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ljones41 · 2 years

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"HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" (2007) Review

"HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" (2007) Review I usually try to avoid reading reviews of movies I am interested in seeing. Instead of relying on the opinions of others, I prefer to form my own opinions. However, thirteen years ago, my curiosity had overcame me and I could not help but read several reviews and opinions of the fifth film from the HARRY POTTER franchise - namely "HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX".

J.K. Rowling's 2003 novel had never been one of my top favorites in her literary saga. But after the near travesty (okay, perhaps that description is a bit exaggerated) . . . after the disappointment of 2005's "HARRY POTTER AND GOBLET OF FIRE", I could not help but wonder this next movie would fare. After all, the novel was longer than even the fourth entry. Fortunately, my fears proved groundless and "THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" has become my third favorite HARRY POTTER movie. Before I begin to wax lyrical over the movie, I need to point out what I consider to be flaws in the movie. My sister had informed me that the producers of the HARRY POTTER movies had originally intended Mike Newell - director of "GOBLET OF FIRE" - to helm the fifth movie. Somehow those plans fell through and they found themselves scrambling for a new director before production was scheduled to begin. They eventually settled upon British television director, David Yates. I must say that for his second theatrical production, Yates did an excellent job. But there is one aspect in which his years in television did the movie a disservice. The pacing. Quite frankly, I found the pacing a bit rushed. The movie felt more like it had a running time of at least 100 or 110 minutes, instead of a movie that was over two hours long. I understand that Yates planned to helm the next HARRY POTTER movie, "HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE", as well. Fortunately, his future HARRY POTTER films proved to be better paced. I also had a few other problems with the movie. One of them happened to be Evanna Lynch, who portrayed the eccentric Hogwart student, Luna Lovegood. Before I receive accusations of sacrilege, please hear me out. Ms. Lynch physically captured the essence of Luna perfectly. And although she managed to convey Luna's offbeat persona in a competent manner, there seemed to be something missing from her portrayal in the movie. Then it occurred to me that there were times when the movie Luna seemed to be devoid of any emotion. She came off as too serene. And as I recalled, the literary Luna was capable of expressing more emotion - including anger at Hermoine's dismissive attitude toward her. And Luna was not the only character I had problems with. Characters like Remus Lupin, Percy Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks and the Blacks' house-elf Kreacher; barely seemed to exist. Lupin's biggest moment came when he tried to prevent Harry from chasing after the murderous Bellatrix Lestrange. One last problem I had with the movie was the lack of closure on a few plot points. We never learned the consequences of Harry's discovery that the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Dolores Umbridge's had used veritaserum on Cho Chang in order to coerce her into exposing "Dumbledore's Army" and Harry's lessons. I never understood why Kreacher even made an appearance in the movie, considering he did not seem to have an impact upon the story. The movie failed to bring some closure or allow Harry to discuss with Sirius and Remus about Snape's memories of the bullying James Potter. And what happened to Lucius Malfoy after Sirus or Remus managed to defeat him inside the Ministry of Magic? The movie never revealed his fate. Audiences had to wait until the next film. Despite the above flaws, I enjoyed "ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" very much. It still managed to be a more than satisfying summer movie. The original novel happened to be the longest in the entire series. Yet, screenwriter Michael Goldenberg managed to pare it down to the novel's main narrative. I suspect many HARRY POTTER fans would have preferred an exact adaptation of the novel. Thankfully, Goldenberg spared the movie audiences of what could have been a long and excruciating period in the movie theater. To this day, I still believe that "HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE" and "HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS" could have faced a little more editing. And some of the changes made to the story - Neville Longbottom's discovery of the Room of Requirement (instead of Dobby the house elf); no visit to the St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries (along with no repeat appearance of Gilderoy Lockhart and Neville's parents); Neville's own revelation of his parents' fate to Harry (instead of the discovery being made at St. Mungo); and Cho Chang's exposure of the Dumbledore Army (instead of Marietta Edgecombe committing the deed) - did not hurt the story at all. However, I am certain many fans would disagree. What made "ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" work for me was the combination of a mystery regarding Harry's connection to Voldemort and the growing fascist state at Hogswarts that also reflected within the Wizarding World under Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge. I have to commend both Yates and Goldenberg for skillfully weaving these two elements within the movie's plot. The movie also benefited from excellent acting by the cast. In fact, I found this to be a great relief after suffering from the hammy acting that permeated "GOBLET OF FIRE". Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint as Harry Potter and Ron Weasley were top-notched as usual. And so was Matthew Lewis as the likable, yet clumsy Neville Longbottom. I especially must commend Radcliffe for conveying Harry's angst over Cedric Diggory's death from the last movie and frustration at being ignored by Dumbledore. And I want to sink to my knees and give thanks to the spirits above and David Yates for preventing Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Ralph Finnes, Jason Isaacs and also James and Oliver Phelps from repeating their over-the-top performances in "GOBLET OF FIRE". Oh, such a relief! On the other hand, Helena Bonham-Carter's portrayal of the insane Bellatrix Lastrange did seem over-the-top. But considering that the literary Bellatrix was equally hammy, I had no problems with this. By the way, I must applaud Imelda Staunton for her delicious portrayal of "Miss Hitler in Pink" herself, namely the ladylike, yet poisonous Dolores Umbridge, a Ministry undersecretary who became the new Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor. In the novel, she is described as being toad-like, yet Ms. Staunton is obviously a more attractive-looking woman. But despite this, she managed to capture Umbridge's insidious and bigoted evil beautifully. However, the movie's piece de resistance - at least for me - happened to be the battle that took place inside the Ministry of Magic. I must confess that the literary version of the battle usually left me slightly confused. I guess I simply found it difficult to visualize what took place. But Yates' direction not only clarified the entire battle for me, it left me feeling thrilled beyond measure. In my opinion, the battle had catapulted in what I now feel is probably one of the best sequences filmed in the entire movie franchise. It was simply superb. Yet, there are other little golden moments in the film that I managed to enjoy: -the Dumbledore Army's Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons -Ron stands up to Seamus for Harry -Filch's attempts to get inside the Room of Requirement -Ginny's jealous glances at Harry and Cho -Dean Thomas' (Alfred Enoch, who had more lines in this movie than the last two combined) argument with Umbridge -Hermoine's handling of Gwarp (different from the novel) -the fact that both Ron and Ginny helped Neville and Luna escape from Draco and the Inquisitor's Squad (I could be wrong that Ginny helped; if so, please inform me) -Harry and the Order of the Phoenix's trip to London via broomsticks And one of my personal favorite moments in the movie turned out to be Fred and George's torment of Umbridge before making their escape from Hogwarts. Classic moment. "HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" possessed have some flaws that prevented it from becoming my favorite HARRY POTTER movie so far. "HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN" still holds this title as far as I am concerned. But I must admit that back in 2007, I had felt reassured me that the movie franchise had not declined following the slightly disappointing "HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE", thanks to Michael Goldenberg's screenplay, excellent performances from a cast led by Daniel Radcliffe and David Yates' first-rate direction.

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heavencollins · 3 years

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Top 10 Films of 2020: Part Two

And the last five of my top ten are...

5: Unpregnant, directed by Rachel Goldenberg and written by Rachel Goldenberg, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Jenni Hendriks, Ted Caplan, and Bill Parker.

This HBO Max Original was the tipping point for me actually purchasing HBO Max, and I haven’t regretted it since. Starring two absolute queens, Barbie Ferriera and Haley Lu Richardson, Unpregnant tells the story of a teenage girl who finds herself in a situation she wants nothing to do with: pregnancy. Her boyfriend informs her that the condom broke a few weeks ago but he didn’t tell her, which is fucked up in it’s own right, but that they should keep the baby and raise it and get married. Veronica, played by Richardson, quickly says no and runs to her old friend’s house; Bailey, played by Ferriera. Veronica learned that you cannot access abortions in her state without parental consent, so she makes a plan to roadtrip to New Mexico from Missouri to get an abortion that should be a human right.

Veronica and Bailey have been estranged for years, as Veronica became popular and Bailey fell into the realm of introvert, pothead, and nerd. But Bailey misses their friendship, and says yes to going on this road trip because she knows they’ll have time to grow close again. Throughout the road trip, the girls reminisce and become closer than they have before; Bailey revealing her sexuality, Veronica facing the reality of her shitty relationship and not-great friends, and the fact that chosen family is often better than real family.

The film is aggressively pro-choice and feminist, but also is a feel-great movie, not just good, but great. it made me both laugh and cry, as well as cheer on both characters. There’s a lot of really, really, really wholesome narrative within this and it’s a film targeted at teens for teens. It shows what a healthy relationship is and that no matter how different your best friend is from you, you’ll still have the same connection as always. I love this one.

4: Saint Frances, directed by Alex Thompson and written by Kelly O’Sullivan.

One of my favorite facts about this film is that the lead star wrote it, and she works as a team with the director, Alex Thompson, and is partners with him in life as well. Saint Frances focuses on a 30-something woman named Bridget who finds herself with no set path in life. She’s childless, sleeping around, has no real career other than waitressing, and doesn’t know what she wants to do with herself. Her friend recommends her as a nanny to a lesbian couple around her age who are having their second kid and need help with their six year old daughter, Frances.

Shortly before starting her job as Frances’ nanny, Bridget undergoes an abortion via pill, which means you bleed in the safety of your home and get to do it outside of the medical appointment. This plays heavily into the plot, as her periods end up being heavier than ever throughout the rest of the film and it becomes a slight joke between all of the characters. It also shows how little Bridget really cares for her own health, as she doesn’t think to go to the doctors at all and that it’s totally normal.

Frances helps Bridget grow up, as well as bringing her two mom’s together after the birth mother of the newborn suffers from extreme post-partum depression. Bridget and Frances end up becoming best friends, and it’s a truly touching film that feels like a home, if that makes sense. I could watch this again and again and never get sick of it. O’Sullivan and Thompson are a fantastic writer-director team.

3: Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker and written by Sarah Gubbins and Susan Scarf Merrell.

A movie about one of the greatest horror novelists and short story writers of all time set in Vermont starring Elisabeth Moss? Alright, I’m in. Shirley held very tightly in the number one spot until just this month, because it was that good. Moss plays Shirley Jackson, the horror writer we all know and love, and there’s something haunting about her.

While the story is highly fictionalized, with two characters being completely made up (the young couple played by Odessa Young and Logan Lerman), the film takes place right after Jackson published The Lottery and as she’s writing her next novel. Her husband, Stanley Hyman (played by Michael Stuhlbarg), is a professor at Bennington College and Jackson finds herself shying away from the stereotypical role of a faculty wife. She’s aloof, callous, straight up rude to the other wives and prefers to spend her time alone in her room, writing. Hyman prefers to cheat on her with younger woman and yell at Jackson for not being more social. This is most likely true to real life.

The young couple work as a mirror for Jackson, people she can project her novel onto and try to see how it will play out. It’s reflective of her writing style. This story is told with lavish cinematography and a score that reminds you of wind whipping between the trees, one of the best scores I’ve ever heard, actually, and it’s just lovely. Despite being mainly fictionalized with some truth sprinkled in, it’s by far Decker’s most palatable work for a wide audience (though I loved Madeline’s Madeline). I highly recommend this one to anyone.

2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, directed and written by Eliza Hittman.

I’ve loved every single film that Hittman has put out, but this one is especially poignant in the current political climate. Abortions should be widely available, but sadly they aren’t and often teenagers have to travel to other state’s to have to have their procedure done without putting themselves in danger by telling their parents.

In Never Rarely Sometimes Always, two cousins go on a trip to New York City to procure an abortion procedure, not informing their parents beforehand. Except nothing goes to plan; they end up having to sleep in strange places, use all of their savings, and even steal portions of money from the grocery store they both work at. This film is quiet, sad, and real.

Perhaps the best scene in this is when the title comes into play. Anybody who has been to a physical appointment knows the questions they ask, but it’s especially nerve wracking when your body is at risk for something. The nurse asks questions, stating never, rarely, sometimes, or always after each. Skylar, played by Talia Ryder, starts to hesitate as the questions get more and more personal. And then she finally breaks down. It’s overwhelming and scary and she’s finally vulnerable for the first time in this entire movie.

While Unpregnant and Saint Frances provide more witty and funny tales about abortion and unwanted pregnancies, Never Rarely Sometimes Always gives a dark and gritty tale of what having no help in those situations can look like, ultimately putting yourself in the most dangerous situations possible to make the right choice for yourself.

1: Swallow, directed and written by Carlo Mirabella-Davis.

I don’t want to say much of this film because it’s something you truly have to experience. Hunter, a woman who finds herself pregnant with her rich husband’s child, finds herself having what can only be called abnormal food cravings. Except, what she eats isn’t necessarily food—she suffers from an extreme form of pica, causing her to eat everything from marbles to staples to little figurines. She proudly displays her collection on her desk, cleaning them off meticulously once she passes them. It’s a horror film but the horror isn’t necessarily in what she eats, it’s how she’s treated.

In fact, her eating habits are the one thing she has control over in her life until even that’s taken away from her. Her husband’s family doesn’t care about her—only the fetus she’s carrying. It’s a really good representation of an abusive husband that you don’t often see, because none of the abuse is physical, rather, emotional.

I can’t say anymore because then I’d be spoiling—all I have to say is go watch it. Please. It’s so amazing.

#films #top ten #2020 #swallow #never rarely sometimes always #eliza hittman #unpregnant #saint frances #shirley #elisabeth moss #film review #review

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adambstingus · 5 years

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Here’s What The Stars Of The Internet’s Most Famous Memes Look Like In 2018

Since its inception in 1990, the World Wide Web – invented by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee – has revolutionized humanity. We now shop online, order take-out online, study online, look through photo albums online, make travel arrangements online, game online, talk, gawk, and stalk online!

In fact, I couldn’t imagine having to do so many daily tasks without the internet. I wouldn’t have survived university by actually reading books, and I could never get through my Christmas shopping without Amazon. But perhaps the biggest change is the way we communicate with one another.

From email to MSN to MySpace to Skype to Facebook – it is now easier than ever to start a conversation with somebody on the other side of the planet. Social Media has allowed us to chat with our friends and family, keep up-to-date their lives, and even plan parties and events without sending one thing in the post. It’s truly made the world a smaller place.

And following the rise of social media in the noughties, we have seen many “trends” come and go – with some becoming iconic, and others more… moronic. For example, everybody out there now converses using emojis, and every year people genuinely get excited to see what new emojis the next updates will bring (here’s looking at you redheads). We’ve seen positive challenges, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge, raise millions for charity, and we’ve also seen a slew of idiots eat detergent in the Tide Pod Challenge.

But if there’s one thing that has stayed around far longer than anybody would have ever imagined, it is the humble meme. If you’re truly out of the loop, a meme is defined as “an image, video, piece of text, etc, typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations”.

Basically, they’re funny pictures and videos of relatable things, often with a funny caption. And over the years, the subjects within these memes have become unintentional celebrities… for doing absolutely nothing except having a sharable expression. Now, we’re taking a look at these very modern stars have changed since being immortalized on the web.

1. Success Kid (Sam Griner)

Never before has a child epitomized the feeling of success more than Sam Griner. After his mom, Laney Griner, uploaded the picture to Flickr in 2007 (yes, it really was that long ago), she never thought she would have turned her young son into a viral star.

Sam was actually trying to eat the sand when the picture was taken, and Laney originally captioned the image ‘I Hate Sandcastles’, but his triumphant expression soon transformed him into the ‘Success Kid’.

2. Side-Eyeing Chloe (Chloe)

In one of my favorite videos on YouTube, Chloe and older sister Lily are surprised by their parents with a trip to Disneyland. However, whilst Lily starts to cry in delight when the camera pans to Chloe, she stares straight into the lens with a “WTF is going on?” expression. It is hilarious.

Amazingly, Chloe’s expression transformed her into “Sid- Eyeing Chloe”, the perfect meme for when people wanted to express their unimpressed disbelief to whatever was going on in the world.

3. Disaster Girl (Zoe Roth)

She could have been a cast member from Village of the Damned with that demonic expression. However, a young Zoe Roth was not taking sick pleasure in the destruction of a house she had just burned to the ground, she was just enjoying a training drill by the local fire department two blocks away from her home in Mebane, North Carolina.

The picture was taken all the way back in 2004 by her father, Dave Roth, and now that Zoe is looking to complete college, she said: “I’d love for the meme to help me get into or pay for college somehow. But I ultimately want people to know me for me.”

4. Trying To Hold A Fart Next To A Cute Girl In Class (Michael McGee)

On March 2, 2014, Redditor aaduk_ala submitted a humorous picture titled, ‘Trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class’ to the /r/funny subreddit. It wasn’t long before his strained expression was seen across all of social media.

When asked whether he had any regret about his unexpected fame, McGee responded: “My take on being ‘internet famous’ is cool and all. But I regret not copyrighting the picture right away because I could have made a lot of money there!” Ironically, his expression would be my face if I were to discover that I could have made thousands of dollars by copyrighting one silly picture.

5. Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston)

I have so many personal memories of using this meme whilst at college. In fact, I became a “Scumbag Steve” after waking up my dorm friend every two weeks at 6 am because I needed to use his printer.

The first known time this image was posted on Reddit was January 21, 2011, and it wasn’t long before a commenter in the Reddit thread identified the young man in the pic as Blake Boston (also known as “Weezy B.”)

In an interview with Know Your Meme, Blake revealed that the picture was originally taken by his mother. “I have no regrets in my life… no matter what I do. I can completely f**k up on something and I still don’t regret it. Because at the end of the day, that makes me who I am, so I wouldn’t go back and erase anything, if I were to go back in time.” I think we can all agree that Weezy B. is a very cool guy…

6. Overly Attached Girlfriend (Laina Morris)

Back in 2012, Justin Bieber asked his dedicated followers to enter an online sing-off competition in order to promote his celebrity perfume ‘Girlfriend’. In response to this, YouTuber Laina Morris uploaded a simplistic webcam video in which she performed a parody version of Justin Bieber’s single ‘Boyfriend’, with her own personalized lyrics.

Morris’ over-the-top expressions immediately led to her face being used to symbolize the ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’, but sadly, she did encounter several issues regarding her fame: “Strangers were finding my personal Facebook page and talking to my friends. They were finding where I worked and trying to access my college records”.

7. Good Luck Charlie (Mia Talerico)

Actress Mia Talerico’s exaggerated “I don’t know” face from an episode of Disney’s Good Luck Charlie has taken comments sections by storm. And thanks to her charismatic acting, the nine-year-old now has over 1 million followers on Instagram.

I’m 26 and have under 400. Where did it all go wrong?

*I don’t know*

8. Bad Luck Brian (Kyle Craven)

Fake News! Did you know that the guy in the picture is not actually called Brian? His name is Kyle Craven. Used to symbolize bad luck, the very first use of Craven’s image was first posted on January 23, 2012, by his long-time friend, along with the caption “Takes driving test .?.?. gets first DUI.”

9. Ridiculously Photogenic Guy (Zeddie Little)

I think we can all agree that we have never looked this good whilst exercising. When I’m at the gym, my expression closely resembles that of when I’m perched on the toilet.

However, Zeddie Little, AKA “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy”, was snapped running in the 2012 Cooper River Bridge Run whilst looking impeccable. Literally better than I’ve ever looked in my life.

When asked about his newfound fame, Little responded: “I really don’t know, but I kinda feel honored to be part of a joke that’s in good spirit because sometimes the Internet can be a little vicious or jokes can get bent the wrong way. But these are all kinda, for the most part, positive. It’s funny that everybody is kinda taking like to it. It’s, I guess, the most flattering way to get spread across the Internet.”

10. Ermahgerd (Maggie Goldenberger)

For those of you out of the loop, “ermahgerd” is a rhotacized pronunciation of “oh my God”, in order to recreate the speech of a nerd (sorry Maggie).

This meme first emerged on March 14, 2012, along with the caption: “Just a book owners smile…”. The girl in the meme, Maggie Goldenberger, said that the picture was created in fourth or fifth grade when she and her friends seriously got into playing dress-up. It’s good to see she’s got a sense of humor about the whole thing, because I can think of about 734 pictures of me from high school that could have been used in the exact same way, and it would have destroyed my life.

11. Grumpy Cat

There’s a face only a mother can love.

Grumpy Cat – the appropriate nickname given to Tardar Sauce – is an always-moody-looking snowshoe cat that rose to fame after several pics of her annoyed facial expressions were posted to Reddit in September 2012. According to Huffington Post, Grumpy Cat now has a reported net worth of $100 million! That’s right, this cat has more money than you ever will.

12. First World Problems (Silvia Bottini)

Amazingly, this is no bog-standard stock-image model. Silvia Bottini is actually a relatively successful Italian actress.

13. Blinking White Guy (Drew Scanlon)

This perfect GIF originally came from a live stream shot back in 2013, when Drew Scanlon was a video producer at the popular gaming website Giant Bomb.

During one of the team’s weekly “Unprofessional Fridays” shows, Scanlon watched as the editor-in-chief played Starbound, a two-dimensional action-adventure game.

However, things got a little awkward when Gerstmann said: “So I’ve been doing some farming… with my hoe.” Scanlon reacted with the bewildered expression now known as the “Blinking White Guy”.

14. Hipster Barista (Dustin Mattson)

Even though this meme has become more appropriate for every year it has existed, it was originally uploaded to in August 2011! However, the guy in the picture, Dustin Mattson, has not seen the funny side:

“I do find it discouraging and disappointing that there was so much exposure brought to an attempt at making a joke of a culinary industry and the professional barista. To me, it’s very telling on how we laud farm-to-table food, craft beer, cocktail mixology, but it’s ok to have no respect for the specialty coffee world and the people who are committed to it. On the other hand, the whole thing only makes me want to work harder at my job, make better coffee, serve my customers better, and bring more positive exposure to both the company I work for, the barista profession, and specialty coffee as a whole. If anyone were to see my and my coworkers’ work in the café, they’d see that it doesn’t quite match up to most of the jokes made against the ‘Hipster Barista’.”

15. Doge

I’m just going to put this out there: I love Doge.

Back in February 2010, a Japanese kindergarten teacher called Atsuko Sato posted several photos of her rescue-adopted Shiba Inu dog Kabosu to her personal blog – it is something we have all done. However, unlike with me and my Yorkshire terrier, Sato’s photos went viral and the world fell in love with the side-eyed confused pup. The best of boys!

So there you have it! And although so many of these unintentional internet celebrities have changed so much since their images were originally posted to the web, there’s no doubt we’ll always remember them for the hilarious memes they spawned.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/heres-what-the-stars-of-the-internets-most-famous-memes-look-like-in-2018/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184330360477

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samanthasroberts · 5 years

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Here’s What The Stars Of The Internet’s Most Famous Memes Look Like In 2018

1. Success Kid (Sam Griner)

2. Side-Eyeing Chloe (Chloe)

Amazingly, Chloe’s expression transformed her into “Sid- Eyeing Chloe”, the perfect meme for when people wanted to express their unimpressed disbelief to whatever was going on in the world.

3. Disaster Girl (Zoe Roth)

4. Trying To Hold A Fart Next To A Cute Girl In Class (Michael McGee)

5. Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston)

6. Overly Attached Girlfriend (Laina Morris)

7. Good Luck Charlie (Mia Talerico)

I’m 26 and have under 400. Where did it all go wrong?

*I don’t know*

8. Bad Luck Brian (Kyle Craven)

9. Ridiculously Photogenic Guy (Zeddie Little)

I think we can all agree that we have never looked this good whilst exercising. When I’m at the gym, my expression closely resembles that of when I’m perched on the toilet.

However, Zeddie Little, AKA “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy”, was snapped running in the 2012 Cooper River Bridge Run whilst looking impeccable. Literally better than I’ve ever looked in my life.

10. Ermahgerd (Maggie Goldenberger)

For those of you out of the loop, “ermahgerd” is a rhotacized pronunciation of “oh my God”, in order to recreate the speech of a nerd (sorry Maggie).

11. Grumpy Cat

There’s a face only a mother can love.

12. First World Problems (Silvia Bottini)

Amazingly, this is no bog-standard stock-image model. Silvia Bottini is actually a relatively successful Italian actress.

13. Blinking White Guy (Drew Scanlon)

This perfect GIF originally came from a live stream shot back in 2013, when Drew Scanlon was a video producer at the popular gaming website Giant Bomb.

During one of the team’s weekly “Unprofessional Fridays” shows, Scanlon watched as the editor-in-chief played Starbound, a two-dimensional action-adventure game.

14. Hipster Barista (Dustin Mattson)

15. Doge

I’m just going to put this out there: I love Doge.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/heres-what-the-stars-of-the-internets-most-famous-memes-look-like-in-2018/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/04/21/heres-what-the-stars-of-the-internets-most-famous-memes-look-like-in-2018/

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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A coalition of the few: U.S. and Saudi Arabia stand alone against Iran

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/a-coalition-of-the-few-u-s-and-saudi-arabia-stand-alone-against-iran/

A coalition of the few: U.S. and Saudi Arabia stand alone against Iran

President Donald Trump has alienated key allies by unilaterally pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and re-imposing sanctions. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The United States and Saudi Arabia lack virtually any allies as they consider how to respond to this weekend’s attacks on Saudi oil refineries, raising doubts about whether the Trump administration could build any coalition for military action in the region.

The attacks have crippled Saudi oil production, creating one of the largest oil disruptions in decades. But while Defense Secretary Mark Esper tweeted that the U.S. is working with “our partners to address this unprecedented attack,” President Donald Trump has alienated key allies by unilaterally pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and re-imposing sanctions. It has already been unable to enlist allies to protect shipping in the region from Iranian attacks.

Story Continued Below

“In a normal administration, we should be able to get 40 or 50 countries on board for something like this but we can’t because nobody trusts the Trump administration and everybody thinks they’re going to take them into war,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration national security official who worked on Iran policy at the Pentagon, referring to the maritime security initiative — which he called “pathetic.”

“There is no offensive coalition against Iran, not there or anywhere else in the world right now,” added Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who studies Iranian military activity in the Middle East.

Even leading Republicans in Congress called on Trump to take action only with the help of allies. “The best way to counter Iran is by working by, with and through regional partners — including making sure they have what they need to defend themselves and our shared interests,” Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma said in a statement late Monday.

The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, said earlier that “I hope our international partners will join us in imposing consequences on Iran for this reckless destabilizing attack.”

Successive U.S. administrations have used coalitions to bolster the legitimacy of military actions and to relieve some of the pressure on heavily used U.S. military forces — from the 1991 Gulf War and the Clinton administration’s actions in the Balkans to the much-maligned “coalition of the willing” that the George W. Bush administration recruited for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

And since taking office, Trump has often expressed frustration with allies over burden-sharing, pushing European, Asian, and Middle Eastern partners to bear greater financial and practical costs in areas where the U.S. underwrites their security.

That was the Pentagon’s rationale when it announced the so-called International Maritime Security Construct in July following the Iranian seizure of a British tanker and the June shoot down of a U.S. surveillance drone.By recruiting international partners for a flotilla of naval vessels and surveillance aircraft, the Pentagon hoped to limit the amount of U.S. military might it would have to commit to providing security in waterways where Iranian naval forces have harassed commercial shipping.

That’s seen as a key concern at a time when the military is trying to shift troops, aircraft, warships and other equipment away from the Middle East to better prepare for potential conflicts with Russia or China.

Yet many allied nations — includingbedrock military partners like France and Germany — steered clear out of concern that the Trump administration might use the mission to drag them into a confrontation with Iran.

France and Germany have both condemned the weekend attacks on the Saudi oil industry. But France appears committed to diplomacy with Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron last month called for Trump and President of Iran Hassan Rouhani to meet to try to arrange a summit.

And a German government official last month warned of being “sucked into” a larger military mission if it joined the maritime security mission.

So far, only the U.K., Australia, and Bahrain have joined the U.S. in the maritime coalition.

The maritime security force is based in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet. It draws on unspecified forces from the Bahraini military — whose navy mostly consists of small patrol craft — as well as a British contingent of two frigates, a destroyer and five mine hunting vessels, according to a British official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Australia, meanwhile, has pledged to deploy a surveillance plane later this year and a warship next year, and Australian Defense Minister Linda Reynolds stressed when she announced that commitment that “Australia’s core interest in this mission is de-escalation.”

In leading the effort, the U.S. has committed destroyers and “intelligence gathering assets,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. Telling reporters last month that the mission was “up and running,” Esper described its mission as “first, to provide freedom of navigation for the commercial shipping that is so vital to global economic trade, and second, to deter provocations and avoid conflict in the region.”

The skeletal maritime force is far too small to be used in any type of military response to the Saudi Aramco attacks — a mission that would go beyond its intended purpose.

“The idea that this coalition could be used to respond significantly or seriously to Iran is fanciful,” said Goldenberg, who is now with the Center for a New American Security.

For quick aerial or sea-launched retaliatory strikes against Iranian missile and drone facilities, a coalition could be more of an impediment than as asset, according to Eric Edelman, a former George W. Bush Pentagon official. “If the president decides on a military response, I think you want it to be fairly prompt and you don’t want to spend a lot of time coordinating with others beyond Saudi Arabia,” Edelman said.

But building a stronger international consensus before taking military action could foil Iran’s efforts to diplomatically isolate the U.S., advised Jack Keane, a retired Army general who is close to the Trump administration.

“What the U.S. has the opening to do now, once it’s gathered all the evidence, is present it to an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council,” Keane said, calling that “a vehicle to garner more support to counter future aggressive Iranian behavior.”

If the Trump administration does seek to build a separate, broader coalition specifically for retaliatory action against Iran over the Saudi Aramco strikes, it’s likely to come up empty — or nearly empty — for the same reasons the maritime coalition has struggled to gain traction.

“International allies don’t know what Trump’s going to do,” said Kelly Magsamen, a former Obama administration Pentagon official at the Center for American Progress. “They look at him and think one minute he’s trying to get us into some sort of maritime coalition, and the next he’s tweeting that he wants to meet [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani.”

“They’re not going to sign up for politically or militarily challenging endeavors without a better understanding of what U.S. strategy is” on Iran, sheadded.

Spooking traditional allies like Germany and France has left the administration “with very few cards to play at this point,” said Magsamen.

The administration’s habit of making major foreign policy pronouncements over Twitter or in other impromptu formats has also hurt allies’ willingness to work jointly with the U.S. on matters as weighty as potential military action, Goldenbergsaid.

“Then they do things like release the intel on Twitter before talking to any allies about it,” he said. “That’s not what you do. You take it to your friends and convince them, and then you go out together and make the case.”

#Arabia #Foreign #Politics #stand

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gettindeggywitit-blog · 6 years

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Final Copy/ Re-Write of Essay #1 (Review) (Pasted to Tumblr)

Harry Potter 5: A Review

Not often is a movie born from a book or series of books able to stand on its own as a competent product when analyzed and compared to its written counterpart. However, as with most of the Harry Potter franchise's movies, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix manages to stay faithful to its origin. So much so that one could simply watch all the movies up to this point without needing to open a single page of the books and be perfectly happy and caught up with the story, give or take a few minute details as with all book-to-movie releases. However, for anyone that has recently read the books and would like to take a look at the movies, I would suggest paying closer attention to the fifth installment analyzed here, as I believe it is conceptually better than most of the others. The movie is a success through its genuine and skilled acting as well as accurate portrayal of characters, its genuinely interesting story, and its sound design. This all makes for a wonderful retelling of J.K Rowling's fifth entry in the Harry Potter series.

As with the rest of the Harry Potter films, the mainstay actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint (Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley, respectively) reprise their roles as they and the iconic characters they emulate age together. After four films of the same actors playing the same roles, I am not sure any of these three could have left the series without a serious media fallout and a drop in success of the films. Each plays their character with ease; nowhere do any of them feel awkward or like they shouldn’t be there. However, it should be noted that since Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (the fourth in Rowling's collection), the series began to take a serious turn in mood. Transitioning from a fantasy/comedy style to a dark/moody tone influences the characters. Presumably, they have grown up and are beginning to see their world for what it is rather than having fun, almost lighthearted adventures within their magical school Hogwarts. Harry has reached a point of angst that at sometimes feels unbearable, but his friends, as always, are there to support him. Along with the characters being near adulthood, this entry in the series introduces something not seen in the previous movies. The characters begin to take real love interests, although this is not a main plot point, mainly serving as a way of creating tension for the individuals the character cares about. The books go much deeper into the romantic lives of the characters, the movie using them mainly to lighten the dark mood with some humor/love. Overall, the actors in this movie do a fantastic, accurate job in playing their characters. After four movies, it seems like they are just an extension of themselves.

The storyline of the film is strikingly different at first compared to its predecessors. As stated above, the series is on a steady decline into moody, solemn, seriousness with a few twinges of comedic timing added in. Voldemort is back (the main villain), and everything and everyone is different (mad and angsty) because of it. The movie begins with a story arc aligning Harry with the ministry of magic (governing body of the magical world) where he is attacked by Voldemort's henchmen outside of school during his break. Harry chooses to defend himself with magic as there is no other way to fight, leading him to a full legal trial within the ministry (they don’t want to believe Voldemort is back) to debate whether he should be expelled from Hogwarts and have his wand taken. Once again, Harry had no other way to defend himself so he has legal precedent. The movies have never delved into the inner workings of the magical world so to start it off with corruption was certainly interesting. I take it as the writers and director trying to incorporate as much as they could within the restrictions making a movie provides. Now, I cannot very well create a review of this movie without mentioning the famous female antagonist it created. Delores Umbridge is, in my opinion, one of the most hated characters of all time. The woman Stephen King called "the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter", she does an incredible job of giving the story tension and makes the viewer feel genuine aggression towards her. For the story, a bit of a dive into the magical world as well as an incredibly despicable character makes it new and interesting for a series on its fifth title.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has an absolutely brilliant soundtrack. Mainly the tracks remain orchestral and ominous to reflect the dark tone of the movie, at times sounding as if they could belong to a crime/drama just as well as a fantasy genre. The composer for the movie, Nicholas Hooper, does a fantastic job on designing each piece so that it reflects exactly how a scene should be making the audience feel. A specific example for this relationship between music and film would be the scene in which the Weasley twins make their last hurrah at Hogwarts with an in-school fireworks display during the final tests. The track for this seen, aptly named “fireworks”, is an abrupt yet pleasant break from the rough, edgy, and ominous tracks in scenes leading up. The music brings the entire movie together as it should, weaving the transitions between dark and moody to cute and cheerful extremely well.

Overall, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is one of the better movies of the franchise. It plays with topics never seen before in the previous movies, and really made an attempt to show the characters transitioning to adulthood from their naïve selves roaming the halls of Hogwarts. It is genuine and true to its literary roots, which makes it a brilliant experience for any Harry Potter fan.

Works Cited

Goldenberg, Michael, et al. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2007.

“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007).” Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=harrypotter5.htm.

“NR Chats to GOF's Emma Watson.” Newsround, news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4440000/newsid_4443700/4443762.stm.

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lorrainecparker · 7 years

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ART OF THE CUT with the editors of “Detroit”

Hopefully, for regular readers of Art of the Cut, there’s a lot to be learned from every interview. I feel this one is exceptionally valuable, mainly because, in addition to interviewing a very experienced and gifted editor, in the Oscar-winning William Goldenberg, ACE we talked at the same time with his talented co-editor, Harry Yoon, who was very open and articulate about the things that he learned from editing “Detroit” with Goldenberg and their talented director, Kathryn Bigelow. Harry Yoon was editor of Newsroom, Half-Life, The Pit, Let Go and Welcome to the Jungle. He was also VFX editor on Zero Dark Thirty and The Revenant. I last spoke to William Goldenberg about editing Live By Night. He was nominated for Oscars for Best Editing for Imitation Game, Zero Dark Thirty, Seabiscuit, The Insider, and won an Oscar for his work on Argo.

HULLFISH: Harry can you tell me a little bit about the post schedule was like when you started principal photography.

YOON: Principal started around July 25th, 2016 and principal wrap was October 1st. And Second unit did some additional photography until October 6th, and then we started with Kathryn (director, Kathryn Bigelow) on October 17th. Director’s cut went until the first week of January 2017 and post continued until three weeks ago (mid-June 2017, with the film releasing in early August 2017).

HULLFISH: Let’s talk about collaborating with the director. Kathryn Bigelow. How does she like to work and do you find that with each new director you work with, you have to change your method of collaborating?

GOLDENBERG: This is my second film with Kathryn, so I kind of knew what to expect but the way we did things during shooting was, every few days we would post our edited scenes for her to see. Sometimes we got feedback, sometimes we didn’t, depending on how busy she was. As an editor you’re always anxiously waiting for some sort of feedback, but you have to learn that it doesn’t always come because they’re very busy. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same thing.

Lantana Avid bay

After principal photography ended the three of us watched the film together. There were sequences that Harry had done and there were sequences that I had done and we stayed with those sequences. Kathryn had specific notes, but she’s not someone who sits in the room with you all day watching you work – looking at every nuanced change. She likes to give you a direction and then she goes away and comes back and sees what you’ve done. Or we watch it in a screening. Kathryn is my favorite kind of director because once she trusts you, she trusts you, and she will let you do your job in a way that is really creative and really is satisfying.

You adjust yourself to every director. They’re a little bit different, but as an editor you’re there to be their right-hand person, and so however they want to work is how you work. I’ve done it so long that it’s all comfortable. You just have to adapt slightly one way or the other and make the best film you can make.

YOON: I worked with Kathryn as the VFX editor on Zero Dark Thirty and I think it was that comfort-level that made her open to having me work with Billy on this. We worked pretty closely, especially towards the tail end of Zero Dark Thirty.

HULLFISH: How did you two collaborate between the editors? How did you pick which scenes each one of you would work on?

GOLDENBERG: The beginning of the project was kind of strange because I was still cutting Live By Night with Ben Affleck, and since Ben and Kathryn know each other very well, and like each other, I asked permission to go back and forth between the two films. Harry was kind enough to come on board, and so for the first two months of shooting, I was splitting my time between both films.

Goldenberg contemplating a cut at the Avid

I think who did what was decided by who needs something to cut and who’s free and who’s not. I was literally running up and down the hall — Live by Night was in Building One and our office on Detroit was Building Four and I would be zooming up and down the hall half a dozen times or more a day. So at the beginning, Harry was carrying more of the load than me because I was splitting my time, and after that was over, we sort of shared. There were a couple of scenes where I said to Harry, “I want this one.“ But, mostly it was whoever was ready to start a new scene. We trusted each other and we both knew that whoever edited it would do a good job with whatever came our way.

YOON: Certain scenes expanded into sequences because there are large parts of the film which are contiguous, time-wise. So as more material was added to those sequences, we would organically just keep working on those sequences – even sequences that would ultimately be cross-cut with each other.

To me, the whole experience was like a dream come true. To be able to work with Billy in that capacity, even our talks in the morning, deciding on how we might split the material and then in the evening just reconvening after work and just being able to hear Billy’s comments on the cuts and then to have the privilege of being able to talk about his cuts. I couldn’t ask for a better experience in terms of dealing with material that was challenging us in really great ways every day.

GOLDENBERG: We sat together for several of the big sequences that were cross-cut and we worked on it together. We sort of laid it out from the script, but you know it never really quite works out the way it’s laid out, so for things like the timing of simultaneous action, we were able to sit down and work on it together. Two heads are always better than one in most situations. It’s really nice to bounce your ideas off someone else whose opinion you respect.

YOON: The quality that I really admired in Billy’s work is his openness to showing stuff. For somebody with his track record and his credits to open up his creative process is so generous. He wasn’t just showing it to me. His first or even second ASSISTANT editor would be in the room and he would be working out a particular editorial problem in real time and the principle of having a senior editor providing that kind of environment of openness was incredibly instructive. It’s something that I’ve tried to carry through by bringing my assistant in and showing them works-in-progress. That was one of the best parts of the editorial process for me.

(L to R): Justin Yates (VFX Editor), Harry, Alex Grosse (Post PA), Peter Dudgeon (1st Assistant Editor), and Jun Kim (Apprentice Editor). (Billy and Additional Editor, Brett Reed, were not present.)

HULLFISH: I love to hear that. I just talked to the Transformers edit team and one of the things that they mentioned was that Michael Bay would just pull a scene from one person and hand it off to another editor without even telling them. It sounds like you guys were pretty autonomous as far as work load.

GOLDENBERG: I was actually on Transformers: The Last Knight for three weeks, and I was there when you recorded that interview, but it didn’t feel appropriate for me to contribute to the interview, since I was there for such a short period.

That’s one of the things you just have to know going in when you work on a Michael Bay film. You just have to let go of the ego of that and become part of the team. It’s a real cohesive experience.

Except for the Michael Bay film, all the films I’ve done with other editors generally have stayed with the scenes that we started with. Which isn’t to say you’re not constantly seeking the other editors’ advice or help. That’s one of the beauties of multiple editors because I think the film is further along when you show the scenes to the director because you’ve got two experienced voices in the room and things can get better that way. Sometimes there are situations where there’ll be one scene plopped in the middle of a run of other scenes that the other editor has done, so it doesn’t make sense to hang onto, so one of us might take over that scene so that we can work on the entirety of a longer total sequence of scenes. There’s a tremendous amount of footage on this film, as there was on Zero Dark Thirty, so the other editor doesn’t have time to take over another scene and go through all of that footage again.

Harry Yoon

YOON: It was sort of a unique situation. So much of this movie happens simultaneously with people in different rooms, but they’re reacting to what they’re hearing in those rooms. There would always be some kind of an overlap from the previous action and post-lap as well into the following scene. The footage would come in waves, so that even after we finish a scene there would be some sort of overlap portion from a different scene and we would have to leaven that material in because there was always good stuff to be mined from there. In addition to that there were also things that were happening simultaneously which we might want to cross-cut into our sequences. So it was necessarily collaborative in that way where sometimes I would notice a reaction shot that was in an overlap portion of my sequence when I was watching one of Billy’s sequences and I would say, “Oh, I have a great reaction shot for what’s going on there, “ and Billy would do the same thing. So it really allowed that collaborative nature, especially in the portions of the film that happen simultaneously.

HULLFISH: Because of all of the cross-cutting of scenes that you shared, did you have to be very cognizant about the transitions between the scenes you shared. Obviously, it’s an important editorial concept to properly transition between scenes, and not just have the perfect cuts interior to a scene.

GOLDENBERG: There’s a section of the film that details the third night of the rebellion going into the fourth day and it’s basically one real-time sequence, so there really aren’t traditional transitions like you would be thinking. It’s basically a 40-minute scene that was shot over several weeks. Similar, in a way, to the raid sequence of Zero Dark Thirty where it’s one event shot over several weeks.

HULLFISH: What are some of the methods that you use to try to deal with the simultaneous nature of those various scenes to keep the audience understanding that these things are all happening at the same time but that you can’t show them all at the same time?

YOON: One of the things that was really notable – and that evolved as we worked – was to use sound design and especially sound you hear off-camera, to indicate the simultaneous nature of the scenes. There’s a point in the film where a number of people are camped inside of the location where most of the action has taken place and calibrating the different degrees of that sound design and calibrating who hears whose music when, that allowed us to create a kind of connectivity from room to room and also the hard sound effects and voices allowed us to connect the dots in terms of who’s hearing what and what’s happening at what time. That was really, really fun to play around with. In addition to managing all the different eye-lines and who is looking at whom and reacting and what they’re reacting to. It made it a really amazing puzzle to try to figure out.

GOLDENBERG: I should point out that Harry’s not talking about score but source music where different people are listening to different music in different rooms. It’s an incredible puzzle of hearing different perspectives from different rooms and where the music and the sound was placed and it made for an incredibly challenging mix including the panning of each particular piece was this overwhelming back and forth, back and forth and what speaker does it come out of and how do you EQ it? It was really a challenge that creates this really incredible tapestry that scores the film in a much different way than a traditional score because it’s music played like it’s coming out of people’s radios or record players. It works as edible tension-building device that really suits the movie.

HULLFISH: It’s a very Scorsese thing too, that use of diegetic or source as music score. One of the other things you’ve been mentioning is this difficult puzzle of figuring out how to work with time. Talk to me about how or why it becomes necessary to change the way two scenes intercut in the final film compared to the way it intercuts in the script.

YOON: The film plays in three acts. There’s the “prologue” of the first act which sets the stage for the event at the Algiers and it’s very much creating a landscape, both physically and emotionally to help the audience understand the context in terms of the heightened tensions that existed at the time and how very specific things were in terms of a mix of emotions and tension. We tried to stay true to the historical nature of things but also really wanted to convey the emotional specificity of those first days, and then there is a big chunk of the movie which is the second act which happens contiguously.

And then there’s the third act of the aftermath and how things are dealt with afterwards and how they impact the characters. What was really interesting about this film were the distinctive demands – from a time management standpoint – of each of those. The first hour has this emotional momentum and as the emotional momentum builds, time accelerates as well until you get to the moment in which the second act begins and then time stretches. Then the third act has more of an impressionistic quality because what we to deal with then is that there are consequences and an aftermath that affects characters over a number of years. Each of these acts demanded a different style. So the treatment of time was different for each of the acts.

HULLFISH: That’s a really great answer. I’d love to get an answer about how things change from the script and why you felt – if you can remember a specific example – of you know, “There are these two scenes together and we decided they need to be separated. Or they were separated and we decided to join them.”

GOLDENBERG: This editor that I used to work for, Sean Barton, said, “Editing is simple. What does the audience want to see next.” Harry and I would sit down together and have a discussion that something doesn’t feel right rhythmically.

YOON: What was really interesting creatively is that – because the action is happening in different rooms – you can really calibrate what characters know (or don’t know) about what’s happening in another room for dramatic effect.. Seeing that process was really amazing for me. It was a process of winnowing in a way where our initial cuts delivered 100 percent knowledge: all the lines were present, and all the action was shown. We kind of laid out a palette as if to say, “This is everything we have to work with.” Then as we moved through the director’s cut, there was a winnowing process that was happening where we were shaving information based on: Do we need to really know this? Will it increase tension here if the characters in one room don’t know what’s happening in another room? We experience it the way that the witnesses experience it; so that when they enter the room what they do is a surprise. Calibrating from room to room was really amazing to decide what’s going to help the audience.

GOLDENBERG: In this film we were very careful about not being manipulative in any way. We wanted to be very, very careful always about being respectful of the subject and of the people involved. The film is very real and very visceral and we didn’t want to feel the hand of the filmmaker.

HULLFISH: Billy, you’ve done many films that have been based on true stories. Zero Dark Thirty and Seabiscuit – a huge list actually. Do you feel a responsibility or is there some difference in the way you feel about doing those films than the fantasies, like National Treasure?

GOLDENBERG: Much different. Yeah, I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility especially if there are people who are alive – or relatives and friends are alive. All I want to do is to be as true to the subject matter and be as objective as possible. At the end of doing a film like this, you feel like you know the people involved. Such attention was paid by Mark Boal and Kathryn and all the people involved to be as true to this subject and to really tell the character’s stories. It’s overwhelming how much you want to get it right. I felt the same way on Imitation Game and Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, you want to do justice to the story and get it right and have people experience it in the right way. I put my heart into all of my movies, of course, but I feel a sense of responsibility that wakes me up in the middle of the night. But at the same time, I also find it truly satisfying.

YOON: I think that was kind of an amazing thing about working with a filmmaker like Kathryn. As we were working or discussing she would share stories and first-hand accounts and anecdotes from the subjects: some of whom visited the set and many of whom she spoke with directly. She would share those things to really underscore that these were stories of real people. And these were stories of their experiences so that definitely added to the responsibility. One of the amazing things about getting to see Billy and Kathryn work together was to witness how tuned-in they are to the aesthetics of the real. What is it that makes something feel more authentic and less like a movie? And being able to pick out little characteristics, like a quality of “messiness” in a way where something doesn’t feel perfectly choreographed or the timing of something that doesn’t feel perfectly choreographed.

One of the things that we noticed as we were watching this footage was that there was a restlessness with the camerawork that I think was a result of these really talented operators constantly having to find the shot. Sometimes they didn’t allow the operators to watch the rehearsals so that there was a certain energy to the camera work where they were discovering the moments as they were happening in the same way that documentarians would. That really informs the shot choices that Billy and I were making because we would find that quality again and again of real-life messiness and imperfection that still works beautifully for whatever moment emotionally we were trying to communicate.

HULLFISH: That sounds like the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi: finding beauty in imperfection. I know what you mean: there’s a predictiveness to certain things like a focus-pull that happens before somebody speaks that you know is planned and rehearsed.

GOLDENBERG: What Harry touched on was the way Barry Ackroyd and Kathryn shot this film so that no one shot was the same as any other shot, and she shot with three or four cameras on everything. There are only two scenes in the film with only one camera and the rest used three and four and each time they did a setup. Take one would be a medium shot of an actor and take two would be a wide. Then they were constantly finding things so it made the editing a real jigsaw puzzle. And sometimes Harry and I would be in each others’ room saying, “Wow! This is so hard!” Six, seven, eight hours of dailies and every shot was different from every other. But the satisfaction you would get out of putting something together and having it be this fluid, well-told story of a scene was incredible, but the unpredictability was sort of built into it in a way. The camera operators are incredible storytellers themselves. They would always be finding shots to help illustrate what was happening with the text of the story or on the emotional story. So it was our job to figure out how to put that all together and make it seem like one beautifully constructed scene. We didn’t have to worry about the unpredictability because it was all sort of built in for us. But it does give it this visceral reality that you could never duplicate.

HULLFISH: You were talking about the unpredictability of the dailies. Normally you get a series of set-ups that are all the same with various takes. But if there’s that much difference in set ups and takes, do you have to approach it differently with how you lay out your bins? How you watch dailies? Are you doing select reels?. How are you approaching that?

GOLDENBERG: I think Harry and I were doing the same thing… my process was to watch all the film and write lots and lots of notes on locators and then pull selects and organize selects in a really rough scene. Then start whittling it together almost like sculpting. What’s telling the story? How are these pieces of the film telling the story? What was so time-consuming was that I would take all those selects that I pulled and make a scene, but then I’d go back and go through all those locators again to make sure I had all of those pieces doing their best jobs possible. I had one seven minute dialogue scene in the film that had seven hours of dailies.

YOON: With eight different characters.

GOLDENBERG: Yeah! Plus three different source music pieces playing at the same time, AND two TVs. So the mind-bending nature of that took me weeks to get a cut that I was happy with. I think it took three weeks to get a cut I was happy with – because it was so tricky to keep everybody “in play” and keep all the emotional stories going and get the text of it straight. It was a very time-consuming process to make sure you had the right shots in there and get the scene to make emotional and story sense. You know when you watch the seven hours of dailies that it’s all in there, but it takes time and patience to get to the point where you think it’s great.

YOON: That encapsulates it beautifully. It was a master class in directorial choices because as scenes progressed, Kathryn would sometimes change blocking. If it was clear that the actors were constrained in some way or if a blocking change would communicate a beat better, she would allow for that to evolve. Sometimes actors would switch positions in the room or one would be standing, instead of sitting on the bed. So, one of the things that I got used to doing was jumping forward to later takes and spot checking middle takes just to see how that blocking evolved so that as I was watching earlier takes, it was useful to see how much of this might be usable considering this is where she ended up. Obviously, you never want to lock yourself into a particular thing depending upon some nuance of performance that you might find beautiful in earlier takes. But I think that really helped us to start to prioritize what was usable and not usable by understanding where she ended up directorially. Sometimes we would get a whole scene and then you could tell that something had bothered her about that because later on she would reshoot that scene with different blocking or in a more efficient way or maybe sometimes even with a different actor. It was fascinating — through the dailies — to get a glimpse into that directorial rigor.

HULLFISH: I’ve heard several different editors speak about watching dailies front to back or back to front and I could see how — on this project — maybe watching the dailies from last take to first might make more sense.

YOON: One of Billy’s techniques, that I’ve come to find as being kind of essential when there is either a lot of footage or an improvisational quality was to have the second assistant or the apprentice go through and cut a selects reel that was just line after line, with all the takes and setups of a specific line. Not slavishly line-by-line but logical chunks of character action and group those together in a sequence as an alternative catalog of the dailies for a scene. And this became really essential as we got iterations or overlaps of that same action in later dailies. These “line by lines” became an efficient way to go back and review those choices because the choices evolved as certain character relationships became emphasized.

HULLFISH: That’s exactly the way I work. Not really line by line but in small groups especially based on blocking of the scene. I would think that with the scene that you described, Billy, that was six hours of footage for a seven-minute dialogue scene – that’s the only way you can get your head wrapped around that, right? You can’t remember six or eight hours of footage.

GOLDENBERG: Normally I like to do that breakdown of the footage myself, but on this film, because of the amount of footage, I had my second assistant do it, and that became really valuable in terms of his knowledge of the footage, so not only did it take a load off my plate in terms of man hours of doing the selects reel, but then he became another resource about the footage. Harry and I were talking about this yesterday about trusting the process. Carol Littleton once said, “You can never know in week two what you’re going to know in week ten.” The process is set up this way for a reason: It takes a certain amount of time to discover things and to solve problems. In films like this that are so intricately shot and there are so many interesting and different ways to put it together, it really does illustrates the reason why there is this process, because scenes just tend to get better and better and you keep mining the footage. The thing you can never do is be complacent. Because there’s more great stuff in there. We’d be constantly finding great shots. You’d be looking for something else to help a moment or complete a note from Kathryn and Harry would come into my room and say, “I found this cool thing in the mirror. You should see if you can use it.” It just made you really want to go in there and work the film as much as you possibly can before they take it away from you.

HULLFISH: Editing is editing. In other words, revising. I’ve heard editors say, “I did it first cut and that’s the way it ended up in the final film.” It’s absolutely possible that you just make this great, perfect cut on the first try, but so much of editing is refining and not being satisfied and trying new things and going back into the dailies.

GOLDENBERG: Absolutely. And I have had scenes that were pretty much the way they showed up in the final film on a first cut, but when I hear “that’s mostly my first cut” there’s always a part of me that thinks, “well didn’t you work on it?” Maybe there was something better in there? It feels like maybe we should have dug in there a little more because it’s like you say, “Editing is Editing.” Part of the job is to never be satisfied.

YOON: I’ve learned so many things working on this film with Billy, but one of the things that I think really stays with me is that. It is kind of paradoxical considering what we just spoke about, which is to know when to rework something and trusting that you don’t have to do all the changes or suggest all of the lifts right up front. I think one of the big challenges — at least in the first act — was to say, “How much context do we need? How much riot do we need? How do we encapsulate this huge event and the scale of this event but also to give an audience the context that they need about Detroit in the 1960s or American race relations in the 1960s? How much context do you need to truly understand how remarkable a time period this was — emotionally or politically?”

My inclination was to make all these radical changes in order to try to get the main story faster and Billy was much more measured and much more mature in the way he first approached the process and would say, “Let’s trust the process” and allow it to work itself out. So what I learned from that is that you don’t have to make all the changes right away. There’s a way in which the lifts and changes that are most important evolve over time. Only by not being impatient and living with the material does the right work become evident. It reminds me of that quote from Goethe which says, “Never hurry. Never rest.” One of the things that really encapsulated a big lesson of working with Billy is that there isn’t a rush to make changes but at the same time there is a desire to always refine.

HULLFISH: Anything you guys can tell me about these scenes in the movie?

YOON: The “Coffee” scene was mine but this clip is just a sample of the overall scene. One thing I remember about that scene is how important it was to help us show that the geographical focus was closing in on the Algiers. The office building where the soldiers are stationed is within sight of the Algiers Motel and the grocery store that Dismukes (John Boyega) is guarding. We used a combination of sound design (music heard from afar) and visual effects (e.g., compositing the Algiers motel sign into a follow-shot of Dismukes walking toward the soldiers) to tie these locations together in subtle but notable ways. This sets the table for the moment when one of the characters from the Algiers fires a starter pistol out of his window at the soldiers, setting off a chain of tragic events that leads to second act of the film in the motel annex.

GOLDENBERG: The interrogation scene we shot first. I think that was the first scene I cut on the movie. They shot a lot of the movie in sequential order. Boyega was just stunning in that scene. It’s probably one of my favorite scenes of the movie in terms of just pure acting. The subtleties of him slowly realizing that he’s not there for information, he’s there to be framed. He’s there as a suspect. I think he just did a beautiful job. That scene is my first cut. It’s probably the only scene in the movie that I think that’s true about. It’s the first scene I showed Kathryn. We messed around a little bit with the beginning of a scene. There was a shot that went out and came back in again but the body of the scene is my first cut. The thing I liked the most is that when they start talking about, “We do these things in stages. Stage One is this Stage Two is this” and I play a lot of that dialogue from the cops on John and not on the cops because the slow realization on his face is so beautiful. I thought, “this is way more powerful how it impacts him as opposed to watching the cops.” Slowly realizing and then getting very panicky. The acting was so beautiful that I just thought that whole performance was gold. When I saw that moment in dailies I knew I wanted to do that before I started cutting. I do that quite often, where I find a performance that is so real it doesn’t even seem like you’re watching a movie any more. I’ll base the whole cut around that performance and sculpt it in a way that makes it feel like it’s natural and it flows to that moment but that moment gets to stand alone.

HULLFISH: I’m assuming that many of the takes of that scene were good. What led you to that particular take? Was it an early take or a did he come to that performance later?

GOLDENBERG: I believe that it’s like the next to the last or maybe third from the last. I think he did about nine takes. She shot three cameras on almost everything so I believe there are three cameras, each on a different size of John. He was good in everything but when I’m watching the dailies — and I’m sure it’s the same for you — a lot of things are going to be good but there’ll be one thing that just really knocks you out and that take was the one that did that to me and you just feel like you’re the audience and then something really has an emotional impact on you I tend to try and use that. There’s were times in this movie where Harry and I’d be watching dailies and we would both be crying and generally we tend to use those performances.

HULLFISH: So with three different shots how did you choose which of the cameras you wanted to be on at that time?

GOLDENBERG: Well I would say that in this particular case if there was ever a time to use a close-up, this was it. One of the interesting things is that he doesn’t tell the truth. He tells the cops that when he walked in, the three boys were dead. It’s not true. One of them was dead and two of them died while he was there. And it’s just such an interesting idea of what you remember and what you’re willing to admit and what you think is safe to say and he actually tells them something that isn’t true even though he’s innocent. But even though he was innocent, he told a version of the truth but not the complete truth and the cops pick up on that and I think that’s what got him in trouble.

HULLFISH: What about the backstage clip?

GOLDENBERG: It was one of the more interesting editorial challenges I’ve had in cutting a scene because Martha and the Vandellas were on stage and these guys are just off in the wings rehearsing because they’re about to go on and Martha’s loud and it has to be boomy to feel real and then how do you play it? Cutting back and forth between them on the side of the stage and Martha on stage and make it feel unified… I was nervous about being able to hear them. And how I needed to cheat that and still having it feel real but you have to cheat the on stage performance down. I was messing around with different ways to cut it. And at one point I was trying different ways to play the audio and it was a real challenge. At the same time I was trying to show how talented these guys were and how they would have been stars except for this unfortunate series of events that are about to happen. And I was trying to show Fred, who is the best friend who is there as the manager and there’re some really fun shots where he’s being really supportive and there’s a wide shot where he is sort of mimicking the dance moves as the guys are rehearsing, which I love. I just loved them all in that scene and I think that’s the idea — to see how talented they are and to fall in love with them

HULLFISH: And I’m sure that getting that blend of the two simultaneous musical numbers was very difficult to do.

GOLDENBERG: When I first started cutting it, I wasn’t really sure how to do it and it was one of those scenes when I saw the dailies – this is one scene where I said to Harry, “I’m going to cut this scene.” It was such a challenge and the footage was so great and later in this scene, the audience has to disperse and Larry is so heartbroken that he actually ends up – when theater is clear and Larry and Fred are the only two left in the theater – Larry walks out on stage and sings anyway to an empty theater and it’s just heartbreaking.

HULLFISH: It reminds me of a great athlete who wants to be up in that at that critical moment.

GOLDENBERG: There’s a great story — and I have to say, in absolutely no way do I compare myself to this man, but there’s a great story about Miles Davis. At one point someone asked him, “How come you never play ballads anymore?” And he said, “Because I love playing ballads so much.” Because he was looking for the next challenge. I in no way compare myself to him, but I just love that idea: You always look for a challenge — for something hard — to broaden yourself and expand your horizons

HULLFISH: Amen I’ve heard that from probably the last three or four straight interviews that “the day I stop learning and stop stretching is the day that I’m going to quit.”

GOLDENBERG: For me, it’s the day I’m not terrified. I mean, when you start a new film, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done before because it’s all new. It’s a whole new set of problems and a whole new set of opportunities. So the day that I’m not terrified, I know I’m finished. I’m sure it’s the same with you. There are just some of these scenes that are so enormous that I look at the dailies and I think, “I have no idea how I’m going to put this together.” I’m clueless while watching. Then you just start and ten hours go by and you say, “Wow, Look at this cool. scene.” Your instincts take over and you do what you’ve been doing for 20 some years. Slowly but surely you sort of figure it out but it’s scary every time.

HULLFISH: Somebody asked me about what I learned from writing the “Art of the Cut” book and the two main ones are: 1) Getting my ego out of the way, and 2) Patience. Finally, I heard someone say, “The day I stop making mistakes is that the day I stop learning.” Can either of you remember a mistake that you made that led to learn something about editing?

GOLDENBERG: I’m sure I’ll hang up and remember ten things…

HULLFISH: It was wonderful to hear from Harry about the things that he learned from you, Billy.

GOLDENBERG: Thanks for that Harry.

YOON: Oh man, I could go on and on with the things I learned from you.

GOLDENBERG: Harry has been so nice to point out the things he learned from me: and most of what I learned I learned from Michael Kahn who had been my mentor. And to add to what Harry was saying about patience, Michael would say to me all the time, “If you want to go faster, slow down. If you slow down and you’re patient everything will happen faster.” You learn a thousand things and maybe ten of them will stick in your head and never go away. That was one of those… take a Zen approach and go slow… be methodical. So, Harry, you thought you learned it from me, but you learned it from Michael Kahn!

YOON: Steve, you were asking about things we learned from making mistakes and I was actually fired from my first job as a PA over a decade ago. I came from the start-up world. I came from a world of technology where it was a much flatter organization and, so everybody wore a lot of hats, and there wasn’t as much of a hierarchy. I remember after a “friends and family” screening, I tried to give the director notes on the cut because I thought, “Who cares where a good idea comes from?” (Goldenberg laughs) Anybody I tell that story to who’s in the film world laughs because they know how ridiculous that is. The point of the story isn’t that a good idea can’t come from anywhere. But the point of the story is that there’s a delicate nature to the creative process that you need to pay heed to. You have to understand where you are. You have to understand who you are in the room and how best you can contribute. That’s not to say that you don’t have good things to contribute. But if you don’t have an awareness of when you should contribute, you can be really disruptive, and it hurts more than it helps. That ability to read the room and to know when to apply your desire to help is something I was so ignorant of when I was first starting out. That understanding is something that I now know is as important a skill as knowing how to make a good cut. Billy is almost ninja-like in understanding the room.

HULLFISH: I had the same experience, Harry. As an editor without a real mentor warning me against the dangers, I felt like I could look at a scene early on in the process and say, “These three lines are never going to make in the final film so I’m just going to cut them out now.” And I would do that and piss off the director. By the time the end of the film rolled around, those lines were usually gone, but that doesn’t mean I was right in doing it when I did. I needed to show some patience. Let the process work. Let the director be a part of the process and get to the same point.

YOON: That kind of attitude is what creates trust and rapport and creative collaboration. Otherwise, you could win the battle but you lose the war ultimately.

GOLDENBERG: That’s probably happened to all of us as editors. There’ve been lots of times when I thought that a scene or a line will NEVER make it to the final movie, but if you trust the process, eventually it works itself out and you discover that that line or scene NEEDED to be in the movie. There were scenes that we took out early in the cut of Argo, and then a few weeks later we were all thinking, “I can’t believe we took that scene out!” and it’s in the final movie. There are a lot of times at that early part of the process that we don’t really know the film yet, and that’s where I’ve been wrong about things. If I had pushed really hard to do something that I thought I was so sure about at the beginning of the process, I probably would have ended up with egg on my face because it ended up being proven that that scene or that line actually is necessary, but it didn’t show itself yet because we haven’t gotten down to the brass tacks of it and made the film lean yet. That’s a big reason I like to let things evolve: so that I can really, get to know the film well. At the very beginning when you’re just putting it together, you just can’t know. I just want to make sure when I make those strong suggestions that I am really positive and that I know the film as well as I can know it before I really stand up for something and feel so strongly that it shouldn’t be or should be in the film.

Before we wrap up, I just want to make sure that we’ve been clear about the genius of Kathryn. We’ve talked a lot about ourselves, but Kathryn is a one-of-a-kind director — and I’ve worked with some great directors. I can’t say enough about her genius, her heart, and her caring about the people who were making the film and the people that she’s making a film about. Everything she does is from a place of having a wonderful heart and incredible intelligence, and being a really gifted and unique storyteller. She is just a superb director and human being. I’m not saying that because it’s a politically smart thing to say. She’s a true friend and a wonderful person to work with.

YOON: Beyond being a great filmmaker, there was a cultural, political and social literacy that she had. She would reference artists or politicians or academics, and Billy and I would look at each other and say, “I’m not sure who that is but it sounds really smart.” She would elevate the discussion in a way that we all felt enriched. There’s a way in which she pays attention to things but also enriches people’s understanding of the world as you’re working with her which is truly remarkable. I think we all feel smarter and more aware by having worked with her on this film.

HULLFISH: I’m sure that was also a challenge for you to know the quality of material she had provided and that you were going to have to show it to her and meet those standards

GOLDENBERG: (both laugh) Her standards and this being a true story and just because you’re a professional … so it really does feel like quite a responsibility and a privilege.

HULLFISH: That’s a great place to end this interview. Gentlemen thank you so much for giving me so much for your time.

This interview was transcribed with Speedscriber.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINKand follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 Art of the Cut interviews have been curated into a book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV editors.” The book is not merely a collection of interviews but was edited into topics that read like a massive, virtual roundtable discussion of some of the most important topics to editors everywhere: storytelling, pacing, rhythm, collaboration with directors, approach to a scene and more. CinemaEditor magazine said of the book, “Hullfish has interviewed over 50 editors around the country and asked questions that only an editor would know to ask. Their answers are the basis of this book and it’s not just a collection of interviews…. It is to his credit that Hullfish has created an editing manual similar to the camera manual that ASC has published for many years and can be found in almost any back pocket of members of the camera crew. It is an essential tool on the set. Art of the Cut may indeed be the essential tool for the cutting room. Here is a reference where you can immediately see how our contemporaries deal with the complexities of editing a film. In a very organized manner, he guides the reader through approaching the scene, pacing, and rhythm, structure, storytelling, performance, sound design, and music….Hullfish’s book is an awesome piece of text editing itself. The results make me recommend it to all. I am placing this book on my shelf of editing books and I urge others to do the same. –Jack Tucker, ACE

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