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noramoons · 2 years

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for reasons wretched and divine:

act i ↠ part i

↠ pairing: bang chan x fem reader (afab)

↠ genre: wolf demon au, greek mythology au, demon!stray kids

↠ word count: 2k

↠ rating: mature/18+

↠ warnings: language, violence, torture, smut, more warnings to be added

↠ summary: You've heard stories about the Lykos clan for your entire life. You know the rules about dealing with demons - never look them in the eye, never trespass on a shrine without an offering, and never walk in their territory alone.

When did you forget to listen?

| next | masterlist | also posted on ao3!

Something has been following you since you left work.

You felt it the minute you left the building—a presence, like eyes boring into the back of your skull. You'd turned around in every direction trying to find the source of the presence to no avail—there's nothing.

And yet, there is undoubtedly something. You hear the bushes rustle behind you on the sidewalk, and you whip your head around only to be met with silence. There's a whisper—your name, maybe? Or someone else's—but the instant you think you recognize it, it vanishes.

You pick up your pace a little now. Whatever it is, it certainly won't follow you into the Wilds: four miles of abandoned woods in either direction.

You know no one knows their way through the miles of trees here like you do. Hundreds of years ago, this area was known as the Pantheon—the entryway between your world, the Interior, and the realm of the deities, the Citadel. During that time, the Pantheon housed dozens upon dozens of shrines, temples, and offering sites to the countless gods and devils that roamed the planet. You aren't sure exactly when they disappeared, or why, for that matter—almost all of your teachers in school said something different. There was internal conflict between the deities, or their powers unexpectedly weakened, or they became irrelevant with the advent of humans with Flairs—whatever the reason was, you know the deity clans haven't heard a word of worship since your grandparents were alive.

Your grandmother was always still a zealot, though. You wondered occasionally if she was the last person on the planet who still truly believed the deities were alive and kicking, and she always made sure you listened to her lectures whenever you came to visit. Don't ever make a deal with a demon, Y/N—if you ever see a deity, never look at it in the eyes—and especially don't wander into the Wilds—

Well, you suppose you weren't always much for following rules.

Regardless, the Wilds are abandoned—despite no one seeing a deity in over a hundred years, most people still stay as far away from the forest as possible. It's probably why you got such a great deal on your home that's only half a mile west of it—everyone that you've ever known has been too afraid to even try to trek a path through it, and you've been warned to stay away from it by family and friends for years. Despite that, though, you've felt a strange magnetism to it since you were young. It's never been hard for you to find your way in and out. Perhaps you're just better with directions than you thought.

Or perhaps that, all along, has been your Flair. Your friends all have one—from birth, Yui's been able to read fortunes, and Saori can see the history of any object by touching it, and Sana can animate drawings that she sees (they have to be made from real ink, though)—but you've never been able to do anything of the sort. Everyone's is always fairly niche; no one has real "super" powers like you used to see in those movies, but you think having the power to never get lost in this one stretch of woods would be a little too specific for even the gods to have given you.

But this is no time to think about any of that, and you know it. You can still sense whoever—whatever is following you into the Wilds' entrance. You're only about a quarter of a mile in, though—surely you can shake them if you make a confusing loop or two.

Once you've circled the entrance area twice, a sigh of relief escapes you—the feeling of any kind of presence behind you is gone. Before you have any time to think about what the hell it might have been, though, you feel it again—only this time, it's fifty feet in front of you.

A breathless "how" escapes your lips. You'd led this thing around the woods for twenty minutes—how could it have possibly gotten in front of you in that time?

You can feel the beginning signs of panic settling into your chest, but you take a long, shaky inhale before you exhale, clenching and unclenching your fists at your sides. You still know this forest better than anyone else—you can still make your way out before this thing, whatever it may be.

You start towards your right, going around where you can feel the presence in hopes of beating it to the edge of the woods. Before long, though, a feeling that you haven't known in years suddenly overwhelms you.

You're lost.

Again, you mutter a "how" in spite of yourself. You know the Wilds like the back of your hand—every gnarled tree stump, every old and bent tree, every decaying temple ruin is instantly recognizable to you.

So how the hell do you not know where you are?

The presence has gotten closer in the time that it's taken you to figure out your situation, and you can finally, finally see an outline of a person. Or what you think is a person, at first.

Because the closer it gets, the sooner you realize it's way too tall to be human. Whatever it's using to walk along the ground definitely aren't feet, either. If you didn't know better, you'd think they were talons, like that of a bird.

You're frozen in fear—where can you go when you have no clue where you are or what this thing is that's approaching you? The panic catches back up to your brain eventually and you break out into a run, but it's too late and you know it. With no way of knowing where you're going, this thing is bound to catch up to you soon, and by then you—

Before you can even finish the thought, there's a hand around your ankle, and you lose your balance almost instantly, falling to the ground. You cry out helplessly, trying to flip yourself over so you can see your attacker, but the instant you catch sight of them, you almost wish you hadn't.

The hand around your ankle isn't a hand at all: it's a claw, with talons that make you wince in pain as they dig into your skin. The body is shaped like a human being—two arms and legs, a torso and a head, but it's covered almost completely in inky black feathers that branch out towards the shoulder blades and form two massive wings. How could you not have seen those before? The face would be human too, if not for the massive beak that protrudes from where you'd expect a nose and a mouth to be.

You were right before—it's definitely not human.

The being leans down and inhales the blood dripping down your leg. "Mmm...it's been ages since I've tasted a being from the Interior. I'll take the chief's seat in no time once I've devoured you."

You struggle in its grasp, but the talons only sink deeper into your flesh, and you cry out again. "Let go of me! What the hell are you?"

The hold on your ankle loosens for a brief moment. "You can see me, little one?"

You meet its eyes with a glare by way of answering, and it laughs as it carves further into your leg, causing you to scream out in pain this time.

"Oh, gods," it exclaims giddily, tugging you closer with the talons in your skin. "You're an Augur? Oh, I can't even imagine the kind of power I'll have once you're consumed." It leans down closer, its face mere inches from yours, and you take the moment to clench your fist and punch the thing's beak as hard as you possibly can. It emits a strangled shriek of pain, letting go of your leg for a brief moment—but that's all you need to scramble to your feet and start running again.

Or at least, you try to. You're much wobblier on your injured leg than you'd expected, but you have to try to escape. You have to. There's no way in hell you're just going to let this thing kill you without putting up a fight.

Your worst fear is realized once you hear the flapping of wings behind you—which also must have been how this thing got in front of you at the entrance to the Wilds in the first place—and it's mere seconds before it lands in front of you, already in a lunging stance to knock you back down.

"Excellent try, little one," it grins. "But it just looks like today's my lucky—"

The bird doesn't get to finish its sentence before something crashes into its side, tackling it to the ground and instantly wrestling with it in a blur of fur and feathers. Whatever this newcomer is, it's much faster—and the only time you can make out what's happening in their fight is when it sinks its teeth into the neck of the bird being, causing both to still.

For a brief moment you think it's a wolf, until it stands up, and you see that the fur on its back is a coat, likely skinned from the animal. It delivers a light kick to the side of the bird being to make sure it's not moving before turning to face you. "Now, then. How'd you get on the Koraki clan's..." It immediately trails off once you make eye contact, and you feel your throat grow dry as you meet its eyes. "...bad side."

Because what's standing before you is undoubtedly a man. No unusual appendages like wings or a beak—just a man with light hair, longer in the back than the front, in clothes much dressier than you would have worn to go out hiking in the Wilds. "Hey," he says, in a much gentler tone than before, although there's an whiff of suspicion in his tone. "You're not a deity, are you?"

You shake your head, at a loss for words.

"And you can see me?"

"Yes," you say, forcing yourself to say something. "I can see you."

"Oh, gods above," the man says, running a hand through his hair. "How the hell did you end up in the Citadel? I haven't seen one of your kind in years."

You frown. "The...what? Where is this?"

"You're in the Citadel," he says, as if that should be obvious. "The home of the deity clans."

"The deity clans?" you repeat slowly. "Then..."

He cuts you off before you can finish your thought. "Shit, you—you're actually human, aren't you?"

You nod, dread settling back into your chest.

A grim smile makes its way across his features. "Then you're stuck here, I'm afraid. You're in an entirely different realm, human girl—and I have no idea how to get you back."

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pyrouge-fr · 3 years

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The Second Omen I.

“So once again, you are my keeper and my watcher.” Frostkeeper looked up. “Though I must admit, I did not foresee it happening in quite this way.”

The icy statue of the Icewarden glared silently back at him. Frostkeeper snorted, and kept pacing around the base. Behind him, his chain scraped along the floor, still securely attached at the base. On the rare occasions his old bones grew restless, Frostkeeper would pace around its circular bottom until the chain wrapped around once, then twice, then however times it took until it was pulled taut. Then he would reverse his route until it was unwound.

The chain itself was more of a formality, at this point. It had been several months, almost half a year, since he had been tried and found guilty by the strange clan he wandered into. The chan now let him wander almost the entirety of the shrine comfortably. The shrine itself was located on the southernmost outskirts of the clan, where the winds ran coldest the year around. A few steps at the entrance lead into a hollow cave where the Icewarden’s statue sat, with a shrine at its base for offerings. Lanterns on the walls and furs on the floor were the only sources of warmth within. Frostkeeper had been given a bare few belongings to help ease his stay- these had been pushed to the most private corner. Food would be delivered to him periodically to prepare and consume as he saw fit, and Ozensa came in from time to time to ensure the shrine was kept neat, under the protection of an armed guard. The shrine had been warded against magic heavily, and they were maintained well. Frostkeeper in turn had been on good behavior the past few months and kept his claws to himself, so some time later visitors started to trickle in.

Not of the clan, of course. As far as he could sense, only two dragons held influence over ice magic in the clan. He only ever saw one of them, a dark colored skydancer, once. Every once in a while another dragon would stumble in, half rotting flesh and half wood, to check and re-light the lanterns. The spirit animating the undead body attempted to approach him once or twice, but he quickly taught them to keep their distance. He failed to see why the clan allowed such an abomination to wander about freely.

Other visitors slowly crept in. Outsiders, who wanted to see whether or not the clan was telling the truth about what they had found. Worshippers, who seemed to range from curious to awe-struck.

Zealots, who begged him to reveal the true intentions of the Master Warden.

One of these flitted around the entrance now, a young dragon from the tundra who had visited him in the days prior. He was an eager young thing, entranced by his tales of the war against the banescales. At first, he indulged him, but Frostkeeper had quickly grown weary of him. He supposed that he should be the guiding claw of the Icewarden to these new dragons who had lost their way, but mostly he was just tired.

Frostkeeper lurked in the back, letting himself blend into the mist and ice in the darker corners of the shrine. Once again he lamented the fact that the clan had managed to capture him before the full strength of his magic had returned. At the height of his strength, Frostkeeper could disappear unseen into the ferocity of a blizzard. Now, between the chain and the magical warding around him, Frostkeeper could only settle for hiding and hoping his visitors couldn’t spot him.

So concerned he was with hiding himself that he didn’t hear the slight shifting of rock on the ceiling, or the acrid scent of smoke drifting through the shrine.

#my lore #the second omen #flight rising #fr #flight rising lore #fr lore #woops I did it again ('it' is forget my own tagging system)#the second omen i

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thegreymoon · 3 years

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Ever Night

LMAO, he’s so mad 🤣🤣

***

Oooh, look at all these dead men walking! Or running, as case may be 🤣🤣

I am so looking forward to the carnage in this episode! 😆😆

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It is absolutely amazing to me how many creative ways people in wuxia/xianxia have to kill you that you never see coming. For example, this ugly mf is using a bell 😶

Which is super interesting to me because I am currently reading Nan Chan and that book also has an insane bell going rogue and causing all sorts of trouble.

***

LMAO, he is so jealous of Ning Que and I am living for it 🤣🤣

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O RLY? 🤨🤨

Somehow, I don’t see your ambitions panning out, fool.

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LMAOOOOO, look at Shanyue working so hard to find Ning Que 🤣🤣

He and the Princess are hands down my favourite messy ship on this show 🤣🤣

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Sang Sang is my hero and I can’t wait to see Shifu kick some Vatican ass 🔥🔥

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Good morning, Taxian-jun!! 🤗

They should have killed him the moment they had him incapacitated. There is no way this will end well for them now.

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LMAOOOO, you are so fucked 😆😆

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LMAO, die then, zealot.

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My love for him knows no bounds 😭😭

His fight scenes are incredible!

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The scenery remains gorgeous 😍

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The chaos gremlin is so pleased and my heart is so full 🤗🤗

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Can’t wait until this Shi Mei asshole gets himself violently murdered 😡

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Ep. 24 is not right on YouTube, smh 😠 Temporarily moving to Viki.

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I love the two of them so much 🖤💙

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Weeping 🤣🤣 Poor baby, he’s so terrified 🤣🤣

He forfeit the music part of the entrance exam because he couldn’t even identify the instruments 🤣🤣 He can’t run away fast enough 🤣🤣

***

I like you so much better than the previous three pretentious bores! 😍

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LMAOOOO 🤣🤣🤣

Baby, I couldn’t agree more! 👌👌 So far, I stan Second Brother, Third Sister, Sixth Brother and Chen Pipi. The rest are antisocial weirdo with egos as big as the mountain itself. First Brother also looks like someone who could be added to the good list, but Fu Zi leads the second one by a large margin.

***

Poor Emperor, he is so lonely.

He so desperately wants a new brother/son/friend 😢 He’s surrounded by bitchy treacherous not particularly smart courtiers who all want things from him, horrible family (minus his demon wife and son who is still too young to be evil) and Xiaoshu absconded in an unknown direction. I’m not sure Ning Que can handle what he’s hoping for from him 😬

***

LMAOOOO, he is selling forgeries of his student’s writing 🤣🤣

Look how pleased he is with all the money he’s making! 🤣🤣 I love him so much!

#chen feiyu #ever night #en spoilers #en ep23 #en ep24

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brunhiddensmusings · 5 years

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random movies/shows i just remembered were a thing

there is no point in any of this other then me being impressed that i remember all of this shit and reflecting on ‘i couldnt make this up if i tried’ a live action tv series of alice in wonderland, it was violently 80s an ‘alf’ cartoon series, that was MORE violently 80s an alice in wonderland cartoon series from the makers of the alf cartoon series which was only moderately 80s neverending story animated series that is somehow underwhelming enough it erases memory of itself a show where james earl jones sits in some kind of negative plane room that has a floor, doors, windows, a chair, and one lamp yet somehow no walls, the windows just kind of hover there. he told stories. how the hell did a show where james earl jones just tells soothing stories fly under everyone's radar? a live action reading comprehension series that featured a kid with magic gloves that rode a stationary bycicle to warp through dimensions that im sure no other human being ever saw so im partially thinking it might have been a hallucination except hallucinations typically have higher production values an animated glowworm movie that was trying to do with the glowworm dolls what MLP the show did for MLP the toys. it contained at least one song i can still remember the tune of 25 years later. there was a moleperson that gave off strong lesbian vibes who was rebelling against her biker vibe moleperson family an animated movie about ‘the lollipop dragon’ that seemed like there was other content on the intellectual property but ive never seen any, taking the form of a car race through whats essentially candyland to prevent liver and onion flavored lollipops being the new official christmas candy to be distributed by santa clause live action series that was only ever on at like 4AM where someone tells fairy tales that are slightly more disturbing then they should be while illustrating them in chalk which is one hell of a trick the animated series ‘mummies alive’ that was trying to basically copy/paste everything they could from the ‘gargoyles’ show but forgot to make it good not to be confused with the ‘tutenstein’ show, which somehow made less sense ‘dink the dinosaur’ a tv series hoping nobody noticed it wasn't actually land before time the animated series a live action series where a modern family was trapped somewhere that was a dinosaur infested jungle so they had to live in a tree house that was only just barely taller then the t-rex that was continually stalking them. the moon had claw marks on it i think? it was basically swiss family robinson but early 90s animated movie ‘the elm chanted forest’ that im more just baffled my parents were able to acquire something that obscure in their pirated vhs collection, i cant think of a possible reason anyone in my family would ever have been in the same room as a copy of this. like damned i havent even seen any of the youtubers that rate obscure bizzare movies even mention this fever dream. the highlight was probably when the talking mushrooms started breakdancing in a impressively racist manner like damned you raised the bar on racist cartoons somehow for about two minutes in an otherwise completely inoffensive movie from i think croatia. seriously its the best part, even better then when the cactus king summons his sapient weapon minions and engages his ferris wheel of doom to kill all the beavers

the animated series ‘superdave’ about a daredevil who gets repeatedly maimed, and repeatedly framed it as though he was a real person in the way jackie chan adventures does the animated series ‘wish kid’ where macully culkin aged 9 is granted basically fairy odd parents style wish abilities from a baseball glove. gilbert godfried its there, constantly, like hes almost there as much as the kid is holy crap i forgot the tazmanian devil got his own show for like five months yall remember when the ps1 first launched? when the game cases were strangely huge for no particular reason because they hadnt adopted the jewel cases yet and there were only like seven games available for the system and none of them even knew how to incorporate memory cards? ‘blazing dragons’ was a point and click adventure game that happened to be one of those seven games, eric idle was one of the people who made the game yet ive never met anyone who remembers playing the game or even hearing anything about it. yeah, this game had an animated series.... it was surprisingly witty in a were not even trying to make sense way that was purposefully avoiding explaining its world live action series ‘zoobalie zoo’ where people in the worst fursuits known to man just kind of exist in an almost entirely empty set where a handfull of circus cage wagons that i assume were their homes were the only structures outside of like two cardboard bushes why the hell was ‘mighty max’ not a cultural icon the way invader zim was, that show rocked so hard ‘the robonic stooges’ where the 3 stooges are robots jhon candy had an animated series where he played himself as a camp counselor. it.... kinda worked almost, blending the generic 80s camp movie ‘bad land developer’ formula with self aware complaints. it only stank a little the animated ‘happy days’ spinoff where they have a time traveling spaceship

not to be confused with the one where the partridge family lives in the year 3000, or when casper the ghost lives in space.... im beginning to see a trend here ‘starship troopers’ the CG series where surprisingly nobody ever died an animated series about a green rabbit on a spaceship that i only recently learned also was not a fever dream from when i was 8. all images i see of it only convince me more that im still hallucinating its existance i cant rmember the name of it but a live action series about aliens living on earth, all the adults have actual costumes to disguise themselves as humans but the baby, who is apperantly the ruler of the universe, is a disturbing pink puppet. also they have magic powers instead of technology and the theme song was ‘wishing on a star’. memories of this show still occasionally haunt me but it was still better then charles in charge just on novelty value there was a ‘jhonny quest’ reboot that aged him up and incorporated CG for a kind of cyberspace setting for the sole purpose they had a villian that was a quadrapallegic but could do things in the cyberspace setting, yet really nobody should have cared because the cyberspace setting wasnt connected to any real world imput devices so he was just the main boss of his own videogame why are you picking on this man. they were foggy on if haji actually had magic powers or just really hardcore yoga skills, and one fanatical zealot villian who basically escaped from the place they keep the well written batman antagonists you remember the ‘the way things work’ book? it had illustrations on every concept of physics and mechanical processes that used mammoths to explain everything from the screw to the lever to sewing machines to integrated circuits. yeah, it had an animated tv series .....somehow not to be confused with ‘cro’, an animated series about a mammoth that was frozen, thawed in the late 80s, was able to talk, and was a framing device for his stories of a weirdly sexily drawn caveman teen that invented all technology

it was basically ‘the croods’ but better and 30 years earlier a live action series based on ‘harry and the hendersons’.... im surprised they could create enough material for one full episode like seriously where do you go from there? its surprisingly hard to think of a story for ‘were a modern 80s family who has bigfoot as a roomate’ an animated series where a basketball player, baseball player, and hockey player are secretly superheroes. there was also a hardcore badass old lady who did most of the work. wayne gretszky was the one nobody respected the pocket dragons had a show. yes, a show based on collectable porcelain figurines that were marketed for their cute value on home shopping network CG series ‘vanpires’, yes it was about sapient cars that were vampires and actual live children who turned into cars that were vampires. that is all oh yeah, there was a back to the future animated series, i thought i repressed that better speaking of repressed memories, i cannot escape the knowledge that ‘super duper sumos’ and ‘mega babies’ existed, booze cannot erase this knowledge

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djemsostylist · 5 years

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I watched Captain Marvel...and I think I hated it. A Review

So like, I really hated Captain Marvel. Well, hate’s a strong word I guess. But given what it could have been, and what we were given instead, well. It’s better than Gagnarok, which is faint praise, I suppose given how much I despised the last Thor outing.

This movie had so much potential. So. Much. Potential. Because they actually had the bones of a good movie. The casting, as per usual for Marvel, was spot on. They created some really interesting characters who weren’t actually cliches like they very easily could have been. And the idea of an origin movie that merely exists for its own sake, especially this late in the MCU lineup, is an interesting one.

Thing is though, this one...well, it sucked. And I think it’s entirely because of the writing and directing. It read like a YA version of a Marvel movie. And it’s the first time in a while that I read reviews and thought “What am I missing?” Most of the round-up that I saw prior to the movie claimed that Sam Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn were a delight, the humor and nineties references were subtle and delightful, and that the whole movie didn’t force things on you but rather allowed the moments to breathe. Even here--the majority of the people I follow are gushing over the movie and the relationships and the subtle building of Carol’s backstory and I’m just like....? Because I got none of that?

Fury, as a character in this movie, makes literally no sense. He seems a whole lot more like Sam Jackson than Nick Fury, and if this movie was attempting to show us how a young and bouncy Nicholas J. Fury became the jaded leader of SHIELD, than they fucking failed. Fury cooing over cats and completely trusting aliens makes no sense, and rather than have him grow over the course of the movie into the Nick Fury we see today, he does...none of that? He was frankly kind of obnoxious, and the amount of moments he dropped a not so quippy one liner the writers desperately wanted us to laugh at made me actively irritated by the end.

Maria was a fascinating character, or she could have been? She and Carol are wingmen test pilots, working under a female scientist developing cutting edge technology. She’s a single mother in the military with a precocious young daughter and together with her best friend they’ve made themselves a family. Her best friend is then killed in a horrible accident gone wrong, and she...actually I don’t know. I’m assuming she left the Air Force perhaps because, like Sam Wilson, she had a hard time finding a reason to stay in. At least that would be what I assume. And maybe she always thought Carol survived and the Air Force covered up something they shouldn’t have been doing and maybe she took a quiet retirement in return for not asking questions, and maybe she always wondered what happened the day that Carol died. I don’t know, really, since they don’t ever really allow her to do much of anything except tell Carol who she is 5 times and then suddenly decide to go into space because her daughter told her to. We were robbed of Maria, is what I’m saying, and I think they could have given us so much more. (Give me a story where Maria takes the retirement and the payout and moves to Louisiana but never really stops looking for answers because Carol wouldn’t just have died like that and one day she digs too deep and she runs into an Agent named Nick Fury who was looking into something too and together they discover what the Air Force tried to cover up all those years ago. Frankly, I feel like this should have been the plotline that Earth had sans Carol, but I digress).

Carol’s team was criminally underused. Gemma Chan, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou (and those other dudes)--they had virtually no part. And it could have been fascinating. Carol was with them for 6 years. 6 years. That’s a ridiculously long time actually. And she has a life there. At least, we can assume? She appears to have an apartment (or quarters), access to public transit, etc. She is close to Jude Law (I refuse to call him Yon Rogg bc that is a fucking stupid name), and she is also, again ostensibly, close to his team (hereafter called Kree Team 6). The scene with them boarding the plane for their first mission together (which totally did not feel like that at all) was interesting, and a lovely glimpse in to team and the dynamics. I liked seeing how they fought together, their ethical views (they go out of their way not to hurt the locals/refugees, which we’ll get to later). And I loved the look into Kree society--it felt more real and grounded than any of the alien societies (beside Asgard) that we’ve seen before. But we get nothing from them. Like, Gemma Chan has 3? lines? Hounsou has maybe 2? And Jude Law 100% feels like he was supposed to Mar Vel (and likely her lover?) before someone, sometime after way too much of the script had been written, decided not to go that direction. Which leads me to the next question, of why not? Because Carol doesn’t need a love interest? I mean, sure I guess, but Thor, Steve, Bruce, and Tony have all had a love interest, and I don’t think it detracted from their stories? Like, Tony still has his bond with Rhodey, Steve obviously has his with Bucky, Thor is still codependent on Loki. Would Carol being in a relationship with Jude Law prevent her from having an equally or more important relationship with Maria? Like, I would have loved for about half the movie to take place with Carol still with the Kree, if only so that we could have felt something of Carol’s relationship and connection with them, which would make the revelations that much more crushing when she does find out. Like, how much worse is it if Carol has an actual life with them (which has likely only been a little bit shorter than the amount of time she’s been in the Air Force) only to find out it’s all based off a lie? Only, it wasn’t totally a lie because she had friends and a home and a job and a lover and a life which she wouldn’t have had if they hadn’t taken her, and yet.

I loved Carol. Or at least, I think I did? Reviews kept whining that Carol was brainwashed half the movie, which sure, but she was no Bucky Barnes. And I loved that. I loved that she has awful nightmares that wake her up and make her seek out her lovermentor to spar, but she is still herself. Like, she isn’t deadened and unemotional and tormented. She’s happy and scrappy and sarcastic and goofy and bouncy and a little bit of a hothead and she is still herself. I loved the scene when she looks at the guy over the newspaper, the sly little half smile she gets when she says “Heroes. Noble warrior heroes” like she knows she’s being a little bitch and she loves it. I love that when she knocks on Jude Law’s door at 2:00 in the morning he can’t even pretend to be irritated with her. I love that she banters with her team and loves her powers and isn’t afraid of dying. I loved who Brie Larson made her in the spare few moments she had between the awful directing and the horrible lines and the things that didn’t really make sense. I can’t wait to see her in Endgame, and much like I did with Hawkeye in Civil War, go “Oh, there’s Carol!” because she had been hiding behind a shitty plot and horrible dialog and suffocating directing for far too long. (Also, I loved her costume and her design and the mohawk is beautiful, and her powers aren’t OP at all.)

Like, imagine if the movie is divided into Carol with the Kree slowly realizing shit ain’t what it seems and the other plotline is Fury and Maria trying to find out wtf is going on, and then they meet up in the climax to take down the bad guys. We get to know Carol, Maria, and their relationship to each other and everyone else. Imagine if we didn’t have to guess at literally everything. And imagine if, in the end, Carol leaves, not because she has to guide the fucking Skrulls to a new home, but because she’s functionally immortal now, and what kind of a life does she have with Maria and Earth any more? (Like, the movie doesn’t address this at all, but I mean, this is a Thing. Whether it’s because she’s Kree (wtf did the blood transfusion do?) or because of her powers, she is immortal now, yes? Or as immortal as Thor or Steve, theoretically.)

The thing is, the Russo’s and Markus and McFeely are really, really good at taking little things and tiny moments and making us know and understand backstory, and showing us how relationships grow and develop in the things we can’t see or don’t have time to see. These writers/directors...are not. They suck, frankly. Who is Mar Vel, what is her relationship with Carol and Maria, what was Carol’s life like in Kree land, why is Maria retired and living in the Bayou, why is Fury on uppers, how did Carol become a Kree, why did they give her the disk control thingy and why doesn’t she take it off, what did they tell her about her past, and most importantly, WTF with the Skrulls and Kree. How did you manage to tell us how to feel to for an entire movie while also telling us nothing at all. (Also, The Russo’s and M&M are good with continuity while still writing new things, while these people, are, again, not. Like, don’t even get me started on the Tesseract.)

And then, okay, when the Kree Team attacks that first planet to save their operative, they are all super specific about making sure the locals don’t get hurt, they protest the innocent, etc. Gemma Chan immediately pulls up her rifle when they say they are just civilians, Jude Law goes out of his way to put up a shield to protect his dudes and NOT hurt the locals, and he seems sorta grossed out by Ronan and his zealots. So...wtf with the “all Kree all evil murdered who kill babies and the Skrulls just want to be with their families.” Like, it’s so fucking tired. A twist for twist sake, which if you didn’t see that coming...well, that’s on you. I’d be much more here for “everyone sucks a little bc people can suck sometimes” rather than the shlocky bullshit family reunion I was forced to endure. The Skrulls were fucking insufferable frankly, and the entire reveal with Talos and the Skrulls from then on was like an embarrassing episode of Stargate.

And look, I’m not opposed to humor in Marvel movies. I’m not, I swear! I legit loved both Antman’s, Peter always fills my heart with smiles, and Sam Wilson refusing to move his seat up made me legit cackle. I don’t like when I feel like the writers spend an entire movie nudging me in the ribs with increasing brutality while screaming “Isn’t it FUNNY THO???” Because no, dear writers, no it’s not. And yes, yes I do get the jokes, but good god could we have a minute? I mean, by the end, the jokes were literally being telegraphed a few 30 seconds before they dropped. (The Kree scanning people--Cat, High danger level. I bet Fury’s going to be...oh yeah, hahaha he is a nonexistent threat isn’t that hilaARIOUS? No, it’s fucking stupid.)

It was, frankly, awful. I hated it, so much so that by the end I couldn’t even muster up enough of a Give a Fuck to care that her callsign was Avenger (and I fucking LOVE callsigns) or care that the stinger had all of my children. I really didn’t. This movie was so fucking disappointing because it didn’t have to be bad. It really didn’t. If they had hired competent writers and directors (I should have known when they hired the Tomb Raider lady this was going to be awful), they could have made it work. They really, really could have. And they didn’t and everyone loves it and I’m happy because shitty butthurt fanboys are being legit gross about this and I want them to be crushed by money, but. I want the next movie to have better writing and better directing because it’s what we deserve. I don’t want to have to keep settling, because it’s good enough.

#Captain Marvel #carol danvers #marvel #my opinions #if anyone cares #this is a lot of words but like #this movie was so fucking disappointing and everyone on here is screaming about how amazing it was and im just like #am i overly critical of everything #did i miss something?#like wtf

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myrcella · 6 years

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thanks so much to @octo-chan for posting the book of joseph! i wanted to compile the most interesting facts imo from it:

joseph, john and jacob seed are from rome, georgia

their father was an alcoholic who regularly beat them and, like the game says, jacob protected them all. their father eventually died in prison

their mother was pretty much absent emotionally

joseph heard “the voice of the creator” as young as seven and was always open about it

they were taken by social services after john’s teachers noticed his pattern of beatings; john was “fragile”

orphanage first, where joseph was evaluated for mental illness, and then the three boys were put with a couple who treated them as labourers. one day, jacob snapped and burned down the couple’s house

jacob was put into juvenile detention and joseph and john returned to the orphanage

john, as i had previously assumed myself, was adopted by a wealthy couple, because he was most attractive looking

joseph had many foster families but never anything permanent

as a man he was just a drifter, searching desperately for his brothers

he suffered depression in failing to find them at first

john seed’s adopted name is john duncan: he became a businessman, though his parents were religious zealots who punished him and made him confess sins like every night. he wore a facade until meeting joseph again

john went through addictions to sex and drugs

he was so prestigious that he was able to easily access information after that for joseph’s mission -- the start of eden’s gate

jacob suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. he spent time at a veteran hospital until his money dwindled

john did indeed acquire land legally with his fortune

faith came to eden’s gate and went cold turkey but they did let her have scopolamine. she works with a guy called peter to administer healthcare to cult members

jacob has at least 300 soldiers fully trained

the cult is communal in farmers and cooks and all that

#far cry 5 #joseph seed #john seed #jacob seed #fc5 #fc5 spoilers

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marvelsagentsofshieldtv · 6 years

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Marvel Studios has announced the start of production on the upcoming Captain Marvel, the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While the press release announces the below-the-line talent and synopsis, the big news is in the full cast list because it reveals that Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson will be making his return to the big screen in the Marvel movies. Yes indeed, while Gregg has been anchoring the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., we haven’t seen him in an MCU movie since The Avengers, when his character supposedly died. For Phase One Coulson was the glue that held the MCU together, so to see him returning is a joy. If you’re wondering how this works since Coulson is dead, well Captain Marvel is a prequel. The film tells the origin story of Carol Danvers, played by Oscar-winner Brie Larson, and the synopsis for the 1990s-set film is as follows: The story follows Carol Danvers as she becomes one of the universe’s most powerful heroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races. Set in the 1990s, “Captain Marvel” is an all-new adventure from a previously unseen period in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Also returning are Guardians of the Galaxy actors Djimon Hounsou and Lee Pace, with the latter reprising his role as that film’s villain, Ronan. In Guardians, Ronan was a Kree zealot—a member of his race with fanatical ideas. Hounsou played his subordinate, Korath. In the Marvel Comics, the Kree race is in a war with the Skrulls, the latter of which are the villains of Captain Marvel. The Skrulls have the ability to shapeshift, so many are theorizing that Captain Marvel will reveal some heretofore unknown secrets about the MCU from the 90s. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the filmmakers behind Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind, are directing Captain Marvel, while the credited screenwriters include Meg LeFauve (Inside Out), Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy), Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider), Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch (GLOW), and Boden and Fleck. That’s, uh, a lot of writers. Ben Davis, who shot Doctor Strange and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, will serve as cinematographer, and Andy Nicholson (Gravity) is the film’s production designer. The full cast for Captain Marvel is as follows: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, McKenna Grace, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, with Clark Gregg and Jude Law.

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hushabyevalley · 6 years

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This was never meant to see the light of day (wasn't happy with it), but my patrons were so kind to it so I'll give it a chance to live. :,3

#Calabi Yau Forest #Zealot-chan #Clover #Scars #Burns

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 12/11/20 - MINARI, THE MIDNIGHT SKY, LET THEM ALL TALK, WILD MOUNTAIN THYME, PARALLEL, WANDER DARKLY and More!

Honestly, I almost didn’t write a column this week for reasons I’ll probably be ranting about for a few more months, but the long and short of it is that I’ve now been writing movie reviews for 19 years, as well as writing a weekly column through most of that time, and I’m kind of sick of working my ass off, usually for very little money, and just not getting anything out of it.

This mainly came as I crossed 200 reviews for the year a few weeks back. As I was preparing to write this week’s column, Rotten Tomatoes, where most of my reviews have been available as FREE content for the past 17 years, decided to upgrade a number of critics to be “Top Critics”… but not yours truly. I have a lot more to say about this but don’t want to waste any more of my time or anger right now. I will be wrapping this column up and taking some time off for a month in January and deciding whether I want to keep wasting my time every week for no money and little feedback. It really just isn’t worth it anymore.

Fortunately, I saw a few good movies this week, and more than a few bad, so let’s start with one of the good ones, shall we?

This week’s “Featured Flick” is Lee Isaac Chung’s MINARI (A24), which like Nomadland last week will get some sort of virtual cinema release in New York and L.A., presumably that can be seen across the country. It will then get its official release on February 12, 2021.

The movie stars Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead as Jacob, a Korean father who brings his family to an Arkansas house in the middle of nowhere in the ‘80s, hoping to start a farm. His wife Monica (Yeri Han) is not happy with this decision but their kids Anne (Noel Cho) and David (Alan S. Kim) try to adjust to the new life. Things aren’t going well but then Monica’s mother Soonja (Yuh-jung Youn) shows up, that just adds more pressure on Jacob, and the kids, especially David, who hates the quirky older woman who acts nothing like a grandmother.

I’d been hearing about Minari going all the way back to its debut at Sundance, and though I remained skeptical, I finally saw it a few months ago an again over the weekend, and it’s one of my favorite films of the year, probably Top 5. To me, it’s somewhat in the vein of The Farewell, my number 1 movie of 2019, vs. the Oscar Best Picture winner, Parasite. It’s a very personal story for Chung who based some of the experiences on his own childhood, which once again proves the adage that if you’re going to write a movie, make it personal since that’s the most likely to connect with others. (Not always true, but it was great advice when I was given it.)

It takes a little time to understand why Minari is so beloved, since Chung takes an interesting approach where we see various scenes that don’t necessarily seem to tie into some sort of plot. Characters like Will Patton’s ultra-religious zealot who seems to be a bit lost when Jacob takes him on to help with his farm. Otherwise, we see various character interactions as things get tenser and tenser between Jacob and Monica, who are fighting all the time. Although the drama does get intense at times, there’s a lot of joyful and fun moments, particularly those involving the wacky grandmother and her dysfunctional relationship with her grandson. I also enjoyed the relationship between the two kids where Anne is always protective of her younger brother, who has some sort of heart illness.

It's a beautiful movie with an equally gorgeous score, but it’s really in the last 20 minutes or so when we start to see where Chung has been going with all these seemingly disparate elements, which builds up to a wonderful ending. Yeun is terrific, and the fact he reminded me of my own father -- we’re neither Korean nor have I ever been to Arkansas -- shows why his subdued performance is so effective. Overall, the film proves that however many awful things life might throw at you, your family can always fix things. I love that message, and I hope others will find and love this as well.

After its one week in virtual cinema, Minari will get an expanded theatrical release starting February 12… hopefully, New York City theaters will be open by then and I can see it in a theater.

Film at Lincoln Center in New York also is starting its 49th annual “New Directors/New Films” series, which was delayed from March, although being virtual, the movies in it can also be viewed nationwide for the first time. I feel like a lot of movies that were scheduled to play ND/NF ended up being released already but there should be some interesting things in there.

George Clooney’s latest film THE MIDNIGHT SKY is based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel Good Morning, Midnight, in which he plays Augustine, a scientist dying on his own at the Barbeau Observatory in the Arctic, who has to warn a group of astronauts returning to earth that it’s no longer safe for them to return.

Clooney has made a lot of good and great movies over the years, so that I’m one of those people anxiously ≠waiting for him to make something great again after the disappointment of Suburbicon. Midnight Sky is definitely one step forward and a few steps back, as it’s impossible not to think of previous Clooney movies like Solaris and Gravity, as well as The Martian and Passengers and Ad Astra. Yes, we somehow have gotten to the point where every year there’s some sort of space movie, and while Midnight Sky at its best is better than Solaris or Ad Astra (sorry, but I was not a fan), there’s enough that’s so quizzical and confounding I’m not sure people will be able to follow what’s going on.

Much of the first half of the movie involves Clooney’s Augustine alone at the Artic base interacting with a little girl (Caoillin Springall) who is completely silent. If it’s ever explained what the girl represents, I must have missed it. There are also flashbacks to Augustine’s earlier career as a scientist and explorer played by a somewhat only semi-impressive Clooney kinda look-alike in Ethan Peck.

The best moments of the movie involve the crew of astronauts on the spaceship Ether, including Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo, who are in a relationship, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler and Tiffany Boone, as they deal with various issues. This is really where comparisons to Gravity and The Martian are earned, but that’s such a mighty quintet of actors that these sections are far more interesting than sullen bearded Clooney with his young ward. The production design and visual FX in these portions of the film are also quite impressive.

The Midnight Sky throws a lot at the viewer but then tries too hard to be quizzical and enigmatic about how all of it ties together until the very end. I feel that some of Clooney’s more mainstream fans will be quite confounded and possibly even disappointed. The Midnight Sky is Clooney taking a swing and only partially connecting, and it might require multiple viewings to feel like it’s a worthy addition to his filmography.

Either way, The Midnight Sky will open theatrically in select cities this week and then be on Netflix on December 23, just in time for depressing everyone on Christmas!

Also hitting Netflix streaming this week is Ryan Murphy’s musical THE PROM, which I reviewed last week. It’s great, I loved it, and can’t wait to watch it again!

Next up is Clooney’s pal Steven Soderbergh, whose new movie LET THEM ALL TALK, will premiere on HBO Max this Thursday, December 10. It stars Meryl Streep as renowned writer Alice who is called to England to receive a prestigious literary award. Since she doesn’t fly, she’s booked on a cross-Atlantic trip on the Queen Mary II ship. Alice decides to bring her old friend Roberta (Candice Bergen)—whom hasn’t spoken to her in three decades--and Susan (Dianne Wiest) as well as her nephew Tyler (Lucas Hedges) to serve as her assistant so she can focus on her writing. Little does she know that her young agent Karen (Gemma Chan) is also on the ship hoping to find out what Alice is writing about with the help of Tyler, who is quite smitten with her.

I’m not sure where to begin with one of week’s films that I probably had the highest expectations and ended up leaving me with the most utter disappointment. I wasn’t really that crazy about last year’s The Laundromat, and I’ve generally found Soderbergh’s work to be hit or miss over the last few years. I loved his thriller Unsanefor instance, and the Magic Mike movies were fun. This one, written by author Deborah Eisenberg, is just plain boring for most of it, offering nothing particularly interesting or insightful, as it’s basically another movie where Streep is playing a character who moans about how difficult her life is and how much better everyone else has it. I mean, if I wanted that shit, I’d spend more time on Twitter than I already do. And then there’s Hedges, one of my favorite young actors over the past few years, who seems to have fallen into a niche playing

In fact, my favorite aspect of the film was Gemma Chan, who plays a character with far more depth and dimension than normal, although much of her role is just to spy on Alice and fend of the subtle advances by the much younger Tyler. The two actors have some fun scenes together, far more lively than anything involving the older actresses, but you always know where it’s going. It’s kind of awkward and painful to watch Hedges bomb so hard. (At least he fared better playing a similar role in French Exit, but in that one, his love interest was Danielle Macdonald.)

The movie looks good with Soderbergh handling his own camera duties and cinematography as usual, and it’s scored with the same hipster jazz he might have used in one of his Ocean movies, but the movie just goes on and on and on, and it hs one of the most “what the fuck?” moments you’ll see this year.

If you can imagine one of The Trip movies without any of the laughs or the delicious food porn…but on a ship, that’s basically what you end up with. More than once while watching Soderbergh’s movie, I was ready to abandon ship.

And from pretty bad, we go to much, MUCH worse. Do you know what thyme it is? It’s WILD MOUNTAIN THYME!!!

John Patrick Shanley adapts his own play Outside Mullingar into a film that will be released in theaters and On Demand by Bleeker Street this Friday, and believe me, its biggest problems isn’t some of the awful Irish accents on display, but they certainly don’t help. Emily Blunt plays Rosemary and Jamie Dornan is Anthony, childhood friends who live down the street from each other in their Irish farming community. When they grow up, Rosemary’s father dies leaving her with a plot of land that forces Anthony and his father Tony (Christopher Walken) to have to use a gate to get to their home. Remember this gate, because it’s going to be mentioned so much over the course of the movie, you’ll wonder why the movie wasn’t called “Wild Mountain Gate.” (It’s actually named after a song that Blunt’s character sings for no apparent reason.)

First, you’ll have to get past the odd choice of the very non-Irish Walken in a key role as the dead narrator of the story with that aforementioned horrid accent. It won’t take long for you to start scratching your head how a noted playwright like Shanley could write such a horrible screenplay. Soon after, you’ll wonder how he convinced someone to finance making it into a movie. I’m normally a pretty big fan of Blunt, but this movie and role might be one of her biggest missteps as an actor to date. As a child, Rosemary was told by her father that she was the White Swan in Swan Lake, so of course that will lead to

It’s not long before Jon Hamm shows up as one of Anthony’s distant relatives who also has interest in Rosemary’s plot of land – nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Pretty soon we’re thrust into awkward love triangle rom-com that falls somewhere between Leap Year and The Holiday. Not exactly something you’d expect from the filmmaker behind the drama Doubt that produced multiple Oscar nominations for the cast, eh?

Instead, Shanley ends up trying to foist the… I don’t want to call it chemistry. What is the exact opposite of chemistry? Between Blunt and Dorman with one long boring conversation after another. At one point, they’re having a romantic chat about suicide, the next Anthony is telling Rosemary that he thinks he’s a honeybee. I mean, what the holy fuck?

Honestly, the whole thing is just grueling to watch, because you wonder how so much talent could falter so badly, particularly Shanley? Even the recent Shane MacGowan doc was a far more romantic take on Irish farming than this could ever possibly be.

One of the nicer surprises of the week is the sci-fi thriller PARALLEL (Vertical), which will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday, and it’s likely to be missed by a lot of people who would enjoy it. Directed by Isaac Ezban from a screenplay by Scott Blaszak, it follows four young people working in the tech sector of Seattle who discover a mirror in a hidden section of the house they’re renting that apparently allows them to experience other dimensions and other versions of their lives. Soon, they’re experimenting with different ways they can make money and achieve fame, although not all of them are cool about how they’re doing it.

Although Parallel opens like a home invasion thriller featuring the great Kathleen Quinlan, we soon learn that it’s a red herring before we meet the quartet of young entepreneurs working on a parking app with an almost impossible deadline. When they find the mirror that leads into an alternative dimension, they immediately start to experiment with figuring out what is happening exactly, and once they do, they realize they can make money by stealing from “alts” i.e. other versions of themselves. Soon, their success starts driving them insane with a desire for even more money and power.

Ezban’s movie benefits from a talented mostly unknown cast, including Martin Wallstrom and Mark O’Brien as boisterous alpha males. Georgia King’s artist Leena is far more than a love interest, although she does become an obsession for one of them eventually – and man, does she remind me of a young Reese Witherspoon. British actor Aml Ameen plays Devin, whose father committed suicide after being accused of corruption, and he’s also wary of some of the activities his friends get up to. There’s also the quartet’s main competitor Seth who gets suspicious of their success as they start producing all sorts of incredible technical inventions.

Parallel is a pretty twisted sci-fi movie that in some way reminded me of the ‘90s thriller Flatliners and even Primer a little bit, but the mirror aspect to it also will draw comparisons to Oculus, one of Mike Flanagan’s cool earlier movies. It doesn’t take long for the twists to start flying at the viewer, and once they do, your mind will be boggled and not necessarily in a bad way. I wouldn’t want to even begin sharing some of the crazy places where the film goes, but even gore fans won’t be disappointed by some of it.

It’s a real shame this terrific movie has floundered without distribution or deserved attention for so long, because there’s absolutely no question in my mind that Jason Blum should be talking to Ezban and Blaszk about doing something together. Parallel is the type of quality high-concept thriller Blumhouse thrives upon.

Another nice surprise this week was Ekwa Msangi’s FAREWELL AMOR (IFC Films), which debuted at Sundance earlier this year and barely got any attention, which is a real shame. It’s expanded from her earlier short, and it’s about an Angolan immigrant named Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), who is reunited with his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson) after 17 years. As they share a small New York apartment, Walter and Esther try to rekindle their romance while Sylvia tries to adjust to an American school.

Msangi’s film opens at Newark airport where the small family is reunited, Walter not having seen either wife or daughter in a decade and a half. He’s working as a cab driver, and he’s ready to rekindle the old flame and meet his daughter who was only a baby when he moved to the States. (Little does Esther know that Walter was in a relationship with another woman, a nurse who isn’t too happy about having to leave Walter’s life.)

One of the things Msangi does to keep things interesting is that she splits the film into three sections, one for each character that focuses specifically on them, and the story gets infinitely interesting as we learn more about each of them. Walter is somewhat at odds with doing the right thing by his wife and daughter, who is wanting to explore her love of dance that her ultra-religious mother forebids. For some reason, I thought Sylvia’s section would be the most interesting as she deals with the trials of being a teenager, but then Esther’s section shows her to be a far more layered character we might have assumed earlier. She also befriends a neighbor woman played by Joie Lee that helps her expand. The thing is that all three are clearly good people, and you never feel as if one is doing something bad in relation to the others.

Farewell Amor is a quiet but beautiful film that explores an immigrant story in a far different way than we’ve seen before. It’s a discovery film, and I hope people will not just presume it won’t hold their interest. It’s a wonderfully relatable human story, similar to Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor.

Sienna Miller and Diego Luna star in Tara Miele’s psychological drama WANDER DARKLY (Lionsgate), playing Adrienne and Matteo, a couple who recently had a baby. After they get into a horrible car accident while arguing, they end up revisiting the highs and lows of their relationship as Adrienne believes either she or Matteo or both are dead.

This is a surprisingly stranger film than I expected, delving into the supernatural not quite in the way as something like Wes Craven’s Serpent and the Rainbow or Jacob’s Ladder, but having a few elements in common. Although I haven’t seen Miele’s other films, this one feels very much like something Drake Doremus might have made to the point where I’m not sure I could say I fully understood what was happening from one moment to the next. The film seems to be exploring a couple’s relationship through a horrible tragedy but does in a strange way.

With the emotional performances by the two leads being enhanced by an amazing score by Alex Weston (who also scored The Farewell last year), Wander Darkly is more than anything, a performance piece with a decent script and further proof Miller continues to be one of the most underrated actresses working today. Despite those great performances, the movie’s strange premise might be too metaphysical and intense in execution for everyone to be along for the entire ride. In that sense, I probably liked last week’s Black Bear just slightly more.

I reviewed Steve McQueen’s ALEX WHEATLE (Amazon Prime Video) in last week’s column, and that will hit Amazon Prime this Friday, but I think I’m going to save Education, the last film in his “Small Axe Anthology” for next week’s column. I was also hoping to review Tom Moore and Ross Stewart’s WOLFWALKERS (Apple+) this week, since it premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, but I just couldn’t get to it. Story of my life.

I’m not sure if I could tell you how many of the Ip Man movies I’ve seen over the past 12 or so years, many of which I saw at the New York Asian Film Festival, but Ip Man is indeed back after last year’s Ip Man: The Finale, but that’s because IP MAN: KUNG FU MASTER (Magnet/Magnolia Pictures) is part of the spin-off prologue series starring Dennis (Yu-Hang) To, who looked enough like a younger Donnie Yen to start a whole sub-franchise. This one is directed by Liming Li, who is also directing a Young Ip Man: Crisis Time prequel movie that presumably stars someone younger than both Yen and To. Got it?

Okay, maybe this needs a little more explaining, although the nice thing about Kung Fu Master is that it works perfectly fine as a stand-alone in case you’ve never seen any of the other movies. This one takes place in the ‘40s as Man is a police captain in Foshan, dealing with the ever-present gang known as The Axes. He’s framed for murder when the leader of the gang dies in prison, and his daughter, Miss Qingchuan (Wanliruo Xin), wanting revenge as she takes over the gang. Ip Man has other issues like being disgraced as a police officer and then the arrival of the Japanese army who have their own agenda. Ip Man ends up donning a mask to become the Black Knight to fight crime in another way.

I make no bones about my love of martial arts films when they’re not stupid or hoaky and sadly, the Donnie Yen franchise was getting by last year’s so-called “finale.” Kung Fu Master starts out with an amazing action scene of To fighting off what seems like hundred of axe-wielding gangsters, and it barely lets up, constantly throwing interesting and thoroughly entertaining fights at the viewer. Eventually, there’s a bounty on Ip Man’s head with whoever kills becoming leader of the Axes, but he has other issues, like his wife giving birth to their baby boy, just as the police chief and force shows up to arrest him. Cutting quickly between childbirth and kung fu action is just one of the interesting things Director Li does to make his Ip Man debut.

The resemblance between Dennis To and Donnie Yen is more than just facial as his wushu techniques are equally impressive, and sure, there’s a few more dramatic moments between Ip Man and his wife, but it’s Xin’s Miss Qingchuan who ends up being more of a formidable counter to To in just about every way, including a few fight scenes where axes are flying through the air.

Ip Man Kung Fu Master is fairly short, less than 90 minutes, but it still feels long because it feels like it finds a good ending, and then tacks on an epilogue and then another one. There were times I thought it might end on a cliffhanger to set up Ip Man’s inevitable next movie. The abundance of evil antagonists Ip Man must fight in this one tends to become a bit much, but it’s hard not to be thrilled by the martial arts on display and Li’s terrifically stylish visuals that keeps the movie interesting.

Ip Man Kung Fu Master will be available digitally Friday through a variety of platforms.

Filmmaker Adam Egypt Mortimer, who released Daniel Isn’t Real last year, returns with ARCHENEMY (RLJEfilms), starring Joe Manganiello as Max Fist, who claims to be a hero from another dimension that fell to earth. He ends up spending time with a teen brother and sister, Hamster (Skylan Brooks) and Indigo (Zelee Griggs) who want to clean the streets of the local drug syndicate, led by The Manager (Glenn Howerton from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). It’s a strange and quirky dark superhero movie that includes appearances by the likes of Paul Scheer and Amy Seimetz, and though I ran out of time to review, I do have an interview with Mortimer at Below the Line.

Time to get to some docs, and there are definitely some you’ll want to check out, although I don’t have as much time to write that much about them, and some of them I wasn’t able to watch yet.

Another great doc out of the September festival circuit is Ryan White’s ASSASSINS (Greenwich Entertainment), which follows the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, half-brother to North Korean leader Kim Jon-un in 2017 at a busy airport in Malaysia by two young women. Although the two women had never met before, they were jointly charged with attacking the North Korean ex-pat with a lethal nerve gas called VX but White’s investigation takes him all over South-East Asia trying to get answers to how the two women were tricked into committing the assassination. This is a pretty masterful display of doc filmmaking by White, not just in the sense of the way the story is paced and edited like a good political thriller, but it’s one that keeps the viewer invested even as the last act deals with the trial of the two young women and the bond that forms between them.

I’ll have more about this film over on Below the Line sometime very soon, but it hits theaters and virtual cinema this Friday and then it will be on PVOD on January 15

I saw Seamus Murphy’s doc PJ HARVEY: A DOG CALLED MONEY way back in March when it was supposed to open at New York’s Film Forum, but it’s finally getting a virtual cinema release there. Murphy travelled across Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington DC with singer/songwriter PJ Harvey as she prepared material for her 2015 album, The Hope Six Million Project, which she produced with Flood and John Parish as an installation at Somerset House where people can walk by and view the recording process. This is an amazing doc that allows you into the process of writing for an amazing recording artist who has given Murphy and the viewer unprecedented access into her creativity. I had fully lost track of Harvey over the years, even though I was a huge fan of hers when she first hit these shores – in fact, I saw her play a concert where Radiohead opened for her… and there as another band (Gallon Drunk) after them! Because of that, I wasn’t familiar with the album, but I just love good music docs, especially ones that take us behind the scenes of a talented artist, and Murphy has created quite a fascinating film even outside the recording studio, whether it’s following Harvey around (narrated by her own poetic observations) but also with commentary by others they encounter. I found the Washington DC segments particularly interesting, since that’s the one place where I’ve spent the most time. An absolutely fantastic doc whether you’re a fan of Harvey’s or not.

Also playing in the Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema this week is Thomas Balmés’ SING ME A SONG, the filmmaker’s second doc set in the Himalayan village of Bhutan that’s been isolated for centuries. He returns to update on Peyangki, the 8-year-old Buddhist monk from his 2014 film Happiness, now a teenager who has fallen under the sway of technology including pop music and smartphone games, as he begins a WeChat romance with a young singer, which makes him consider leaving the monastery.

Also premiering on Netflix this Friday is Jim Stern and Fernando Villena’s doc GIVING VOICE, tying into the streaming premiere of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom next week. It follows six student actors auditioning for the August Wilson Monologue Competition, which brings thousands of students from twelve U.S. cities together to perform the Pulitzer Prize winner’s work.

Joshua Faudem’s doc THE LAST SERMON (Gravitas Ventures/Will Kennan) follows the director and Jack Baxter as they follow 14 years after making their 2004 documentary Blues by the Beach, in which the two ended up in a terrorist attack by British Nationals on Mike’s Place, a bar next door to the National Embassy on Tel Aviv. This event sends Baxter and Faudem across Europe to refugee camps and mosques in order to understand the essence of Islam and the truth about the international terrorists that almost killed them.

Drew Barrymore plays a dual role in THE STAND-IN (Saban Films), directed by Jamie Babbitt (But I’m a Cheerleader). While under normal circumstances, Wild Mountain Thyme would have been the dog of the week, then this movie came along. Yikes. Barrymore plays Candy Black, a comedy star best known for her pratfalls in bad movies (ala Melissa McCarthy). She also plays Paula, Candy’s much sweeter and almost identical stand-in. Candy is a nightmare to work with and after a fall from grace, she holes herself up in her Long Island Estate for five years, while Paula’s own fortunes falter without having that work. I’m sure you can figure out where it goes from there.

Yes, folks, we have what is now one of the worst iterations of a Tale of Two Cities not made by Barrymore’s frequent co-star Adam Sandler, although there are times where you wonder if she is actually playing a version of Sandler with Candy. Eventually, either Candy or Paula or both decide that Paula can take Candy’s place in her attempt to return to work, but the results are just far worse than The Hottie or the Nottie, as Paula also stands in for Candy on dates with the man she’s fallen in love with online through their love of woodworking. (I didn’t make that up.) You almost always know where it’s going and can’t help but groan when you’re right.

Basically, there’s one Drew that’s glammed-down and the other talking in an annoying wispy voice, so there really isn’t getting away from the awfulness even for a second.The thing is that, like the worst comedies, The Stand In is not funny, and it’s sad to see a decent director like Babbitt being dragged into this one. It’s just a terrible overused premise that’s executed quite poorly. Not only that, but the movie also co-stars TJ Miller, who has fallen so far from grace himself, that it’s shocking to see him in another movie.

Besides guaranteeing Barrymore a double-dose Razzie nomination, The Stand In also leaves her with cow shit on her face, much like her character.

Movies I just didn’t have time to get to this week:

Funny Boy (Array/Netflix) Gunda (NEON) Safety (Disney+) Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (HBO Max) 40 Years a Prisoner (HBO Docs) Through the Night (Longshot Factory) To the Ends of the Earth (KimStim) Rompan Todo: The History of Rock in Latin America (Netflix) The Wilds (Prime Video) Nasrin (Virgil Films) Finding Ying Yin

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #Minari #TheMidnightSky #LetThemAllTalk #VOD #Streaming #WildMountainThyme #Parallel #TheStandIn #IpManKungFuMaster

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ourwitching · 3 years

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I wanted to draw some more Zealot-chan. So I did! Here she is with her grandpa's relic sword...

#originaltags

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anthonybialy · 4 years

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Muddled Muggles

You can say what you wish as long as you write the most successful book series ever. Even then, you might lose rabidly erstwhile fans who are so conscientious that they hate those repeating obvious truths. Facts are hate speech. Is it possible to unread novels?

The First Amendment might not apply to the wizard world. But the principle remains even if the ink disappears or whatever. We don't need to cast a constitutional spell in order to feel being able to share opinions is valuable. J.K. Rowling's endorsement of women being women is the worst thing that happened in 2020. Some virus trails way behind. Freedom of speech has been deemed hurtful if you wonder what some people have concluded while separated from the perspective of others.

It took the creator of a fantastical world revolving around manipulating the physical world to note an incontrovertible reality about boys and girls. The horrifying view that women have uteruses is outside acceptable discourse. People can't decide on their genders, which is a controversial view telling you all you need to know about these amicable times.

Disagreeing with an experiment's obvious conclusions is fine in its daftly cretinous way. But misguided zealots who do so refuse to allow differences. No: a different kind. You'd think anyone out to crush contrary stances would at least have proof on their side.

Those who believe the motivated can alternate from boy to girl with a wish are similarly rational when it comes to interacting with opponents of fantasies. Rowling's so hateful that she didn't even conjure a sex switcheroo spell.

Update your tolerance app unless you like having a red number on the App Store icon's corner and also want to be ruined. Announcing people are born this way is transphobic, while denying it is homophobic. All you have to know is to agree with everything woke Twitter accounts proclaim that day, even and especially if it's contradictory. That's unless you want to be branded an equality-hater, you Mini-Pence. Of course they know what makes a woman so: they majored in gender studies.

I was foolish enough to merely roll my eyes on numerous previous occasions when Rowling said silly things. Why did it never occur to me to discard her output while demanding others do the same? Virtual volume-burning is totally not what her villains would do. I wonder if there's a magic land parallel of attempting to censor normal opinions. I promise to read another book.

Noticing the original Harry Potter fan fiction writer had and has a rather prominent platform is supposed to work against her. It's possible she might be speaking on behalf of obscure muggles who fear losing everything if the mob discovers they proclaim a weddings are a special ceremony between a man and woman. Progressives can't envision standing up for the underprivileged.

You have to be your industry's most prominent member to speak out. And you say free speech is limited. Rowling being positioned to defend the right to talk is reminiscent of Jackie Chan confronting Triads. The man who broke everything to entertain you had to be the world's most famous person before he felt safe standing up to gangsters messing with his industry. The witch tale lady faces a different kind of mafia, namely ones that try to break your reputation if you go against tearing down the family.

Today's bullies can't do pushups. The most fragile humans are the most vicious. Those risibly priding themselves on acceptance target anyone they conclude they can get away with torturing. Meanwhile, they cower in fear of being decked back. Anti-scientific leftists are the worst kind of tormenters, namely those who believe they're righteous.

Treating speech as violence while excusing violence as speech is the sort of sensible position we'd expect from those who declare gender is a feeling. Persistent attempts to destroy anyone who maintains you have the right to decline baking a cake for a ceremony you don't believe is a marriage brings everyone together.

Classifying city-smashing as a righteous expression of anger against Target because you're mad about a killer cop is righteous expression. The new free television allows for consuming other views. Why are you against viewpoints?

Liberals who aren't liberal fail to appreciate the irony. Demanding utter submission is only necessary because everyone who disagrees with Starbucks-smashers is a new Nazi who doesn't wear a mask. The innate sadism of their foes is why they only have to tolerate those goose-stepping to their rhythm. It's the most closed-minded way possible to be open-minded.

Having to get to a place where there's no fear of being fired for thinking something is not quite a sign of a healthy society. The professionally vindictive are deluded enough to perceive themselves as holding others accountable by trying to destroy the businesses of anyone who dares back the president.

Noticing biology shouldn't be divisive. Humans identifying as something make-believe are free to disagree, although that's an odd habit for those deeply into proclaiming allegiance to science. It's almost like phony justice adherents replaced religion, which explains the fervor with which they ignore the evidence they claim to worship.

Speech cops are screwed up enough to declare that destroying those who disagree is the market functioning. It's no wonder they loathe commerce if they believe this is how it's supposed to work.

Those canceling others for what have depressingly become contentious takes always fear someone doing the same to them. The only thing worse is using the word “cancel” in reference to a human being. The lamest predators possible are sleepless like sharks with all the crankiness and none of the bite.

Seeing those who oppose gender free agency as being unfit for polite society is itself rather impolite. You're banned from noting how antisocially shrill your word monitors are in general and specifically while hissing at dissenters.

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operationrainfall · 4 years

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Title Kawaii Deathu Desu Developer Pippin Games, Top Hat Studios Publisher Eastasiasoft, Top Hat Studios Release Date April 16th, 2020 (Switch); August 30th, 2019 (Steam) Genre Action, beat’em up, fighting, arcade Platform Nintendo Switch, Steam Age Rating Teen Official Website

What happens when you take GWAR and make them cute monster girls instead of alien warlords? Kawaii Deathu Desu is a start. Developed by Pippin Games and Top Hat Studios, KDD (as it’s affectionately referred to in-game) is a fast-paced beat’em up button masher in the vein of One Finger Death Punch. Nine adorable supernatural beings have found themselves incarnated as Japanese idols, and have decided the best way to lay claim to the throne of the underworld is to kill as many of their fans as possible. Whoever reaps the most souls wins. Pretty straightforward, honestly. And like GWAR, the fans are more than happy to throw themselves on stage to be slaughtered by their idol overlords. (Fun fact: I was killed by GWAR once. They sacrificed me to the Meat Grinder. It was a blast, and thankfully I recovered.)

Death-chan is your default idol and she’s a pretty fun introduction to the game’s simple but addictive mechanics.

Each of the girls has a unique moveset, though they generally fall into one of two camps: a mid-range melee or a short-range melee. For instance, Death-chan, the game’s default monster girl, wields a scythe that has some decent range on it. When she activates her special, she conjures a much larger scythe, extending the range of her melee attack across half the screen while retaining full mobility. On the other hand, Emmy (my monster girl of choice for the majority of my playthrough) is a brawler who uses her hands and feet to beat her fans to a pulp. Her special plants her in the center of the screen and she spits zombie bile at her approaching zealots who are slowed down by corpse hands rising from the floor. The rest of the girls follow similar patterns with different weapons.

Since each idol is locked except Death-chan, here’s your options: Death-chan, Emmy, Suu, Mary, Elysa, Abigail, Gummy, Ruka, and Mira.

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I played a review copy on the Nintendo Switch for about six hours, and the controls were very, very responsive. You use the left and right bumpers to attack in their respective directions, and every tap had my girl turning on a dime to maul whichever poor soul had ventured too close. The tight controls were great, especially in later levels and when tackling hard modes, because the fans come fast and often. Unlike One Finger Death Punch, where you’re penalized for button mashing, Kawaii Deathu Desu pretty much requires it, though you can make breathing room for yourself by focusing on one side of the screen and only turning around to take out faster-moving fans as they approach. At other times it’s just a mash-a-thon to keep them from touching you, which is actually kind of exhilarating.

The more fans you kill, the more your special gauge fills up and you can unleash particularly devastating attacks. Early on you’ll see this rarely and it doesn’t offer much help, but later on it can mean the difference between life and death. To trigger the special, you have to hit both left and right bumpers at once. I almost always triggered it without meaning to because of how rapidly I was weaving back and forth. While not terrible, it did end up feeling like there was no way to strategically use my special. The game is also on Steam, and this issue might not come up when you’re using a keypad or mouse, but on the Switch I’d almost rather it be automatic once the bar fills.

Gummy’s special move envelops her in a ball of goo and she attacks oncoming fans using tendrils from the floor.

What’s nice about the controls is how easy the game is to pick up. There’s virtually no learning curve, and the pop aesthetic of the game itself is very inviting. My nine-year-old was able to pick up a Joy-Con and play with me without any hassle. What is a hassle is the fact you cannot remap the buttons on the Switch. I almost exclusively used a Pro Controller when playing, and my fingers would ache after about 20 minutes. Playing in handheld mode on the Switch itself was even worse. Constantly mashing your index fingers on the tiny bumpers made for a painful gaming session, and KDD is incredibly grindy. Playing PVP isn’t any better, as the game forces you to use individual Joy-Con, to which even my son felt the buttons were too small to play comfortably. (As an addendum, you can remap buttons on the Switch itself, though you cannot make it game-specific – or rather, I couldn’t figure out how if you can. This is a workaround if you intend on having long gaming sessions, but it’s cumbersome. Ideally, I’d prefer being able to remap in the game itself.)

The game suffers from a few other quality of life issues, the least of which is that confirm is mapped to the B button. As any Switch owner can tell you, confirm should be mapped to the A button, and it throws me for a loop every time. The UI is pretty cumbersome as well, and nothing aggravates me more than when I back out of a level to move on to another and it knocks me all the way back to the character select screen. When working your way through the game, you also cannot access the Hard or Insane modes until playing each Normal stage three times. It felt needlessly gatekeepy. The game also lacks any sort of information guide. Your monster girl has multiple stats you can level up using souls, but none of those stats are explained. Some are easy to infer (Life, Block), but others aren’t so straightforward. I think Magic is how long your special lasts? But I’m not sure.

I also stumbled across what I can only assume is a glitch. KDD has achievements for each character, which are nice motivators to keep playing. One of them is leveling each character to her max level. I maxed out Emmy at level 10, but her achievement says I’m still only 77% of the way toward the goal. It’s not a deal breaker or anything, but it does irk me a bit.

I’m not entirely sure why this says I’m only at 77% when my Emmy is maxed.

Speaking of souls, everything in KDD relies on them. Leveling up a character? Souls. Unlocking a new monster girl? Souls. Buying outfits for your idol? Souls. As far as I can tell there are no micro-transactions to be seen in the game (thank goodness!), so I expect some grinding, but coupled with how painful it is to play for extended periods, that grind feels interminable. As it is, I was able to level Emmy and unlock each idol, but never bothered leveling up anyone else or going for outfits.

One of my favorite aspects of the game was the music. This is a chiptune lover’s paradise. The game is broken up into four countries with three venues each: Japan, China, America, and Brazil. Each country has a distinct sound, which I really liked. Some of the tracks are absolute bangers (my favorites were “Tashite,” “Oturan,” “Fruity Dance,” and “Na Town Pongster”) but there are several that didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I do wish though that a game focused on idols had done more with that concept musically. With so many characters, I’d have loved to see character songs or boss levels that showcased each girl’s style of music. What we got was good, it just feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

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Kawaii Deathu Desu is a fun time waster that would really benefit from some quality of life changes. (My soul for a button remap option!) For someone looking for a quick, simple gameplay experience, you can’t really go wrong picking it up.

KDD is available on Steam for $3.99 USD (or $4.99 if you also want the soundtrack), and $4.99 on the Nintendo eShop.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″]

Review copy provided by the publisher.

REVIEW: Kawaii Deathu Desu Title Kawaii Deathu Desu

#arcade #beat&039;em up #EastAsiaSoft #fighter #Kawaii Deathu Desu #Pippin Games #Switch review #Top Hat Studios

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