#death trance 2005

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

#movies #polls #death trance #death trance movie #death trance 2005 #yuji shimomura #2000s movies #tak sakaguchi #takamasa suga #requested #have you seen this movie poll

[bless-my-demons]

Redamancy: Chapter One

Jasper Hale x Reader

Series Summary: What happens when your soulmate is a vampire that struggles to maintain a diet of trying not to kill you? Common sense says run for the hills, nothing is worth your life - but my heart is whispering why not, what’s there to lose?

Warnings: Use of curse words

Notes: I was nervous to start writing from Jasper’s POV, but sometimes you just gotta send it and hope for the best. POV changes in italics at the beginning of their sections!

Word Count: 823

Series Masterlist

• January 24th, 2005 • Forks High School •

Jasper

Another boring day at this high school which means another tally added to the long list of days spent amongst hormonal teenagers for almost no reason.

Almost.

I understand the importance of learning to curb my hunger, to be able to assimilate into society as easily as my coven members. I crave the ability they possess to just exist in public without any hint of the monster that lies within. I’ll give it to Carlisle, not many places could I be immersed in an environment flush with humans, but also have the ability to blame my awkwardness with them on teenage hormones while I adjust. I’m not too keen on taking the risk with literal children, but the risk forces me to maintain a tighter grip on the bloodlust raging inside.

I still don’t like the experimentation of it all.

At least my adopted brothers and sisters are close by whenever I need. I hate that I’m not sure of myself yet, like I’m still in need of the crutch they provide should I need it. This is a never-ending war crawling under my skin. I should be strong enough to control this, I’m nearly 160 years old. I’ve commanded humans and vampires alike, why can I not command my own urges for blood?

I'm deep in my own mind walking alongside Emmett as he talks my ear off about his Jeep and the modifications he contemplates making tonight to kill time, and as we pass the front office to our high school, I nearly miss catching the door before it could crack me across the face.

Once I gain my bearings after the momentary shock of being caught in my thoughts, I let the door drift shut and look to the culprit-

Thoughts are foreign to me all of a sudden.

I immediately stop breathing in shock, my back goes rigid, and blinking becomes a thing of the past as my eyes connect with the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen.

I’ve never seen such a beautiful person, human or vampire, in my life. My eyes are greedy as I drink her in. From the white converse, worn overalls, the chunky sweater underneath to ward off the early morning chill, to her beautifully messy hair hastily clipped up in a twist at the base of her head - she’s a breath of fresh air and I’ve been submerged for over a century.

But what really catches me off guard is her scent. She smells like fresh lavender and something else so decadent I can’t quite put my finger on it. I can feel the beginnings of flames licking down my throat at just the microscopic inhale after releasing the door from my death-grip moments ago.

The scent of this bewitching girl had me in such a trance, enough that when Emmett delivers a clap to my shoulder to shake me from my thoughts, I didn’t even realize he was chuckling at my expense.

“Oh god I’m so sorry! I was so focused on my schedule that I didn’t even see you-“ she immediately began apologizing.

“No need to worry, doll. It’ll require a little more than a door to take me out.” I immediately interrupted her nervous rambling. Did I really just say that?

“Jasper Hale.” I stuck my hand out for her to shake, trying to start this introduction all over on the right foot.

I noticed her glance to my outstretched hand and back up to my face as her warm hand slid into mine.

“Y/n, Y/n Y/l/n.” She replied, still looking a little surprised. She squeezed my hand a little before allowing hers to slip from mine.

Just from the small amount of skin to skin contact with this beautiful girl, everything inside of me roars to life. I’m worried that if I glance at my hand, I’ll see the skin crawling from where the heat of her hand lingers.

Surprise, worry, anxiety, embarrassment, self-deprecation, awe - the emotions a rolodex scrolling in rapid succession in the forefront of my mind. The shock of meeting her momentarily throwing my supernatural ability for a loop. I haven’t had such shit control over the emotions surrounding me since I was a newborn vampire.

I’ve never had such an interesting reaction to something, or rather someone, before - it scares me slightly. I can only gape as Y/n turns and makes her way quickly to class.

Reader

Can someone die from stupidity?

I’m at my new high school for less than an hour and I’ve already made the biggest fool of myself. I almost just took out the most attractive human being at this school by complete accident.

After introducing myself to Jasper Hale, I hastily turned around and booked it for my first class in the hopes to avoid further insult to injury.

Smooth, Y/n. Real fucking smooth.

Next

#jasper hale x reader #jasper hale #jasper whitlock #jasper whitlock hale #jasper hale x female!reader #female reader insert #twilight #twilight fanfiction #romance #slow burn #redamancy series #bless-my-demons

[withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus]

Masterpost: Visual Kei movies & other types jrockers were involved

So, it came to my attention some of you want to watch more visual kei movies so I thought of listing what I know, in case you've missed any of those. Please feel free to add anything I've missed with reblogs or in the comments.

Thank you @kirk-goes-to-gallifrey for the three movie links! ^^ And thank you @waretamado for helping with the titles of Plastic Tree's movies! Btw most of the vkei only movies must still be available on YT guys, however not all of them will be on HD.

Visual Kei movies:

Seth et Holth (1993) (Hide) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx_laJCEpew)

Moon Child (2003) (Gackt & Hyde)

Verte Aile/Bel Air (1997) (Malice Mizer) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdd58pTaK8A)

Bara no Konrei/Bridal of the Rose (2001) (Malice Mizer) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1d_cFRnxs)

BeatRock☆Love (2009) (Takeru ex.SuG)

Number Six (2006) (Alice Nine)

Yuku Pura Kuru Pura... Edokawa Puranpo no 「Ougon otoko」~「Visual bako no bijo」 (Plastic Tree) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Bb-3L4l2E)

Yuku Pura Kuru Pura... Edokawa Puranpo no 「Onan tokage」~「Bishounen wo kuu bijo」 (Plastic Tree) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAha6vDCE0Q)

Yuku Pura Kuru Pura...Edokawa Puranpo no「Angura Kaijin」~「Remon no bijo」 (Plastic Tree) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzt3ai5LSXc)

Ascendead Master (2009) (Versailles)

Onegai Kanaete (2011) (Versailles)

Oresama (2004) (Miyavi) YT link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcBvKQfVKNM)

Non Visual Kei movies jrockers acted in:

Kagen no Tsuki (2004) (this is a live action of a manga) (Hyde)

There is a movie that Takeru of SuG had played in for only a couple of scenes that was his first ever role, but I forget the name. I remember sth about "blue generation" or sth. If sb remembers it, please put it in the comments. Most people might remember the scene with the fluffy coat, him with blond hair turning to the protagonist with a menacing look, from the distance.

Paracelcus' Homonculus (2015) (this is an artsy film based off a photographer's exhibition) (Takeru of SuG)

Midori: the Camellia girl (2016) (live action of a manga) (Takeru of SuG)

Bunraku (2010) (Gackt)

Akumu-chan (2014) (Gackt)

Karanukan (2018) (Gackt)

Tonde Saitama 1 (2019) & 2 (2023) (Gackt)

Moshimo Tokugawa Ieyasu ga Sori Daijin ni Nattara (2024) (Gackt)

Furin Kazan (2007) (Gackt)

Mr. Brain (2009) (it must have been 1 episode or 2) (Gackt)

Tempest (2011) (Gackt)

Sengoku Basara (2012) (Gackt)

Time Spiral (2014) (Gackt)

BLEACH (2018) (live action) (Miyavi)

Hell Dogs (2022) (Miyavi)

Familia (2023) (Miyavi)

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) (Miyavi)

Kate (2021) (Miyavi)

Stray (2019) (Miyavi)

Unbroken (2014) (Miyavi)

There's a movie with either gangs or bands that Chiyu of SuG played after the disband. Papiko, shed your light cause I don't remember the title.

Other

REPO! The Genetic Opera (2008) (Yoshiki was involved with the music production of this film. Personally I learnt it years after I'd watched it)

Death Trance (2005) (It features many Dir en Grey songs in its soundtracks)

I hope you can find anything you like and enjoy!

#visual kei #vkei #visual kei movies #hide #x japan #versailles #malice mizer #gackt #miyavi #takeru #hyde #l'arc en ciel #vamps #alice nine #plastic tree #chiyu #sug

[spookychick78]

Final Girl

Helplessly Hoping

Michael Myers X AFAB!Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count: 763

It was close to midnight and she still hadn't come back. He was starting to wonder if she ever would. He had been standing still for so long at the window, trying to fight the sudden urge he had to pace. He had never felt the need before, but he found himself doing it, a desperate attempt to distract himself from his wandering thoughts. It didn't seem to help, but he walked back and forth throughout his empty house anyway. She had left him so incredibly confused as if he hadn't been already. She had been doing it for years without even knowing it.

He knew there was a possibility she was angry he had killed him. He was afraid of that. However, he questioned why she would waste any energy grieving his meaningless death. Or maybe it was that he had stopped her. He didn't like thinking that she might have actually gone through with it, the image of her killing wasn't one he liked. It destroyed that perfect image his mind had created of her. He then began to wonder why exactly he cared.

She was after all, just human. She had made mistakes, she had desires he was sure, just like everyone else. He had always been immune to emotion of any kind, so what was different? What was it really that he had been so addicted to all these years?

He thought back to when he was a child, watching Judith fall in love over and over. He never understood her need for what he viewed as just another warm body, but she chased it. He remembered the look in her eyes the night he killed her. She had looked at her partner in awe it seemed, her mouth agape in ecstasy. She looked to be in a trance, like everything he did was some great mystery to uncover. The layers of clothes she peeled away were perhaps just a metaphor for discovery. She was uncovering what she viewed as treasure, not just his body, but his soul and in turn she would share her’s with him. Maybe within all that lust there was something else.

Lust was what made him sick. The thought of using and being used never failed to disturb him. He never cared to explore exactly why people felt it, but he was so conflicted about his own desires that he had to find some deeper meaning. He himself refused the thought that it was lust he was feeling, he had made up his mind that he was immune to that. He was truly incapable of looking at her in such a meaningless way. There was meaning. She in turn never seemed to act on lust, perhaps it was what he found intriguing. But there had to be more than that.

It made him terribly uncomfortable, but he internally pressed on to find the answer. He needed one just in case she did come back. He couldn't stand this inward battle he felt when he looked at her any longer. He needed an explanation, not only for his own feelings but as to why it was so important to keep her from becoming like him. He thought back to the first few times he had laid eyes on her and his unwillingness to kill her. He remembered that desperate need to touch her. He remembered thinking it would only trigger his rage, but it hadn't. It didn't necessarily offer an answer, but it had made it feel something other than cold. Something he had never felt in his life. He felt a strange heat in his face when he thought of his fingertips on her lips again. It almost made him feel embarrassed. It wasn't natural for him to think any of the things he was thinking yet he couldn't stop. Her hand on his, her lips on his mask.

Wishing the mask hadn't gotten in the way.

He stopped pacing. None of this was right. None of it made sense. There wasn't anything specific about her, sure there were good qualities but there wasn't any logical explanation for him to feel what he was feeling. Other than one. It was simple, but it went against the entire history of his being.

Just then, the door opened. She stood before him bathed in moonlight once again, her presence gave him the relief he so desperately needed. He felt it again, that strange heat washing over his body. He had no way of telling her and maybe that was for the best, but he knew he had his answer.

#Michael Myers #michael audrey myers #michael myers x reader #og michael myers #slasher #slasher fandom #slasher fanfiction #slasher x reader #horror #horror fiction #horror fan #horror fanfiction #Halloween #halloween 1978 #Spotify

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday To The Hottest And Most Bodacious Geeky Nerdy Bad@$$ Actress of Many Favoritable Movies and Shows of the 21st Century. The Awesome Latina Wonder Woman👩🏾🇵🇷🇨🇺🤎🧡 herself.

She is an American actress. She made her feature-film debut in the 1995 independent drama Kids. Her subsequent film roles include He Got Game (1998), Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Men in Black II (2002), The Rundown (2003), Rent (2005), Sin City (2005), Clerks II (2006), Death Proof (2007), Seven Pounds (2008), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Unstoppable (2010), Zookeeper (2011), Trance (2013), Top Five (2014), Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), and Clerks 3 (2022). Dawson has provided voice-over work for Disney/Marvel, Warner Bros./DC Comics, and ViacomCBS's Nickelodeon unit.

Rosario Dawson was born on May 9, 1979, in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, is of Puerto Rican, Taíno, Cuban and African ancestry. Isabel was 17 years old when Rosario was born; she never married Rosario's biological father, Patrick C. Harris. When Dawson was a year old, Isabel married Greg Dawson, a construction worker. Isabel and Greg moved into a reclaimed building on East 13th Street after being approved as members of an affordable housing plan. The family later moved to Garland, Texas.

As a child, Dawson made a brief appearance on Sesame Street. At the age of 15, she was discovered on her front-porch step by photographer Larry Clark and Harmony Korine, with Korine deciding that she was perfect for a part he had written in his screenplay for the controversial 1995 film Kids. 

Dawson had several roles in film and television adaptations of comic books. These include Gail in Sin City (2005) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), Claire Temple in five of the Marvel Netflix series (2015–2018), and providing the voices of Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in the DC Animated Movie Universe and Space Jam: A New Legacy and Barbara Gordon / Batgirl in The Lego Batman Movie. In 2020, she portrayed Ahsoka Tano in the second season of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and stars in Disney+ original series Ahsoka. In 2021, she had a recurring role in the Dwayne Johnson autobiographical comedy series Young Rock and a main role in the Hulu miniseries Dopesick.

I always thought she was Afro Latina. Oh well

PLEASE WISH THIS MOST AWESOME & BAD@$$ LATINA AMERICAN ACTRESS OF MANY FORMS OF ENTERTAINMENT & HOT NERD 🤓 🔥

A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

YOU KNOW HER

YOU SEEN HER MOVIES 🎥 , TV APPEARANCES 📺 & GEEK OUT ON SUPERHERO FILMS 🎥

& SHE IS STILL RADIANT TO THIS VERY DAY

THE 1 & THE ONLY

MS ROSARIO ISABEL DAWSON👩🏾 🇵🇷🇨🇺🤎🧡

HAPPY 45TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MS. DAWNSON👩🏾🇵🇷🇨🇺🤎🧡 & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME

#RosarioDawson

#Rosario Dawson #Spotify

[madamlaydebug]

Happy 44th Birthday to Rosario Isabel Dawson.

Born May 9, 1979, She is an actress and film producer. She made her feature-film debut in the 1995 independent drama Kids. Her subsequent film roles include He Got Game (1998), Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Men in Black II (2002), Rent (2005), Sin City (2005), Clerks II (2006), Death Proof (2007), Seven Pounds (2008), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Unstoppable (2010), Zookeeper (2011), Trance (2013), Top Five (2014), and Zombieland: Double Tap (2019). Dawson has also provided voice-over work for Disney/Marvel, Warner Bros./DC Comics, and ViacomCBS's Nickelodeon unit.

[fettesans]

Top, unaccredited photograph (Harvey Metcalfe?) of Helen Duncan, Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735, circa 1930. Via. More.

Vincent (Woodcock) said that Helen Duncan slipped into a trance-like state before the ectoplasm poured from her mouth.  His dead wife then materialised from the ectoplasmic matter and asked Vincent and his sister-in-law to stand up. The dead wife then removed her wedding ring and placed it onto her sister's finger, saying: “It is my wish that this takes place for the sake of my little girl.” Via.

Bottom, photograph by Michel Momy, Martin Margiela, in page 310 from Fashion Now published in 2005 by Taschen. Via.

--

Where there was once the ‘real,’ there is now only the electronic generation and circulation of almost supernatural simulations. Where there was once stable human consciousness, there are now only the ghosts of fragmented, decentered, and increasingly schizophrenic subjectivities. Where there once was ‘depth’ and ‘affect,’ there is now only ‘surface.’ Where there was once ‘meaning,’ ‘history,’ and a solid realm of ‘signifieds,’ there is now only a haunted landscape of vacant and shifting signifiers.

Jeffrey Sconce, from Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, 2000. Via.

--

Viewing anecdotes of sudden social combustion according to comprehensive, deterministic accounts of neurochemical response, social dynamics, and platform incentives can certainly be clarifying, but such theories are incomplete. After all, Mark Zuckerberg is not pointing a gun at anyone’s head, ordering them to use Instagram—and yet we post as though he is. Perhaps the best lens to examine compulsive, unproductive, inexplicable use of social media is not technical, or sociological, or economic, but psychoanalytic. In which case, rather than asking what is wrong with these systems, we might ask, “What is wrong with us?” (...)

What if the urge lurking behind our compulsive participation in the Twittering Machine is not the behavioralist pursuit of maximized pleasure, but the Freudian death drive—our latent instinct toward inorganic oblivion, destruction, self-obliteration, “the ratio”? What if we post self-sabotaging things because we want to sabotage ourselves? What if the reason we tweet is because we wish we were dead?

Max Read, from Going Postal - A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive, for Bookforum, Sept/Oct/Nov 2020 issue.

#diptych #safe new world #linked excerpts

[avalkorn]

MOVIE & TV SHOW

1. Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (2022)

2. The Falcon and the Winter Solider (S1) (2021)

3. Loki (S1) (2021)

4. Hawkeye (S1) (2021)

5. Bird Box (2018)

6. Annette (2021)

7. Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

8. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

9. Bumblebee (2018)

10. The French Dispatch (2021)

11. The Courier (2020)

12. Rocky (1976)

13. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

14. The King’s Man (2021)

15. Tick, tick… Boom! (2021)

16. Army of the Dead (2021)

17. House of Gucci (2021)

18. Nightmare Alley (2021)

19. Левиафан (2014)

20. Westworld (S1) (2016)

21. The 355 (2022)

22. I Am Zlatan (2021)

23. Westworld (S2) (2018)

24. Fahrenheit 451 (2018)

25. Uncharted (2022)

26. Moonfall (2022)

27. Peacemaker (S1) (2022)

28. Last night in Soho (2021)

29. Last Looks (2021)

30. Encanto (2021)

31. The Adam Project (2022)

32. Neon Genesis Evangelion (S1) (1995)

33. The End of Evangelion (1997)

34. Squid Game (S1) (2021)

35. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

36. Pleasure (2021)

37. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)

38. Infinite (2021)

39. Akudama Drive (S1) (2020)

40. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

41. The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

42. Watchmen (2009)

43. Charlie’s Angels (2019)

44. Bungo Stray Dogs (S1) (2016)

45. Казнь (2022)

46. Карамора (S1) (2022)

47. Operation Mincemeat (2021)

48. Spellbound (1945)

49. In the Aisles (2018)

50. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

51. The lighthouse (2019)

52. Armour of God (1986)

53. Top Gun (1986)

54. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

55. Водоворот (S1) (2020)

56. Donnie Darko (2001)

57. Chungking Express (1994)

58. The Truman Show (1998)

59. Fire of Love (2022)

60. Цвет граната (1968)

61. Jagten (2012)

62. What, If…? (S1) (2021)

63. Чики (S1) (2020)

64. Псих (S1) (2020)

65. Being John Malkovich (1999)

66. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

67. The Grey Man (2022)

68. The Pray (2022)

69. Everything everywhere All at once (2021)

70. Jason Bourne (2016)

71. The Happening (2008)

72. The Italian Job (2003)

73. The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

74. Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

75. Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

76. A Sound of Thunder (2004)

77. Paprika (2006)

78. Revolver (2005)

79. Boss Level (2019)

80. Smokin’ Aces (2006)

81. Trance (2013)

82. Black Hawk Dawn (2004)

83. Avatar (2009)

84. The Hunt (2020)

85. The Expanse (S5) (2021)

86. The Expanse (S6) (2022)

87. Bullet Train (2022)

88. The Greatest beer run ever (2022)

89. The Boys (S3) (2022)

90. Passengers (2016)

91. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

92. Stranger Things (S4) (2022)

93. Black Adam (2022)

94. House of the Dragon (S1) (2022)

95. Good morning, Vietnam (1987)

96. Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

97. Men (2022)

98. Only God Forgives (2013)

99. Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

100. Wasabi (2001)

101. The Office (S1) (2005)

102. Amsterdam (2022)

103. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (S1) (2022)

104. Westworld (S4) (2022)

105. Our Flag Means Death (S1) (2022)

106. Avenue 5 (S1) (2020)

107. Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

108. Gorbachev. Heaven (2020)

109. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

110. The Office (S2) (2005)

111. C’mon C’mon (2021)

112. Death on the Nile (2022)

113. Leon (1994)

114. Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

115. The Book of Eli (2009)

116. The Menu (2022)

117. Lightyear (2022)

118. Poker Face (2022)

119. In the Mood for Love (2000)

120. The Umbrella Academy (S3) (2022)

121. The Office (S3) (2006)

122. Wednesday (S1) (2022)

123. The Woman King (2022)

124. Devotion (2022)

125. Moon Knight (S1) (2022)

126. Pulp Fiction (1994)

127. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

128. Vincent (1982)

129. Frankenweenie (1984)

130. Scream (2022)

131. The Office (S4) (2008)

132. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

133. Violent Night (2022)

134. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

135. Spirited (2022)

136. Don’t worry Darling (2022)

137. The Guardian of the Galaxy. Holiday Special (2022)

138. The Book of Boba Fett (S1) (2021)

139. Chinatown (1974)

140. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

141. Glass Onion (2022)

BOOK

1. The Witcher. The Lady of the Lake (1998)

2. Morphology of the Folktale (1928)

3. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

4. To Unknown Lady (1956)

5. Cinema. Who want to do everything (2018)

GAME

1. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020)

2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

3. Uncharted 3. Drake’s Deception (2011)

4. Fortnite (2017)

5. Destiny 2 (2017)

6. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom battle (2017)

7. Titanfall 2 (2016)

8. Disco Elysium (2019)

9. Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017)

[thequillsink]

Re:Born (2016) Film Review - Dont Bring A Gun To A Knife Fight

Published by grimoireofhorror.com and The Yurei on December 5, 2021

The evolution of action films has come a long way over the years; from cheesy one-liners and over-the-top shootouts, the genre has progressed to slick visuals and epic hand-to-hand combat. Although the old style is still prevalent with fans today, these present-day techniques are vastly superior in displayed skill from both the director and the cast. From the American John Wick (2014), the Indonesian Head Shot (2016) and the Japanese Re:Born (2016) to name a few, all follow similar erratic pacing with non-stop action that surpass this out-of-date approach considerably.

What is it?

Re:Born is a 2016 Japanese action crime drama directed by Yûji Shimomura. Though mostly known for his work as stunt coordinator for films such as Gantz (2010) and Library Wars (2013), Yûji Shimomura has also been in the directorial seat for the films Death Trance (2005) and Crazy Samurai Musashi (2020).

“Toshiro, former Special Ops soldier in an elite unit, lives as a simple shopkeeper in rural seclusion and takes care of his adopted daughter Sachi - until one day a mysterious murder happens: his former officer is behind it, called “Phantom”, who starts a brutal campaign of revenge. When his adopted daughter is kidnapped, there is no stopping Toshiro - his fighting spirit breaks new, even more merciless paths. Opposite him: an army of brutal killers! The body count rises to dizzying heights and accumulates in a showdown that takes your breath away…”

What Worked?

A tour de force of action, the film features amazingly choreographed fight scenes throughout its run time, all performed with impeccable accuracy and skill. Yûji Shimomura’s knowledge of fight choreography shines through in his directing, along with the supervision of Yoshitaka Inagawa as well as an incredibly skilled cast, to create an adrenaline-fuelled romp reminiscent of The Raid (2011) in its frantic display of martial arts violence and break-neck pacing.

Sprinkled in between this rampage are genuinely endearing scenes shared between our protagonist, Toshiro Kuroda (played by well-known J horror actor Tak Sakaguchi), and his adopted daughter Sachi (played by Yura Kondo). Although Sakaguchi plays a relatively emotionless character, Sachi’s performance more than makes up for this, reinforcing their dependence on each other in a candidly captivating way. Consequently, their relationship feels intimately authentic throughout the production, compounding the reason Toshiro is ready to fight back.

An air of mystery surrounds our protagonist’s backstory, with a slow organic reveal that avoids large exposition dumps on the audience. Though this story is somewhat cliched, full of the usual tropes that litter this genre of cinema that border on silly towards the film's conclusion, guards having zero situational awareness as a well-trained combatant wipes out an entire platoon. However, the story does take a back seat towards this point allowing the action to take centre stage at the cost of believability.

The production makes excellent use of lighting, being well lit opposed to the dreary contrast ratio prevalent in the action genre. That isn't to say the film doesn't make use of darkness, with an amazing example of how to use shadows effectively for our protagonist to covertly use to his advantage to dispatch his enemies. Providing an excellent example of how to implement both light and darkness effectively to create an unblemished contrast between the two. Along with the use of unconventional lighting techniques such as flashlights and muzzle flashes, diversifying these darker scenes - breaking up what could have been monotonous and difficult to make out visually as a result.

What Didn't Work?

The character Max, played by Japanese/American actor Orson Mochizuki, seems to switch between Japanese and English mid-sentence throughout the film. Though fluid in transition, it feels really off-putting and unnecessary to scenes, near on feeling like an improvised addition to the script rather than being in the source material. Undoubtedly, their addition adds nothing beneficial to the production and would have been better off scrapped, keeping with a completely Japanese-spoken film.

A wise man once said, don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. This film disregards this entire concept, as our protagonist is an edged weapons specialist limber enough to be able to actually dodge bullets. So why, as a well-trained mercenary hired to kill this one-man army, would you think you had a chance going mano a mano with this near superhuman killer? These mercenaries seem to want to drop their guns and fall back to an edged weapon at the first available opportunity, defying logical belief and just ending up as fodder for the kill count. Although, this certainly increases the overall action featured in the film (let’s face it, that’s why we’re here).

Final Thoughts

Re:Born is a non-stop action-packed thrill ride, executed with the utmost precision and dedication. Effectively disguising the production's low budget with diligent effort into creating an interesting world, congenial characters, and eminent set-pieces. Although the story has its flaws, the movie is still a whirlwind of martial arts action sure to entertain the majority and fully deserves its referral as the “Japanese John Wick”.

#film review #japanese cinema #cult cinema #grimoire of horror

[docgold13]

365 Marvel Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…

February 27th - Bling!

Roxanne ‘Roxy’ Washington is the daughter of two highly successful musicians, considered to be on par with royalty in the world of hip-hop music.  Baby Roxanne was a celebrated figure who featured in a number of her parents’ music videos.   Roxanne’s father is a latent Mutant who passed the X-gene onto Roxy.  Her Mutant powers manifested in early adolescence.  Her physique changed with her skin taking on a purple, crystalline quality.  This bestows her greatly enhanced strength and durability.  With practice, Roxy has gained greater control over the functionality of her form, learning to produce shards of super-hard crystal that protrude from her hands and can fire off at great speed. 

Roxy’s parents had hoped she would follow in their footsteps and become a musician yet she decided instead to take a different path and accepted enrollment in the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters.  She became a student of the X-Man, Gambit, who taught her to better utilize her Mutant powers.  Roxy chose the alias of ‘Bling!’ as her Mutant codename.    

Although Bling! flourished under Gambit’s tutelage, she had difficulties making friends amongst her peers at the school.  Her shyness was often misconstrued as her being haughty and conceded as a product of her having famous parents. Her sense of alienation was further compounded by Bling!’s unrequited crushes on her fellow student Mercury as well as her instructor, Jubilee.  

Bling! was one of the few members of the Institute to retain her Mutant abilities following the events of M-Day where the majority of the world’s Mutant population was de-powered and transformed into humans.  Having managed to survive the devastating attacks by anti-Mutant forces that killed a number of her classmates, Bling! chose to decline Prodigy’s offer to join his new squad of Mutant heroes; stating ‘any Mutant who wants to be an X-Man must have a death-wish.’  Despite these reservations, Bling! accompanied the X-Men in relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area and the foundation of the Mutant nation of Utopia.  

Shortly thereafter, Bling! was targeted by the Mutant vampire known as Emplate.  The nature of Bling!’s mutation made her an ideal host for Emplate to feed off of and Bling! participated in a mission alongside Rogue and Trance to defeat the villain.    

Following the schism where the majority of the remaining Mutants split into two camps along philosophical differences, Bling! chose to side with Wolverine and became a student at his Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.  She later became a member of Jubilee’s new iteration of the Generation X squad.  During this time, Bling! entered into a psychotherapy with Paige Guthrie to help her cope with her anxieties.  She also discovered she possessed a natural inclination for computer sciences and quickly became a highly accomplished programmer and hacker.   Around this time Bling! and Mercury became romantically involved.

Bling! has since relocated to the island nation of Krakoa where she has joined the covert operations squad known as The Fallen Angles.  The heroine first appeared in the pages of X-Men Vol. 2 #171 (2005).  

#365 Marvel Comics Heroes #Marvel Comics #Bling! #X-Men #Academy X #Fallen Angels #cut-out #paper art

[deepartnature]

Pharoah Sanders – Live In Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings)

“When Pharoah Sanders played tenor saxophone with John Coltrane in the 1960s, his tone was harsh and wild. Soloing alongside Coltrane on records like Ascension, Om, and Live in Japan, Sanders’ horn would shriek and howl and cry, reaching a pitch of earth-shaking intensity on pieces that pushed jazz to the limits of legibility. But after Coltrane’s death in 1967, Sanders began exploring a different path. Playing with Alice Coltrane on Ptah, the El Daoud and Journey in Satchidananda, and on his own albums for the Impulse! label, his sound was still searching, but now it was lyrical, and his musical settings often included trance-inducing grooves. After a half-decade enduring the blast furnace of free jazz, Sanders’ style grew more spiritual and cosmic and started looking to music from around the globe for inspiration. ...”

Pitchfork

W - Live in Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings)

LondonJazzCollector (Audio/Video)

YouTube: Live In Paris (1975 - Album)

2015 December: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharaoh Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors (1994), 2016 January: Ptah, The El Daoud - Alice Coltrane & Pharoah Sanders (1970), 2016 November: Tauhid (1967), 2017 May: The Pharoah Sanders Story: In the Beginning 1963-1964, 2017 November: Let Us Now Praise Pharoah Sanders, Master of Sax, 2018 February: Anthology: You've Got to Have Freedom - Pharoah Sanders (2005), 2018 February: James Blood Ulmer & Pharoah Sanders - Live 2003, 2018 May: How Pharoah Sanders Brought Jazz to Its Spiritual Peak with His Impulse! Albums, 2019 January: Africa (1987), 2021 December: Promises - Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

End of month update - April

Hello, all! This is the end-of-month update, where I post Tumblr’s current top four films that have received the highest percentage of “yes,” “no,” and “haven’t even heard of this movie” votes.

As of today, the top four films with the highest percentage of “yes” votes are:

Finding Nemo (2003) | Shrek (2001) | Monsters, Inc. (2001) | The Lion King (1994)

Next, the top four films with the highest percentage of “no” votes are:

Sausage Party (2016) | Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) | All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) | Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Finally, the top four films with the highest percentage of “haven’t even heard of this movie” votes are:

Monica and Friends: Bonds (2019) | Monsturd (2003) | Heroic Losers (2019) | Death Trance (2005)

There were no changes in the top fours between this month and last month’s updates.

Currently, The Incredibles (2004) is the still the only film to receive absolutely zero “haven’t heard of this” votes.

That’s it for April’s end-of-month update! Remember that you can view last month’s update by clicking here. Additionally, you can view the full ranked Letterboxd lists of movies that have come up on this blog by clicking the following links:

This list is ranked from highest-to-lowest percentage of “yes” votes.

This list is ranked from highest-to-lowest percentage of “no” votes.

This list is ranked from highest-to-lowest percentage of “haven’t even heard of this movie” votes.

Remember to vote on the polls that are currently running: Seven Beauties (1975) | Starfish (2018) | The Changeling (1980) | Cronos (1992) | Notting Hill (1999) | Mulholland Drive (2001) | The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) | Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) | Bionicle: Mask of Light (2003) | Don’t Look Now… We’re Being Shot At! (1966) | The Adventures of Buratino (1959) | The Rescuers (1977) | Memories of Matsuko (2006) | Hellraiser (1987) | Spaceballs (1987) | A Fish Called Wanda (1988) | Summer Days with Coo (2007) | Her (2013) | Barton Fink (1991) | Hot Rod (2007) | The King of Comedy (1982) | Maurice (1987) | Planet of the Apes (1968) | The Beach (2000) | Frankenstein (1910) | Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) | George of the Jungle (1997) | Bride of Frankenstein (1935) | Dracula (1931) | The Mummy (1932) | Paris, Texas (1984) | Ghost World (2001) | The Long Goodbye (1973) | Casablanca (1942) | Ponyo (2008)

#end of month update #text

[star-spangled-steve]

His New Partner

Chapter 46: The Inevitable

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: 2005

Warnings: Angst, death, tears, some fluff near the end, pregnancy, light cussing.

A/N: Yes, I’m back! I know that it’s been so, so long since I last updated and I’m very sorry for that. To be completely honest, this pandemic has been so draining and I just haven’t had the drive to write. But I finally buckled down and finished this chapter, and I’m hoping to get the rest of this series finished relatively quickly!

All morning Y/N had been worried sick about Steve. Yes, of course she was used to her husband partaking in tons of dangerous battles here and there, but time travel was a whole different ordeal.

She was walking through the halls of the Avengers Compound, having just arrived several minutes prior. She knew that Steve would call her as soon as he got back safely, it had been his promise to her. But Y/N was just too worried about him and decided to meet him face to face. As well as her other Avenger friends.

Y/N turned a corner and saw Steve already walking her way, a huge smile instantly breaking out on her face. She immediately ran as fast as she could, pregnancy belly in mind, to her other half.

“Steve.” She sighed in relief into his shoulder as soon as she embraced him.

He wrapped his arms around her in what he hoped was a comforting manner, but at this point he didn’t exactly know what to do at all.

“Oh, goodness. Thank God you’re okay.” Y/N told him tearfully. “I was worried sick about you.” She sniffled as she slightly pulled away. “Your poor face.”

All Steve could do was shrug as she lightly stroked the red mark on his cheek.

“And... wow, where did you get this?” She said as she patted his green Army uniform. “It’s pretty nice... pretty sexy actua-”

“Y/N.” Steve interrupted her, not being able to ignore the weight of what he had just found out.

His wife looked up at him, noticing how serious he suddenly was. “Yeah?”

Steve internally contemplated what the best way to break the news to her would be, and grabbed her right hand. “Follow me.”

Y/N, more confused than she was before, obediently followed him into one of the nearby office rooms. It was vacant, as everything was these days.

“Sit down.” He told her before doing the same, rolling his chair right up close to hers so that their knees were touching. “Okay, sweetheart, I need to tell you something very important. But I need you to promise me that no matter what, you will stay as calm as possible.” He evenly spoke to her.

“Okay, Steve, you’re really scaring me right now.”

“Y/N, I need you to promise me. Okay? Too much stress on the baby is not good and you know that.” He said, grabbing both of her hands in his.

“Yes, I promise, Steve. And I know.” She insisted, giving his hands a comforting squeeze. “Just tell me, please.”

The man took a deep breath before just letting it out. “Natasha didn’t make it back.”

Y/N shook her head confusedly. “Wait, what? Wha-Where is she? Can you go back and get her?” The woman spoke frantically, her breaths beginning to get laboured. This was her best friend that they were talking about.

Steve could see the tears in Y/N’s eyes, triggering his own.

“Y/N, she’s dead.” He choked out. “She sacrificed herself.”

“What? No. No, no, no, she can’t be dead.” The woman started to bawl, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth. “Steve.”

“I know. I know it’s hard, doll.” He told her as he stood up them up together, his heart breaking even more at how utterly devastated she looked. “C’mere.”

Y/N crashed into his chest, still mindful of her growing stomach. Steve’s arms wrapped around her shaking form as he slowly rocked their bodies back and forth, trying and calm her down in any way he could.

Memories of Natasha swarmed through both of their minds. Memories of how she was always there when they needed her, memories of how genuinely good of a person she was.

Y/N’s heavy sobs were a contrast to Steve’s silent tears.

“Shh, shh. Darling, you have to stay a little bit more calm. For the baby, okay?” The man cooed into her hair.

The man felt her nod against him before he slightly pulled back, cradling Y/N’s face in his hands.

“Nat sacrificed herself for half of the universe. Okay? She did this so we could bring everybody back. She knew exactly what she was doing.” He tried to comfort her.

“She’s a hero.” Y/N stated, sniffling.

“Damn right.” Steve nodded before pulling his wife back into his chest. “And we’re going to make her proud, baby.” He stated while stroking her hair. “I’ll make sure of it.”

*****

Y/N giggled as she looked down at her little boy playing with his blocks, trying to build a little tower out of them. She knew that she was never crazy for keeping all of his things, despite what the people around of her said. She knew that she was never crazy for having faith that baby Anthony James would return.

She was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that he was right there in front of her after all of those years of mourning. So many sleepless nights, bawling her eyes out into her husband’s shoulder as he rocked her back and forth, trying to keep his own tears at bay. And now here A.J. was, as adorable and as comforting to her as ever.

Despite how joyful Y/N was that her son had returned, there still was a looming sadness and a looming worry in the back of her head. Sadness for what had happened to her best friend just two days ago, and how she would never see her again, and worry for her husband who had left for the compound yesterday morning, and still hadn’t returned yet. She knew that the reason Steve had left was for them to finally assemble the new gauntlet, and snap their fingers to bring everybody back. Clearly the snap had worked, so what was taking him so long?

As if he had read her thoughts, Y/N heard the front door open and the familiar thump of combat boots on the floor, alerting her that her husband was finally home. She sighed out in relief before placing a kiss on her son’s head, using the couch behind her as leverage to stand her and her baby bump up, and running... well, waddling to the front door.

“Stevie, you’re home!” The woman grinned, but her expression quickly changed when she realized that he was not only wearing the same clothes from when he left yesterday, but also had tons of bruises all over his face and every other body part that was visible. “Wha-What happened to you?”

The man puffed out a breath, holding out his arms and beckoning his wife closer. “Come on, come give me a hug.” He insisted, desperately needing to feel her touch after what he had just experienced. Seeing Pepper kiss Tony one last time as he was dying really left a mark on him. He didn’t want to loose his partner the way that Pepper lost hers.

Y/N wrapped her arms around Steve’s waist and buried her face in his chest, thankful to have this peaceful moment until: “You stink.”

The man lightly chuckled at his wife’s words, knowing that she was in fact correct. “Yeah. Thanos didn’t let us go without a long fight.”

The woman separated to look him in the eye. “Thanos? But he’s dead.”

Steve sighed. “There was a mishap with the time particles. 2014 Thanos got a hold of them and used our own machinery to come here. We fought for hours; the whole compound is in ruins.” Y/N gasped at his words, and he continued. “I would’ve changed my clothes but any spare belongings we had there are gone. This is what I was wearing under the uniform.”

“Oh my god, Steve. Are you okay?” She asked worriedly, stepping back to give his body a once over.

“There’s a cut on the inside of my leg.” He pointed to his inner thigh. “And the shield is in pieces. But other than that, I’m okay. Alive.” Steve couldn’t help but feel guilty that some of his closest friends weren’t. “But we did it, babydoll.” He spoke, wrapping his arms around her to pull her closer again. “It’s finally over. We brought everyone back.”

The padding of little feet brought the couple’s attention elsewhere as baby A.J. came into view, making a huge smile light up on Y/N’s face. “Yeah.” She said, petting her son’s hair. “I know.”

“Dadda here!” The boy squealed, and Steve felt his heart swell in his chest. Tears instantly sprung into the man’s eyes as he let out a sob, leaning down to pick up his boy and bring him into his arms.

Steve was still amazed that Anthony could recognize him based off the pictures that Y/N had shown him alone, but he probably got his great memory from the serum being passed down through genetics, if Steve had to guess. “Hi, A.J.” The man smiled through his tears, bouncing his baby in his arms. “I missed you so much, little guy.”

“No more beard.” His son spoke, pressing his little palms on his dad’s cheeks. He was referring to the beard that Steve had grown five years ago while on the run, and was still sporting when he had first met A.J.

“Yeah, buddy. I shaved.” The man explained, though he knew that the toddler wouldn’t understand what he was saying anyways.

Little sniffles broke Steve out of his A.J.-infused trance and he looked over to where they came from, seeing his wife with her hands covering her mouth while crying.

“I’m sorry, it’s just...” she sniffled again, “you guys look so alike.” She stated in awe. “It’s so cute!”

Her husband chuckled before beckoning her closer. “C’mere, doll.”

Y/N curled into Steve’s side, bringing one of her hands up to stroke A.J.’s soft, chubby cheek. “My little family.” She spoke, sighing out contentedly. “All together. Finally.” Her voice broke at the last word, all of the pain from the last seven years flashing before her eyes. But that part of her life was over now. From now on it would only be happy memories, with both of her boys, and soon her new baby girl, by her side.

Steve looked down at the two, technically three people that he loved the most in the world all surrounding him, and felt like the luckiest man in the universe. “A.J., did your mama tell you that you have a new baby sister coming?” He questioned, so excited to see his son be the best big brother ever.

“Yes!” Anthony cheered. “Mama said she in her belly!”

Steve nodded, laughing at how cute his kid was. “That’s right.” He pressed a kiss to A.J.’s forehead, and then to Y/N’s, before whispering in her ear: “This is the most incredible moment.”

She looked up at him with a smile and whispered back: “I know.”

The man debated on whether or not this was the right time to tell his wife about Tony’s death. It felt wrong to lie to her, to pretend that everything was okay, but he really didn’t want to spoil the moment. They hadn’t felt this at peace in so many years, and he just wanted to hold onto that a little bit longer.

‘Tonight.’ He told himself. ‘Later tonight I’ll tell her.’

Steve knew that she would scream and cry, just as she did for Natasha, and it was completely justified for her to do so. He wished that he just could’ve tried a bit harder in the battle, and maybe Tony would still be here, but he also knew that-that was a lie.

Everything that had happened up until this moment was inevitable. All that Steve could do now was live with it, and make sure that nothing would ever happen to anyone he cared about again.

Both Tony and Natasha sacrificed themselves so that families all around the universe could reconnect and have a moment just like he was having right now. And Steve was going to bask in this beautiful moment for as long as he could.

Next Chapter

Feedback is always welcome!❤️

#steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #chris evans x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x y/n

[fortune-fool02]

Took a lot of time and research and finally I was able to sketch out my OC's bio 😭👍🏼. Hope you like it @fortune-fool02

RE8 OC Goptri Biography

Early Life

Goptri was born to a middle class family in India. Growing up, she was a quiet kid and didn't speak much to anyone, but she was way more intelligent than her fellow peers. At the age of 5, her parents migrated to USA because her father had gotten a better job opportunity. She was very good in Academics and her creativity knew no bounds. She was also skilled at archery and took the sport as a hobby.

Everything was going well, until one day her mother succumbed to pneumonia and her father suddenly disappeared. She was 11 years old when both her parents left her alone and she was approached by Oswell E Spencer.

Adoption by Oswell E Spencer

Oswell E Spencer adopted 11 years old Goptri when she was orphaned and had no where to go. She had no idea who this man was or what he was here for. One second she was sitting outside her house entrance and the next second, a black limo parked itself in front of her house. She was too deep in grieving the death of her mother, that she didn't notice a man clad in fine suit approach her. He called out her name and she broke out of her trance. She looked up to find Oswell looking back at her with a warm smile on his face.

"Who are you?" Goptri asked, to which the man replied "I'm Lord Ozwell E Spencer, President and CEO of Umbrella Cooperation. I offer my condolences for what happened to your mother." With an annoyed look she asked "What do you want?". He explained to her that he's willing to help her get her life back in line. He promised her she'll be sent to the best institutes for her further education in exchange for her to agree to become his adoptive daughter.

She was sceptical about this at first but ultimately had to agree because as a young child she had nowhere else to go and not taking this one-time offer would be stupid on her part. With that, in the year 2001, Goptri Valli was officially adopted by Oswell E Spencer and renamed Goptri E Spencer.

Life in the Oswell Mansion

Goptri arrived at the Oswell's mansion in the Arklay Mountains where her new life began. Just as promised, Spencer sent her to the best institute he could find for her to continue her studies. She was good, very good. Always got straight A's which was a telltale sign that she had an higher IQ than the average person. For some unknown reasons, by the time she reached age 13 Oswell requested her to learn how to fight and hired professionals to teach her hand to hand combat. This somehow was the start where she started to doubt Oswell's intention of adopting her, but she dismissed the thought as soon as she thinked about it.

Little did she knew, that her gut intention was right. Oswell was a cold calculative elitist and him going out of his way to adopt some random kid was too hard to pass a judgement. She was nothing but another lab rat for him to test his viruses on. He always kept her away from the part of the mansion where he had a lab running. Due to this, Goptri never had any idea what was really going on under the beautiful architecture of the mansion. She was oblivious to the truth.

Capturing and Experimentations

Goptri thought her life was sorted out and she genuinely saw Oswell as her new father. Afterall, he took care of her when nobody else was there for her. Her life came crashing down real bad on her 15th birthday. On 24th of July in 2005, Oswell held a surprise party for her. Unbeknownst to her, it was a trap. He laced her dinner with a sedative and when she ate it, she blacked out.

She woke up few hours later with her body strapped down on a surgery table. Both her hands and legs restrained. She started to panic and tried to call out for her father but couldn't because her mouth was taped. When she tried to calm down, she realised she was in very different room than she had seen in the mansion. It looked like a operating room and it reaked of medical stench. This was the second time she was terrified so much, last time was when she was orphaned and left all alone. "No, no, no, no, NO!!! This is bad, where's papa!?" Is all she thought before a figure approached from the dark corner of the room. This is where she finally found out why being asked to be his daughter was always off setting. Oswell stared her in the eyes with no expressions whatsoever. He removed the tape from her mouth so she could speak, very well knowing that she's about to demand an answer. "Papa, please help me. What's going on?" She asked in a shaky voice but all she got was another dead stare from him. She started crying and wasn't able to figure out what is going to happen to her. Two people in lab coats approach Oswell and he orders them to proceed. Too distraught to even focus on the danger that was approaching her when one of the researcher grabbed her arm harshly pulling her out of her trance. "No.... NO!!!! STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? Papa, PAPA PLEASE HELP ME. PLEASE". "Goptri..... You're going to make a fine specimen." Is all he said with a sick smile on his face before he left her down there with her cries of help drowning in the darkness of the underground lab.

Discovery of mutation

Oswell experimented on Goptri a total of three times. Third experiment being the last one before he died and she managed to escape the container she was frozen in.

The first virus he tested on her was the Progenitor Virus, or better known as the Mother Virus. This virus gave Goptri her first mutated power, that was Regeneration of any lost tissues, cells, and even limbs. The virus was injected into her body through an injection which was so painful, she collapsed out of pain. Oswell would visit her sometimes just to see how the experiment is progressing. Not satisfied enough, he would order the researchers to increase the dosage of the virus and keep on testing her regenerative abilities to the point where she was time and again put up against the other BOW's held captive in the mansion to fight like some wild animals. It always resulted in her loosing her limbs in the most brutal way possible, only to be forced to regenerate the lost limb back. This heavily damaged her psychological health and also in a way made her stronger as her Regeneration got more and more better.

The second time Oswell ordered to experiment on her to "enhance" her further, he bought few samples of the snake "Yawn", an adder (he experimented on years ago and now is a 40ft tall BOW) and asked the researchers to infuse Goptri's cells with the BOW snake's cells and see how it would work out. Goptri, now 16 years old, had become so numb, she barely felt anything. Her bright smile and laughter long forgotten and replaced with a dead expression which was hard to read. Once again she was strapped to the surgery table and a huge injection as big as an arm was injected into her spine and this time, she didn't even flinch from the pain, just staring at the lights that hung above her with dead expression. This experiment granted her the ability to mutate into a giant scaley creature with accelerated regeneration and inhuman strength and speed. This new discovery caused Oswell a sick sense of excitement that finally an experiment wasn't failing like the others. This pissed her off, making her go berserk and killing half the staff in the lab before collapsing after using her new powers for the first time and reverting back to her normal self. She was quite healthy looking for a lab rat mainly because of how Oswell made sure she stayed healthy when she was still his adopted daughter. After few months, the researchers discovered a new development in her powers, where she had developed the ability to release venomous substance from blisters forming on her face when she's in her mutated form. Goptri, by far, was the only subject who had managed to show so much progress without even damaging her original body and didn't turn into some deformed human like the other subjects. The reason was unknown and Oswell wanted to find out what makes her her.

Goptri endured his tormenting experiments until he was finally killed by a BOW called Albert Wesker. But not before he infected her with an unknown virus as his last experiment and freezing her in cryogenic pod. That unknown virus is later revealed to be an another version of the T-Virus (aka Tyrant Virus). This last virus is what gave Goptri her final set of powers. This virus enhanced her already existing mutations, making her one of the most dangerous BOW ever created. The virus sped up her metabolism, heightening her existing strength, speed and regenerative abilities. This in turn also made her mutated form way more bigger and tougher than it was earlier. It also effected her oscular tissue, allowing her to view and process visual information at a speed allegedly equatable to raptors. Now her mutated form has increased to 70ft, has bulletproof scales and a layer of thick skin underneath the scales as extra armour. Blisters on her face can now release venomous substance way more dangerous than it was before and can burn into a person's skin and flesh.

Oswell knew very well about how much less time he has to live and how dangerous she'll become if she were to be released. So he managed to build a specialised Cryogenic Pod for her to be frozen in and sealed and moved it to the Spencer estate located somewhere in Europe. Only to be released once the time comes. He won't be there, but his associates will take care of it until then.

Spencer Estate raid and death of Oswell E Spencer

In 2006, there was a raid organized by the BSAA on Spencer Estate. Meanwhile the BOW Albert Wesker found out about Oswell hiding in the estate and came in before BSAA. While the BSAA were raiding the entire estate, some of its soldiers made there way to the underground lab in the estate, only to be faced by loose BOW subjects. In the following gun firing fight, one of the BSAA soldier threw a grenade towards the BOW near Goptri's pod and the impacting blast successfully broke her free out of the container. The whole room was covered in ice and freezing due to the cryogenic pod being literally blasted to pieces. What the soldiers didn't realise was what they had freed was far worse than the current monsters they were fighting. Goptri woke up from her slumber and went berserk. Killing all the BSAA soldiers in a blink of an eye and also taking out the other monsters (this time not even bothering to mutate into her other form, that's how strong she'd become).

When she was done with the soldiers, she headed towards Oswell with nothing but pure rage and thirst for Oswell's blood on her mind. She reached his quarters only to discover him already dead. She was both pissed and happy at the same time. Pissed because someone took out Oswell before she could and happy on the fact she doesn't have to endure anymore of Oswell's experiments. With nothing to fear for and loose, she set with a new objective on her mind, "Find the cure" to turn herself back to normal. And anyone who stands in her way will be dealt with in a brutal way.

Life thereupon

After the raid was done, Goptri tracked down the BSAA's Europe headquarters. She knew they had taken all the information, documents and files containing every detail on Oswell and his research and experiments. She knew if they were to analyse it all, they'll find out about her existence and will probably come after her next. "No! I can't let that happen. They'll use me for their own selfish gains just like he did." Her inner voice warned. With that, after a few days, she planned to infiltrate the headquarters and take away all the information about her. She was successful in reaching the maximum-security archives. She took a little time to skim through the files and documents and finally she found it. Unluckily, she got spotted by one of the security soldier and the siren went off. "Well, it's now or never." Was the last thing she said before she used her powers once again to escape but not before leaving mutilated dead bodies of BSAA soldiers in her wake.

She took on herself to create a vaccine to cure her mutations once and for all and become normal again. She thereupon spent years in hiding, trying to find a cure. But it always ended in a failed attempt. It wasn't until 2015, she discovered a new information that could possibly help her in her quest. Among all the other files, there was a single file with just one name written on it, a name Goptri never heard of from Oswell. "Miranda", she checked the file and was baffled by the discovery she'd made. This "Miranda" woman was the sole reason why Umbrella Cooperation existed. Oswell learnt everything about mutations and the viruses from this very woman and weaponized this knowledge to terrorise the world in a sick plan for becoming god. "If she taught, sure enough she'll have the cure." And with that, she set out to find Miranda and "The Village" where she resided. A big surprise waiting for Goptri in the village.

😮 ooh. Finally finished it. I hope you guys liked this. I thank you for actually reading the whole thing because I know it's very long but I gave my all to create it. So much love and appreciation to you all for your time and attention ❤️🥰

#re8 oc #submission

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 8 – Dream a Little Dream of Me: parallels with Doctor Who

What’s queer film and TV without a bit of Doris Day in your chapter title?

This was never intended to be a chapter by itself, but having seen @tjlcisthenewsexy’s fantastic video on Wholock parallels here X I had to start writing. Full credit for inspiration here to @tjlcisthenewsexy, who has definitely had many of these ideas independently, and I would fully recommend watching the video before you read this. I personally only really buy Moffat era Who as a direct parallel to Sherlock, largely because Moffat wrote both, but also because 2010-17 matches up exactly with our boys. Lots of people have drawn parallels between 2005’s Bad Wolf Bay scene (by Russell T Davies) and the tarmac scene – those parallels are definitely there, but I think they’re more due to common tropes in love-declaration scenes than from intent.

The Doctor Who episodes I’m largely going to be drawing on here are Amy’s Choice, Last Christmas, The Name of the Doctor and A Good Man Goes to War. Others will feature, but if you want a really strong grip on what I’m talking about, I’d recommend taking a look at all of these, or at the very least Amy’s Choice! But now – on with the show.

Time travel has always been possible in dreams. This line comes from The Name of the Doctor, which came out in 2013. The dream in question is a psychic telepathy connecting five of our main characters whilst they sleep, controlled by Madame Vastra. Much has been made of Madame Vastra being an explicit Sherlock mirror (X) with Jenny as her wife and explicit John mirror, so using a dream state to connect people across time should already ring TAB bells. But crucially, we’re not just focusing on telepathy here – we’re focusing on the ability of 19th century characters to use a dream state to connect with the 21st century. Given that we never see where River Song is connecting from, it’s safe to say that it is the 19th – 21st connection between the other characters that is important, like in TAB. The use of the word ‘always’ is really important here – it’s not saying that time travel is possible in dreams in the Whoniverse, but that it has always been possible. There’s an implication here that before time travel was invented, in a non science fiction world, dreams can still do this – and that’s what helps us to jump across to TAB.

In the dream sequence in TNotD, Jenny is supposed to lock up before they go into their trance, but she forgets. Intruders break in, but because Jenny and Vastra are unconscious they can’t defend themselves and so Jenny is murdered. This is the spur for everybody to wake up, to save themselves. Pretty much all of our dream states in Doctor Who are focused on the possibility of dying in the outside world, but TNotD is the one which articulates the problem of EMP theory most specifically. Jenny, our John mirror, dies because her protector’s unconsciousness means that she can’t protect her wife. (Vastra’s Silurian abilities very much put her into the role of protector here – she could save Jenny where Jenny couldn’t save herself, and frequently does.)

Between the time travel and Jenny, then, TNoTD is probably the best framework we get set up for TAB. This came out only a few months before s3, in which EMP began, so it’s safe to say that these ideas are well-formed in Mofftiss’s heads at this stage. However, if we jump all the way back to 2010 and Amy’s Choice, we can see that this has been in the works for a lot longer.

The first point of note here is the casting of Toby Jones as the Dream Lord.

Casting the same actor to play dream merchants, knocking characters unconscious and altering their memories and psyches? The universe is rarely so lazy. Other mirrors in this episode are easy to pull out. The Doctor and Sherlock have long been read as mirrors for each other – characters who have existed for a long time and are constantly evolving through adaptation, super-intelligent loners, but in case that wasn’t obvious, Moffat went to a reasonable effort to style them very similarly when both tenures began.

Both of these are very conscious remodellings of old characters. Much was made of Matt Smith being the youngest Doctor ever (26!), and Cumberbatch’s youth set him apart from the Rathbone/Brett image in everybody’s heads. There’s something young and modern here – but both still dress like they’re slightly ‘out of their time’, which of course they are. Coming to terms with modernity is the central challenge that Sherlock is going to have to face. And then, of course, there’s the hair – instantly recognisable to the character in both cases, yet remarkably similar.

If the Doctor and Sherlock are mirrors, Amy as the Doctor’s companion should be linked to John. Amy ran away on the night before her wedding, and whilst she is reasonably happy with Rory in the long term of the series, this episode is about her making the decision between domesticity and adventure – a pretty clear link to John in s3 and 4. This episode is particularly important for TST however, because Amy is heavily pregnant in the domestic dream – but she is far from enthused, torn between domestic life with Rory and wanting to run off with the Doctor. However, I grant the similarity with Martin Freeman isn’t striking.

Do note, however, the similarly uncomfortable dynamic in both of these photos – hilarious.

The parallel dream!verses created broadly represent John’s dilemma from TST, and if we followed Amy’s Choice as it seems on the surface, we would end up with a pretty straight reading of TST – John spends too much time with Sherlock, they’re all in danger, Mary dies and John is suicidal because of it. Broadly speaking, this works – Rory is killed in the dream (with a really nice visual parallel to TST) and Amy crashes a bus and kills herself because she doesn’t want to live without Rory. Amy picks the domestic sphere and although it takes several more series to play out in full, this is broadly the direction the series takes us in.

In both scenes, Sherlock and the Doctor are left standing off to the right, unsure of what to do – if you watch both scenes in parallel, it’s striking. There’s a great article here talking about how the angle demonstrates the Doctor to be powerless for the first time, amongst other things. X Amy asks the Doctor what is the point of him, and John’s declaration that Sherlock has broken his vow carries similar weight – they were supposed to save them.

The title of the episode is Amy’s Choice, and this, we’re led to believe, is the moment when Amy chooses Rory. I don’t believe this. The Doctor/Rory conflict goes on for a lot longer than this, and it’s far too early in their first series to resolve it. It would leave a lot of later episodes without nearly so much tension. It’s true that Amy does have some agency in choosing – the science is questionable, as the Doctor says they’ve all tapped into some space LSD equivalent from an unmentioned offscreen adventure which has induced a mutual psychic trance, which means that we’re not sure how much agency each of the characters has in this dream. It’s not seeded, and so it sounds like a fudge – deliberately. Because a pseudoscientific explanation like this can’t explain the Dream Lord himself, Amy and Rory point out, and the Doctor admits that the Dream Lord, the architect of the dreams themselves, was actually the Doctor’s psyche. The space LSD sounded like a fudge – and Amy and Rory expose that it wasn’t just a fudge on Moffat’s part, it was a fudge on the Doctor’s part.

And, crucially, what was the first thing the Doctor said about domestic!dream, long before he realised he created it?

“Oh, you’re okay. Oh, thank God. I had a terrible nightmare about you two. That was scary. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. You’re safe now.” X

Later, when asked how he knew that the Dream Lord was him, the Doctor merely says that no one else hates him so much. Domestic!verse, then, is a manifestation of everything that the Doctor dreads – it’s his worst nightmare, being conjured by his subconscious. That nightmare involves Amy’s suicide, Rory’s death because the Doctor can’t protect them – this maps pretty neatly onto EMP theory and TST. Although John doesn’t kill himself, he is rendered suicidal in the domestic nightmare that is left behind. As the previous chapter discusses, Sherlock not being able to protect John is definitely a nightmare, but the nightmare also maps onto reality – John is suicidal, but he’s struggling to work out why, so he has to construct it through a heterosexual lens. John’s potential death and love for Mary are the two things that form the worst nightmare in both dreams, and the nightmarish sense is highlighted in TST by the deep waters metaphor.

At the very end of the episode, the Doctor’s reflection is still the Dream Lord, suggesting that this isn’t some psychic drug phenomenon, an explanation which was frankly crap. The Doctor’s dark side is still inside him. This feels like an allegory for mental illness, and mental illness crops up aplenty in Moffat’s depictions of the Doctor, particularly the later we get – the seeds of it are here. Again, although Sherlock is being killed rather than killing himself, we have seen the suicidal side of him before and it is made clear in TAB that his opinion of himself is low. EMP s4 is about him coming to terms with how he views himself, and the cognitive dissonance that we see in Amy’s Choice is a nice separation of the psyche in two that foreshadows the immense splintering that’s going to come in EMP, but particularly between John, Mycroft and Eurus.

Another nice parallel between s4 and Amy’s Choice is the idea of predictability. Way before we know that this is the Doctor’s dream, the Doctor displays a remarkable ability to finish what the Eknodines say before they do, an ability which becomes an obvious hint in hindsight. Moving over to TLD, Sherlock has similarly ridiculous powers to predict what other people will do; because this underpins TLD, it jumps out as being something that rings very false to me, almost like a parody of who Sherlock Holmes is meant to be, and so we should pay attention to it. An uncanny ability to predict what others will do – yup, that’s a dream world.

One key similarity that Amy’s Choice has with EMP theory is that a false dream premise is set up in both. Amy’s Choice suggests that there are two worlds, and only one is a dream; their survival depends on recognising which is the real one. This is, of course, a lie – both worlds are dreamed, and that false premise is created to trap them in the Doctor’s psyche, presumably until the Doctor dies (although the threat is never clearly explained). TAB sets up a real world in the form of the modern day and a false Victorian age, but the supernatural graveyard scene is the first hint that the reality/dream binary is not real, just like Amy’s Choice. This one scene is not an anomaly – the chronology of the ‘man out of my time’ scene coming after Sherlock gets off the tarmac suggests that such mixing is still going on, and we shouldn’t trust our senses. In case that point needed hammering any more, however, Steven Moffat gave us A Good Man Goes To War.

This episode is the culmination of a series in which Amy is actually an almost-person, and Amy has been dreaming all of their adventures with a flesh avatar actually having them with Rory and the Doctor. Here it is Amy, rather than the Doctor, who is dreaming, which is a little ambiguous, but there are two key aspects that parallel Amy’s Choice. The first is that, like Amy’s Choice, the flesh avatar/dream person threat doesn’t just go away. These words of Madame Kovarian are extremely important:

Fooling you once was a joy, but fooling you twice, the same way? It’s a privilege. X

Exactly what the Dream Lord does in Amy’s Choice. Furthermore, although there’s a later meta in blindness across Doctor Who and Sherlock which at some stage really needs writing, many people have made the point that Sherlock is associated with blindness throughout series 4, and so we should note that the architect of the dream people/flesh avatars is Madame Kovarian, better known (and usually credited) as the Eyepatch Lady. However, there’s one other key message they’re giving us, which comes at the end of the clip linked above – the baby’s not real. Both Amy’s Choice and A Good Man Goes To War feature Amy’s child, and in both cases the plot revolves around the emotional recognition that that world isn’t real. Given that we know that Amy is a John mirror, and that her choice between the domestic and the adventurous is consistently paralleled to John’s choice in Sherlock, this is a pretty huge indicator that something is up with Rosie even if we didn’t know it already. Indeed, the cot and mobile that the child has in Amy’s Choice are similar to Rosie’s. That baby never stood a chance.

The last episode I want to briefly invoke is Last Christmas. If we’re looking for dreams, this episode really goes above and beyond. The premise is that there is an alien species called the dream crab which latches onto your face and dissolves your brain whilst putting you in a dream so that you don’t notice. To make this more confusing, it often places dreams within dreams to confuse you – whilst you’re dying. This episode came out on Christmas Day 2014, so a year after series 3 aired but before TAB, so in Sherlock-time we’ve just entered the mind palace. The title, Last Christmas, is pretty helpful here I think – of course it has relevance within the episode, but this episode should also get us thinking about what was going on this time last year, when Sherlock was airing.

We’re no stranger to dreams within dreams at this stage, but it’s interesting how the saving-the-companion vibe is still going strong here. Ostensibly, that’s not what the episode is about at all – it’s a classic everyone-trapped-on-a-base-working-together episode, but the last five minutes tacked on the end suggests that it’s far more about the Doctor’s relationship with Clara, the episode’s companion, than one might think. In this clip (X) the Doctor thinks he’s broken out of the final dream but goes back to visit Clara and realises that she is now old, and that he’s missed her life. It culminates in him apologising for getting it wrong, for not coming for her in time, for failing her; we get more of this with Clara’s actual death later in the show, but given that it’s a kid’s show and Christmas, this scene is a touch lighter than that. It’s then that Father Christmas comes in to tell the Doctor that he’s still dreaming, he can still save her – and his first word when he wakes up is “Clara”. None of the others trapped in the dream have needed his help to wake from the vision and survive; Clara, who as the companion is our John mirror, specifically needs saving, and the Doctor needs to wake up from his dream within a dream to do that.

Nick Frost’s appearance as Father Christmas gave us all a good laugh, but he was also used as the indicator that the world we were perceiving was a dream world. This was made a bit of a joke of early in the episode – in a sci-fi world like this, are we seriously looking for what’s not realistic as the code to crack the dream? The exact same joke is made in Amy’s Choice, and here we’re hitting a pretty silly version of the show where they joke that just about the only character who can’t be real is Father Christmas. These hints about looking for what’s not real, though, should be taken as just that – hints. From the emergence of ‘something’s fucky’ theories early on in s4, this has been the abiding reasoning for the various forms of EMP theory that have sprung up, and they’re not wrong. However, if I had to put my money on a figure like Santa Claus, something iconic which functions as a kind of dream thermometer, I’d be guessing:

You were there before me. The fucky skull that glows, almost like a warning that this is too mad. Crucially, in Last Christmas they explain that Santa is a warning that your brain is sending you, picking the most unbelievable thing possible so that you know you’re trapped, dying in your brain. Santa Claus? Well, it’s a kid’s show, and it’s Christmas. But if I were picking a dream siren to tell me I was dying, I like to think that my subconscious would pick the glowing skull on the wall; without explanation, it’s an awful lot more direct.  

There is more reference than necessary made to dream crabs making one blind, and between Madame Kovarian and the blind Doctor in the later dream episode Extremis, there’s a lot more to unpack there, but I’m going to leave that for sometime down the line, or for someone else to jump into if they would like. I also want to throw out a thought I haven’t quite come to terms with yet – the elephant in the room in Amy’s Choice. Arwel Wyn Jones would be proud of the script for Amy’s Choice – twice, it mentions the elephant in the room, and so I feel I have to do the same. The first time, you could blink and miss it – the Doctor calls pregnant Amy ‘elephanty’. But the second time, we get this exchange:

DOCTOR: Now, we all know there’s an elephant in the room.

AMY: I have to be this size, I’m having a baby.

DOCTOR: No, no. The hormones seem real, but no. Is nobody going to mention Rory’s ponytail? You hold him down, I’ll cut it off? X

The elephant in the room – that the baby’s not real? Possibly, but not what we normally take it to mean. Rory’s ponytail also has not shaving for Sherlock Holmes vibes, but again it’s not quite concrete in my mind. These little bits at the end aren’t quite tied up, and I would love to hear what people have to say about them. That, however, is for another day! The next chapter in this series will be jumping back into episode-by-episode analysis with TLD – see you there.

#emp theory #wholock #tjlc #thewatsonbeekeepers #meta #my meta #mine #bbc sherlock #chapter eight: dream a little dream of me #tjlc is real #johnlock #sherlock holmes #doctor who #steven moffat #mark gatiss

[alanlicht]

Alan Licht’s Minimal Top Ten List #4

A few weeks ago, near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my friend Mats Gustafsson sent out a mass email encouraging people to send him record lists to post on the “Discaholics” section of his website--top tens, favorite covers, anything. I immediately thought of the first 3 Minimal Top Ten lists I did (now found online here) back in 1995, 1997, and 2007 respectively, for the fanzine Halana (the first two) and Volcanic Tongue’s website (the third), and sent them to him. Those articles have sort of taken on a life of their own, and I still see them referenced as the albums get reissued and so on. Occasionally people ask me if I’d ever do another one, and looking at all three again made me think now is the hour. I started writing this in the midst of the lockdown, and the drastic reductions in people’s way of life—the restriction of any activity outside the home to the bare essentials, the relative stasis of life in quarantine, even the visual stasis of a Zoom meeting—make revisiting Minimal music, with its aesthetic of working within limitations and hallmarks of repetition and drones, somehow timely as well.

The original lists were never meant to represent “the best” Minimal albums: they were ones that were rare and in some cases surpass, in my opinion, more widely available releases by the same artist and/or better known examples of the genre. Some were records that hadn’t been classified as Minimalist but warranted consideration through that lens. Likewise, the lists aren’t meant to be ranked within themselves, or in comparison to each other; the first record on any of the lists isn’t necessarily vastly preferable to the last, and this fourth list is not the bottom of the barrel, by any stretch. In some cases the present list has records I’ve discovered since 2007; others are records I’ve known for quite a while but haven’t included before for one reason or another. I’ve also made an addendum to selected entries on the first three lists, which have become fairly dated in terms of what is currently available by many of the artists, and to account for some of the significant archival releases in the 25 years since I first compiled them.

Unlike the mid-90s, most if not all of these records can be heard and/or purchased online, whether they’re up on YouTube or available for sale on Discogs. So finding them will be easier than before (although I haven’t included links to any of the titles as a small tribute to the legwork involved in tracking records down in olden tymes), but hopefully the spirit of sharing knowledge and passions that drove my previous efforts, forged in the pre-internet fanzine world, hasn’t been rendered totally redundant by the 24/7 onslaught of virtual note-comparing in social media.

1. Simeon ten Holt Canto Ostinato (various recordings): This was the most significant discovery for me in the last decade, a piece with over one hundred modules to be played on any instrument but mostly realized over the years with two to four pianos. I first encountered a YouTube live video of four pianists tackling it over the course of 90 minutes or so, then bought a double CD on Brilliant Classics from 2005, also for four pianos, that runs about 2 and half hours. The original 3LP recording on Donemus, from 1984, lasts close to 3 hours. It’s addictively listenable, very hypnotic in that pulsed, Steve Reich “Piano Phase”/”Six Pianos” kind of way, with lots of recurring themes (which differentiates it from Terry Riley’s “In C,” its most obvious structural antecedent). Composed over the span of the 70s, as with Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Sei Note in Logica, it’s an  example of someone contemporaneously taking the ball from Reich or Riley and running with it. Every recording I’ve heard has been enjoyable, I’ve yet to pick a favorite.

2. David Borden Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments (Red Music, 1981) 3. Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. Like a Duck to Water (Earthquack, 1976): These were some of my most cherished Minimal recordings when I was a teenager in the mid-80s, and are still not particularly well-known; they’re probably the biggest omission in the previous lists (at least from my perspective). Borden formed Mother Mallard, supposedly the first all-synthesizer ensemble, as a trio in the late 60s, although there’s electric piano on the records too. He went on to do music under his own name that hinged on the multi-keyboard Minimalism-meets-Renaissance classical concept he first explored with Mother Mallard, as exemplified by his 12-part series “The Continuing Story of Counterpoint” (a title inspired by both Philip Glass’ “Music in Twelve Parts” and the Beatles’ “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”). I first heard Parts 6 & 9 of “Continuing Story” (from Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments) on Tim Page’s 1980s afternoon radio show on WNYC, and bought the Mother Mallard LPs (Like A Duck is the second, the first is self-titled) from New Music Distribution Service soon after. I mail-ordered the Borden album  from Wayside Music, which had cut-out copies, maybe a year later (c. 1986). I wasn’t much of a synth guy, but I loved the propulsive, rapid-fire counterpoint and fast-changing, lyrical melodies found on these records. “C-A-G-E Part 2,” which occupies side 2 of the Mother Mallard album and utilizes only those pitches, has to be a pinnacle of the Minimal genre. Interestingly, Borden claims to not really be able to “hear” harmony and composes each part of these (generally) three-part inventions individually, all the way through. The two-piano “Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part Two” on the 1985 album Anatidae is also beloved by me, and there was an archival Mother Mallard CD called Music by David Borden (Arbiter, 2003) that’s worth hearing.

4. Charles Curtis/Charles Curtis Trio: Ultra White Violet Light/Sleep (Beau Rivage, 1997): Full disclosure: Charles is a long-time friend, but this record seems forgotten and deserves another look, especially in light of the long-overdue 3CD survey of his performances of other composers’ material that Saltern released last year. This was a double album of four side-long tracks, conceived with the intent that two sides could be played simultaneously, in several different configurations; two of them are Charles solo on cello and sine tones, the others are with a trio and have spoken vocals and rock instrumentation, with cello and the sine tones also thrown into the mix. (I’ve never heard any of the sides combined, although now it would probably be easily achieved with digital mixing software.) The instrumental stuff is the closest you can come to hearing Charles’ beautiful arrangement of Terry Jennings’ legendary “Piece for Cello and Saxophone,” at least until his own recording of it sees the light of day; the same deeply felt cello playing against a sine tone drone. And it would be interesting to see what Slint fans thought of the trio material. Originally packaged in a nifty all-white uni-pak sleeve with a photo print pasted into the gatefold, it was reissued with a different cover on the now-defunct Squealer label on LP and CD but has disappeared since then. Stellar.

5. Arthur Russell Instrumentals 1974 Vol. 2 (Another Side/Crepuscule, 1984) 6. Peter Zummo Zummo with an X (Loris, 1985):  Arthur Russell has posthumously developed a somewhat surprising indie rock audience, mostly for his unique songs and singing as well as his outré disco tracks. But he was also a modern classical composer, with serious Minimal cred—he’s on Jon Gibson’s Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 (see addendum), and played with Henry Flynt and Christer Hennix at one point; his indelible album of vocal and cello sparseness, World of Echo, was partially recorded at Phill Niblock’s loft and of course his Tower of Meaning LP was released on Glass’s Chatham Square label. He’s the one guy in the 70s and 80s (or after, for that matter) who connected the dots between Ali Akbar Khan, the Modern Lovers, Minimalism, and disco as different forms of trance music (taken together, both sides of his disco 12” “In the Light of the Miracle,” which total nearly a half-hour, could arguably be considered one of his Minimalist compositions). Recorded in 1977 & 1978, Instrumentals is an important signpost of the incipient Pop Minimalism impulse, and the first track is a pre-punk precursor to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca’s appropriations of the rock band format to pursue Minimal pathways (Chatham is one of the performers in that first piece). The rest, culled from a concert at the Kitchen, features long held tones from horns and strings and is quite graceful, if slightly undercut by Arthur’s own slightly jarring, apparently random edits. [Audika’s 2006 reissue, as part of the double CD First Thought Best Thought, includes a 1975 concert that was slated to be Instrumentals Vol. 1, which shows an even more specific pop/rock/Minimal intersection]. Zummo was a long-term collaborator of Russell’s and his album, which Arthur plays on, is a must for Russell aficionados. The first side is made up of short, plain pieces that repeat various simple intervals and are fairly hard-core Minimalism, but “Song IV,” which occupies all of side two, is like an extended, jammy take on Russell’s disco 12” “Treehouse” and has Bill Ruyle on bongos, who also played on Instrumentals as well as with Steve Reich and Jon Gibson. A recently unearthed concert at Roulette from 1985 is a further, and especially intriguing, example of Russell’s blending of Minimalism and song form. (That same year Arthur played on Elodie Lauten’s The Death of Don Juan--another record I first encountered via Tim Page’s radio show--which I included on Top Ten #3; Lauten as well as Zummo played on the Russell Roulette concert, as their website alleges).

7. Horacio Vaggione La Maquina de Cantar (Cramps, 1978): Another one-off from the late 70s, and yet more evidence of how Minimalism had really caught on as a trend among European composers of the time. Vaggione had a previous duo album with Eduardo Polonio under the name It called Viaje that was noisier electronics, and he went on to do computer music that was likewise more traditionally abstract. But on this sole effort for the Italian label Cramps, as part of their legendary Nova Musicha series, he went for full-on tonality. The title track is like the synth part of “Who Are You” extended for more than fifteen minutes and made a bit squishier; but side 2, “Ending”--already mentioned in the entry on David Rosenboom’s Brainwave Music in Top Ten #3--is my favorite. Kind of a bridge between Minimalism and prog, and a little reminiscent of David Borden’s multiple-synth counterpoint pieces, for the first ten minutes he lingers on one vaguely foreboding arpeggiated chord, then introduces a fanfare melody that repeats and builds in harmonies and countermelodies for the remainder of the piece. Great stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say.

8. Costin Miereanu Derives (Poly-Art, 1984): Miereanu is French composer coming out of musique concrete. Unlike some of the albums on these lists, both sides/pieces on Derives are superb, comprised of long drones with flurries of skittering electronic activity popping up here and there. Also notable is the presence of engineers Philip Besomes and Jean-Louis Rizet, responsible for Pôle, the great mid-70s prog double album that formed the basis of Graham Lambkin’s meta-meisterwork Amateur Doubles. I discovered this record via the old Continuo blog; Miereanu has lots of albums out, most of which I haven’t heard, but his 1975 debut Luna Cinese, another Cramps Nova Musicha item, is also estimable, although less Minimal.

9. Mikel Rouse Broken Consort Jade Tiger (Les Disques du Crepuscule, 1984): Rouse was a major New Music name in the 80s, as was Microscopic Septet saxist Philip Johnston, who plays here. Dominated by Reichian repeated fills that accentuate the odd time signatures as opposed to an underlying pulse, this will sound very familiar to anyone acquainted with Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin albums on ECM, which use the same general idea but brand it “zen funk” and cater more to the progressive jazz crowd rather than New Music fans, if we can be that anachronistic in our terminology. Jade Tiger also contrasts nicely with Wim Mertens’ more neo-Romantic contemporaneous excursions on Crepuscule. Rouse later performed the admirable (and daunting) task of cataloging Arthur Russell’s extensive tape archive for the preparation of Another Thought (Point Music, 1994)

10. Michael Nyman Decay Music (Obscure, 1976): Known for his soundtracks to Peter Greenaway films, and his still-peerless 1974 book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (where I, Jim O’Rourke, and doubtless many other intrepid teenage library goers learned of the Minimalists, Fluxus, AMM, and lots of other eternal avant heroes), Nyman is sometimes credited with coining the term “Minimal music” as well, in an early 70s article in The Spectator. Decay Music was produced by Brian Eno for his short-lived but wonderful Obscure label. The first side, “1-100,” was also composed for a Greenaway film, and has one hundred chords played one after another on piano, each advancing to the next once the sound has decayed from the previous chord (hence the album title). For all its delicacy and silences, you’re actually hearing three renditions superimposed on one another, which occasionally makes for some charming chordal collisions (reminiscent of the cheerfully clumsy, subversive “variations” of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D major” on Eno’s own Discreet Music, the most celebrated Obscure release). This is process music at its most fragile and incandescent. In hindsight it may have also been an unconscious influence on the structure of my piece “A New York Minute,” which lines up a month’s worth of weather reports from news radio, edited so that one day’s forecast follows its prediction from the previous day. I’ve never found the album’s other piece, “Bell Set No. 1,” to be quite as compelling, and Nyman’s other soundtrack work doesn’t hold much interest for me, but I’ve often returned to this album.

11. J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw, 2006): One more for the road. Rightfully acclaimed as a masterpiece of instrumental hip hop, I have to confess I only discovered Donuts while reading Questlove’s 2013 book Mo’ Meta Blues, where he compared it to Terry Riley. The brevity of the tracks (31of ‘em in 44 minutes) and the lack of single-mindedness make categorizing Donuts as a Minimal album a bit of a stretch, but Questlove’s namecheck makes a whole lot of sense if you play “Don’t Cry” back to back with Riley’s proto-Plunderphonic “You’re Nogood,” and “Glazed” is the only hip hop track to ever remind me of Philip Glass. Plus the infinite-loop sequencing of the opening “Outro” and concluding “Intro” make this a statement of Eternal Music that outstrips La Monte Young and leaves any locked groove release in the proverbial dust. There isn’t the space here to really explore how extended mixes, all night disco DJ sets, etc. could be encountered in alignment with Minimalism, although I would steer the curious towards Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals (BBE, 2001), Larry Levan’s Live at the Paradise Garage (Strut, 2000), and, at the risk of being immodest, my own “The Old Victrola” from Plays Well (Crank Automotive, 2001). On a (somewhat) related note I’d also point out Rupie Edwards’ Ire Feelings Chapter and Version (Trojan, 1990) which collects 16 of the producer/performer’s 70s dub reggae tracks, all built from the exact same same rhythm track--mesmerizing, even by dub’s trippy standards. 

Addendum:

Tony Conrad: “Maybe someday Tony’s blistering late 80s piece ‘Early Minimalism’ will be released, or his fabulous harmonium soundtrack to Piero Heliczer’s early 60s film The New Jerusalem.” That was the last line of my entry on Tony’s Outside the Dream Syndicate in the first Top Ten list in 1995, and sure enough, Table of the Elements issued “Early Minimalism” as a monumental CD box set in 1997 and released that soundtrack as Joan of Arc in 2006 (it’s the same film; I saw it screened c. 1990 under the name The New Jerusalem but it’s more commonly known as Joan of Arc).  Tony releases proliferated in the last twenty years of his life, which was heartening to see; I’d particularly single out Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct, 2017), which rescues a 1972 live recording of what is essentially a prototype for Outside played by Tony, Rhys Chatham, and Laurie Spiegel (Rhys has mentioned his initial disgruntlement upon hearing Outside, as it was the same piece that he had played with Tony, i.e. “Ten Years Alive,” but he found himself and Laurie replaced by Faust!) and an obscure compilation track, “DAGADAG for La Monte” (on Avanto 2006, Avanto, 2006), where he plays the pitches d, a, and g on violin, loops them over and over , and continually re-harmonizes them electronically--really one of his best pieces.

Terry Riley: The archival Riley CDs that Cortical Foundation issued in the 90s and early 00s don’t seem to be in print, but I feel they eclipse Reed Streams (reissued by Cortical as part of that series) and are crucial for fans of his early work, especially the live Poppy Nogood’s Phantom Band All Night Flight Vol. 1, an important variant on the studio take, and You’re Nogood (see Dilla entry above). These days I would also recommend Descending Moonshine Dervishes (Kuckuck, 1982/recorded 1975) over  Persian Surgery Dervishes (Shandar, 1975), which I mentioned in the original entry on Reed Streams in the first Top Ten; a lot of the harmonic material in Descending can also be heard in Terry’s dream-team 1975 meeting with Don Cherry in Köln, which has been bootlegged several times in the last few years. Finally, Steffen Schleiermacher recorded the elusive “Keyboard Study #1” (as well as “#2,” which had already seen release in a version by Germ on the BYG label and as “Untitled Organ” on Reed Streams), albeit on a programmed electronic keyboard, on the CD Keyboard Studies (MDG, 2002). As you might expect it’s a little synthetic-sounding, but it also has a weird kinetic edge (imagine the “Baba O’Riley” intro being played on a Conlon Nancarrow player piano) that’s lacking in later acoustic piano renditions recorded by Gregor Schwellenbach and Fabrizio Ottaviucci. But any of these versions is rewarding for those interested in Riley’s early output.

Henry Flynt, Charlemagne Palestine: A few of the artists on that first Top Ten list went from being sorely under-documented to having a plethora of material on the market, and Henry and Charlemagne are at the top of the heap. I stand by You Are My Everlovin, finally reissued on CD by Recorded in 2001, as Henry’s peak achievement, but I’m also partial to “Glissando,” a tense, feverish raga drone from 1979 that Recorded put out on the Glissando No. 1 CD in 2011. Charlemagne’s Four Manifestations On Six Elements double album still holds up well, as does an album of material initially recorded for it, Arpeggiated Bösendorfer and Falsetto Voice (Algha Marghen, 2017). The Strumming Music LP on Shandar is a definitive performance, and best heard as an unbroken piece on the New Tone CD reissue from 1995. Godbear (CD on Barooni, vinyl on Black Truffle), originally recorded for Glenn Branca’s Neutral label (which had also scheduled a Phill Niblock release before going belly-up), has 1987 takes of “Strumming Music” and two other massive pieces that date from the late 70s, “Timbral Assault” and “The Lower Depths”; Algha Marghen released a vintage full-length concert of the latter as a triple CD.

Steve Reich: Not a particularly rare record, but his “Variations on Winds, Strings and Keyboards,” a 1979 piece for orchestra on a 1984 LP issued by Phillips (paired with an orchestral arrangement of John Adams’ “Shaker Loops”), is often overlooked among the works from his “golden era” and I’d frankly rate it as his best orchestral piece.

Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue: As with Henry and Charlemagne, after a slow start as “recording artists” loads of CDs by these two have appeared over the last twenty years. Phill and Eliane’s music was never best served by the vinyl format anyway—you won’t find a lackluster release by either composer, go to it.

Jon Gibson: I called “Cycles,” from Gibson’s Two Solo Pieces, “one of the ultimate organ drones on record” in the first Top Ten list, and it remains so, but Phill Niblock’s”Unmounted/Muted Noun” from 2019′s Music for Organ ought to sit right beside it. Meanwhile, Superior Viaduct’s recent Gibson double album Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 collects some great pieces from the same era as Two Solo Pieces, with players including Arthur Russell, Peter Zummo, Barbara Benary, and Julius Eastman. 

John Stevens: In Top Ten #2 I mentioned John Stevens’ presence on the first side of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Life With the Lions; the Stevens-led Spontaneous Music Orchestra’s For You To Share (1973) documents his performance pieces “Sustained Piece” and “If You Want to See A Vision,” where musicians and vocalists sustain tones until they run out of breath and then begin again, which result in a highly meditative and organic drone/sound environment. In my early 00′s Digger Choir performances at Issue Project Room  we did “Sustained Piece,” and Stevens’ work was a big influence on conceptualizing those concerts, where the only performers were the audience themselves. The CD reissue on Emanem from 1998 added “Peace Music,” an unreleased studio half-hour studio cut with a similar Gagaku--meets--free/modal jazz vibe. I also mentioned “Sustained Piece” in my liner notes to Natural Information Society’s Mandatory Reality too, if that helps as a point of reference.

Anthony Moore: Back in ’97 I wondered “How and why Polydor was convinced to release these albums [Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom and Scenes from the Blue Bag] is beyond me (anyone know the story)?” That mystery was ultimately solved by Benjamin Piekut in his fascinating-even-if-you-never-listen-to-these-guys book Henry Cow: The World is A Problem (Duke University Press, 2019)—it turns out it was all Deutsche Gramophone’s idea!

Terry Jennings, Maryanne Amacher, Julius Eastman--“Three Great Minimalists With No Commercially Available Recordings” (sidebar from Minimal Top Ten list #2): Happily this no longer applies to these three, although Terry and Maryanne are still under-represented. One archival recording of Jennings and Charlotte Moorman playing a short version of “Piece for Cello and Saxophone” appeared on Moorman’s 2006 Cello Anthology CD box set on Alga Marghen, and he’s on “Terry’s Cha Cha” on that 2004 John Cale New York in the 60s Table of the Elements box too. John Tilbury recorded five of his piano pieces on Lost Daylight (Another Timbre, 2010) and Charles Curtis’ version of “Song” appears on the aforementioned Performances and Recordings 1998-2018 triple CD.

Whether or not Maryanne should really be considered a Minimalist (or a sound artist, for that matter) is, I guess, debatable, but I primarily see her as the unqualified genius of the generation of composers who emerged in the post-Cage era, and the classifications ultimately don’t matter—remember she was on those Swarm of Drones/ Throne of Drones/ Storm of Drones ambient techno comps in the 90s, and I’d call her music Gothic Industrial if it would get more people to check it out (and that might be fun to try, come to think of it). She made a belated debut with the release of the Sound Characters CD on Tzadik in 1998, an event I found significant enough to warrant pitching an interview with her to the WIRE, who agreed—it was my first piece for them. Her music was/is best experienced live (the Amacher concert I saw at the Performing Garage in 1993 is still, almost three decades later, the greatest concert I’ve ever witnessed) but that Tzadik CD is reasonably representative, and there was a sequel CD on Tzadik in 2008. More recently Blank Forms issued a live recording of her two-piano piece “Petra” (a concert I also attended, realizing when I got there that it was in the same Chelsea church where Connie Burg, Melissa Weaver and I recorded with Keiji Haino for the Gerry Miles with Keiji Haino CD).  While it’s somewhat anomalous in Amacher’s canon, making a piece for acoustic instruments available for home consumption would doubtless have been more palatable to the composer herself, who rightly felt that CDs and LPs didn’t do justice to the extraordinary psychoacoustic phenomena intrinsic to her electronic music. “Petra” is more reminiscent of Morton Feldman than anything else, with a few passages that could be deemed “minimal.” Some joker posted a 26-minute, ancient lo-fi “bootleg” (their term) recording of her “Living Sound, Patent Pending” piece from her Music for Sound-Joined Rooms installation/performance series on SoundCloud, which is a little like looking at a Xerox of a Xerox of a photo of the Taj Mahal; but you can still visit the Taj Mahal more easily than hearing this or any of Maryanne’s work in concert or in situ, so sadly, it’s better than nothing (and longer than the 7 minute edit of the piece on the Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music CD from 2000).

A few years after Top Ten #2 I was on the phone with an acquaintance at New World Records, who told me he was listening to a Julius Eastman tape that they were releasing as part of a 3CD set. Say what?!?!? Unjust Malaise appeared shortly thereafter and was a revelation. Arnold Dreyblatt had sent me a live tape some time before then of an Eastman piece labeled “Gangrila”—that turned out to be “Gay Guerrilla,” and is surely one of my five favorite pieces of music in existence (the tape Arnold sent was from the 1980 Kitchen European tour and I consider it to be a more moving performance than the Chicago concert that appears on the CD, although it’s an inferior recording). The other multiple piano pieces on Unjust Malaise more than lived up to the descriptions of Eastman performances that I’d read. The somewhat berserk piano concert I mentioned in that entry seems similar to another live tape issued as The Zurich Concert (New World, 2017), and “Femenine,” a piece performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble, came out on Frozen Reeds in 2016. Eastman’s rediscovery is among the most vital and gratifying developments of recent music history--kudos must be given to Mary Jane Leach, herself a Minimalist composer, for diligently and doggedly tracking down Eastman’s recordings and archival materials and bringing them to the light of day.

The Lost Jockey—I was unaware of any releases by this group besides their Crepuscule LP until I stumbled onto a self-titled cassette from 1983 on YouTube. Like the album, the highlight is a piece by Orlando Gaugh--an all-time great Philip Glass rip-off, “Buzz Buzz Buzz Went the Honeybee,” which has the amusing added bonus of having the singers intoning the rather bizarre title phrase as opposed to Glassian solfège. Also like the album, he rest of the cassette is so-so Pop Minimalism.

Earth: Dylan Carlson keeps on keepin’ on, and while I can’t say I’ve kept up with him every step of the way, usually when I check in I’m glad I did. However I’d like to take this opportunity to humbly disavow the snarky comments about Sunn 0))) I made in this entry in Top Ten list #3. Those were a reflection of my general aversion to hype, which was surrounding them at the time, and of seeing two shows that in retrospect were unrepresentative (I was thunderstruck by a later show I saw in Mexico City in 2009). Stephen O’Malley has proven to be as genuinely curious, dedicated and passionate about drone and other experimental music as they come, and the reissue of the mind-blowing Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea on his Ideologic Organ label is a good reminder of how rooted Minimalism is in ethnic music, and how almost interchangeable certain examples of both can be. 

And while we’re in revisionist mode, let’s go full circle all the way back to the very first sentence of the introduction to the first Minimal Top Ten: “I know what you’re thinking: ECM Records, New Age, Eno ambients, NPR, Tangerine Dream. Well forget all that shit.” Hey, that stuff’s not so bad! I was probably directing that more at the experimental-phobic indie rock folks I encountered at the time, and expressing a lingering resentment towards the genre-confusion of the 80s (i.e. having dig through a bunch of Kitaro records in the New Age bins in hopes of finding Reich, Riley, or Glass; even Loren Mazzacane got tagged New Age once in a while back then, believe it or not), which probably hindered my own discovery of Minimalism. What can I say, I’m over it!

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