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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Upcoming Movies in October 2020: Theaters, Streaming and VOD

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October looks a lot different than it did only a few weeks ago. As the month many movie theater owners were hanging their hats on with the hope of a weekly deluge of new movies , October has recently been vacated by high profile features that include Wonder Woman 1984, Death on the Nile, and Candyman.

Yet if you’re a cinephile or movie lover who is desperate for new stories and visions, it is not all doom and gloom. Between the streaming market of Netflix, VOD, and other platforms, as well as some smaller films willing to roll the dice on a limited theatrical release, there are still more than a few things to see in October 2020…

2067

October 2 (U.S. Only)

A high-concept science fiction setup if we’ve ever heard one, 2067 is the story of Ethan Whyte (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a young man born in a dystopian future where he learns that he might be the savior of humanity… at least that’s what people from an even more distant future are saying. In a plot twist that sounds, at least on paper, akin to a reversal of The Terminator, messengers from the future say Ethan is the key to saving the world and wish to transport him via time machine to an unknowable destiny. Chaos ensues. It’s a big idea, but we’re always game for someone swinging big in this genre.

Death of Me

October 2 (November 23 in the UK)

Darren Lynn Boseman, director of Saw II through Saw IV, returns to the horror genre again alongside Nikita’s Maggie Q and Westworld’s Luke Hemsworth. In this VOD release, the pair play a vacationing couple who wake up on an island with a horrible hangover. Yet a video on their phones seems to suggest the night before was even worse: Neil (Hemsworth) spent the evening brutally murdering his wife, as per the screen in their pockets. Nevertheless, here they are now, left with a lot of questions of what happened yesterday… and what can happen today.

Black Box

October 6

The first of Amazon Prime and Blumhouse Productions’ “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour’s Black Box has a tantalizing premise. Nolan (Mamoudou Athie) survived a car accident that took his wife, but it also took large swaths of his memory of her. So in order to regain his memory, and regain a sense of stability for his young daughter, Nolan undergoes an experimental treatment where his psychologist uses hypnosis to thrust him into his subconscious where he’ll be able remember his past and face his personal demons. Literally.

Like something out of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, this horror movie shows how scary being trapped in dreams really is if all that’s in them is the stuff of nightmares…

The Lie

October 6

The second Amazon/Blumhouse feature is more of a psychological thriller than a straightforward horror movie. Originally premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018, The Lie follows a father (Peter Sarsgaard) who discovers his daughter Kayla (Joey King) accidentally killed her friend… until she admits she may have actually murdered her.

How far will he go to cover-up his daughter’s sins? Well, that’s the logline, and it seems to be a gripping one, albeit reviews from TIFF were less than kind two years ago.

Hubie Halloween

October 7

Last year Adam Sandler warned the Academy that if he doesn’t win an Oscar for Uncut Gems he’d make a film so bad that it’d make “you all pay.” Well, he wasn’t even nominated and eight months after the ceremony, here we are with Netflix’s Hubie Halloween. It remains to be seen whether this is actually the bad one—for starters it filmed before Oscar nominations went out—but it is still very much a Happy Madison production, complete with major supporting roles for Kevin James and Rob Schneider.

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In the movie, Sandler plays Hubie Dubois, the town loser of Salem, Massachusetts. A lonely fry cook obsessed with Halloween, Hubie spends all year looking forward to decking out his home and town the same way Clark Griswold anticipates Christmas. But on this particular Halloween, the town appears besieged by actual supernatural forces, and finally Hubie will have his time to shine. Eh, it looks more amusing than The Do-Over and The Ridiculous 6?

Books of Blood

October 7 (U.S. Only)

Who doesn’t love anthological horror? Hulu certainly does, as they’re releasing Books of Blood, the latest adaptation of Clive Barker’s multi-volume series of short stories by the same name. Previous tales from Books of Blood have been adapted into movies as beloved as Candyman and as decidedly not as Rawhide Rex. In this film version, three stories are created for the screen by co-writer and director Brannon Braga. Here’s hoping it lands closer to the former?

Saint Maud

October 9 (UK Only)

The UK will be the first to get A24’s only horror movie this year. Lucky. The feature directorial debut of Rose Glass, Saint Maud follows an unhealthily repressed and zealous young woman: Maud (Morfydd Clark). Maud is technically a caretaker by trade, looking after people in hospice. But she also imagines herself to be something of an apostle, sent to save godless folks from their sins, particularly Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), the woman she’s living with as the in-home nurse.

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It’s already a tense situation, even before Maud starts hearing voices and having images of ecstasy and Heaven, and demons and Hell. Rich with atmosphere and grueling anticipation of something horrible happening, Saint Maud is a great debut for Glass and a potential star-maker for Clark, who is skin-crawlingly pious as Maud, the young woman who’s wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow

October 9 (U.S. Only)

Debuting in theaters and on VOD, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is Jim Cummings’ follow-up to Thunder Road. That earlier, underrated movie was a delightful mix of comedy and drama that won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize. So the sophomore effort being a werewolf comedy-horror movie is intriguing. Indeed, Wolf of Snow Hollow is the rare lycanthrope yarn that’s told from the point-of-view of the would-be wolf hunter, Sheriff John Marshall (Cummings).

Following a series of grisly murders every full moon, the residents of Snow Hollow become convinced they have a wolfman on their hands, even if the frustrated sheriff refuses to accept the obvious. The film also marks the final performance of Robert Forster as John’s crusty mentor.

The War with Grandpa

October 9 in the U.S. (October 16 in the UK)

For most people, having Robert De Niro as a grandfather can be an imposing experience. But kids these days! That’s at least one amusing takeaway from The War with Grandpa, the delayed family movie that sees De Niro’s grandfatherly Ed enter into a prank war with his grandson Peter (Oakes Fegley) after upsetting the youth by moving into his old bedroom—Peter’s mom and Ed’s daughter Sally (Uma Thurman) forced them into the arrangement.

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Soon shaving cream reveals itself to be foam sealant stuck to De Niro’s face, and Peter’s oral report announces he is a louse. Oh, and there’s a dodgeball battle in which De Niro is aided by a squad of screen legends like Christopher Walken, Cheech Marin, and Jane Seymour, to squash the pups. Now things are getting serious…

Nocturne

October 13

The first of Amazon and Blumhouse’s next batch of original movies, Nocturne is the tale of a hellish rivalry between sisters. Genuinely. The feature debut from director Zu Quirke stars Sydney Sweeney as Juliet, the younger sister of fellow musician Vivian (Madison Iseman). While both young women are gifted pianists, Vivian is a prodigy and the center of Juliet’s envy. That is until Juliet finds the diary of another child prodigy at their prestigious conservatory who killed herself. The book includes all the late pianist’s hidden compositions… and symbols and incantations.

Ever heard the story of Faust? It seems like Juliet is about to get an up-close modern example.

Evil Eye

October 13

As the final Blumhouse effort to be released on Amazon Prime in 2020, Evil Eye hails from directors Elan and Rajeev Dassani and presents itself as both a psychological thriller and supernatural chiller. The truth of which it really is depends on how much you believe the eye of Usha (Sarita Choudhury).

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How Jason Blum Changed Horror Movies

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By Don Kaye

For this mother of Pallavi (GLOW’s Sunita Mani) is convinced her daughter is necking with a new boyfriend (Omar Maskati) who’s the spirit of an evil abusive ex Usha escaped in her youth. Is he the vestiges of a half-remembered curse or the potential victim of a mommy dearest prone to snap judgements? Tune in to find out for yourself…

The Trial of the Chicago 7

October 16

“The whole world is watching.” That’s the chanted refrain of protestors in Aaron Sorkin’s second movie as director, but it might also apply to the level of anticipation regarding this major Netflix release and potential awards season darling. The movie itself is an old-fashioned legal thriller like Sorkin cut his teeth on with scripts like A Few Good Men, but Chicago 7 feels urgently (and depressingly) vital.

Following on the heels of the Chicago riots during the Democratic National Convention of 1968—riots later deemed to have been started by the police—eight men categorized as “the far left” are rounded up for a show trial by Nixon’s Justice Department where they’re charged with conspiracy.

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Aaron Sorkin: Donald Trump Made The Trial of the Chicago 7 Movie Possible

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The film features the same blistering abundance of dialogue Sorkin has become famous for, as well as his penchant for breezy fast-paced editing. But the political heft of the subject matter and the movie’s deep bench of an acting ensemble that includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Rylance, and Frank Langella is what makes this one of the most thrilling movies of the year.

Honest Thief

October 16 (U.S. Only)

Liam Neeson plays a thief who wants a second chance. A bank robber willing to turn himself and $9 million in to be with the new love of his life. But then crooked FBI agents (Jai Courtney and Anthony Ramos) steal his money and frame him for murder instead. So he’s left with one thing to do: menacingly hiss over the phone, “I’m coming for you.” We imagine that trailer-ready threat was what Honest Thief was sold on during its elevator pitch.

Rebecca

October 21

Remaking Alfred Hitchcock remains a tricky proposition that has thwarted many filmmakers in the past. Readapting the only one of his movies to win the Oscar for Best Picture, Rebecca, appears all the harder. Yet everything we’ve seen from Ben Wheatley and Netflix’s luscious adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel is highly encouraging.

With a winning cast that includes Lily James as the new Mrs. de Winter, Armie Hammer as her husband Maxim, and Kristin Scott Thomas as his menacing housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, the film opens with the young bride trying to step into the shoes of Maxim’s dead first wife, Rebecca. An apparent light of his mansion that has been long snuffed, Rebecca’s flame burns still if only because of Mrs. Danvers’ admiration for her late mistress… and maybe the ghost who prowls the house. This is archetypal Gothic horror, and with screenwriter Jane Goldman apparently keeping the novel’s original ending, we already feel seduced by the imagery.

On the Rocks

October 2 in the UK (October 23 in the U.S.)

Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray work together again. For the first time since their luminous Lost in Translation (if you ignore the ill-considered A Very Murray Christmas), the director and star are collaborating on this visibly intimate tale. It’s about an adult daughter (Rashida Jones) and her famous father (Murray) spending a weekend in New York City on an adventure after years of estrangement.

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The film, which also stars Marlon Wayans, premiered to a largely warm reception at the New York Film Festival and is already being written about as a spiritual successor to their original collaboration. Once more a woman in the midst of an existential crisis is aided by Murray between glasses of scotch. Who doesn’t want to pull up a seat and order another round?

Over the Moon

October 23

You probably don’t know Glen Keane’s name but you should. The longtime Walt Disney Animation Studios animator oversaw the design and animation of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin in Aladdin, and Rapunzel in Tangled. With Over the Moon, he steps away from the Mouse and toward Netflix as a first-time co-director, alongside John Kahrs (an animator on Tangled and Frozen).

The trailer for the film is like a Georges Méliès fever dream from as a little girl named Fei Fei (Cathy Ang) builds a rocket ship to take her to the moon. But once there, Fei Fei and friends meet a mythical moon goddess (Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo) who takes them on a candy-colored odyssey through the cosmos.

Synchronic

October 23 (U.S. only)

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Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are two of the most intriguing new voices in science fiction. If you don’t recognize their names, go watch The Endless right now. One of the strangest and cleverest sci-fi yarns of the last decade, that film is now being followed up by Synchronic, another original tale that stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan. The specifics of the film remain vague other than it is about two New Orleans paramedics who investigate a series of murders caused by a new, bizarre designer drug. But we already know we can’t wait to watch what horrible side effects come from these poor bastards taking it.

The Craft: Legacy

It cannot be Halloween without at least one more horror movie coming out the week of. Thus enters The Craft: Legacy, Sony Pictures and Blumhouse Productions’ legacy sequel to the original 1996 The Craft. Like its predecessor, this follows an outsider who is the new girl in school (Cailee Spaeny). She may be ostracized by the popular kids, but she befriends fellow students who have alternative tastes… like witchcraft.

The original is a touchstone for millennials and Gen-Xers of a certain age, and this reboot looks to push the story into a more complex understanding of friendship. And if it doesn’t, it’s still a Blumhouse effort so it should have plenty of spooky jumps!

Relic

October 30 (US Only)

Dementia is at the heart of this very eerie chiller where three generations of women convene in an old family home which seems to be rotting from the inside. Robyn Nevin, Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote star in a slow build drama which delves into the horror of losing your sense of self, as Nevin’s matriarch goes missing for days and can’t remember what happened while her house is filled with odd notes, black mould and snippets of a life slipping away from her grasp. This is the feature debut of Australian-Japanese director Natalie Erika James and it’s a stylish, chilling and confident first feature with a final act that veers into full blown horror. Out already in the States on VOD it has a UK theatrical release in the UK.

The post Upcoming Movies in October 2020: Theaters, Streaming and VOD appeared first on Den of Geek.

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farkenshnoffingottom · 6 years

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Ace Discourse, Here We Go

So. *rubs hands together* I decided it’s time for me to break into the discourse. Largely inspired by recent happenings on @highkingfen‘s blog. I’m going to bring some theory into this so we can understand why people are so invested in this.

But first, since the first line of attack always seems to be aimed at people’s identities, I’m gonna go ahead and state mine right now: I’m transmasc nonbinary, gray aroace, and sensually, aesthetically, and platonically attracted to all genders. I’m also not able bodied, so I want you to understand the physical toll getting involved in this debate means for me, so that you know I am invested in this discussion. I apologize in advance for any errors, although I think I caught them all. (Long post, so I put it under the cut)

I will use queer in this post because I am queer.* Let’s start with some basic politics of sex, then work our way into queer politics, and then bring it back around to aceness.

In 1984, anthropologist Gayle Rubin wrote an essay called “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in which she argued that feminism could not take on sexuality theoretically or politically (she was writing in the midst of the feminist porn wars), but that we needed a distinct politics of sexuality. The part that strikes me as most relevant here is when she describes her theory of the sexual hierarchy.

(While this does not include asexuality, it is fair to say that asexuality can fall behind some of these walls too, because it is not accepted. Underlying the category of “good” sex is the assumption that people will be having sex, so asexual people are a threat to this social order that requires that people have “good” sex to reproduce itself.) I highly recommend you read this article, but I am mainly using it here for the visual. Walls are high, and I would say most people cannot just scale a wall all by themselves. So the way we get around this is to throw each other under the bus, to mix my metaphors. In order to cross the line into “good” and acceptable behavior, people have to step on others, push them further down, to advance themselves (instead of, say, just destroying the walls). It looks a little like “we’re exactly like you, we just love each other, we want to get married, we want to be normal. They’re the ones having public sex, turning tricks on the streets, flaunting their sexuality, etc.”** Anything that buys into the normative narrative gets you a little closer to the “good” side of the wall.

Now, I’m sort of rambling, but I promise I have a point. That point is that while asexuality may seem diametrically opposed from Rubin’s list of “bad” sex, it actually is theoretically and politically very similar. Society needs people to have sex to keep itself alive, but it just wants people to have the “right” sex. In a biopolitical way (see part five of the book linked), queer sex is just as threatening as no sex at all. The state is highly invested in controlling their population and regulating its function. This is why "Hyposexual Desire Disorder” appears in the DSM IV (It now appears split into separate disorders for males and females, which I won’t even get to, and now contains the caveat that it isn’t a disorder if someone identifies as asexual). So, improvement, right? Not quite. It still fits into the long history of queer identities and people being pathologized by medical and psychiatric authorities. Our cultural institutions acknowledge the danger asexuality poses to the social order alongside its other queer counterparts.

So, I’m counting that as my theoretical evidence that ace people belong in the queer community and moving on a little bit. One of the critiques I see of including ace people in the community is that asexuals aren’t discriminated against enough to be counted. First, see my very brief discussion of pathologization above. Second, the “cishet asexuals pass as heterosexual, so they don’t experience oppression” argument misses the point. I assume most people in this community understand why heteronormativity hurts. The assumption that you are straight when you’re not hurts. And that’s exactly what this is. The assumption that you’re straight, and that you are sexually attracted to people. And it hurts, except now it’s our supposed community that’s telling us we’re straight even after we say over and over that we’re not. Asexual is by definition not heterosexual. Three, the microagressions: lol you’re asexual, does that mean you reproduce like a plant? Don’t worry, you’ll find the right person some day (remind anyone of “but wait how do lesbians even have sex?” or “don’t worry, you’ll find the right (‘opposite’ gender) one day”?). We can acknowledge that microagressions are bad in other areas, so why can’t we admit that it’s true for ace-spec people too? Four, “corrective” therapy and/or sexual assault happen to us because of our orientations too. Even though I could go on and on, I’ll stop there. Just check my “ace discourse” tag for more. Or don’t. It’s exhausting stuff.

Another critique I see is that this somehow plays into the desexualization of gay people. People who are attracted to their own gender will be hypersexualized or desexualized by straight society as their politics call for.*** It is not asexuals’ fault that people cannot conceptualize the difference between asexuality and desexualization. Asexuality is an identity. Desexualizing someone is an act of perception and political understanding.

Additionally, asexuality is newer (not in concept, but in public visibility) than other queer orientations, and yet no one seems to want to remember that each of those past orientations had to go through the same thing, fighting to be seen as real and not pathological or unhealthy. Sure, we don’t have a legal fight in the same way that homosexual and trans people do, but that is mostly because a lot of people have no idea we exist. I’m going to point you to AVEN for an asexual history, because they’ll do a much better job than me.

Finally, simply this: it is not your job to decide who counts as queer “enough” to be in the community. Another thing we tend to forget when having this argument is that identities shift all the time. It’s politically important when dealing with the straight world to be able to say “it’s not a phase!” But sometimes, your identities shift, and that’s okay. I thought all sorts of things about who I was before I figured myself out, and I’ll probably end up somewhere a little different from where I am now. It is not so cut and dry. People can come out while they’re still questioning, and then realize that they were wrong and are really something else. Some people can be solid in an identity for years, and then start to think maybe there’s something more to it. And that is okay. What’s the point of saying we’re queer if we are just recreating the exact same structures and hierarchies and expectations that we faced in straight society? There is no need for gatekeeping here. I realized I was ace only two years ago, and started to question whether I was aromantic only a year ago. And guess what. I’m still not entirely sure who I am. But that’s fine. It’s okay to explore yourself. You don’t have to be locked into one category forever. Asexuals are not straight, and they are and should be welcome in queer spaces.

*While this should probably be covered in another post, I want to point out how intentional my use of the word is. Queer and LGBT are different concepts, in my mind. See my “queer discourse” tag for some history and theory that others have contributed. Also, read Queers Read This! to get a sense of the approach I take. For now, I will just say that queer has a historical and political meaning that grew as it diverged from the lesbian and gay movement (which was half-heartedly tacking the B and the T to the end of their name) in the ‘90s. Queer as a concept has a much higher capacity to be inclusive of ace-spec identities, because it defines itself and prides itself in its difference from the norm rather than its attempts at being normal. **For a much better discussion of this concept than I can provide here, Michael Warner’s book The Trouble With Normal is excellent, and I highly recommend it.

***Besides, the mainstream movement intentionally desexualized themselves to be acceptable to the straights. The more mainstream turn in our politics was essentially to de-sex gayness. That’s where things such as “love is love” and the gay marriage court cases came from. These were very effective political attempts to play into the normative “good” sex narrative, and distance themselves from all those bad queers doing the things on the other side of Rubin’s walls. Again, I’m going to point you to The Trouble With Normal, even though it’s almost twenty years old, because it just so brilliantly addresses all of this.

ETA: Michael Warner does talk about sex as being essential to queerness, specifically because he is writing his book in response to the desexualization of gay politics. I do not read this as an argument that asexual people aren’t queer, because I don’t think he is trying to account for our existence in this book, and it seems likely that he wasn’t thinking about us at all (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it’s not what he set out to do with his book, and I’m fine with that. You’ve gotta narrow down your scope to something manageable, and he already has a huge topic to address).

#long post #ace discourse #queer discourse #queer #ace #e's endless rambling #i'm tired and in pain #but i had to get this out of my system #I'm too exhausted for this bs #gatekeeping #happy pride month everybody #with just a hint of sarcasm #and frustration #i don't know if any of this made sense #but i hope it does something meaningful for someone somewhere #aromantic #asexuality #asexual #The Discourse™

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scruffyplayssonic · 6 years

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And the best movies of all the years I’ve been alive are... (updated for 2017!)

Hey folks, I’ve got of a bit of a tradition that I’ve started. It wasn’t a New Year’s tradition previously, but this feels like the best time to be updating

Back in August 2015, I watched a Youtube video by Jeremy of @cinema-sins, where he was answering fan questions. One question that he addressed was, “What is the best movie of every year that you’ve been alive?” While Jeremy thought this was a great question, he didn’t think one video would be long enough to explore it fully, and he wanted to find another way to answer it. This eventually was done through the Cinema Sins podcast, SinCast. Each week, the cast would discuss the movies of a certain year and then vote on which one they thought was the best, starting with 1975 in episode 14, and then working their way through another year each episode right up until episode 54, where they voted on the best movie for 2015. They then took a break for a few weeks to get caught up on some of last year’s movies that they hadn’t seen yet before finally tackling 2016 in this week’s podcast, episode 58.

I did my own picks for my favourite movie of each year back in August 2015, when I first saw Jeremy’s Q and A video. I really liked that question and was inspired to try and name my own favourites from each year. I reuploaded the updated version of this when the SinCast finished going through it last year, and I’ve been waiting for New Year’s Eve to update it again for this year. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment and/or argue about my choices. And thanks again to @cinema-sins, for providing me with laughs every week in the podcasts and videos they release. :)

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1982: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial This might be a bit of a cheat, since the film came out in June and I wasn’t born until October, but oh well. It’s still the same year.

1983: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi The first Star Wars movie I was around to see the cinematic release of, although I wouldn’t see it in cinemas (or at all, shamefully) for another 14 years.

1984: The Terminator The original was pretty chilling. This still gets me every time. “Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can’t be bargained with! It can’t be reasoned with! It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!”

1985: Back to the Future The beginning of what I still believe is the greatest movie trilogy of all time.

1986: Aliens More awesome from James Cameron.

1987: Spaceballs Well, it’s pretty funny. Plus I haven’t seen much else from this year, other than Lethal Weapon.

1988: Die Hard The original and quite possibly the best. More on that later.

1989: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade This was a tough one to pick, as Michael Keaton’s first Batman film, Licence to Kill, AND Back to the Future: Part II all came out this year. But it really has to be the onscreen chemistry of Harrison Ford and Sean Connery!

1990: Back to the Future: Part III At the time, I probably would have picked DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp. Ahhh, nostalgia.

1991: Terminator 2: Judgement Day I’m sure most of you who know me and know my favourite movies saw this one coming. This was my very favourite movie of all time for almost twenty years, but recently something has surpassed it. Silence of the Lambs would probably get second place for this year.

1992: Batman Returns It was a hard choice between this and Aladdin, which was my favourite Disney cartoon for a very long time. But since it’s not in my dvd collection and Batman is… Honourable mention goes to A Muppet Christmas Carol, my favourite of the Muppet movies.

1993: The Fugitive Another tough choice, considering that Jurassic Park also came out in 1993. But I just love the battle of wits between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.

1994: The Lion King Another of Disney’s finest. No contest, although True Lies, Speed, and The Mask were all excellent films too.

1995: Goldeneye (007) This was another tough choice, and Die Hard with a Vengeance came very, VERY close. It’s hard to live up to the awesomeness of that first film, but the partnership with Samuel L. Jackson definitely pays off here. But Goldeneye was the first Bond film I saw in the cinema, and I remember that experience vividly. Pierce Brosnan remains my favourite Bond, even though the next three films he starred in didn’t quite live up to this one.

1996: Scream The Rock and Independence Day were my other main picks from this year, but Wes Craven made an instant classic with Scream, which inspired so many other movies and spoofs. If only they’d stopped after the first Scary Movie…

1997: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Special Edition) It’s a bit of a cheat, but technically the original Star Wars trilogy was re-released in cinemas that year with new “special edition” footage, which is when I first fell in love with the series. From original movies that came out in ‘97, it’s a toss up between Men in Black, Air Force One, and The Fifth Element.

1998: Rush Hour Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker were hilarious in this one. The Mask of Zorro was another great movie, and Deep Impact, which was waaaaaay better than Armageddon. Of course, a Michael Bay film will be obsessed with making things go ka-boom. :P Yes, yes, I know The Rock was a Bay film too. So sue me.

1999: The Matrix Another of my very favourite movies. The effects, the plot, the action… it was just sensational. The Sixth Sense was another very clever movie, and Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me was hilarious! But… c'mon, The Matrix, man!

2000: The Whole Nine Yards I was still a big Friends fan at the time, so I loved Matthew Perry starring alongside Bruce Willis. There was also Gone in 60 Seconds, which is one of my favourite Nick Cage films, The Emperor’s New Groove, and of course, X-Men. And then there’s Mission: Impossible 2… hey, be nice. I watched this a lot when I was in Virginia and homesick for Australia :P

2001: Ocean’s Eleven Such a clever film with a great cast!

2002: The Bourne Identity Spider-Man came pretty close, but Matt Damon was amazing as Jason Bourne. …well, that most recent movie was kind of hit or miss…

2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl Who would have ever guessed that a movie based on a Disneyland ride could be so good?

2004: The Incredibles It was a good year for animation - there was this one, Shrek 2, and Team America: World Police. National Treasure came out too, which I quite like.

2005: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire There was also The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (a huge improvement on the previous two movies), Batman Begins, and of course, Serenity; the movie that had Firefly fans screaming, “NOOOOOOOOO!!!” near the climax. :P

2006: V for Vendetta I just LOVE this film. Top performances from Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman and John Hurt. The Da Vinci Code was my second choice. Controversial it may be, and people tend to poo-poo Dan Brown a lot, but I loved this movie too. Tom Hanks was the perfect choice for Robert Langdon, and Ian McKellan was brilliant as always. Casino Royale also came out this year, which brought the 007 franchise back from oblivion.

2007: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I had to find a cinema playing this in English in Nanjing - no easy feat! But at least they didn’t butcher it like they did with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (my second pick, after I saw the uncut movie on DVD). Ocean’s Thirteen was pretty good too, if not as good as the original. And of course, The Bourne Ultimatum. I was on the edge of my seat for that one.

2008: The Dark Knight A no-brainer. One of the best films of the decade, let alone the year. Iron Man was a surprise hit too. Little did we know of what was to follow - and in fact, you’ll be seeing a few MCU movies coming up on the list. Taken was great. Oh, and I quite liked Steve Carrell’s take on Get Smart, even if he didn’t quite capture the original magic of Don Adams.

2009: Up One of my very favourite Pixar movies. Angels & Demons was pretty good too, although not as good as the first movie. Plus Tom Hanks cut his hair - I thought his shaggy do in the first movie suited Robert Langdon better. :P Strange that I liked Angels & Demons better of the books but The Da Vinci Code better of the movies. Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes was great too.

2010: Kick-Ass This one was a surprise, but I loved the deconstruction of the traditional superhero movie they did here. And when I read the original comic, I loved the film even more for the improvements they made. Nicolas Cage was hilariously hammy, but the major star of this one was undoubtedly Chloe Grace Moretz as the tiny killing machine, Hit-Girl. After that, there was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and Toy Story 3.

2011: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 A fantastic end to a fantastic series. There was also Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which really surprised me. Excellent stuff there. The Adventures of Tintin - an amazing film that tricked me into forgetting it was animated and not live-action several times. Finally, The Muppets, which was such a fantastic return for some of my favourite childhood icons.

2012: The Avengers No surprise there. Honourable mentions go to The Cabin in the Woods, which is a delightfully insane deconstruction of horror movies, Looper, a film I still occasionally stay up late at night scratching my head in confusion over, and Skyfall, which is probably Daniel Craig’s best Bond film so far. I also loved Wreck-It Ralph.

2013: White House Down This one was definitely the film I liked best from 2013What can I say? I love Die Hard, and this was basically Die Hard in the White House, yet it felt original enough to not just be a knock-off. The other ones I liked best would be the Marvels (Iron Man 3, the Wolverine and Thor: The Dark World), Kick-Ass 2, and Gravity, which was absolutely terrifying.

2014: Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel sure knows how to get my bum into the cinema - X-Men: Days of Future Past and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are up there, but Guardians wins out for pure fun (and the delightful company I had in the cinema <3). There was also The LEGO Movie, which I thought was very clever, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

2015: The Martian When I first made this list in August 2015, my prediction was that Jurassic World would be my favourite of the year. Nope, not by a long shot. The Martian was absolutely amazing - Matt Damon’s ability to keep the audience on the edge of their seats when he’s completely alone on the screen (and on the planet) is a major credit to him as an actor. In fact, I think this film has now actually surpassed Terminator 2 to become my favourite movie of all time. Then of course we have Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation, and Terminator: Genisys. …no, really. Stop laughing, I really enjoyed it. :P And then there was Ex Machina, which was a really intriguing film that kept me guessing the entire time.

2016: Captain America: Civil War It’s no secret that I love my comic book movies, and this was definitely my favourite of last year. Civil War (the comic) was the first instance that got me intrigued enough to actually pick up and read a Marvel comic. It really raised an interesting question for me - just how accountable should superheroes be for what they do when fighting crime? Granted, the comic really went too far and made both Cap AND Iron Man look like total dicks, and I was relieved when the film managed to not use some of the more ridiculous ideas, such as a homocidal Robo-Thor-clone or a prison for superheroes in an alternate dimension that literally saps your will to live. On top of that, the film also introduced a fantastic Black Panther, and Tom Holland really nailed what Spider-Man should be. And that airport scene was worth the price of admission all by itself.

2017: Wonder Woman Ohhhhh man, it has been a really good year for superhero movies. We’ve had Tom Holland really prove he is Spider-Man in Homecoming, and the most ridiculous-and-yet-accurate portrayal of Batman ever in the LEGO Batman Movie. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s swansongs in Logan were heartwrenching. Ragnarok and Justice League were a lot of fun (yes, I liked Justice League. Fight me). The Guardians managed to surpass their first movie in Volume 2 with really great character development and humour, and that would probably have been my pick for the year if there wasn’t one other superhero movie I loved even more. But I found Wonder Woman to be truly inspirational. Patty Jenkins,Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and everyone else involved with this movie created something that took my breath away. I cheer every time I see her walk out onto no man’s land, and I scream, “FUCK YEAH!!!” every time that iconic butt-kicking theme music plays. In non-superhero movies... Coco was simply amazing, and is another of Pixar’s very best movies. Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi was fantastic, and I can’t wait to go see it again. And I went into Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle with pretty low expectations, but I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot.

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I challenge any of my friends out there who are avid movie lovers to give this challenge a try - it’s not as easy as you’d think. Wikipedia is your friend though - just browse by “(insert year here) in film.” Comments telling me, “Yes, I love that film!” or, “Are you nuts? How could you forget THIS film?” are quite welcome. :)

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ciathyzareposts · 4 years

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The Black Gate Bonus: The Books of Britannia

One of many in-game books that make in-jokes and build lore.

I’d have to look through my notes to see what game first offered full-text books–not as plot devices but just as random background flavor and world-building. It might have been Ultima VI. But even if they appeared in earlier games, Ultima VII is the first game to treat them this extensively, with at least a couple of dozen different titles found on desks, nightstands, and bookcases throughout the homes and workplaces of the Britannian people. The castle alone had more than 15 different books.

Ultima VII admittedly doesn’t do as well with its books as many later titles. Many of them are goofy, or simply analogues of real-world titles, and not the world-building tomes that we find in, say, The Elder Scrolls series, the Infinity Engine games, or The Witcher series. Still, they’re fun and deserve some additional attention and analysis.

I thought I’d use this entry to organize that analysis, adding new books as I find them. I’m excluding some “plot” books that don’t have much text (like Morfin’s register of venom sales). I’ll add notes to future entries when this one has been updated. The books I’ve found so far are: The Apothecary’s Desk Reference by Fetoau. A book that accurately describes which potions have which effects. Very useful.

The Art of the Field Dressing by Creston, with a forward by Lady Leigh. It has some advice about cutting cloth into strips to bandage wounds, something that actually works in the game. While Lady Leigh is later found in the game, I don’t believe Creston is.

The Bioparaphysics of the Healing Arts by Lady Leigh. The bible for in-game healers. I believe Lady Leigh will be found later in Serpent’s Hold.

The Book of the Fellowship by Batlin of Britain. The first page of the game manual–the one time it makes sense for a real-life book to appear in the game.

Chicken Raising by Daheness Gon. A relatively useless instruction manual for raising chickens and producing eggs. The anatomical advice seems accurate, but I’m not sure how it helps in-game. Found on the shelf of a farmhouse, which makes sense.

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang by Ian Fleming. The real-life 1964 book by the author better known for creating James Bond. Lead Ultima VII writer Raymond Benson later went on to become the official James Bond writer from 1997-2002.

With a couple of syllabic substitutions, this could easily have been a James Bond title.

Collected Plays by Raymundo. An anthology of plays by the guy who runs the theater in Britain. Play titles include Three on a Codpiece, The Trials of the Avatar, The Plagiarist, Clue, and Thumbs Down. “Raymundo” is the in-game avatar of lead writer Raymond Benson, and at least three of these plays are real plays written by Benson. Clue is a 1977 musical based on the board game–a full 8 years before the Tim Curry film. The Plagiarist and Thumbs Down are more obscure; I’m not sure when or if they were ever staged, but they were published as short stories by Amazon Shorts in 2006. Three on a Codpiece is described in-game as a performance art piece in which audience members “tear an undergarment into tiny pieces, after which they are placed in funeral urns and mixed with wheat paste . . . then the audience may glue the pieces anywhere on [the actor’s] body that they wish.” One Ultima site suggests this might be a reference to Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1965).

A Complete Guide to Britannian Minerals, Precious, and Semi-Precious Stones by B. Ledbetter. The book discusses some of Britannia’s natural resources, including veins of gold and lead. It is notable for a paragraph on blackrock, a “recently discovered” substance with little practical use, rumored to have a “profound effect” on magic. This will of course become a major part of the game’s plot. I don’t believe Ledbetter appears in-game. I thought it would be funny if it was the guy who runs the jewelry shop in Britain, but his name is Sean.

The Day It Didn’t Work by R. Allen G. A collection of essays about “overseeing a group of well-meaning misfits in a mechanical environment.” An obvious joke about Richard Allen Garriott and the staff at ORIGIN. Everything an Avatar Should Know about Sex. This book is blank after the title page. Ho-ho-ho. Or maybe it’s not a joke and it’s foreshadowing the upcoming unicorn encounter.

The Honorable Hound inn register. The guest list for this Trinsic inn has four recent names: Walter of Britain, Jaffe of Yew, Jaana, and Atans of Serpent’s Hold. Jaana is of course the Avatar’s companion going back to Ultima IV. I don’t believe the others are ever seen or heard from in the series.

How to Conquer the World in Three Easy Steps by Maximillian the Amazingly Mean. The ravings of a “megalomaniac cleric.” He plans to acquire VAS CORP (“Mass Kill”), which he thinks will make everyone fear him, and that not even Lord British himself is immune. I’m pretty sure that Lord British survives a VAS CORP (which is a real spell). Lord British doesn’t even die from VAS CORP IN BET MANI (“Armageddon”). Also, there are no “clerics” in this setting. As an aside, I wonder if employees of Vascorp Network Solutions know that to a portion of the public, their name means “Mass Death.”

Hubert’s Hair-Raising Adventure by Bill Peet. A real 1969 children’s book by a real author. It tells in rhyme how the proud lion Hubert had his mane scorched in a series of escalating misadventures. We learned about its presence in Britannia in Ultima VI, where Lord British spent every night reading it to Sherry the Mouse. I don’t know which idea is worse: that the adolescent Lord British was carrying the book while hiking through the English countryside, or that he later went back for it.

It’s good that Lord British has priorities.

Jesse’s Book of Performance Art by Jesse. A “controversial and eccentric Britannian actor” who has published a book of “scripts” for performance artists and argues that performance art is basically the same thing as acting. Jesse is an NPC in Britain who jokes about playing the Avatar and having only three lines: NAME, JOB, and BYE.

Key to the Black Gate. A cluebook to the game, found within the game (but without any of the actual text). Probably meant as a subtle in-game advertisement. Can you imagine needing a cluebook to solve this game?

A crummy commercial?!

Lord British: The Biography of Britannia’s Longtime Ruler by K. Bannos. The biography frankly acknowledges that Lord British is from another world. I wasn’t sure that was public knowledge until now. He entered Britannia through a moongate and became one of the rulers of the eight kingdoms of Sosaria. The people proclaimed them the king after he successfully dealt with Mondain, Minax, and Exodus. The book recounts his role in Ultima IV and Ultima V but ends just as the gargoyles become a threat in Ultima VI. Unfortunately, the text also re-affirms the idea that the Avatar is the same hero as the one who defeated Mondain, Minax, and Exodus–the dumbest retcon ORIGIN ever introduced.,

Part of Lord British’s bio. A party of Fuzzies defeated Exodus and nobody can convince me otherwise.

Mempto Rays: A Qualitative Study in Metaparaphilosophical Radiation by Mempto. Some rantings about Britannia always being bombarded by radiation “lethal to all non-living matter.” Probably meant as a send-up of pseudo-science in the modern world.

No One Leaves by R. Allen G. This sequel to The Day It Didn’t Work is a humorously-phrased paragraph about missed deadlines and forced overtime.

No Way to Jump by Desmonth. A treatise on tropes found in adventure stories. This is probably another in-joke about game development. After all, Ultima VII, for all its realism, does not allow the Avatar to jump. The issue continues into the present day and is found on TV Tropes as “The Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence.” Note that Ultima VIII does feature jumping and jumping puzzles.

On Acting by Laurence Olivier. Philosophical notes on acting “written by a noted thespian of a distant land.” The text notes that it was apparently “one of the many brought to Britannia by Lord British.” Why was the kid hiking with half a library on his back? Anyway, Sir Laurence did in fact publish a book of this title in 1986.

Play Directing: Analysis, Communication, and Style by Francis Hodge. A “respected textbook” written by “an eminent professor emeritus from a university in a distant land.” It is in fact a real-world book, published in 1971 by a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Probably someone that Raymond Benson or someone on the staff at ORIGIN (which was based in Austin) knew. Hodge passed away in 2008.

The Salty Dog inn register. This inn and tavern in Paws lists seven recent visitors: Addom of Yew, The Avatar, Jalal of Britain, Tim of Yew, Blorn of Vesper, Sir Dupre, and Penelope of Cove. Addom is a traveling merchant who later shows up in Moonglow and plays a role in that city’s plot. To my knowledge, Jalal and Penelope never appear in the game, although I think Jalal appears in another register. Tim of Yew is also an unknown (there was a bard named Tim in Ultima V but he’d be long-dead). Blorn is an anti-Gargish racist who we later find in Vesper. The idea that Dupre recently visited a tavern is entirely within his character. The most disturbing entry is that someone is wandering around passing himself off as “The Avatar.”

Thou Art What Thee Eats by Fordras. A nutritional analysis that pre-dates the Atkins crazy by suggesting meats and vegetables ahead of carbohydrates. The author recommends certain foods in order, and I think it roughly corresponds with how filling those foods are in-game.

The Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. This is a real book by a real author, originally published in 1984. As best I can tell, it’s a real book about English grammar and syntax, but all the examples are vampire-themed and there are vampire illustrations. If there’s something deeper going on, someone’s going to have to tell me. I suppose if it actually gets people to read a book on grammar, there are no bad ideas.

Go figure.

Tren I, II, III, IV . . . XVII. An autobiography by “the obtuse mage” which “reveals Tren’s life in all of his incarnations as he continually strove to possess more powerful beings.” As far as I know, we never meet a mage called Tren, nor do we ever see an application of magic that involves possession of beings.

Up Is Out by Goodefellow. A treatise on gravity and mass, including “falling apples.” It’s a clear analogue to Isaac Newton, but I otherwise don’t know if the title and author are a reference to anything. If Goodefellow is an actual Britannian trying to research physics, his life is going to be rough.

Vargaz’s Stories of Legend. This anonymous book is subtitled Reasons Why One Should Never Build Doors Facing North or West. The book has two stories, one about a plague of locusts foretold by Father Antos (Ultima II and IV) which destroyed houses with north-facing doors. The other tale suggests that monsters fleeing sunlight are more likely to flee east and thus invade houses with west-facing doors.

The Wayfarer’s Inn register. This tavern in Britain lists five recent guests: John-Paul of Serpent’s Hold, Horffe of Serpent’s Hold, Featherbank of Moonglow, Tarvis of Buccaneer’s Den, and Shamino. I later found Shamino shacking up with an actress, so he probably only had to stay for one night. I don’t believe Tarvis or Featherbank appear in the game, but John-Paul is in fact the ruler of Serpent’s Hold and Horffe is his Gargish captain of the guard.

What a Fool Believes by P. Nolan. The book only has a brief paragraph, describing it as “the story of a bard, a blonde, and a bottle . . . a classic tale of the war between the sexes.” There’s a song of this name, of course, recorded by the Doobie Brothers and Aretha Franklin among others, but it doesn’t mention a blonde or a bottle and has no association with anyone named “Nolan” (although, in a weird twist, the R&B artist Nolan Porter did cover the song, but not until 2011).

The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. The real book from the real world, except that in the real world, the author is L. Frank Baum. It is given a quick summary in-game. I assume it’s in Lord British’s castle because I stole it for him as part of an Ultima VI side-quest.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-black-gate-bonus-the-books-of-britannia/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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longlistshort · 5 years

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Silver Jews- Random Rules

I first heard about David Berman and his band Silver Jews a while ago, as they were one of those bands you heard about if you were a Pavement fan. But sadly, I never got around to listening to them until now.

Stephen Malkmus and David Berman went to the University of Virginia and later moved together to Hoboken, New Jersey. There Malkmus, along with their other roommate Bob Nastanovich, played with additional bandmates as Pavement, and together with Berman they formed the Silver Jews, although Berman soon remained the only constant member of the band.

When I discovered that David Berman had passed away and read the many quotes from his songs posted online by friends and fans, I finally spent some time listening to his music. There are just so many great lines in these songs. For instance, from Random Rules, posted above- “In 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection/ Slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction”. It’s a funny opener and the whole song is filled with quotable lyrics. Towards the end are the lyrics “I asked the painter why the roads are colored black/ He said, ‘Steve, it’s because people leave/And no highway will bring them back’.” So many of his songs are like this, the humor mixed with the pathos.

Silver Jews disbanded in 2009 and Berman quit making music for awhile. In 2011 he started a blog. In May, ten years after he stopped making music, he released the album Purple Mountains. The lyrics to the songs on this album, including the one below, are poignant, made even more so after his death. In a recent interview with Exclaim!, he discusses each song off that album.

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Purple Mountains- All My Happiness Is Gone (song starts 2:06)

He also wrote poetry, and this poem, from his book Actual Air, is just so incredible I’m presenting it in its entirety (via poemhunter).

Self- Portrait at 28

I know it's a bad title but I'm giving it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and I think "at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand" by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from the house while still seated in this chair with my eyes closed. It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it. My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now. If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf. As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.

II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party. It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here." Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image. I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me. In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years.

III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is. How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work. I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin. If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions. You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway. You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking. And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid. A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but... Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations. I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages. It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines. It seems our comedy dates the quickest. If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard. Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now. It's just that our advances are irrepressible. Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands. It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid. I'm not saying it should be this way. All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two. We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth. Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up. He'd never broken the name down to its parts. By then it was too late. He had moved to Coral Gables.

V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything. I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set. I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things. Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see. I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one. VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved? Let's get an update on this. But first I have some business to take care of. I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head. You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.

There is only so much time to read, listen to, and see all the wonderful things people have created. David Berman made work well worth spending some of that precious time on.

Rest in Peace.

#david berman #silver jews #purple mountains #music #musicians #writers #poetry #books #playlist #pavement #stephen malkmus #rip

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

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Margaret Atwood: a high priestess of fiction who embraces the digital age | Claire Armitstead

The Handmaids Tales joyful reception on the small screen reminds us of its ever-energetic generators spooky prescience

Once or twice in a generation, a tale is suggested that vaults out of the literary corral studying to be a phenomenon, well known to beings the world over who have never read the book: George Orwells 1984 is one and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale is another.

So its perhaps not remarkable that a new 10 -part TV series based on the romance has struck a chord. Starring Elisabeth Moss as handmaid Offred, the succession launched in the US last-place month and comes to the UK later this month trailing superlatives.

At 77, Atwood blends the loftiness of a high priestess who does not stand moron gladly with an unstinting generosity to those she deems not to be foolhardy. She is a heartfelt environmentalist, with a special interest in chicks, which she shares with her husband, Graeme Gibson.

If her determination to live by her principles occasionally seems incidentally comic as when she embarked by barge on an international tour of a stage show publicising the second tale of her MaddAddam trilogy, The Year of the Flood she also brings to her politics a healthy dose of intentional humour.

On a recent trip to her Toronto home, her longtime UK publisher Lennie Goodings was amazed to converge her carrying a paper bag bellying with four large-scale rubber turkeys. She established them to me with that joke, manager on a tilt, wicked smile of hers. They yelped when she pressed them. It turned out that she and Gibson were about to present the trophies at an annual RSPB competition. The winners each receive a rubber goose from Margaret, at which point she deports them in a squeezing squawking choir.

Atwood traces her refer with the environment back to a childhood spent criss-crossing the groves of Canada with her entomologist leader. She was the second of three children, and the familys itinerant life meant that she did not going to see full-time academy until she was eight years old. She embarked producing her poetry while a student at the University of Toronto, acquired her firstly major literary award for a poetry collection are presented in 1964, and three accumulations later diversified into fiction in 1969 with The Edible Woman, about the status of women driven mad by consumerism.

She is a exceedingly hands-on person, says Goodings, a fellow Canadian, who has been her publisher at at the feminist imprint Virago since 1979. Her self-sufficiency comes from her childhood but also from her participation in the early days of CanLit[ Canadian Literature ]. She designed her own cover for her first journal of poetry, The Circle Game, with the red-faced specks you buy at stationery stores. In the early days of Virago she enjoyed and learned alongside us bookshop point-of-sale information such as shelf airstrips and dumpbins.

Once she and I passed in a taxi to an happen with a large cardboard lady a replication of the figure on the handle of[ her 1988 novel] Cats Eye. She loved it.

Her hands-on approach has carried her forcefully into the digital period. As an internationally successful author who has been awarded 24 honorary magnitudes in six two countries, been shortlisted five times for the Booker prize( acquiring it in 2000 for The Blind Assassin ), and who was more recently invited to Norway to implant a manuscript for 100 years as the first participant in The Future Library project, she faced the tricky issue of a monumental carbon footprint. She undertook it by inventing the LongPen, which enabled her at least to do volume signals without leaving her home.

Her penultimate novel, The Heart Goes Last, began its life on the fanfiction scaffold Wattpad, and she has 1.6 million Twitter partisans, to whom she tweets a dozen times a day on subjects arraying from the urgent need to protect the monarch butterfly to the vilification of Hilary Clinton.

She has also made cameo appearances in The Handmaids Tale, and as an cataclysm survivor on Zombies, Run !, a fitness app blending an audio drama with an immersive jogging competition, which was devised by her protege, the English novelist and gaming wizard Naomi Alderman.

The two were brought together through a mentoring strategy run by Rolex. Four of us got flown out to Canada to meet her and I belief she picked me because I was funny, says Alderman, who ascribes Atwood with the convent settle of her recent novel, The Power, which is in the running for the Baileys prize. Shes really implied me in their own families in a way I hadnt expected. Ive been bird watching in Cuba with her brother and his wife, and to the Arctic.

Atwood has said she was reluctant to get involved with the strategy, and some of her more institutional mentoring rapports ought to have little encouraging. As a teacher she was pretty hectoring, says one former student on a imaginative print MA. She read all our first assemblies and we each had one grilling with her about our journals. Almost all the questions she requested was, And then what happens? And then what happens? so I predict plot is pretty important.

Her abrasive line-up has also been evident in run-ins with the science fiction parish as to which category her fictions are all part of, insisting that they are speculative myth on the basis that: Discipline story has demons and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen.

The veteran SF columnist Ursula K Le Guin countered in a Guardian inspect: To my memory, The Handmaids Tale, Oryx and Crake and now The Year of the Flood all exemplify one of the things science fiction does, which is to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near-future thats half prediction, half wit.

Published in the mid-1 980 s, with a Canadians mounting chagrin at the religion revitalization she was detecting over their own borders in the United States, The Handmaids Tale, a legend of a theocratic territory in which young woman are treated as clutch mares by a merciless revolutionary upper-clas, has become a staple of the curriculum in the English-speaking world.

In the late 20 th century, when a progress in feminism appeared irreparable, it seemed a cautionary tale of what might well. At the Hay festival in 2003, Atwood herself argues that it had little general relevance than the first fiction in what was to become her MaddAddam trilogy about a world-wide facing the consequences of environmental meltdown. Oryx and Crake, she said, addressed world-wide issues whereas The Handmaids Tale was specifically about America.

But three decades after The Handmaids Tale was produced, there are many all-too-real the locations where the denizens of the fictional republic of Gilead would feel at home, from Donald Trumps increasingly dictatorial and misogynistic US where objectors against two abortion-related greenbacks turned up at the Texas senate in March dressed in the long ruby-red costumes and white bonnets of Atwoods handmaids to a Nigeria in which schoolgirls are seized en masse, and a changing number of theocratic countries across Asia and the Middle East.

The Year of The Flood, are presented in 2009, boasts Gods Gardeners, a religious sect devoted to the melding of science, religion, and sort, whose hymn-singing was promulgated in a strange roadshow.

Atwood herself opened the depict, intoning on a monotone from a wooden throne. As Diana Quick, one of the musicians, echoes: Peggy was rather eerie on that amusing promo make because she had written all their carol of praise and she took to blessing everyone, as it were, ex cathedra. I recall she had had great hopes for it and was quite theatre struck, and then very disappointed in its implementation of the piece.

Perhaps we were too far away to see that wicked smile, though an endnote to the tale proposed to not. In it, Atwood invited readers to listen to the Gardeners hymns on her website and to use them for amateur devotional or environmental purposes. If she sometimes takes herself preferably too seriously, she has surely gave the right to do so over a 60 -book career which shows no sign of ceasing to produce spookily prescient books.

Anyone inclined to be said that The Handmaids Tale is still a parochial parable should consider its relevant to even presumably radical societies in an age of a mass surveillance that would have been inconceivable when the novel was written. Like their fellow citizens of Gilead, we have internalised the distorted reasoning of Atwoods sinister Aunt Lydia, the apparently kindly supervisor who is actually a commonwealth stooge. There is more than one various kinds of democracy. Discretion to and exemption from, she says. In the days of disorder, it was freedom to. Now “you think youre” being given discretion from. Dont underrate it. As Orwell almost said, Big Sister is Watching You.

Potted profile

Born: 18 November 1939

Age: 77

Career: Started out as a poet and has to date written roughly 60 books for adults and children. She has also created opera libretti, television dialogues and a graphic novel.

High spot: Prevailing the Booker prize in 2000 with The Blind Assassin, the fourth of her fictions to be shortlisted.

Low quality: The Handmaids Tale has been censored from schools and libraries all over the US for being anti-Christian and sexually lurid and has appeared on the 100 Most Frequently Objection Books for the last 20 years.

What she says : Optimism necessitates better than world; despair entails worse than actuality. Im a realist.

What they say : The National Book Critics Circle of America gave her a lifetime achievement give this year for her groundbreaking myth, environmental and feminist activism, and work to community as a co-founder of the Scribe Trust of Canada.

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scruffyplayssonic · 7 years

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My favourite movies of all the years I’ve been alive.

I did my own picks for my favourite movie of each year back in August 2015, when I first saw Jeremy’s Q and A video. I really liked that question and was inspired to try and name my own favourites from each year. So to celebrate the SinCast crew finally completing this task, I thought that I’d re-post my list, which is now updated to include 2015 and 2016. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment and/or argue about my choices. And thanks again to @cinema-sins, for providing me with laughs every week in the podcasts and videos they release. :)

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1982: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial This might be a bit of a cheat, since the film came out in June and I wasn’t born until October, but oh well. It’s still the same year.

1985: Back to the Future The beginning of what I still believe is the greatest movie trilogy of all time.

1986: Aliens More awesome from James Cameron.

1987: Spaceballs Well, it’s pretty funny. Plus I haven’t seen much else from this year, other than Lethal Weapon.

1988: Die Hard The original and quite possibly the best. More on that later.

1990: Back to the Future: Part III At the time, I probably would have picked DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp. Ahhh, nostalgia.

1991: Terminator 2: Judgement Day I’m sure most of you who know me saw this one coming. To this day it’s still my favourite movie of all time. Silence of the Lambs would probably get second place for this year.

1993: The Fugitive Another tough choice, considering that Jurassic Park also came out in 1993. But I just love the battle of wits between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.

1994: The Lion King Another of Disney’s finest. No contest, although True Lies, Speed, and The Mask were all excellent films too.

2001: Ocean’s Eleven Such a clever film with a great cast!

2002: The Bourne Identity Spider-Man came pretty close, but Matt Damon was amazing as Jason Bourne. ...well, that most recent movie was kind of hit or miss...

2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl Who would have ever guessed that a movie based on a Disneyland ride could be so good?

2004: The Incredibles It was a good year for animation - there was this one, Shrek 2, and Team America: World Police. National Treasure came out too, which I quite like.

2008: The Dark Knight A no-brainer. One of the best films of the decade, let alone the year. Iron Man was a surprise hit too. Taken was great. Oh, and I quite liked Steve Carrell’s take on Get Smart, even if he didn’t quite capture the original magic of Don Adams.

2009: Up My favourite of all the Pixars. Angels & Demons was pretty good too, although not as good as the first movie. Plus Tom Hanks cut his hair - I thought his shaggy do in the first movie suited Robert Langdon better. :P Strange that I liked Angels & Demons better of the books but The Da Vinci Code better of the movies. Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes was great too.

2012: The Avengers No surprise there. Honourable mentions go to The Cabin in the Woods, which is a delightfully insane deconstruction of horror movies, Looper, a film I still occasionally stay up late at night scratching my head in confusion over, and Skyfall, which is possibly Daniel Craig’s best Bond film so far. I also loved Wreck-It Ralph.

2013: White House Down This one was definitely the film I liked best from 2013 - and yes, that includes Frozen. You may charge with your flaming torches and pitchforks when ready. But what can I say? I love Die Hard, and this was basically Die Hard in the White House, yet it felt original enough to not just be a knock-off. The other ones I liked best would be the Marvels (Iron Man 3, the Wolverine and Thor: The Dark World), Kick-Ass 2, and Gravity, which was absolutely terrifying.

2015: The Martian When I first made this list in August 2015, my prediction was that Jurassic World would be my favourite of the year. Nope, not by a long shot. The Martian was absolutely amazing - Matt Damon’s ability to keep the audience on the edge of their seats when he’s completely alone on the screen (and on the planet) is a major credit to him as an actor. Then of course we have Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation, and Terminator: Genisys. …no, really. Stop laughing, I really enjoyed it. :P And then there was Ex Machina, which was a really intriguing film that kept me guessing the entire time.

2017 (so far - I’ll update this at the end of the year): Passengers I’ve only seen two films so far this year, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was okay, but not great. I really enjoyed Passengers though, despite all the controversy it has surrounding it. It’s definitely not the same movie the trailers made it look like it was going to be though.

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

Text

Margaret Atwood: a high priestess of fiction who embraces the digital age | Claire Armitstead

The Handmaids Tales joyful reception on the small screen reminds us of its ever-energetic generators spooky prescience

Once she and I passed in a taxi to an happen with a large cardboard lady a replication of the figure on the handle of[ her 1988 novel] Cats Eye. She loved it.

The Year of The Flood, are presented in 2009, boasts Gods Gardeners, a religious sect devoted to the melding of science, religion, and sort, whose hymn-singing was promulgated in a strange roadshow.

Potted profile

Born: 18 November 1939

Age: 77

Career: Started out as a poet and has to date written roughly 60 books for adults and children. She has also created opera libretti, television dialogues and a graphic novel.

High spot: Prevailing the Booker prize in 2000 with The Blind Assassin, the fourth of her fictions to be shortlisted.

What she says : Optimism necessitates better than world; despair entails worse than actuality. Im a realist.

The post Margaret Atwood: a high priestess of fiction who embraces the digital age | Claire Armitstead appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

Text

Margaret Atwood: a high priestess of fiction who embraces the digital age | Claire Armitstead

The Handmaids Tales joyful reception on the small screen reminds us of its ever-energetic generators spooky prescience

Once she and I passed in a taxi to an happen with a large cardboard lady a replication of the figure on the handle of[ her 1988 novel] Cats Eye. She loved it.

The Year of The Flood, are presented in 2009, boasts Gods Gardeners, a religious sect devoted to the melding of science, religion, and sort, whose hymn-singing was promulgated in a strange roadshow.

Potted profile

Born: 18 November 1939

Age: 77

Career: Started out as a poet and has to date written roughly 60 books for adults and children. She has also created opera libretti, television dialogues and a graphic novel.

High spot: Prevailing the Booker prize in 2000 with The Blind Assassin, the fourth of her fictions to be shortlisted.

What she says : Optimism necessitates better than world; despair entails worse than actuality. Im a realist.

The post Margaret Atwood: a high priestess of fiction who embraces the digital age | Claire Armitstead appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2Ao8cR9 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes