, is this normal?? I had no idea there were bats in Sydney, but apparently I was the only one. Everyone else just casually carried on like there weren’t rodents flying around above us.

Other unusual activities: Chelsay & I arrived right around the Lunar New Year, which comes with a host of bizarre festivities. ~20% of Sydney’s population has immediate Asian ancestry (with 7% actually born in China), so the holiday is a big deal here. Whether walking through food markets, past train stations, or under the Harbour Bridge, it was impossible to miss the unique celebrations.

We’ve also managed to make friends in our first few weeks here. In London, it was tough to get together with other couples because our friend group was always travelling. We’d try to grab dinner or drinks with Brooke & Mike or the GEP crew, but genuinely have to schedule six weeks out because they’d be in Rome for two weekends, followed by Chelsay & I’s trip to Iceland, and then their parents would be in town, etc. With Australia, our vacations will be longer but more spaced out, so we have more weekends in Sydney for BBQs or hikes or time with friends. This social renaissance started in our first few weeks, with boating in Sydney Harbour (where the captain didn’t tell us there were sharks in the water until after we finished swimming), picnics on Manly Beach, and a couple’s hike from Spit Bridge with our Manly friends, Pete & Megan.

Chelsay and I also got out for a day-trip on our own, venturing an hour from the city for an 8 mile hike through Royal National Park. We heard about some Figure 8 pools on RNP’s coast, so arbitrarily found a loop trail that could take us there. I knew the pools themselves would be cool, but the prettiest views came from the hike itself: untamed palm jungles, coastal breeze along the headlands, and expansive coastline as far as you could see. (PS, update on my tanning experiment: solid coloring in the first few weeks)

To go with all these activities, Chelsay & I have also started to establish our inventory of food options, including: Sunset Sabi’s Japanese fusion, 678 Korean BBQ, Three Blue Ducks’ breakfast, Coogee Pavilion drinks, Harajuku Gyoza, The Whiskey Room, Bill’s breakfast, Thirsty Bird fried chicken, Bulletin Place cocktails, Mappen soba, Alice’s Makan Malaysian, Vic’s Meat Market brisket, and everything that was going on at the Grounds of Alexandria.

What has been the biggest highlight of our first month though? Without a doubt, it’s been Manly itself. We’ve only been here a week, but I already love this neighborhood so much. It feels like a resort town (which it was, until Aussies discovered flights to Bali). It’s so rare to find a place that offers quality, cleanliness, activities, and beach vibes. In Manly, the locals are as warm as the weather, the views are breath-taking, the restaurants are delicious, and shoes are definitely optional. After three months of bouncing around, Chelsay and I couldn’t have found a better place to finally settle.

Summarizing my last three posts, we moved from London to Sydney.

Okay, that’s over simplifying things because this prolonged move took three months and covered FOUR continents. Instead, I’ll use the bags we lived out of to summarize how far we’ve come.

On December 12, as Chelsay and I closed the door to our London flat for the last time, we knew we wouldn’t have our own home again until we were settled in Sydney. For the next 12 weeks, we’d be living out of the same bags we rolled around Heathrow that day.

First stop for our bags (and us): Japan, where we experienced the neon lights lifestyle of Tokyo, and enjoyed historic holy temples in Kyoto. Next, our bags arrived in Dallas, TX, where we busted out our specially-packed Christmas sweaters and cherished being home for the holidays. We then temporarily unpacked our bags for a month in Seattle, where we spent January reuniting and reminiscing with family and friends. Then, for the last leg of our trip, our bags caught a one-way flight to Sydney, where we wore the swimsuits we’d packed while it was snowing in London.

Now, as I write the last sentence of this three-part moving post, our bags are empty and stored away, finally unpacked in their new home. 

[erraticprojectjunkie]

Dewey's 10th Anniversary 24-Hour Read-a-Thon: 10 Books in 10 Years

Since it's the 10th anniversary of Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon, there is a special mini-challenge to commemorate the event. The task is to recommend a published book for each year of the read-a-thon's existence (2007-2017). Though it appears to be 10 years...it's actually 11, giving a total of 11 great books. As I started working on this challenge, I quickly realized that it would very easily stand as its own post and would likely make an update post far too bulky. So...bonus read-a-thon post! Whee! It took me a decent chunk of the day to finally get it all together, but here are my recommendations for some fabulous 2007-2017 reads... 2007 2007 was a fantastic year for books. I actually had four potential slam dunks on this one, but I had to go with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. It's the culmination of the series that was responsible for creating a whole new generation of fervent readers and for reigniting the desire to read in so many others. It didn't hurt that this baby is awesome. It's not my favorite of the Harry Potter series (I'm a lover of Prisoner of Azkaban), but there is no disputing that this is a read well worth the time. 2008 Another powerhouse series showed up in 2008. The first book of Suzanne Collins's amazing trilogy...The Hunger Games. When I read this series, I flat out devoured it. I waited until all three books had been released and read them back to back. I stayed up all night to get through the second book, Catching Fire because I just couldn't put it down. I busted out the entire trilogy in less than a weekend. It's just that good. 2009 If you're looking for a brilliant and beautiful historical fiction read, look no further. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is just....ah. It's sad and heartbreaking, but beautiful and redeeming. It centers around the Japanese-American interment during World War II, with the setting focused on the Pacific Northwest. It's one of those books that just makes your heart hurt...in a good way. 2010 I loved Amy & Roger's Epic Detour soooooo much. I have not stopped talking up this book since I read it. It was my 2014 Book of the Year and has been featured in several of my favorite lists and Top Ten Tuesday and Top 5 Wednesday posts. When I start talking YA fiction, Amy & Roger is one of my go-to recommends. Hands down. 2011 There is such a good wide range of genre representation in this list. I'm mildly proud of myself for that at the moment. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was a book I chose to read based upon the cover and a friend recommendation and it was a solid win. It was a finalist in my 2012 Book of the Year and, like Amy & Roger, has been talked up time and time again. This one ranks high on my reread list because I honestly miss the magic. I need to feel that book love again. 2012 And this is why The Night Circus was only a finalist and not a winner for the 2012 Book of the Year. Jenny Lawson, also known as The Bloggess, wrote a hilarious memoir that I nearly died laughing over. Rarely do I laugh out loud when I read a book, but that happened several times with this one. In fact, I was so enjoying Let's Pretend This Never Happened, that it resulted in several mid-read texts to friends who were also familiar with her and her blog. I couldn't shut up about how funny she is. If you need a laugh and you want to feel like your life is pretty darned normal, just grab Jenny's book for a read. She'll make you feel better. I promise. 2013 Looking for a book with all the feel goods that you'll want to hug when you're done? The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is for you. I did not want this book to end. I just loved, loved, loved it. It's cute and sweet and just a nice, relaxing read. This is probably the best beach read on the list.  2014 Two memoirs in a list of eleven books. Wow. I really didn't see that coming for myself. But...I will tell you that Now I See You by Nicole C. Kear was a total surprise for me. I really didn't expect it to be as good as it was. It blew me away. Kear is brutally honest about her life while still keeping things light and fun (something hard to do when your primary premise is a debilitating medical disorder). She has a way with words and just makes you feel like you've known her forever. If you read memoirs of any kind...grab this one. Yesterday. 2015 Oooh...oooh...oooh. One of my most favorite books ever. Seriously. And yet, one of the books I am still most confused by. It's complicated to explain. The Library at Mount Char is haunting, intriguing, freakish, and fabulous. It is completely mesmerizing and, if you are anything like me, will leave you nearly out of breath and wondering "what the heck just happened?". It's so incredibly awesome. There is little that can be said without dripping out spoilers, but if you want a book that's going to blow your mind (even several years after the fact)...well...we have a winner. 2016 This right here is a story of meant to be. I bought The Bookshop on the Corner honestly on accident, thinking it was a different read. Super pleasant surprise for me when I just flat out adored it. Again, a nice and breezy read that would be good on the beach or for a travel read. It's comfortable without just being fully predictable and it was just a decently fun read. Pure and simple. 2017 This is the only book on the list that I have not already read. But...I haven't read any 2017 published books yet. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green is on my read-a-thon list at slot number 3, so there is a chance that I will at least get it started before the read-a-thon has come to an end. I have super high hopes for it, as I think do a lot of other Dewey readers. This book keeps showing up in posts. It has to be the top mentioned book this go round. I have high faith in Green, so let's hope he doesn't let me down. And there you have it...a nice little mini-library. My 10 (11) Books in 10 (11) Years. Stock up on these babies (and grab the remaining books in the series reads) and you won't find a bad book in the bunch. (Again...high hopes for Turtles.) Did any of my picks make your list? Or were any of my picks a pass for you? This post originally appeared on Erratic Project Junkie and is copyrighted by Elle. Find EPJ on Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads

#24 Hour RaT #Books #Challenges #Read-a-Thon

[symbianosgames]

Classic Tools Retrospective: John Romero talks about creating TEd, the tile editor that shipped over 30 games

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If you were to ask a room of game developers about their first experience making games, many would tell you that it involved using a tool that came with the game that they were already playing. Most likely, they found it tucked away in the same folder as the executable, sporting an enticing name like “editor.exe”.

Many years before Unity 3D, companies such as id Software, Epic, 3D Realms, Blizzard, and BioWare would release tools along with their games, in the hopes that enabling people to create new content would grow the community and extend the lifespan of the game. For many people, these tools were not only exciting to use, but they were also their gateway into the game industry. The content that they created would later become their resumes.

In recent years, retrospectives of classic games have been well received at GDC, but there have been very few stories about classic game tools. This series of articles will attempt to fill that gap, by interviewing key people who were instrumental in the development of those classic game tools.

For the first article of this series, I have the great pleasure of speaking with John Romero about TEd, the tile editor that he created at id Software, which went on to ship 33 games.

DL: Hi, John. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me!

JR: No problem!

DL: Before we talk about TEd, I want to take a step back: In the early 80s, there were very few level editors that came with the game. In your interview for the book Honoring the Code, you spoke about how the Terrain Generator in the game Pegasus ][ was one of the first level editors that you ever played with. What can you tell me about that experience?

JR: Well, the first time I saw Pegasus ][ was at Sierra College, in the Apple  room. It was one of the very first things I saw on an Apple. While playing it, I saw that there was this option to do terrain generation. I thought that it was pretty cool that it has this tool built in to generate gameplay.

It’s funny to think now that this is one of the earliest games that let you generate mods. This was the first time I saw anything like this. I thought it was really cool. It's funny, I never thought "why don't other games have that?"… I just never expected it!

  DL: OK, so, let's move on to talking about TEd.

[While we are talking, I launch two instances of DOSBox so we can look at TEd and Deluxe Paint, side-by-side]

  The first thing I want to talk about is the TEd splash screen. It says Deluxe Paint for Tile Maps. So, anyone who has read a bit about the history of id Software knows that Adrian Carmack used Deluxe Paint…

JR: The whole industry did.

DL: Yeah! Well, one of the first things that struck me was that the menu at the top of Deluxe Paint and TEd are very similar, in terms of look and feel. Were you trying to make something that was familiar to users of Deluxe Paint, or were you re-using something that was coming from Deluxe Paint?

JR: Before id Software, I had written some tools at SoftDisk and I was writing them on PC. I wrote a program called Pixel Puzzle Maker which was a tool used to create puzzles for a Softdisk game called Pixel Puzzler. So I wrote a pull-down menu system for Pixel Puzzle maker and then I did some modifications to it. I think I created some more tools for PC at Softdisk, then when I was doing the id stuff I think I created another one, because it was pretty easy to make this pull-down menu system.

It wasn't based on Deluxe Paint, because I never used Deluxe Paint, but I just thought having a pull-down menu it was much easier compared to dealing with a whole bunch of hotkeys… even though there are a lot of hotkeys!

  DL: Speaking of hotkeys, there are other similarities that I noticed. These days, we're very familiar with the Control-Z hotkey being for undo, but back then - at least in the case of Deluxe Paint and TEd - it's just the “u” key on the keyboard.

JR: [Laughs] Wow. Is that what I did?

DL: Yes! Here, if I fill in a few squares and press "u", it goes back...

[I draw some tiles, and then press “u” to undo the last action]

JR: [Laughs] Nice.

Oh, by the way, you're using DOSBox, and when you scroll around the screen, that is super slow compared to how fast it actually was on a 386 back in the day. It was lightning fast.

"EGA Scrolling using Latch mode was so fast back then, you had to tap the keys quickly because it was just flying by."

DL: Oh yeah? No kidding?

JR: DOSBox is slowing it way down for some reason. EGA Scrolling using Latch mode was so fast back then, you had to tap the keys because it was just flying by. So, you're getting to see a weird super chuggy slow version.

[Author’s note: Here is John as “user42604” on StackExchange explaining EGA Scrolling using Latch mode: http://ift.tt/2lc24UU]

DL: OK, so, we were saying that TEd has a lot of hotkeys. At the time that TEd was being used, you often had to read the help file to figure out how to use tools like these.

JR: Oh yeah, definitely, and I think some people were still at the tail-end of WordStar, which was like a nightmare of hotkeys.

DL: [Laughs]

JR: Back then, we were playing Ultima, and in Ultima, every letter on the keyboard was used, so it was not difficult to remember what things did when you were used to that, back then.

    [Author's Note: I dug up the manual for Ultima 1, and John is absolutely right... almost every key on the keyboard was mapped to an action!]

DL: For sure! So, when it comes to designing a level at that time in the games industry, you might use a piece of graph paper to decide where the tiles would go, and then you would type them in one at a time.

JR: Yeah.

  [Author's Note: After our interview, John sent me this graph paper drawing for a game he created called Mach Six. Also, click here to see an article on Gamasutra about how Nintendo used graph paper to design levels for the original Zelda on NES]

DL: So, at which point was it decided at id Software that it was necessary to create TEd?

JR: When I created Dangerous Dave in 1988, I needed to create levels for it, and I decided "well, why don't I just use the game itself, and just let my own game create levels, and save them out". So, that's what I did with Dangerous Dave.

So, when John Carmack saw that - because he was an Apple II guy - he was really impressed, because he was used to just using text to represent graphics. When we were first starting to make stuff together, I made TEd 1.0, and it evolved over the next six months to be TEd 5.0, which was used for 33 shipped games.

  DL: Wow… now, when you say 33 shipped games, that’s not only stuff that was within id - like the Commander Keen and Wolfenstein series - but also outside of id as well, like Rise of the Triad?

JR: Yeah! Also, Corridor 7, and stuff at Gamer's Edge, like Shadow Knights, Slordax, Dangerous Dave and the Haunted Mansion, Rescue Rover 1 and 2, BioMenace... a bunch of games! 

DL: So, is it also true that TEd was not only used -- from a side perspective -- to create levels for two dimensional side scrolling games, but it was also used -- from a top perspective -- to create levels for three dimensional first person shooter games?

JR: Yeah. TEd 5.0 is the same tool that created all those games.

DL: OK, on that topic, I was wondering: At a certain point at id Software, you guys went from making two dimensional games to three dimensional games. Did you ever debate the idea of creating a new editor versus re-using TEd?

JR: Yeah, I think we talked pretty quickly about it. We were saying "we're going to have a 2D matrix to represent the level. Cool, we'll just use TEd for it." Yup, that was it! [Laughs] It was very simple.

DL: So, there’s something else I wanted to ask you: In the Rise of the Triad help file – written by Tom Hall – he quotes you as saying this: "Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TEd's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused."

JR: [Laughs]

  DL: [Laughs] So, why did you write that? Is there a story behind the fill routine?

JR: Well, the fill routine had some bugs in it. I didn't spend a lot of time writing it, and it *mostly* worked, but sometimes it wouldn't fully flood fill, so you had to keep on clicking to fill all the areas. It was easy to use.

[As we are talking, I start using the Flood Fill routine, and TEd crashes inside DOSBox with a "Divide by zero" error]

JR: [Laughs]

DL: [Laughs] True to form! It's funny, because I was playing around with it before our interview, and I was saying to myself "I don't know why he was quoted as saying that, it works fine for me!"

JR: [Laughs] Well, it didn't ever divide by zero when we were using it... OK I think the problem is that you didn't have a tile selected. It will blow up if you try to flood fill with no tile.

[I restart TEd, which shows the graphics installation dialog]

  See that graphics installation right here? What TEd would do is it would actually let you edit maps in CGA, EGA, and VGA and it would move all of the graphics data up into XMS memory, so it could pull it out of XMS when you wanted to switch graphics modes. So if you had a game that had all three graphic modes, then it would let you pull down those tiles. You could pull the VGA tiles down because you're switching to VGA mode, so they would all be loaded up and sitting in memory.

DL: Yes, I read that was a pretty revolutionary feature at that time.

"Totally! [That error message] was totally for Tom [Hall]!"

JR: Yeah. The other thing I did was that if you had a cursor somewhere in the level, you could press Alt-L, and it will launch the game and put you right at that location in the level. See if it will work.

[When I place my cursor in the level and press Alt-L, an error message appears]

DL: [Laughs] So, this is the other thing I wanted to talk to you about...

JR: [Laughs] 

DL: I took a screenshot of this error message as I was playing around with TEd earlier, because I wanted to ask you about it. You wouldn't see this kind of error message in Photoshop or Maya these days... [Laughs]

JR: Nope, nope! This tool was only written for me and Tom [Hall]. 

DL: Of course! That's what I wanted to ask you: Did you write this error message specifically for Tom?

JR: Totally! It was totally for Tom. I would never make that error. [Laughs] 

DL: [Laughs] I can imagine him reacting to it when he saw it for the first time.

JR: Oh yeah, he'd be laughing.

[John then shows me that you need to add the name of the executable of the game after the TEd executable so it knows what to launch when pressing Alt-L]

DL: Hey, that worked!

JR: Oh, but it put you at the start of the level. I think the reason why is that you're using a release version of the game, which ignores that command line parameter. The commercial version doesn't allow that, because they you could just cheat!

DL: Yeah, OK, that makes sense. But to me, cheating is one of the things that got people started in game development… you know, having the ability to modify levels in the game to mess with their friends...

JR: Oh yeah! [Laughs]

DL: So, I wanted to wrap up by talking about the future of game development tools.

In the early 90s, when I was getting started making games by using the tools made by you and other developers, it wasn't always easy: you had to read the help file – that is, if it existed. You needed a bit of technical knowledge, and you often had to learn some basic scripting or programming. However, at the same time, you could make some 8-bit pixel art and it could look half-decent. You also had the flexibility to make the levels look any way you wanted.

These days, there are tools like SnapMap which are a lot more accessible to everyone, but there is a lot less flexibility. There's visual scripting, so you don't really have to learn how to script or program. Making assets that look good enough to be in the game is out of reach for most people.

My question to you is: Do you think that some of these modern tools are not giving people who are getting into the industry enough flexibility, or do you think that this is just the evolution of the games development – in the same way that people went from coding in assembler to compilers – and this is just our industry is moving forward?

  JR: This is where it's gotta go. The group who made SnapMap started their careers by playing Doom and using TEd. The company that was embedded inside id Software was called Escalation Studios. They did Doom Resurrection. I've known those people for over 20 years. They're very hardcore gamers, they come from the Doom world, and then the Quake world. They've followed the company since we made Doom. These were people whose lives were about making levels for years.

So, SnapMap was a natural evolution of where tools need to be for people, but on console. Obviously they didn't create Doom using SnapMap, but SnapMap is a really great way for people who have never done level design to – at least – see if they like it, and if they do like that, well there are more powerful things that they can do. Maybe not with this version of Doom, but with the Source engine, and many other engines out there, like Unreal. So this is to give them a taste of what it's like.

DL: OK, that makes sense. So it's not a replacement, it’s a way to get people started on that path.

JR: Yeah, because making the pieces of SnapMap is the hard part. So, if that's something that people can do for the PC version of Doom, then they'll actually know what real level design is like, at least in those modular chunks.

"First, you need to write the tool for the user of the tool."

DL: So, for my last question, I wanted to loop back to where we started: looking back at classic game retrospectives.

Sometimes there are tricks and tips that - over time - get lost. I think that one of the interesting things about the GDC classic game retrospectives is that people who are bringing back knowledge that has gotten lost over time. People like you, who have been in the industry for a while, can pass down this information to people who are just getting in to the industry now.

So, specifically from a tools development standpoint, what advice you would give to tools developers these days?

JR: Yeah, definitely. First, you need to write the tool for the user of the tool. So, if a level designer is going to be using your tool, that's the person that you need to make the tool for. Make it as easy as possible, with as much power as they are asking for. It's also important to take the time to really use the tool yourself, so you can experience what's annoying about it.

"A lot of times, tools programmers don't go far enough asking the questions about 'Why do you want that? What is it that you're actually trying to do?'"

DL: Definitely.

JR: Also, a lot of times, when designers ask for some power, a lot of times, tools programmers don't go far enough asking the questions about "Why do you want that? What is it that you're actually trying to do?" because we can wrap up a lot of functionality for you to make it easy when you want to put these things in the world… versus "here are all these components... have fun, level designers!" and then the programmers run away.

DL: Right! [Laughs]

JR: It's also great if the tools programmers and the users are in the same room, to make sure that the tool is being written with the best communication between the two.

DL: Agreed.

JR: Finally, don't make stuff in assembly. [Laughs] What I mean is, it's really hard to maintain a tool ten years later when it's using languages or features that are so hard-coded for the platform that it's on. So try to abstract the functionality so you can replace it later. I actually had that problem with TEd, where - in 2001 - I needed a tile editor to make levels for a new game I was going to make, and I went back and looked at the TEd 5.0 code, which was from 1991, and I was like "Wow, there's no way I can use this code in any way..." [Laughs]

"Remember, tools live longer than games do."

DL: [Laughs]

JR: Remember, tools live longer than games do.

DL: That's all great advice. Thank you so much, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

JR: Thanks!

David would also like to thank Kris Graft, Marc D’Amico, Shawn Guzzo, and Miles Holmes for their advice in writing this article.

Are you interested in game development tools?

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