#also Hugh Grant is yes he’s great

[mermaidsirennikita]

I’ve started watching The Artful Dodger and loving it, it’s far better than Bridgerton at actually capturing the essence of a romance novel (my first thought upon seeing Jack and Belle interact was that it could’ve been ripped straight from a romance novel). Do you have any recs for tv shows or movies that have the vibes of a romance novel?

Ooh yes!

Oldie but a goodie and if anyone hasn't seen it they should (and really, the whole trilogy--the second movie gets a bad rap, but I personally so enjoy it, and I love the third movie for a lot of reasons but the "REIGNITE. OUR. LOVE." sequence is absolutely one of them, the "we are gonna FUCK THIS SHIT OUT" vibes are sooo romance novel for me). Bridget Jones's Diary. Mark Darcy is just an amazing hero. Bridget is a legend. Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver is PEAK Hugh Grant, and his introduction in that film is one of the greatest character intros I have ever. Seen in cinema. I see some people knock on it because of things that have aged--Bridget worrying over her weight because it's the early 2000s and super skinny was the trend, the workplace harassment. I don't give a fuck. If you haven't seen Bridget Jones's Diary, you are doing yourself a disservice.

(It is based on a book, but that book is not a romance novel. The movies are.)

Ummm speaking of Hugh Grant, Music & Lyrics is an underrated BANGER and absolutely fucking reads as a romance novel. A washed up has-been pop star begins a creative partnership with the messy neurotic woman who waters his plants? He does a flop attempt at defending her honor to do the guy who did her wrong. There's a grand gesture/grovel moment ffs. It's GREAT. The music is AMAZING. POP! Goes My Heart!

This one is borderline because it is more of a girls trip comedy, but the romance is truly centered so well and is a swoony romance and it features peak Richard Madden and it is again, so underrated. Netflix's Ibiza, dude. Buttoned up marketing girl goes on a business trip to Spain, her two best friends (who are both much wilder than her) accompany her and they go to the club one night and see DJ Richard Madden (LEOOOOO WESSSSST) and he and the main girl have this amazing meet cute that involves someone drawing a dick on her face in glow in the dark marker and him coming to the rescue, but then he has to go to a gig in Ibiza and she and her friends decide to track him down because some people are destined to go to the moon, but her destiny is to FUCK. THAT. DJ. But Harper and Leo's connection is more like love at first sight than pure horniness? I just miss movies that like, unabashedly capture zany happiness and the flutters of first love (and the sex scene is so good???). This movie is amazing and I adore it.

Bros. Look dude. I know Billy Eichner fucked up the marketing for this one. I know he's annoying as hell. Bros is objectively a romance novel movie lol. It's not as inclusive as it could/should be, I will agree with that always--but the romance arc is so good, and it is legit funny, and it has a FAILED GROVEL which we all know is one of my favorite things. And I do think it has a deeply true heart and soul and is really amazing.

Brown Sugar. PEAK Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan. It's a slow burn friends to lovers movie in which there is sooooo much sexual tension and so much angst and so much follow the fuck through. Also, Taye Diggs has one of the most magnificent line deliveries of all time with "riCHARD LAWson".

Imagine Me and You. The sapphic romcom we deserve. A bride falls in love at first sight with hot florist Lena Headey while walking down the aisle to marry her groom, as you do. What follows is a woman desperately trying not to cheat on her husband while experiencing extreme sexual tension with Lena Headey. Surprisingly soft and super romantic.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022). Required viewing for historical romance novel fans. Obviously based on a book, but again, that book is not a romance lol. The movie is. And it's one of the hottest movies in recent memory. Jack and Emma did the WORK. The kiss right before he goes down on her is maybe my favorite movie kiss of all time.

Obviously. Pride and Prejudice (2005). I shouldn't have to include this, but to be fucking clear lol. I will always maintain that while P&P (the novel) is a predecessor and a shaper of romance novels, it is not a romance novel. It is a contemporary novel with a lot of social commentary and a good love story. This movie? Makes it a full, sweeping romance with some of the best tension ever committed to screen.

Faraway. Omg, an amazing slept-on movie that is a rare romcom featuring a middle-aged woman! Basically, right when her mom dies she finds out her husband is having at min an emotional affair with his younger employee, and she also discovers her mom had a secret property on a Croatian island. She goes there, and is immediately courted by this younger real estate developer guy, but why is she constantly butting heads with the gruff guy who's been living in her mom's house????

Far and Away. Hate to recommend a Tom Cruise film, BUT it is is very romance novel, and it does star Nicole Kidman as well, and I hate to say it but those two did have bomb chemistry when they were married. The Irish accents are rough, but the plot is delightful because he's a poor guy who ends up getting roped into her scheme to leave for America (after his harebrained revenge scheme against her dad fails lol) and they live in a boarding house together pretending to be brother and sister... But like, everyone can tell they aren't because of their extremely obvious sexual tension lol.

When Harry Met Sally. Cliche, but it is a classic every romance lover should see. I'm not a big Billy Crystal fan, but his chemistry with Meg Ryan is MAGIC in this, and you really do get the sense of two people slooowly falling in love without even realizing it until suddenly they do all at once.

#romance novel blogging

[stxrshxpxd]

leading man

pairing: hugh grant x reader

word count: 1.134

warnings: age gap (early 20s/late50s)

prompt: reader is an inexperienced (in more than one way) actor who’s just booked a film job, and she strikes up a conversation with the leading man

* * *

It was the summer between my first and second year of drama school. The last month of the semester had been crazy, as I had begun filming for my first real big acting job. It was a film with Hugh Grant in the lead. Yes, Hugh Grant! I hadn’t been able to muster up a single word to say to him for the first two weeks on set. I had kept on walking in the opposite direction and avoiding eye contact for the first few days. Some of the first words I said to him I believe were when we had a conversation on screen as our characters. Truth was I had had a huge crush on his younger self half my life.

“Is that so?” Hugh laughed and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling with an amused smile. The confession about my crush had just poured out of me. Once we had, at last, gotten to talking as ourselves I had found myself rambling on for minutes on end. I was terrified of the silence that might’ve appeared between us had I not had anything interesting to say, and he might’ve gotten bored and left. Granted, I wasn't sure how interesting my last few spiels had been.

“And not now?” he joked, looking down again and glancing at me from under his brows. I took a sharp breath in and tried to think of a witty answer.

“Relax,” he chuckled, noticing I was trying hard to appease him. So long as we’re being honest, I definitely still found him attractive. His bright blue eyes in contrast to his tan and freckled skin. The varying shades of grey in his hair, which I was grateful he had grown out a few inches for the role. The prominent veins residing on the backs of his hands at all times.

“So then you’ve shagged a whole lot of awkward blokes with weird hair and a funny walk probably, eh?” he continued joking and took a sip of his coffee. We were in a corner on set, where we had sat with our coffees for the past half hour. I had learned quickly that being an actor meant you had to do a lot of waiting around.

“Surely those fools are begging at your feet,” Hugh added and extended his whole arm at me. Panic washed over me. He had just complimented me massively and also assumed I had been with a great deal of guys. I could’ve easily laughed it off. Why couldn’t I have laughed it off?

“Not so much blokes as bloke.”

“Oh, long time boyfriend?”

Yes. Lie!

“No. One night stand.”

Hugh smiled gently.

“So, you’re single.”

I was surprised that was what he took away from our conversation, and that was what he chose to emphasise. I chuckled nervously and nodded, crossing my legs and sitting up straighter in my chair. Hugh was quiet for a minute, looking around the room, deep in thought with a little smile on his lips. I was sweating.

“He must not have been that good, your bloke. If you didn't come back for seconds.. And you swore off guys after him.”

“He wasn’t great,” I laughed, still telling the truth. Hugh took another scan of the room and then he looked down in his coffee cup. It looked tiny in his large hand.

“We’re not all like him, you know. There are a few of us who are quite decent in bed.” He made a face that I thought should have been accompanied by a wink but it wasn’t. “Even us awkward boys with funny hair.”

“I really loved your hair! Honest.”

“You’re sweet.”

He smiled softly still.

“How old are you?”

Lie! It’s not that hard.

“Twenty… one.”

I was turning twenty-two in a month. He noticed I was in agony telling him my age.

“You’re a baby! When you’re pushing sixty you can start making that face.”

He pointed at me and my grimacing face again and I laughed.

“I know. I don’t think I’m old… necessarily. I just think I’m… I haven’t done anything, it feels like.”

A serious conversation was blossoming between us and Hugh looked at me with his head slightly tilted, his lip caught between his teeth. He thought for a second.

“Do you mean in the area of that singular bloke with the hair?”

“His hair wasn’t that weird,” I laughed quietly as a quick chime-in, and he made a quick face in response, and then I answered his question. “But yes. That’s a big thing.”

“Well,” he took a deep breath and looked away from our kind of intense eye contact. “You’re gonna hate me for saying this and you won’t believe me, but really it’s not that big of a deal. Firstly, it really doesn’t matter how many people you’ve slept with. You don’t have to do–”

“But I want to!” I cut him off, leaning forward in my seat now. Maybe it was the ninth hour on set which was sending me into delirium, or the apparent chemistry we had, but I was suddenly gushing about how badly I wanted to have sex to Hugh Grant. “I want passion and lust and drama! I want sex.”

“Of course you do, you’re an actor.”

I laughed in the middle of a sigh.

“You wouldn’t let me finish, though… Secondly, it’s just about finding a person you’re comfortable enough with and you can experiment all you want. It’s quite fun.” He shrugged, sipping his coffee again.

“Finding the person is the impossible bit,” I stated with my chin in my palm, as the visual representation of a sigh. Hugh pressed his lips together into a thin line for a moment, staring at me intently. There looked to be many thoughts whirring around in his brain. There was some sort of a vibe building between us. All this time I had had so many things to say to him but now my mind was blank. Was the sexual tension only in my head?

“I guess you’re right,” he nodded and looked away, licking the inside of his cheek.

One man from the production crew came out to our spot and told Hugh that he had a scene to shoot in five minutes. He finished the last bit of his coffee in one swig and I took a mental snapshot of his neck as he bent his head all the way back for a second.

“I’ll pray for that right person to find you,” he pointed at me as he began walking away. “Funny hair or not!”

It wasn’t until he was out of sight that I recognised the big stupid smile on my lips and the heat in my cheeks.

#man i love writing dialogue #hugh grant #fic #imagine #hugh grant x reader

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Rebecca Ferguson: “I must try everything” 

In Mission Impossible 5 you had the opportunity to kick strong men. Did you enjoy it?

Oh yes! From a very young age I liked to move, I was into swimming sports and i danced.  I feel great when i’m active.  I’m not the type of person to linger in bed in the mornings. When I was told that i need to train this hard to be able to fight like Tom Cruise i was enthusiastic. Only the scene where i jump from the rooftop of Vienna’s Operahaus was a challenge because I’m afraid of heights. Luckily I don’t have to hang from the flying plane like Tom. 

What makes one a hero? Is Tom Cruise one of them?

I admire people who believe in somethng and commit to it.  You can do it in your day to day job as well and i have many private examples. Tom is probably not a hero, but he is an incredible workforce - not only is he an actor, he is also a producer and is involved every step of the way. This is for me exemplary.

Have you done anything heroic?

Let me think. Nothing comes to mind. But I think I have good morals and I stand by it. If you want to consider that heroic, then yes.

Could you defend yourself  if you were being attacked?

If I stop the attacker and ask him to choreograph it like a dance, then of course. I would say: “You attack on the left and I jump on the right”.

What do you need to find the right groove? Tango is known as particularly erotic dance.

I never analyzed Tango’s philosophie, I simply like the dynamic. And you need to be able to hear your partner, so that your movements coordinate each other and ready for the smallest stir. Very similar to the way me and Tom fight.

What does your partner and your little son say to the fact that mama now does action with Tom Cruise?

They think it’s cool and they support me in everything I do. I simply must try all kinds of things in life. This puts a smile on my face.

Are you looking for adrenaline rush?

I have diffrent sides. I can be energetic, but on the other hand i live a cozy life in a fishing village.

Now you’d have to leave your idylic life more often while your career goes up futher. Does that bother you?

No, I like meeting new people and getting to know new cultures.

How did you start acting?

I went to casting and as soon as I was infront of the camera i felt like a fish in the water. I was protected, i could hide behind the role.

Would you also like to try roles where you don’t kick spies?

I miss trainings for Mission Impossible. My body is activated for Pilates-hours now. But of course i would like to play other roles. Right now I’m preping for a very different film with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant called “Florence Foster Jenkins”.  It’s about 1940s opera singer. Stephen Frears is the director. I don’t think i will practice much fighting for that. But who knows?

Interview for “Mission:Impossible - Rogue Nation” (2015) translated from german by @edwardslovelyelizabeth for @rebeccalouisaferguson

#rebecca ferguson #interview #mi5 interview #photoshoot #charlie gray shoot

[naughtygirl286]

So Yeah this week we finally went to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves now like Mario this isn't the first time we went to see a Dungeons & Dragons movie in the theater. We where actually there opening weekend to see the original Dungeons & Dragons in 2000 which at the time I thought was pretty good. Now I'm not a player of Dungeons & Dragons but I know and hang out with plenty of people who are and I have watched "guilds" play through quite a few campaigns and where it does seem fun and I do enjoy RPGs and the Fantasy elements and I'm always invited to play its just the table top stuff isn't really my thing I'm more of a Video Game Role Player and more interested in stuff like Final Fantasy/Dragon's Age/Mass Effect/ect. its noting against table top stuff Its just a preference I'm a Video Game girl lol

Now with this movie there was of course some collectable items which you can see here!

Now anyway as for the movie itself I thought it was excellent!! I'd have to say I did love it I enjoyed it alot. There was plenty of action and plenty of funny moments but also it did have a serious tone at times. it is true what the advertising says it's an "Epic Adventure" and I do feel that partly that is due to the writing I feel that the writers of this probably play the game and are familiar with how everything works being while watching this I had the feeling that this could actually be a campaign you could and would actually play.

Your basic story is pretty much this Edgin (Chris Pine) and his partner Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) have a band of thieves and they go out and do quests and adventures stealing treasures and what not. this came about do to a tragedy in Edgin's past which caused him to turn away form being a Hero and at this lowest point he met Holga who also suffered a from events in her past and the 2 became friends and started working together and created a group to go out and do jobs. During one of these one of the group members Forge (Hugh Grant) double crosses Edgin and Holga and they get sent to prison while Forge lives high on the treasure. Upon their Escape/release Edgin and Holga must get a team together to take down Forge and the powerful sorceress he is now working with and get everything back that they lost.

but like I said the movie is fun and exciting I did feel that it had alot of heart and at its core it is a story about family and going to pretty much the ends of the earth for them.

I did feel the acting was great and the characters are likeable and you do want them to succeed in their quest. Chris Pine and Justice Smith (who plays the somewhat bungling wizard Simon) bring alot of the humor to this movie. Also the pairing of Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez is really good too she plays this somewhat serious barbarian warrior who deep down has a soft heart. and there interactions are at times funny too and I wouldn't be surprised if she had a hard time keeping a straight face with him while filming. But also Sophia Lillis (Doric) who changes into animals through some really nice visuals and camera work and Hugh Grant (Forge) who is the double crosser and pretty much everyone else did an amazing job!!

but yes the movie is also a visual spectacle! The cinematography and locations were all amazing as well as the production design and the costumes. The visual effects were excellent including the Owlbear of course I'm all about that Owlbear! lol but yeah the creatures and animals, fights and stunts and everything was just top notch and really cool! Even the music just fit right into this and made the movie better

So with all that I would say the movie was excellent and a epic fun adventure! So give it a watch if you can being I would highly recommend it!

Also don't forget there is a funny lil mid credits scene for this also.

#Dungeons & Dragons #Dungeons & Dragons Movie #Dungeons & Dragons Movie 2023 #Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves #Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves #D&D #D&D Movie #D&D Movie 2023 #DnD #DnD Movie #DnD Movie 2023 #Dungeons and Dragons #Dungeons and Dragons Movie #Dungeons and Dragons Movie 2023 #Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves #Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves

[ingek73]

Harry and the Press: Read All About It?

A prince of the realm taking on Britain’s biggest newspapers is surely newsworthy? Not if you’re a reader of one of these titles, writes Liz Gerard

Liz Gerard

24 May 2023

In the 45 days from 28 March to 12 May, members of the Royal Family featured on our national newspaper front pages 320 times. These appearances included 133 photographs and 82 lead stories.

What do you expect? you might ask. We’ve just had a Coronation for the first time in 70 years. And we can all pledge allegiance to the new King. And Kate had a go at climbing a wall. And Charlotte had a birthday. And Louis wore blue. And some of them went to the pub and drank beer or a gin and tonic. And Camilla’s a jolly good egg. And Meghan is self-centred. And Harry…

Ah yes, Harry.

Harry flew in from America twice during that period. Once to make a brief appearance at the Coronation; and once to attend the High Court, where he has launched three cases, accusing the Mail, the Sun and the Mirror of illegal breaches of privacy.

He was joined in his case against the Mail by Baroness Lawrence, Elton John, David Furnish, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley and Simon Hughes. Only Hurley and Hughes were missing from court on day one – 27 March. Quite a big deal, you might have thought. Five very big names, including a royal prince, appearing in court in person to sue our most popular news brand. Imagine the sort of coverage that turnout would have achieved were they taking on the BBC rather than the Mail.

So how many of those 320 front-page items did this four-day hearing account for? Six – almost all on the first day.

The Times and Telegraph both had a main photograph of Harry with a caption explaining why he was in the country; the i and Mirror had puffs – the i referring to the court case, the Mirror ignoring that altogether in favour of the King being too busy to see his son. The Guardian also had Harry as the main picture, alongside a splash that focused on Baroness Lawrence’s assertion that she felt betrayed by the Mail – which has made great capital over the years from its pursuit of her son’s murderers.

But the case was covered inside, wasn’t it? Up to a point, Lord Copper.

The Times, i and Telegraph had page leads. The first two focused on the allegations against the Mail; the Telegraph – in common with the other papers that carried anything at all – went on the line that Harry wouldn’t be seeing Dad while he was here. The Mail, which had described the lawsuits as “a pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to draw it into the phone-hacking scandal” and the allegations as “preposterous smears”, ploughed its own furrow with a page five lead headlined ‘Key witness says hacking claims “false”‘. A private investigator who had told the plaintiffs’ lawyers 18 months earlier that he had acted illegally on behalf of the Mail – “hacking phones, tapping landlines and bugging cars” – had now produced another signed statement retracting it all.

The paper’s owner, Associated, wanted the case thrown out, arguing, among other things, that it was based on material given in confidence to the Leveson Inquiry and because it was out of time. It also applied for anonymity for its journalists “in order to prevent distinguished journalists having their reputations destroyed in the event that the case never proceeds to full trial”. The granting of this application was phrased as “the judge quickly awarded victory to the Mail”. Somehow the factoid that it had been made under the auspices of human rights legislation – which the Mail has repeatedly said should be repealed – did not make it into print.

So much for day one. If Baroness Lawrence was a tasty starter, day two brought a seriously meaty main course in the form of Prince Harry’s witness statement. There were two central features:

The Royal Family had known about phone-hacking, he said, but didn’t tell him and did nothing about it for fear of opening a can of worms. There was even, he said, a private agreement with the Murdoch papers not to “engage or even discuss” the possibility of bringing claims against them until the hacking litigation was over.

His assertion that he had decided to sue Associated because “if the most influential newspaper company can evade justice… the whole country is doomed”. The statement continued: “I am bringing this claim because I love my country and I remain deeply concerned by the unchecked power, influence and criminality of Associated. The evidence I have seen shows that Associated’s journalists are criminals with journalistic powers which should concern every single one of us. The British public deserve to know the full extent of this cover-up and I feel it is my duty to expose it.”

Wow. Just a reminder that this is a statement by a royal prince in documents to the High Court – not a barb thrown out by some bloke in the pub. And he was there, in the flesh, to hear his words read out.

It may be that it shows, as the Mail attests, that he is obsessed. But it surely merits reporting. Apparently not on page one. Only one title – the i – had any mention of the case or Harry’s allegations on the cover, and that as a small puff. The Times had a new portrait of the King, the Telegraph told readers that Charles would be dining with his cousins in Germany. Even the Guardian was too busy with its mea culpa on its founder’s links to slavery.

Most papers ran page leads inside, although the i and The Times did not mention the alleged pact with its stablemates at News Group Newspapers (the Sun and News of the World’s parent company) or Harry’s explanation of why he was suing. As to the two titles whose owners have paid out millions in hacking damages to prevent hundreds of other cases going to court: the Mirror managed five paragraphs in a small single on the royals knowing about hacking; the Sun nothing.

And the Mail? Not a word of those key elements from the Harry witness statement. Instead, it led its spread on its own statement, building on the private investigator’s recantation, with a panel on the side with his “point by point” rebuttals of the claims against Associated. It’s one thing to get your retaliation in first, but this took one-sided reporting to another level.

Harry’s next action, which he watched by video-link, started on 25 April to take on the Sun, which – like the Mail – has always denied phone-hacking. This time his central claim was even more sensational: that News Group Newspapers owners had paid Prince William “a very large sum of money” as part of a private settlement to stop him suing for hacking.

This time the story made the splash for the Guardian and for the Telegraph, which “understood” that the figure was about £1 million. But its headline wasn’t the ‘Prince’s £1m phone hacking deal’ you might have expected, but that the claim had “left Coronation peace hopes in tatters”. There was, however, a spread inside as well, which was more than anyone else did.

The Times had a page lead and the Express a chunky story on its Coronation spread. But the Mail had just a small single-column on page 10 that started “Prince Harry has dragged William into his war on the British press”. The Sun and the Mirror ran nothing. Royal developments deemed worthy of front-page coverage included a chocolate bust of the King and his resistance to having Heathrow’s Terminal 5 named after him.

There was more interest the next day, after the judge said he was troubled by “factual inconsistencies” in Harry’s story, with more prominent coverage, including a small story in the Mirror (albeit on a different angle) and an early righthand page lead in the Mail.

As with the case against the Mail, third day coverage was more limited – the angle this time being actor Hugh Grant’s claim that stars’ homes were burgled at the Sun’s behest. For the third successive day, the case made the front of the Guardian, a page lead for The Times – and not a single word in the Sun. The Mail may have skewed coverage of its own case for the defence, but at least it was there. The Sun, whose lawyers wanted the case dismissed as out of time, just pretended it wasn’t happening and ignored it altogether.

Harry’s next homecoming was what the Mail called his “blink and you’ve missed it” trip for the Coronation. He may have gone back to California swiftly after the ceremony, but he hadn’t finished with the courts. For just under a week later, on 10 May, a third case started – against Mirror Group Newspapers. And this time it wasn’t a preliminary hearing, but a proper trial, expected to last seven weeks. Harry wasn’t in court for the opening speeches, but was lined up to give evidence, possibly for as long as three days, in June.

The two key features of the first day was MGN’s admission of, and apology for, a single instance of illegal information gathering – by the People – that it said was worthy of compensation, and the assertion by lawyer David Sherborne that it was “inconceivable” that Piers Morgan was unaware of phone-hacking under his editorship. This claim had been made in one of the previous cases and was, indeed, the subject of two identical Guardian front page headlines.

Morgan – a former Editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror who now presents a show on Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV and writes a column for the Sun – had (coincidentally?) just recorded an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan in which he was asked about hacking on his watch. He said he didn’t know how to hack a phone (even though he had written about it in his autobiography and is reported to have explained how to do it to a Tony Blair aide), and that he was unaware that hacking had been going on at his papers. He also declared that he wasn’t going to take lectures on privacy from Harry and Meghan, who had, he said, constantly invaded the Royal Family’s privacy.

What did our papers make of all that? Apart from the Guardian, only the i and Telegraph had anything on the front, in each case a puff. The i took the ‘Morgan knew’ line, while the Telegraph went with ‘Morgan mocks Duke’. The FT had the earliest inside coverage with a five-column page two story headlined “Mirror accused of industrial scale illegality”. Everyone else pushed the story back as far as they dared. The Sun, Express, Mirror and Star all went on the apology, while The Times and Mail both majored on the defence line that stories Harry claimed were the result of hacking had in fact been fed to journalists by members of his family and royal courtiers.

As for declarations of interest, The Times mentioned Morgan’s current role with Talk TV and listed Harry’s other cases against the press, but did not note that News Group Newspapers shared its ultimate ownership by News Corp. The Mail also mentioned its own case in its coverage. The Sun did not say that it, too, was being sued by Harry. The Express quoted a Mirror spokesman as saying “MGN is now part of a very different company” but did not add that that company was Reach, owners of the Express (and Star).

Only the Guardian, The Times and Mail bothered to print anything about day two of this trial, when Sherborne told the court that Morgan “lies at the heart” of the claims. The Times and Mail both led on the Mirror contentions that stories put down to hacking might have been leaked by a palace aide or the result of an interview with Harry. The Guardian went on Morgan “approving” the illegal blagging of Prince Michael of Kent’s bank details. The reporter allegedly given the assignment was Gary Jones, now Editor of the Express. The Times and Mail did not include this in their stories; the Express ran nothing on the case that day.

But nobody reads print newspapers any more. Dead tree news is dead. People get their news online. So what about live coverage on the day the Mirror trial started?

Broadcasters featured it prominently; independent websites ran live feeds. The Times, FT, Independent, Guardian and Telegraph all had it among the top four stories online. But scroll as far as you could on the Sun, Mail and Mirror home pages and you would find not a word. Click on the ‘royals’ or ‘celebrities’ tabs and you’d find Kate and George and Charlotte and Sophie, and more Sussex bad-mouthing, but nothing on the trial. Only by searching ‘Harry and High Court’ did the Mail offer agency reports of the case on a page called ‘wires’, which has no tab or link from the home page. This is what you call burying bad – or inconvenient – news.

By day 45 of this little snapshot, not one single national newspaper had presented to its readers a full and fair account of any of the proceedings in the High Court.

The Times and Telegraph came closest, but the rest were either partisan, deliberately blind or uninterested. The Guardian, which of course uncovered and doggedly pursued the phone-hacking scandal from 2009 and blew the whole thing open with its Milly Dowler bombshell in 2011, played the cases up, while most of the others tried to play them down.

When you have such high-profile litigants taking on the country’s biggest news brand – actually accusing its journalists of being criminals – it is worthy of proper attention. When you have a royal prince claiming that the heir to the throne accepted £1 million in hush money to stop him taking the second-biggest news brand to court, it is worthy of proper attention. When you have the King’s son accusing one of the country’s most prominent television presenters of overseeing industrial scale law-breaking, it is worthy of proper attention.

There are those who accuse the British press of a culture of omertà, a reluctance to acknowledge, let alone confront, malpractice within the ‘club’, even by rivals. They will be able to cite the Harry coverage in support of that complaint. Regardless of whether they are right, this widespread refusal to face challenges to our industry is troubling. But more so is the fact that it raises the question: if reporting of these cases is so unreliable, what does it say about what we are served on everything else?

Meanwhile, the vilification of Harry and his wife continues apace. The day after the Coronation, the anti-Brexit author Edwin Hayward tweeted that he had logged more than 100 negative stories about the couple on the Express website in the space of 72 hours.

These papers know full well that the press has hounded Harry since boyhood and that he blames the tabloids for the death of his mother. But now they brush all that aside as ‘other people’ and ‘all in the past’. It is absolutely in all of their interests to discredit the prince as he stands up to them in court – and they are doing their damnedest to avoid letting their readers know why.

This is an extract from ‘Royal Reporting: The Media and the Monarchy’ edited by John Mair and Andrew Beck. It will be published by MGM Books on 1 June

#prince harry #byline times #phone hacking trial #uk tabloids

[theuntitledblog]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) - REVIEW

SYNOPSIS

A Bard, a Barbarian, a Sorceror and a Druid must team up and find a way to break into a castle to save the Bard's daughter from a treacherous Rogue and a powerful Wizard.

It can be a great thing to be completely wrong about something and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is one of those very rare surprises that you just didn't expect at all. The first trailers did nothing to win me over; sure the visual effects looked impressive enough but everything else about it just screamed generic, throwaway fantasy of the likes of say Eragon. While Eragon remains a truly terrible cash-in, Dungeons & Dragons couldn't be far from that if it tried. Contrary to the special effects, huge Lord of the Rings-esque landscapes, magical creatures etc; Dungeons & Dragons greatest asset isn't the spectacle but rather its heart. This is a film that is very earnest and the writers (Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley and Michael Gilio) have put a lot thought and effort into characters who you are more than happy to just hang around with while on this adventure.

It's an eclectic group of characters who all have different personalities and abilities that they bring to the table (much like in the game) but all are grounded by their respective personal and somewhat relatable demons. Justice Smith's Simon is a sorceror with self-esteem, confidence and performance issues, Michelle Rodriguez's Holga struggles with being outcast for marrying someone her family disapproved of while Chris Pine's Edgin grieves the loss of his wife and trying to manage with fatherhood. Yes there's a fantasy adventure for them all to go on and challenges for them to overcome but it is the amount of depth that they are given as characters that is the biggest surprise. A scene where Holga visits her ex-husband (Bradley Cooper) could've been played for just laughs but it's an incredibly tender scene and the subsequent exchange with Pine's Edgin afterwards that is memorable. Each character has a moment like that of sorts with perhaps Sophia Lillis's Doric receiving slightly less from a character perspective but even then she is no simply bystander. The main take away from this is that this is a film whose foundations are firmly rooted on characters that you are actually given a reason to care about and makes you invested.

But of course what also helps the film is that it is just incredibly good fun and you get that sense from the opening and hilarious escape attempt from a barren and icy prison. Effortlessly blending the standard exposition with the type of humour that Chris Pine does so well, you know very early on you're in for a fun ride. The humour is neither mean spirited or seeks to mock but is playful and endearing with respect to the source material and those who play it with a graveyard interrogation scene a particular stand out for me. Pine and Rodriguez enjoy great chemistry in a platonic relationship but perhaps no-one appears to be enjoying themselves more on screen than Hugh Grant's treacherous Rogue; Forge Fitzwilliam. But it's Regé-Jean Page's Paladin Xenk Yendar who gracefully wanders into the film and steals it from everyone in the roughly 20 minutes he's in the film for. I could go and say more but sufficed to say, the greatest compliment I can pay Dungeons & Dragons is that it is the type of film you could watch over and again no matter what mood you're in.

VERDICT

An unexpected triumph but a delightfully entertaining one at that. With a strong cast, likeable characters with plenty of depth and a genuine earnestness, Dungeons & Dragons is a blockbuster you will want to revisit again and again.

5/5

#Youtube #high fantasy #fantasy #fantasy film #fantasy movies #paramount pictures #jonathan goldstein #john francis daley #michael gilio #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #dnd honor among thieves #dnd #chris pine #michelle rodriguez #justice smith #sophia lillis #hugh grant #daisy head #regé jean page #2023 movies #blockbuster movies #comedy film #dnd bard #red wizard #sorcerer #tiefling

[queen-beefcake-sqx]

I’ve wanted to make this post for a while but headcanons on what media I’ve consumed that various characters in Disco Elysium would be insane over:

Harry — Harry would fucking love Paradise Killer. He’d love Lady Love Dies and her whole affect and the weird vaporwave aesthetic and he’d absolutely make himself puke playing it too long (based on actual experiences). Really any detective game he’d be insane over and YES he has opinions on every one of the Nancy Drew adventure games, thank you very much. He’d also watch way too many sports movies and yell at the screen constantly when people make bad calls or plays. Probably has The Waterboy memorized tbh. Not-so-secretly cries over romances — Notting Hill with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts is his favorite.

Kim — Kim’s an original trilogy Star Wars fan and will never admit the massive crush he has on Han Solo. He’s also watched the entire Lord of the Rings saga as a marathon and will absolutely offer his opinion on how it stacks up to the books if you give him the slightest nudge. He’s read A Wrinkle in Time so many times he’s had to replace his childhood copy with a new one because pages were finally falling out.

Jean — Watches police procedurals because he likes to mock their sensationalism, particularly CSI: Miami and Law and Order: SVU. When he actually decides to love himself he watches pre-Marvel superhero movies, particularly Hellboy and Spiderman (Tobey Macguire edition).

Judit — She listens to podcasts because she’s a mom and a cop and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to sit and watch/read something. She likes funny podcasts like My Brother My Brother and Me best, for some levity in her life, but sometimes she’ll listen to Oh No! Ross and Carrie if they’re covering a topic she’s interested in.

Cuno — He likes torture porn horror he really shouldn’t be watching at his age. Him and Cunoesse binged the entire Saw series and are now afraid of jesters and clowns. Following it up with watching It didn’t help.

Garte — He doesn’t have a ton of time to consume media (three cafeterias!!!) but he’ll read novels under the counter during slow periods. He’s particularly fond of Charles Dickens and his many rags-to-riches stories like Great Expectations.

Klaasje — She likes non-American films like Let the Right One In (to which she says the book is better) and Pan’s Labryinth. All time favorite is The Cakemaker, which she regularly shows to people and when they comment on how sad it is she drags on her cigarette and smiles and says, “I know, it’s awful” and keeps watching.

Ruby — Mad Max: Fury Road is godtier in her mind and Furiosa is her hero. She listens to the podcast Alice Isn’t Dead on long drives even if she’s heard it a thousand times. She cries every time she watches Carol which is why nobody knows she likes it.

Joyce — Had a massive Game of Thrones phase and wrote scathing reviews after the series finale.

Evrart — I literally do not think me and this man would see eye to eye on any media ever but he’d probably turn on Fox News and shake his head at the state of politics.

Soona — she reads scientific and academic essays for fun and literally nothing else.

Feel free to ask about other characters I can do this all day.

#say more sadie #this is so self indulgent #I’m not even putting this in the tags if it breaks containment it’s because my followers willed it #feel free to ask about other characters #sadie writes meta

[agentnico]

Most Anticipated Movies 2023

Though the COVID pandemic can still be referenced within the film realm as the recent Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery does, the movie industry itself has now seemingly fully recovered from those lockdown days and we now get to enjoy the full might of Hollywood and indies yet again. As such 2023 is proving to be a stacked yet for movies. There’s a lot of them! So many! Many of which will most likely be crap, but here I am listing the ones I am most excited for. Again, come end of 2023 and prepped for disappointment for a lot of these, but as of right now I am full of hopes and dreams! So, in no particular order...

HONOURABLE CURIOUS MENTIONS: Oppenheimer, Next Goal Wins, The Old Way, Wonka, Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

John Wick: Chapter 4 - It simply doesn’t get better than seeing Hollywood sweetheart the beautiful Keanu Reeves plays an unkillable hitman who is able to kill a man with a single pencil or a book or any item at his disposal, let alone give him a gun. Those headshots then come at the speed of a Call of Duty pro-player! So obviously I want to see what’s next for Mr Wick.

Killers of the Flower Moon - Let the Brendan Fraser renaissance continue! It’s been absolutely adorably awesome seeing him back and looking so happy and pleased to be appreciated for how amazing he is! I mean, yes Killers of the Flower Moon also happens to be a new crime drama from one of cinema’s greats Martin Scorsese featuring a cast including Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro, but honestly I’m just happy seeing Fraser getting solid work again. Go get them tiger! 

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre - Technically this was originally slated as an early 2022 release, however due to distribution issues it has been moved a year later. Regardless, Guy Ritchie always makes slick gangster flicks, with his recent The Gentlemen being especially cool and badass, so I’m willing to see Ritchie continue making these types of films as many times as he wants, as long as his dialogue stays sharp and Hugh Grant keeps saying “Darling” during every appearance.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie - Setting aside the controversial lack of effort that Chris Pratt is putting into that Mario voice, this animated effort from Universal and Illumination is actually looking surprisingly enjoyable. The animation looks great and there are some great nostalgic call backs to the games, and even the voice cast (aside from Pratt) are all sounding great. That Bowser voice from Jack Black - woah!! Can’t wait to hear more of that! 

Napoleon - Ridley Scott is doing a movie about Napoleon, and Napoleon himself is played by Joaquin Phoenix. Great director, superb actor, an integrally interesting historical figure at the narrative centre... what’s not to be excited for!

Knock at the Cabin - M. Night Shyamalamalamalamadingdong is back with another plot twist. Look, M Night is very hit-and-miss, and when he’s great he’s great, but when he’s bad he’s bad in a fun way. His last film Old was filled with plot-holes, inconsistencies and ridiculous narrative choices, yet I had a ball watching it and pointing out all the obvious foreshadowing. And then Shyamalan is also responsible for The Happening, which, well, happened. Anyway, new Shyamalan film - gimme gimme gimme!

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Before James Gunn fully takes over the running of DC films (though he already took Henry Cavill as Superman away from us the monster!!!) he still has one Guardians film from Marvel left for us. And though I was not a fan of Vol. 2, the recent Holiday Special has reinstated my hope in this ragtag space-travelling group of outcasts, and Gunn himself has been on a roll with The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, so they’ve got this. Also Rocket has an otter girlfriend in this one so I’m ready to witness some animal loving. 

Barbie - Okay, so it’s okay for a guy to look forward to a Barbie movie?? What’s so wrong with that?? It’s not weird! I don’t have a thing for dolls if that’s what you’re thinking. Nope, in fact I am more hoping that similar to how The Lego Movie managed to take a famous toy and create a superbly meta entertaining movie classic, Barbie shows promise to also go against conventional genre tropes and do something different weird. At least judging from that 2001: A Space Odyssey piss-take of the teaser, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach have created something real unique. Also Ryan Gosling as Ken.....either the greatest casting choice or the worst decision ever. We’ll see...

Renfield - Nicolas Cage is a worldwide treasure, and one thought that him playing himself in a movie was the craziest thing yet. Nah, now he’s playing Dracula. Yep, THE Nicolas Cage is playing THE Count Dracula! And this time he really is a vampire!

Cocaine Bear - It’s a bear that’s high off it’s tits on cocaine and is going on a murderous rampage whilst trying to get more cocaine. I don’t need this to be a good movie. I don’t need it to win any awards. I just want there to be bears, I want there to be cocaine, and ideally those two to be connected for the entire time. What’s more is this is based on the real life story of a 175lb black bear who ingested a duffel bag of abandoned cocaine in northern Georgia in 1985. I mean yes that bear died fairly quickly, but in the movie they’ve evidently taken some creative choices (and definitely the correct ones!!) and instead this bear is simply killing everyone left and right and being high as a kite. And from that recent trailer from the very first appearance you can tell that this bear is on cocaine. That is all I want. 

#2023 #2023 in film #2023 films #cocaine bear #renfield #napoleon 2023 #barbie #knock at the cabin #guardians of the galaxy vol 3 #the super mario bros movie #john wick chapter 4 #killers of the flower moon #operation fortune ruse de guerre #anticipated movies #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #anticipated movies 2023 #2023 movies #most anticipated movies 2023

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'I am an idiot. I am! A complete and utter idiot.' Hugh Laurie stretches his long, thin face, bringing a rubbery expression of astonishment to it; he turns down his lips; his brows corrugate; his electric-blue, blazing eyes boggle. He does make himself look a creditable idiot, or a lanky schoolboy caught in a spasm of acute self-consciousness. He calls himself berk, fraud, twit. He uses words like blimey and gosh and oh heck, like a blathering fool from an antique issue of Boy's Own . 'Joke,' he says apologetically as soon as he makes one, anxious lest I miss it. 'Sorry,' he says at the end of long sentences, staring at me helplessly, 'sorry I'm talking such tosh, such twaddle; I know I must be disappointing you.' Then he half-covers his sad-fool mouth with a hand, as if to stop any more treacherous words escaping. It should be annoying, this hectic English ruefulness. It should be a kind of disguised vanity. It isn't.

'The secret is out. He's a great actor, our new Cary Grant or Tom Hanks,' says Ben Elton, who has just directed him in his own directorial debut, Maybe Baby, casting Laurie against the apparent grain of his acting talent as the romantic lead.

'He is very loveable,' says Emma Thompson, who was, many years ago, his girlfriend, and has been his friend for two decades. 'He is one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy, like a well-hung eel.'

'He's a remarkable man to know,' says his great friend Stephen Fry. 'I owe him everything. He's the real thing. Gifted, phenomenally intelligent, and wise.'

'And he's beautiful,' says Ben Elton.

'Yes,' says Joely Richardson, who plays opposite him in Maybe Baby . 'Hugh is mysterious, and very beautiful.'

'Blimey!' says Laurie, stretching his beautiful eyes until they look as if they will pop out, grimacing wildly. 'Gosh!'

But it is true. When Hugh Laurie stops pulling the face of amiable fool, his own face is beautiful: gaunt, vulnerable, tender, sweet, strangely haunted. And although it may be hard to imagine him playing the lead in a romantic comedy, it's difficult, once you've seen him doing it, to remember this is his first shot at doing it. Maybe Baby is the story of Sam and Lucy, who are happy in love, successful at work (he's a TV commissioning editor, she a theatrical agent), surrounded by friends. But they cannot make a baby, no matter how enthusiastically they try. The high spirits of the opening scenes - sexy underwear, acupuncture, intercourse along the ley lines - present a familiar Hugh Laurie, the rueful Englishman with the turned-down smile and high-rise eyebrows making quips between the sheets. Gradually, the pleasure recedes with the onset of sperm tests and hormonal injections. Unable to create at work, Sam finally breaks his writer's block by betraying Lucy and turning their story into a TV drama. Things fall apart, and the comedy becomes a tale of loss. Here is a new Laurie, letting himself stand still and quiet, not hiding behind the gestures, grief-struck and unravelling. 'Amazing despair,' agrees Emma Thompson, who also appears in the film. 'But that's very much part of Hugh - an existential despair.'

When we meet, he says that he found it hard, indeed 'almost unbearable', to watch himself in Maybe Baby. When takes of the film were played back on the monitor, he would put his head in his hands. He never watches himself, he says. He hates to read articles about himself ('interviews, they steal your soul, your identity, your privacy - so you can just make stuff up if you want'). He can't bear the sound of his own voice. 'Inside your head, your voice is interesting; it goes up and down and is full of light and shade and emotion. When you hear it, though, it's uh it's horrible. Retarded.' Difficult for an actor, I suggest, to hate the look of his face and the sound of his voice. He seems surprised: 'Don't most people think that of themselves? Unless they are exceptionally attractive. Most of us, though, don't we wince at how far short we fall from the picture we have of ourselves?' Self-mocking voice: 'Blimey, I thought those trousers looked good on me.'

Ben Elton, who has known Hugh Laurie for nearly 20 years, cast him in Maybe Baby because 'I always felt with Hugh that there was a secret waiting to be let out. He thinks a great deal. He is not good at selling himself. Of course he's terrific at comedy, playing the amiables and idiots, but those who know him well - and not that many do - know that as well as doubt and insecurity he has great inner strength; huge depth and thoughtfulness. When I asked him to play Sam, he was all: "Blimey, Ben! Do you think I can do it?" But when I looked at him through the camera, the vulnerability was heartbreaking. He is a complicated fellow, and really quite special.'

Joely Richardson also calls him special. 'I met him during 101 Dalmatians. I was sort of fascinated by him; I found him mysterious. There is a lot more to him than comedy - though he is brilliant at that, he has comic timing no amount of money can buy. Ben had to fight to have Hugh as his leading man; it was a risk. And Hugh, he didn't feel he deserved to be there. He was very nervous. But as an actor he was also hugely brave. He bares his soul at the end of the film. So it was a risk absolutely worth taking, for both of them.

'Hugh has this heartbreaking quality. When his face is still, the pathos is extraordinary. There are two sides to him. There's the Hugh who dances around and cracks jokes, tangos all over the place. And there's the other side: tortured, dark. I love them both.'

Laurie says he was very apprehensive before the film about acting grief, and afterwards he was 'very shaken. I felt as if I'd had a near-miss in a car crash. I was physically shaking. Thing is, I've never trained as an actor. I've got no diploma in acting out grief. I don't know the "normal" way to do it.' He drinks a slurp of coffee and stares past me. ' The Unbearable Lightness of Being, that's a good title, don't you think?' he asks, unexpectedly. 'This is the big struggle. Is the object to care utterly, or not to care at all? Should I access grief, as they put it, and trust the camera will see that, so if I'm feeling something truthful, that will emerge? Or am I going for the lightness of grief? Do I just have to resemble grief, represent it, and not let myself be filled with it? It's like that famous example in Marathon Man, with Laurence Olivier saying to Dustin Hoffman: "You should try acting, dear boy, it's an awful lot easier."'

Which was he, then, heavy or light? He lights the first of many cigarettes, after he has courteously asked my permission. 'The truth is, I don't know. I don't know what I would do again if I had to. I've not trained in this job, acting. I don't feel like an actor. What does an actor feel like? Not like me, anyway.'

Instead, he says, he feels like a tree - or like the little bit of bark on the tree - which has been struck by lightning. (Has lightning struck your tree, they say in Hollywood, meaning the electric dazzle of fame.) Hugh Laurie is, to anyone looking at his life from the outside, a success. He grimaces every time this word is said; luck, he says, it has only been a matter of luck. He grew up the youngest son of a GP. He went to the Dragon School, Eton, where he dreamed of being an action man, a policeman, an actor. Then to Cambridge to study anthropology, where he won a blue in rowing and was president of Footlights, and got a third. He met Emma Thompson here, and Stephen Fry and Tony Slattery. He was part of the Cambridge Footlights that won the 1981 Perrier Award at Edinburgh, and which he then took to the BBC in 1982. He met Ben Elton and was in Blackadder. He is the Fry of Fry and Laurie . The Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster. The star in the forthcoming Stuart Little, a comic tale about a mouse, that is a huge hit in America. He has written a best-selling, critically acclaimed novel. He has close friends, a good marriage with his wife Jo, three beloved children (Charlie, Bill, Rebecca). He has money, security, affection, a future that looks bright and steady.

'Yes.' He pulls a contrite face. 'I've been lucky. The lightning has struck my tree.' Of course, the trouble with luck is that it can end. You have no control over it. The 'luckier' Laurie is, the more scared he becomes. Life is thin ice. He's skated over it so far, but underneath are dark waters. And the other trouble with luck is that you don't deserve it. Hugh Laurie feels unworthy.

He wishes, he says, that he had a prison story to tell, like Stephen Fry has. Instead, his story is 'timid, dull, middle-class'. He grew up in a comfortable family, six years younger than his next sibling, a brother to whom he wasn't particularly close. He was 'loved and cared for. Lovely parents, lovely sisters and brothers. But I was sort of an only child, because I was so much the youngest. Sort of alone.' He did, though, have 'problems' with his mother, 'and she with me. I was an awkward and frustrating child. She had very high expectations of me. Long after I had stopped being a child, I heard from my sisters that I was the apple of her eye, her golden boy, but I didn't realise it at the time. I knew she had high expectations, which I constantly disappointed.' He says that he cheated in French tests, smoked in the school loos, moved his lips when he read; his school reports were 'desperate'. 'I was lazy. I lied. About everything, all the time. I was a fussy eater. Once Mum caught me with two pieces of liver in my pocket and sent me back to the table to eat it. It took three hours and then I caved in. I gave up on the piano - that was a battle I won. I went on hunger strike and didn't eat for three days.' He makes one of his faces: 'It's still not a prison story, is it? I'm terribly jealous of Stephen Fry for his theatrically bad childhood.'

Not a prison story, but Laurie clearly had periods of quite intense unhappiness as a boy. 'However, I've never been convinced,' he adds, 'that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness. It is' - ironic tone here - 'a snare and a delusion. It's jolly nice sometimes, like steak and chips, but is it a goal?' He stops for a minute and puts his head on one side, considering. 'I have the luxury of asking something like that, of course. Because I can eat steak and chips whenever I want, and my life is secure and, well, "happy". Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry to be talking such a load of tosh. I may have to go out and punch a policeman. Do a bit of porridge.'

After Eton - where, says Fry, Laurie could never have been a natural Etonian - he went to Cambridge. Emma Thompson met him in their first term. 'He was a rowing blue. Gigantic. I first saw him when we were auditioning for parts in the pantomime Aladdin. He looked a bit like Indiana Jones, wearing a lot of khaki. I saw him sitting there and I jabbed my friend in the ribs and said: "Star. Star. Star!" I knew at once. He sat on the stage and did an impression of the Emperor of China trying to attract someone's attention - it was extremely funny and clever. He was always so funny, the funniest person I've met. I remember once driving back from some Footlights performance, and hearing on the radio that somebody had been kidnapped and driven off in a Ford van. We were in a Ford van, so Hugh did a lot of struggling and thrashing around on the front seat, to see if we would be stopped. And I laughed so much I had to stop for a wee.'

Fry also met him at Cambridge. Indeed, he says that meeting Laurie 'was the best thing that could have happened to me, both in career terms and emotionally. He is absolutely my best friend. People sometimes call me a Renaissance man, but I'm not and Hugh is. He's a natural athlete. He's a gifted musician. He is clever, perceptive, has natural charisma. Sometimes it is thought that I'm the loud mouth and the dominant one, but we have been an equal partnership. And we have not been jealous of each other - I'm genuinely thrilled when good things happen for him. And I'm particularly thrilled by the way his acting career is going.'

And his writing career, for Laurie has also, like Fry, written a novel, The Gun Seller. He is working, he says with a wide, anxious grimace, on his next one now. He does a kind of browbeating act about the writing: Gosh, how do I dare? But his publisher, Tom Weldon of Michael Joseph, insists that he is 'unusually talented in many different ways, but in 50 years' time, I think he'll be known for his fiction. He's a complete perfectionist, and very tough on himself, almost too tough on himself, but this means his books are written with incredible care. His writing is clever, intricate and at times joyous, and I am very proud to be his publisher.'

Real depression - 'heavyweight unhappiness' - began in his late teens and has continued through success, marriage, fatherhood. Maybe it is a chemical imbalance, he says, though he won't take drugs for it (once, he admits shamefacedly, he did resort to St John's Wort). He hates the idea of drugs that will alter him - and anyway, is not convinced that he wants to be altered. He wouldn't mind having 'a life that I like', but at the same time admits to sometimes clinging to his unhappiness, which is a known, familiar state; part of what makes him Hugh Laurie. ('But then,' he wags a long finger at me, 'who is Hugh Laurie? Aha!') He is anxious when talking of his depression, because he is so conscious that he has 'nothing at all to complain about'. He shrivels his nose. 'Perhaps that's my problem - where is the struggle? There has been no struggle. Where's the passion of my life? Where is its purpose?' He answers himself almost at once: 'Having children, that's my purpose. I am eternally in my children's debt. They stop me thinking about other stuff.' (Fry puts it the other way round, saying that his friend is the best father he's ever met.) 'I have thought of killing myself when things got really bad,' he continues, 'but I was dwelling too much on the conversations that would be had at my funeral for it to be convincing. "That'll show them."'

Show whom, though? 'Aha!' He looks triumphant. 'Who? Nobody, of course. I'm nobody's victim. I can't remotely feel sorry for myself. In fact, I'm riding for a fall, don't you think? I've had a few slips, but I've had no falls, have I? And the slips were all of my own making. My own stupid, stupid blunders.'

So we talk of the 'slips'. First of all, Hugh Laurie feels that he has not risked enough in his life. 'I've not been tested. I remember hearing Enoch Powell interviewed, and his big regret was that he would have liked to have died in the war. I understood what he meant - that feeling of unworthiness, to continue to survive and enjoy the fruits of a victory that others die for. I'm of a different generation, but I still feel that unworthiness. I feel huge emotion when I think of the war - especially of the First World War. All those boys going down together to the recruiting office. How endlessly tragic. Whatever grand thing they were doing it for, I've not made the most of, have I? What is freedom? The freedom to eat ravioli at three in the morning? Not enough, is it?'

When I speak to Emma Thompson, she picks up on this yearning of Laurie's to prove himself. 'There are men around, fortyish, like Sebastian Faulks, say, who would do wonderfully well at war. Hugh definitely belongs to that generation. Maybe something like war would have solved his feeling of unworthiness, but there isn't one for him, thank God.'

And Fry, who has faced his own dark nights, says that comedians are maybe cursed with a lucidity about the world and 'therefore a clarity about themselves. So perhaps we torment ourselves. Comedy, even when it's surreal, draws attention to the absolute and the particular. You take something big and make it concrete. It can be scary.'

Laurie tells me how, for his 40th birthday last year, his wife gave him a parachute jump. He trained for it, but when the day came, the wind was too high and they couldn't do it. The women in the group were upset, the men relieved. 'Us blokes, we were all there because we felt in some pathetic way we wanted to be tested, to know what it is like when the guy opens the door and says, "Jump!", and you jump. Could I do it?'

You're scared of failure, I ask. 'Yes!' He is emphatic. Very scared. 'Very, very.'

Because you've never failed? 'Perhaps. Perhaps I am so conceited I dare not risk failure. Or perhaps I dread it just because I know it will happen.' His blue eyes brighten. 'Call me a conceited pessimist.'

His other slip - which we approach tentatively - is that a few years ago he had an affair with the director Audrey Cooke when he was filming The Place of Lions in Australia, and was outed by the tabloids ('Hugh in Love Tug over Blonde!'). Being Hugh Laurie, the affair was not just a fling while in another continent, and being Hugh Laurie - married to a wife he loves, father of three children he adores - his guilt is still considerable. He says that 'there is nothing to say that will make it better for anyone, so it is better not to say anything. The public exposure was an agent in the whole process; it didn't just show what happened, it affected it.' He adds hastily, 'I'm really not saying "poor me" here. It was all my fault. And I was shocked by what happened. The pain. Everyone's pain. I'm nervous of saying, in a facile way, that it has changed me. I can't just say, "Oh I'm fine now" - that sounds like a man who's about to start drinking again.'

Change, he says, is very hard for anyone. Until last year, he was in therapy. He began when he realised that he was bored even by dangerous things like driving racing cars. The world was flat, stale. He stopped because he went away for work, but he will probably return again pretty soon: 'Not because I am in dire need still, but because my therapist is an extremely nice, bright woman and I find it a fascinating process.' His eyebrows shoot up and his blue eyes bulge. 'Did I really say that? Listen to me. "Fascinating process." God, I make myself sick sometimes.' Being willing to have therapy means that theoretically Laurie does believe that it is possible for him to change, 'but actually I feel that I have just got older. Nothing does much good. I still hold out the hope that I will find ways of dealing with people that are better. More honest. In the meantime, I am just older.'

Part of this reason for feeling older, though not much wiser, is that both his parents have now died and he is on 'the front line' or 'the top floor'. 'I'm the next to jump, in fact. Yes, I will make that jump in the end. Though I'm the youngest in my family and there are other people before me. Not before me, as in to die before me,' he adds hurriedly, 'but before me in age and wisdom. I can ask for help and advice. Though it is not like having parents, is it? Do I miss them? Yes. Except the funny thing is that I don't miss their company, since I was so separate from them for such a long time. I went to boarding school at an early age, and once you leave home like that, things are never the same again. No, what I miss is the knowledge that they are there.

'My father, a lovely man, died a few years ago when I was in the States. I knew he was unwell, and before I went I made a deliberate decision not to resolve things, not to have that final conversation. I didn't say goodbye and have the big talk. Because,' he says, 'I didn't want to give him my permission to leave. I wanted him to have unfinished business, as if resolving things would somehow be unlucky. I guess I was scared to let him clear the in-tray. I regret that now, but probably I would do the same again.'

Nor did he have any kind of resolution with his mother, who died when he was 29 of motor neurone disease; the woman who expected so much of him and whom he felt he constantly disappointed; who probably gave to her golden boy his debilitating self-doubt, his dread of competition, his fear of love and risk, his endearing vulnerability. 'No, no resolution, not at all. Or maybe very, very slightly. A small amount of movement.' He holds up his thumb and forefinger in measurement. 'Maybe two inches.' Two inches along what road, I ask. 'Oh,' he grins savagely. 'Say, two inches along half a mile.'

Laurie's self-deprecation goes very deep. He continually cracks scathing jokes about himself, makes gargoyle grimaces at his own words. He calls this behaviour his 'default system'. Fry believes that he is terrified of being seen to be cocky. 'He'll sit at the piano and pull silly faces rather than allowing your attention to be drawn to his brilliant playing. God knows we all feel unworthy, but he feels it more than most. He knows he is lucky, but he can never take that for granted. There are some people from working-class backgrounds who treat people like shit because they've come so far. They don't need to prove themselves. Hugh is more likely to be apologetic. He's a seriously emotional soul.'

His friends get annoyed with him for so underselling himself. 'His extreme deprecation is his only really annoying habit,' says Fry. Thompson agrees: 'He is surrounded by people who love him passionately and have spent a good part of their adult lives saying, "Hugh, you are marvellous." He is the most infuriating and the most wonderful of people. He, of course, would say yes to being infuriating and no to being wonderful. And the infuriating thing about him is that he won't accept he's fantastic. I don't know if the paradox will ever be answered now. Probably it never will be.'

He is clearly well-loved. He is clearly very loveable. Nobody has a bad word to say about him, so he provides the bad words himself. 'I am an idiot.' He has no enemies, so he becomes his own self-wounding enemy. 'Blimey, I'm a fool.'

#interview #article

[estelscinema]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a long-lost relic, but their charming adventure goes dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was either going to be one of the worst films of 2023 or a pleasant surprise. Given that the trailers for the movie were questionable, my expectations were low. Yet somehow, the film managed to roll a 20 into becoming a pleasant surprise. The film plays out like an average campaign, with all the tropes that one would expect. From setting off traps to random side characters, you will never see again, the movie knows who its audience is, and I respect it for that. However, the film could not run away from one of the worst tropes of D&D, which are the exposition dumps. This movie has a lot of exposition, to the point where it's overwhelming. I was hoping the film would avoid this trope, but sadly it fell into its trap, so be prepared for information overload. With all that stated, I was shocked by the film delving into deep themes, such as grief, parenthood, and family. These themes are perfectly intertwined with its story and world. The comedy is hysterical, and the action pieces are fantastic. Overall, this film knew exactly what it needed to be.

As for acting, I was pessimists about the performances because I thought this cast was looking for an easy paycheck. Yet the majority of the cast surprised me with their performances, given the limitation of the writing. Chris Pine oozes charisma and charm yet perfectly brings strenuous and tender moments to life. Michelle Rodriguez lives up to her typecasting as a badass barbarian yet also brings surprisingly tender moments to her performances. Daisy Head is a great villain that is intimidating and a bit scary. Hugh Grant's performances, sadly, scream that he is there for a paycheck. However, my favorite performance came from Rege-Jean Page. He plays one of the more unique characters, and his performances prove it. He is charming yet strange and badass. I wished he was in the movie more.

The production is in line with a modern superhero movie. The score is mostly forgettable, though there are some good moments. The VFX was also a mixed bag. Some bits looked great, while others looked questionable; the rest were fine. The costumes and production design have Dungeons & Dragons look to them, which is exactly what I wanted. The character design and makeup were fantastic. Though I am a little disappointed with the looks of the Tiefling and the Drows.

Overall, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a pleasant surprise. Is it the best movie in the world? No. But is it a lot of fun? Yes. This movie will please the most passionate D&D fans and the general audience. You will laugh, cry, and have a joy ride. Now, Roll for Initiative.

I am giving Dungeons&Dragons: Honor Among Thieves a B.

#film #cinema #movies #movie #filmmaking #filmmaker #moviemaking #moviemaker #cinephile #cinematography #film community #film is not dead #film review #movie review #film critic #movie critic #D&D #dungeons and drawings #dungeons & dragons #chris pine #michelle rodriguez #justice smith #hugh grant #regé jean page

[toastytoast77]

Review: The Gentlemen

Hey, Its been too long without anything and I hate that. I reread my old posts. I made myself feel bad. Anyway, finally, a movie review for the everyman.

Warning: Minor Spoilers ahead

Full disclosure, I’ve seen this movie 3 times now, the most recent being a few days ago. I’ll probably watch it again soon with other friends (there’s your TL;DR, it’s GOOD).

Directed by Guy Ritchie, starring Charlie Hunnam, Mathew McConaughey, and Hugh Grant, The Gentlemen paints a picture of the illegal weed trade in England. Now, you may be thinking, “One of these things is not like the others.” You’d be right. But it’s exactly that that gives the American some of his best dynamics. Mickey manages to both standout as The American and blend in as England’s greatest Cannabis Farmer. He keeps that amazing calm throughout the entire film with the exception of when they show his backstory and his Vader in a hallway moment. See, he wants to retire so he’s looking for a buyer of his trade. But not just any buyer and anyone who tries to weasel in on the deal will face the consequences. Raymond, Mickey’s right hand (played by Charlie Hunnam), has to deal with errands to fix some of the problems and track down who’s been sharing secrets.

A little late in my recount, enter Hugh Grant. All of this is being told to us through Hugh Grant’s character, Fletcher. A weasel himself, Fletcher has gathered enough intel to write a whole script and wants some cash to present it to Miramax (yes, really). The dynamic between Fletcher and Raymond is mazing. The way Fletcher flirts with Ray just to poke the bear plays so well and really digs in to show us exactly what these guys are like.

Now, here’s where things get weird. The story is told through the lens of Fletcher’s script as well as a rap music video and actually showing us what’s happening. there are parts where it’s easy to get lost in what Fletcher knows or not. There’s also how ridiculous it sounds that they could use a rap video to tell the story and still be good. Much like Fletcher and Ray’s banter, the video The Toddlers’ video introduces them and how they operate and they’re true style (which includes elegant VERY English tracksuits). It also brings them in a secondary monkey wrench. But don’t worry, we get to see that monkey wrench fix a major leak under the guidance of Collin Farrel’s, Coach. Just looking at this man you can tell he is not to be messed with. That said, he’s mostly just a father figure trying to keep his Toddlers on the straight and narrow.

The characters have such good dynamics together and even in serious moments they an find humorous banter without falling out of the seriousness of the situation (looking at you Thor 4). The action is perfectly timed and feels so realistic without being boring. It has some shocks and twists but never so far you stop believing it. It’s so British but as an American it doesn’t feel out of place for me. Overall fantastic fun and just a great piece of storytelling.

It’s on Netflix, give it a watch

[mermaidsirennikita]

Okay I'm so onboard for Hugh Grant as St. Sebastian (this has nothing to do with him being my like lifelong crush I saw Bridget Jones Diary at very formative age and was okay yes)

Listen…. Daniel Cleaver and St. Vincent are the same person except St. Vincent reformed.

People alwaaaays downplay what a douche Sebastian was before his own book and I think that’s so boring because he was so hot in his lazy slut era? Like Lisa really did a great job in telling an amazing love story in Autumn while also emphasizing how fuckable the completion was. Lillian telling him she’s had sex with Westcliff and him being like “oh so like… you could be pregnant I guess… whatever I’ll look the other way” always SENDS ME.

Like imagine how satisfying it would’ve been to see Daniel Cleaver get owned by a woman. The reason why you can’t run from how slutty and horrid Sebastian was is that it makes him becoming Evie’s bitch boy that much better.

#romance novel blogging #this is why the current era of sanitized historical heroes is so….. #boring………….. #(not all i should add!!! many authors aren’t doing this)

[tobi-tobi-tobi]

-remus lupin

#thoughts had whilst drawing this #remus is such a good teacher #ALSO #Notting hill au #please #I have the soundtrack on #And omg #someone #anyone #it shall just be in my head #THE THING IS LIKE SIRIUS COMING DOWN THOSE STAIRS IN THAT CROP TOP #surreal but nice #I THOUGHT THE APRICOTS AND HONEY WAS THE LOW POINT #hhhHh #And #juSt remus owning a book shop #do yOu haVe winniE the pooH #nO it’s a trAvel book shoPw #also Hugh Grant is yes he’s great #so please if anyone fancies writing one or has read one please let me know ashfjje #love you #I shall stop rambling about this in the tags #harry potter #marauders #marauders era #tobi art #remus lupin

[evening-primroses]

Maurice (1987) dir. James Ivory (deleted scene)

#seems like a great time to post some maurice haha :) #i feel like im putting a cupcake on the ground in the middle of a dumpster fire #should i wait till the next couple days for shit to calm down before i post some maurice? yes #will i? no #maurice #maurice 1987 #deleted scene #james ivory #james wilby #maurice hall #clive durham #hugh grant #aesthetic #also controversial opinion: i think maurices moustache acc looks.. ..nice #like it isnt preferred #but he doesnt look horrible if ygwim #maybe ive gotten used to it at this point but idk #its much better than clives at least

[multifandom-fanfic-writer]

Mads Mikkelsen in conversation

After The Hunt, you did Hannibal, Bryan Fuller’s NBC show about Dr. Lecter and his relationship with FBI agent Will Graham. What made you say “Yes” to a network TV show in the U.S.?

Yeah, how did that come around? We had just been successful in Cannes with The Hunt. And then my agent talked about Bryan Fuller — “this genius” she called him — and said I should have a look at it. At first, I was like, “Oh, God, Anthony Hopkins. That’s just a no-go.” He did it to perfection. Then I had a meeting with Bryan Fuller and he pitched the first season. And I was just like, This is absolutely nothing like the film. This is a different animal. I was one out of three or four actors they were considering [Bryan Fuller has discussed how NBC wanted more-name-brand actors for the part of Dr. Hannibal Lecter like John Cusack, Hugh Grant, and Paul Bettany. He had also considered David Tennant for the role.]. I was really reluctant to do that. I don’t like castings. Nobody likes castings. “Come on guys, either you want me or not.” But we did a couple of scenes, me and Hugh Dancy, and I think we had a great chemistry in that awkward way it was supposed to be.

Did you see his relationship with Hugh Dancy’s character, Will, as a romance?

Yeah, but not necessarily something that would become physical.

The murder of Francis Dolarhyde (played by Richard Armitage) is the consummation of Will's and Hannibal's relationship, in some ways.

And also cannibalism, obviously. This is the ultimate way to love someone in his world, to eat them — right? We actually did a couple of takes of the very last scene where we were looking at each other, and it was a little too obvious — it was almost a kiss. Me and Hugh were like, “Why not? We have a couple of takes. Let’s do one. It might be cool.”

Did you kiss?

No, we didn’t. Never went for the kiss. Bryan loved it, but he was like, “Too much, guys. It’s too obvious.” And he was absolutely right. But I think we were just stuck on that. And a lot of the Fannibals wanted it as well. It’s been a subject of homoerotic fan art. And for good reason, because they are so united as twins in many ways. But we never wanted it to be a physical thing. It was something much bigger than that.

What were the discussions of the season-three ending like?

It had to be that they managed to kill someone together and both have the same sensation. Finally, I got him. Finally, Will Graham is me. They are inseparable at that point. We also knew that that was not the ending. We knew that there was a fourth season. We had something more up the sleeve, but then it didn’t happen. (NBC declined to air the show for a fourth season in 2015 (in a somewhat complicated relationship, NBC was not producing the show in-house, merely paying a licensing fee). One could easily have imagined another life for the show had the cancellation occurred during the streaming boom.)

It was such a surprise to all of us because we did not have great numbers the first season, so we thought that was it. But we got saved and got a second season. And then in the third season we had much greater numbers. So we thought it was a given we would continue. And it didn’t happen.

Talk of a fourth season has gone away, but would you still do it to end the show in the way you envisioned?

Yes. The work itself was brutal because we had long hours, with scripts coming in late. It’s TV, and what we were doing was elaborate. The texts were high-IQ texts. The monologues or the dialogues were always about fine art, music. You had to learn Japanese, Hungarian, and words you had simply never heard before. And you had to do it within two hours because everything came so late. Having said that, I would love to go back. Everybody wants to go back, and if there’s only one season and we’re sure about that, he can finish it in a proper, surprising, stunning way.

It’s still such an improbable show in so many ways because it was on NBC.

Exactly. And I’ve been wondering if we had been on some other platform and could do whatever we wanted, would we have gone more for the graphic stuff and forgotten some of the poetry? Maybe it was a good thing we had to hold back. It served the show really well that we didn’t go full-blast Walking Dead on it.

source: https://www.vulture.com/article/mads-mikkelsen-in-conversation.html 

#mads mikkelsen #mads mikklesen #hannibal meta #interview #hannigram #bryan fuller #hannibal season 4 #interview with mads mikkelsen #this interview is awesome

[epicspheal]

Heya! I hope your doing well!

Ever since swsh gave the rivals something to do after the fact( something that I believe only happened to Blue), I can't help but think of the rivals prior who haven't. What do you think they end up doing? I know that Blue ends up becoming a gym leader, but would still be interesting what you plan for him too! :3

Hi there @ihopethisendswell! So actually, it's the norm typically for the rivals to have something to do, even if it's just continuing being a roaming trainers. Being a roaming trainer is still just as valid of a career path as other routes given the way the Pokemon world works, it's just not as solid of a career path as say gym leader or research assistant. Pokemon Sword and Shield is one of the only main games that really puts emphasis on the rivals' alternate careers paths as part of the plot outside of the gen 5 games. So like you have Blue who becomes gym leader and also helps his grandpa with his research by still be a roaming trainer (much to the frustration of anyone trying to challenge his gym). By the time of Sun and Moon/USUM he has ditched the gym to become battle facility which ultimately given his status as a former champion ends up being a much more fitting role. Granted he needed that time as a gym leader as long standing humbling exercise so it wasn't a bad call at all. Then we have Silver, who remains a roaming trainer, though he kind of mainly sticks around the Dragon's Den because he really wants to avenge that loss to Lance and show how much he has changed. Then we have Brendan/May (when not the protagonist) who end up going back to being full time assistants professor Birch. Wally on the other hand, is much like Silver in that he continue to be a roaming trainer, with him staying around the Battle Resort in ORAS with him eventually going to the Battle Tree by the time the SM/USUM events occur.

Barry also follows the roaming trainer route with him staying Stark Mountain in Diamond/Pearl and with Platinum he hangs around the Survival area.

Gen 5 is where the rival's future goals get the most attention, and was the best well done (SwSh in my opinion failed hard on the rival's goals bar Klara and Avery's). Bianca is still my favorite "how to do a future career path" ending in the entirety of series which is she really doesn't know. She ends up taking up a position as Professor's Juniper's assistant. However it's this linefrom Bianca in Pokemon Black 2/White 2 that I really enjoyed:

"Actually, I'm not sure being a professor's assistant is really what I want to do... But when I do the work, I have lots and lots of fun!" I really appreciated that they allowed Bianca to have doubts that this is her final career path. She's still a child and I can remember when I was her age (God, I sound so old) how many career paths I thought about in that time frame...and only one of those comes even remotely close to what I'm attempting to go back to school for. I liked how she's just trying to things and aiming for experiences while not trying to commit herself to one specific path. Now obviously this could theoretically be true for any number of the rivals as with the exception of Blue (and Wally although for some odd reason they didn't give him an aged up model considering he'd be just as old as Red and Blue are) we don't see them as adults and their ambitions could very well have indeed changed over the years. Then you have Cheren who after that scolding from Alder really begins to question his pursuit of strength and what he really wants to do. Cue 2 years later in BW2 where we see him as the Aspertia City gym leader as well a lecturer at the trainer's school. Fitting as it shows his desire and capabilities as a trainer but also allowing a more concrete goal than just pursuing strength but actually overseeing the future generations. And Hugh, another one of my favorite characters, concludes his story arc on forgiveness (since he had absolutely none for Team Plasma at the beginning of the story) ends up a roaming trainer but also helping the good side Team Plasma in Driftveil City reunite Pokemon that were stolen during the events of Black/White to their original trainers. So he has a goal and really touching one I might add, one of the few that doesn't revolve around battling or researching.

Then there's the XY rivals who were admittedly the most shafted. They all pretty much end up as roaming trainers except for Trevor who already had the aim of completing the Pokedex for Professor Sycamore and he continues to do so.

The no specific aim works the best, in my opinion, for Shauna as she really didn't have much of a goal to begin with outside of travelling/making memories, and much like I said with Bianca, it's okay for characters to not have a specific end game (although I personally see Bianca's route as better as although she isn't quite sure what she wants to do, she does take initiative and actively pursue a goal to gain experience and see if it's for her).

Serena/Calem (again when not the protag) having no set aim also works because they were most competitive of the group and continuing to be a trainer makes sense, but since they get hardly any development it just feels hollow and not satisfying. At least with characters like Wally, Silver and Barry who are roaming they all went through some major development. Lack of major development plus no end game just makes Serena and Calem unfortunately just not stand out.

Then Tierno...poor Tierno. He's my favorite XY character and I hate that screwed over so poorly. He actually a goal but the game doesn't allow us to see how a dance team would work. Kalos really could've benefitted from a Pokemon Contest/Musical like sidequest where Tierno shines in. So him being a roaming trainer is just...meh.

Now moving on to Gen 7 and best boy Hau (Hau's up there with Blue and Leon as one of my favorite Pokemon characters PERIOD). In both Sun and Moon and USUM he's a roaming trainer but I argue that Sun and Moon actually wrapped up his character better, despite USUM giving him much more in the way of development. By that I mean he explicitly mentions to the player that he wants become strong enough to find his father who fled Alola because the pressure of being the Kahuna's son was too much. So yeah he is still just a regular trainer, but he does have an explicit goal that goes beyond just trying to continue to measure up to the player. He also helps to train the reforming Team Skull grunts in the art of Alolan SuMo. In USUM this is erased for a more generic roaming trainer scenario unfortunately. Gladion's fate also changes depending on what version of the Gen 7 games you play. With Sun and Moon he ends up taking over as Aether's president but also still trains on the side as he is one of the challengers that can come for your title in the post game. In Ultra Sun and Moon he actually takes the "I'm going to Kanto" route instead of Lillie although he actually back and is essentially a roaming trainer since Lusamine's villainy was nerfed and therefore allowed to stay as Aether's president

Then there's Trace who ends up champion then loses it, but keeps on going in this endless circle of trying to reclaim it from the player. And then finally the Gen 8 rivals where we have Bede, Marnie, Klara and Avery all become gym leaders and Hop is a professor. Despite this cast having the most focus on their future paths since the gen 5 rivals I don't think they were done that well. Like Klara and Avery's worked, really well and they're probably the only rivals bar Trace and Blue who actually their goals (with them actually maintaining there dream status because their goal didn't involve becoming champion).

I've talked about Hop's on this post before but the lack of genuine foreshadowing just made his sudden declaration of wanting to be a Pokemon Professor just come out of nowhere. And honestly considering the fact that he had just come out of a depressive stage and still hadn't quite addressed his idolization issues I think he would've been served better with the Bianca route where yes he becomes Sonia's assistant, but it's clear that he's still trying to find his new path and that he's just open to trying out research rather than making a rather bold claim that this was his new career path. Either that or do better in the foreshadowing where he shows he has a much clearer interest in academia but feels like he needs to be a champion like his brother.

Then there's Marnie who I've also stated was kind of screwed over. Because she made it rather clear to Piers she didn't want to be gym leader (which makes sense given that she saw how that position screwed over older brother that she admires). She's pretty much doing this because she still has the motivation to save her hometown which is extremely admirable and mature. But also it's sad, like if she didn't have to do this, would she honestly still be gym leader. I think not, at least not immediately. Considering that gym challengers can still compete on the big stage with the champion's cup rematches and some even can be invited to the Galarian Stars Tournament, I think if I had of written that I would've focused on how with Leon as the head of MC he's going to actually work with Spikemuth to revitalize without shouldering the responsibility on one single person, especially a minor. And let her be a roaming trainer and live for herself and not continue to be Spikemuth's martyr.

Then there's Bede who quite vocally states when crashing the Champion's Cup that he was ready to retire. Like poor boy goes from being used as Rose's wishing star collector and fall boy to Opal's reirement plan. Like yes it's great that Opal actually remembers his name and gives him a support system and teaches him some discipline. But still it's kind of sad as he was very much okay with retiring but more or less gets goaded into staying because of the stadium audience.

So this post got way longer than I what it was going to be but hey that happens. But yeah too long don't read, all of the rivals do have a goal, even if a lot of them end up as roaming trainers. If I'm honest in most cases (bar the gen 6 rivals because they lacked developent) the roaming trainer thing works. Because they're kids and they still have their whole lives ahead of them and they don't need to have concrete job just yet. Especially because in some cases the concrete plan just doesn't always fit the character. It works best when it feels like an organic part of the story and not just trying to wrap things up for the sake of wrapping things up.

Finally, to answer your question about how I deal with Blue. Well in my Pokeverse (dubbed cactusverse in case you see me refer to my AU as this), I tend to be fairly canon compliant to the games. So after he loses his champion title to Red he becomes Viridian gym leader, slightly patches things up with grandfather by helping with the research and eventuallya head of the Battle Tree as an adult once he gains the Battle Legend Status (which is an actual legitimate title in cactusverse held currently only by him, Red and Leaf, although one of my OCs gets this designation as well). So nothing that really deviates from canon except for some offscreen events. Basically the battle legend status is bestowed if a major event happens that is taken care of by an already established powerful trainer. So there's a rather major plot thing the Kanto Trio gets involved in that once they take care of gives them their status.

Also for cactusverse there's the whole issue of the Viridian City gym. So it eventually it gets passed down to Trace as Blue has shown that he's become a bit too powerful to be a gym leader. He was honestly when he first got it probably still a bit overkill for an 8th gym leader, but he also really needed an attitude adjustment. And with Lance being a far better father figure to him than Oak could ever dream of, with the help of Agatha tried to rein in his egotistical and self important ways by giving him the position. Which worked very well. Still in cactusverse there's rules on the win percentage a gym can have and that's determined by position. Win too many for your rank and you get moved, vice versa if you lose too many, and sometimes you might even lose your position. The first and last gym leaders are always the most at risk of losing their status. This actually happens to Wallace, Iris and eventually Raihan because they just end up exceeding the strength of most challengers who try to challenge them. Hence why all three of them end up champions at some point cactusverse (Raihan does not become Galar's champion, but Johto's champion since I really like the idea of him spreading his wings beyong Galar).

Blue between the time of BW2 and SM had ended up getting to a point that no one had gotten a gym badge off of him in a couple of years which is unacceptable by league standards and he would've gotten booted out sooner had Lance not personally asked my OC Terra to come kick his butt and get a badge off of him. And cue possibly the most iconic and brutal gym battles to have ever gone down in a region of outside of Galar because two heartbroken champion tier trainers, who broke each other's heart is a recipe for a frightening battle. Lance happened to referree that match and might be a little traumatized. Terra won and he was able to give out his last badge before Red came back from his latest global trip and said let's go to Alola.

#rival blue #rival marnie #rival hop #rival bede #rival silver #rival wally #rival barry #rival bianca #rival cheren #rival hugh #rival hau #rival gladion #ask epic spheal #rival klara #rival avery #rival trace