#i think psycho is audacious

[cantsayidont]

I don't want to oversell FEMME FATALE, which is above all a piece of trashy pulp fiction, but something I appreciate about it is that it manages to dodge a particularly irritating tendency in stories of that type, which is what I'd call "the disposable female POV character."

This is a pseudo-protagonist whom we follow at the outset in a way that suggests she is the main character, but whom the narrative then discards or sidelines in favor of the actual male protagonist. In the most notorious example — PSYCHO, a movie I detest and think is wildly overrated — the female pseudo-protagonist is actually killed off for shock value, but while that's not uncommon in stories of this type, there are also quite a few where she's not killed, but simply demoted to love interest, obstacle, or other such second banana. The point is that the pseudo-protagonist is revealed as either not really the main character or not really the protagonist; even if she remains central to the action, she is functionally just a plot device in some male character's story.

FEMME FATALE flirts with this pretty hard: We follow the Rebecca Romijn character, Laure/Lily, through her identity-swap, and the POV then shifts for a while to the Antonio Banderas character, the photographer Bardo. When Bardo encounters Lily, she's acting very oddly, and even though we know who she really is, it's not entirely clear what her deal is. The first time I saw the movie, I assumed the worst; in a lot of these kinds of stories, Bardo would then just take over the plot and the rest of the film would be about how he resolves or tries to resolve the situation. This segment of the script goes on longer than I think it should, but it then makes an unexpectedly strong recovery, revealing that not only does Laure/Lily still have a plan she's been working on the whole time (which Bardo has unwittingly complicated), Bardo is very definitely just a supporting character in her story. Everything that happens in the third act is driven by Laure, either directly or indirectly (there are some important events that she's set in motion even though she doesn't know how they've turned out), and Bardo is reduced to a bystander, as he was when he appeared in the first act.

This shouldn't be a big deal, but I've recently watched some other, more recent pulp fictions, in particular MY NAME and the irritating KLEO, that just can't manage to keep their female main characters in focus narratively, much less make them seem like actual people with even rudimentary thoughts and emotions. In both shows, the notional heroine is not just a supporting character in some specific dude's story, she's constantly being overshadowed by virtually every male character who appears onscreen as anything other than a random goon who's only there to be beaten up. That Brian De Palma, of all people, managed to do better than that more than 20 years ago is a sign of how low the bar is, and how obnoxious it is that TV and film writers so rarely manage to clear it today.

#movies #femme fatale #brian de palma #rebecca romjin #antonio banderas #i do not like hitchcock #his being a misogynist creep is a big part of why #i think psycho is audacious #but once the shock value is gone it has little to offer #and i don't think the narrative ever recovers from the death of the janet leigh character #i'm not suggesting that femme fatale is a feminist movie #it's still pretty exploitative #it's just that it resists the usual bait and switch about who the protagonist is

[byneddiedingo]

Lana Turner and Juanita Moore in Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)

Cast: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Susan Kohner, Sandra Dee, Robert Alda, Dan O'Herlihy, Karin Dicker, Terry Burnham, Troy Donahue, Mahalia Jackson. Screenplay: Eleanore Griffin, Allan Scott, based on a novel by Fannie Hurst. Cinematography: Russell Metty. Art direction: Alexander Golitzen, Richard H. Riedel. Film editing: Milton Carruth. Music: Frank Skinner.

John Gavin was Hollywood's ultimate decorative male, there to look good in bed with Janet Leigh in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) but otherwise to play no significant role in the film. (When he shows up later with Vera Miles, playing Leigh's sister, to find out what happened to Marion Crane, she's the one who does all the work, including the discovery of the mummified Mrs. Bates in the cellar.) It's no surprise that when Gavin died a few years ago, several of the obituaries mentioned the scene in Thoroughly Modern Millie (George Roy Hill, 1967) in which his character is paralyzed by a poison dart: He's been presented as so handsomely wooden that it takes a long time before anyone notices he's just sitting there. He's not quite so inert in Imitation of Life, but that's because Douglas Sirk, like Hitchcock, knew how to make use of him: He's there to hang as nicely on Lana Turner's arm as the Jean Louis gowns do on her body. Unfortunately, this makes for some of the film's weaker scenes, the ones in which Sandra Dee's Susie develops a crush on him, but even there the fault is more Dee's limitations as an actress than Gavin's as an actor. He comes off much better in one of the key scenes, in which his Steve Archer proposes to Turner's Lora Meredith. It works because Turner is skillful enough to make Lora into a woman who knows how not to get trapped by male expectations of what women should be. It's not quite so well-played as the scene in Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942) I wrote about a couple of days ago, in which Charlotte Vale rebuffs Jerry Durrance's suggestion that she should be looking for a man instead of taking care of his daughter, but that's because Lana Turner wasn't Bette Davis. Still, the scene comes off, and it's reinforced later when Lora is the one who proposes to Steve, after she's gotten what she wanted. The film belongs, of course, to the women, not only Turner but also and especially to Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner, who got the Oscar nominations they deserved. It's possible to fault the film for "whitewashing" by casting Kohner as the Black girl who tries to pass for white, especially since in the earlier version of Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl, 1934), the corresponding character was played by Fredi Washington, who was indeed Black. But even to raise the issue of "passing" in 1959, especially in a film that some considered little more than soap opera, was audacious: The Production Code had long forbidden any treatment of miscegenation. And Sirk artfully turns the issue into a generational one: Sarah Jane's desire to be white as a reaction against the subservience of her mother, foreshadowing a generation gap that would be operative in the coming decade's civil rights struggle. Sirk's films have a way of working themselves into your head unexpectedly, putting the lie to my observation that drama makes you think and melodrama makes you feel. Sirk's melodrama -- Imitation of Life is unashamed of the clichés it exploits and usually transcends -- undoubtedly makes you feel. Is there ever a dry eye at showings of the film's funeral finale? But by confronting the problems that underlie the melodrama it also has a sneaky way of making you think.

#Imitation of Life #Douglas Sirk #Lana Turner #Juanita Moore

[katyatalks]

MP100 “Characters & Such Official Guidebook” - Interviews ENG Translation

The Characters & Such Official Guidebook was released mid-April 2019 as a guide for all things related to MP100 season 1 & 2. The guidebook also includes interviews with the voice actors of the main five characters (Mob, Reigen, Dimple, Ritsu, Teru), followed by interviews with Director Tachikawa, Series Coordinator Seko, Character Designer Kameda & finally with ONE himself.

Contains a bunch of interesting trivia and conversations (eg. Tachikawa and Kameda looked at fan art before they began the anime, an alternative past for Reigen was once considered, plenty of references to S3 & broccoli arc.) This is a pretty long read, so please enjoy!

Original thread on Twitter here. TN = Translator’s Note "Bold denotes a direct quote of a question,” & “italics denotes a direct quote of an answer.” I’m a little bit inconsistent with where I decide to give full question and answers rather than summaries here...

--

ITOU SETSUO [Mob]

On being asked how he approached voicing Mob during the audition, he says that he went for something flat as Mob doesn’t really inspire “main character” vibes in him.

He takes it as a compliment when he is told that he’s like Mob as a person.

Initially he didn’t think too much of himself in the role as Mob but after being told by co-stars just how well his voice and performance suit the character, he began to believe it too.

On being asked what’s so charming about Mob, Itou says his honesty, and that he doesn’t take a negative viewpoint. Brings up that when Mob is against a foe, rather than “are you my enemy?” he’ll ask “what are you doing here?”.

Itou’s favourite character is Teru, as he thinks the way Teru behaves with his powers originally is the most realistic in terms of standard human nature.

He says the same thing applies to Shou & Touichirou.

The fact that Mob is different is his strength; the fact that he doesn’t think of his powers as anything special. He gives credit to Reigen for Mob thinking this way about his powers.

“At first, Mob-kun suffered because of his powers. But then he meets shishou, who tells him that his powers are just one part of him - this is linked to why Mob-kun is so charming now.”

Mob considers “you shouldn’t use your powers against people” a given fact.

Itou originally found it difficult to know how far he should go adding emotion to Mob’s voice.

Since MP100 is the first show Itou has been a regular & leading part for, he wanted to be the first person in the recording booth for episode 1, and as a result ended up arriving 45 minutes early.

Asked about his favourite scenes from S1 & S2, he mentions the scene that’s stayed with him is when Mob first appears in S1E1.

Has a few scenes he mentions as favourites; he loves the whole Teru vs Mob fight, but especially when Teru is shouting while using his powers as he recalls the passion Matsuoka [Teru] had when recording it.

He mentions when Mob saves Ritsu in S1E8, also mentions that’s something they covered in the stage play, and that it makes him emotional thinking about it.

Says he loves the scene when Mob shouts “Shishou!” as Reigen is ‘killed’ by Sakurai in S1E11.

Mentions S2E1 as well. “Mob-kun doesn’t express his emotions much, but he does then. Showing his powers to another while crying. I remember being glad when I first read the script for episode 1 as it’s a scene I wanted to do. I think of it as the moment Mob-kun starts to change.”

When asked about the stage play, says he thinks the Mob he portrays in the stage play is slightly different to the one he portrays in the anime.

Asks the fans to please continue to watch over MP100 and Mob’s growth, and it would be good if we could all continue to support MP100 as much as we can, from a stage play angle as well.

SAKURAI TAKAHIRO [Reigen]

Sakurai says if he were to have powers he’d probably use them to commit wrongdoings with.

Asked on his impressions of Reigen, says he sees Reigen as an “unbalanced person”, but thought he was mysterious in season 1.

Thought of Reigen as a fraud and not a good person in S1, but with S2 we see his uchizura (private, more ‘real’ self) and real emotions, so his feelings re: Reigen changed from S1 to S2. “It was hard to know who he was, back in season 1.”

“So you felt pretty strongly that he was simply a fraud?” Sakurai; “Well, he lies to people, but at the same time he does actually put some work in (laughs). Clients go home feeling refreshed, so he definitely gives a good massage.”

Calls Reigen eloquent, and that the things that he says are sound. Calls him a good speaker. Brings up his speech to the “claw guys” (likely referencing S1E12). “He can be irresponsible, but he’s got a mysterious intelligence.”

Says that from the middle to the end of S2 there would be as many as 20-30 people in the studio.

Asked about his favourite episodes S1+S2 inclusive, says S2E1 and that the transition from the end of S1 to S2 is smooth with it. “A really fantastic episode”, “you can also see signs of Mob’s growth.”

“On that note, when Reigen hears that Mob got a girlfriend...” Sakurai; “It’s a shock (laughs). His mind goes blank. ‘There’s no way Mob managed to get a girlfriend,’ is what’s running through his mind. He doesn’t celebrate it. Actually, it’s an upsetting thing for him - since Mob would be all over her, Reigen’s business would end up in trouble (laughs).”

Sakurai describes the “Shishou and Deshi” relationship that Mob & Reigen originally have as something that’s quite fabricated and disregards a lot of truths.

“Reigen was an adult floating in limbo for some time, and starts a business in a calculating move. And it starts going well once he meets Mob in their chance encounter.”

“The nickname ‘Mob’ signifies him as a boy without a presence, and yet it’s from that point that Mob starts to grow, and something like a desire for recognition sprouts within him.” [TN: This appears to be implying that Reigen began the ‘Mob’ nickname.]

Sakurai considers Reigen arc 1) a story in which Mob's popularity skyrockets 2) a story in which we see a more raw side of Reigen and start to like him more.

On being asked if there’s any part of Reigen that he sees in himself, starts off with saying that he tends to give out advice to those younger than him (he’s in his 40s and implies he can’t compare himself to someone who’s young in their 20s). Then after knowing what’s running through Reigen’s head in S2; “I suppose we do overlap in one way or another.”

Sakurai says he was very much one of the “mob” (a nobody) in his 10s.

Finally, asked to give a message to fans; “I’d like to do a Season 3, so please continue to love Mob Psycho 100.”

OOTSUKA AKIO [Dimple]

Asked about his thoughts on MP100, Ootsuka says that the art style of the manga caught his eye - he thought it was fun that the anime doesn’t lose the style of the manga while making it more stylish.

Finds in modern manga, the trend is an ordinary kid will get powers by some chance & the adventure starts from there, but found it interesting that in MP100 Mob has had powers since he was tiny & the adventure begins after he comes crying to Reigen with “I don’t know what to do”.

Also enjoys how Mob isn’t exactly the “main character” type. Thinks that it’s a breath of fresh air in the shounen manga genre.

On being asked about Dimple’s charm, Ootsuka; “He’s bad, but you can’t hate him.”

Says that Dimple is ugly but that’s fun, since most of the time mascot characters are cute.

When asked what was running through his mind when preparing for the role of Dimple, he says “dishonesty, slyness.” Acting as if he’s smarter than people but he actually isn’t.

“Speaking of dishonest/sly adults, I feel Reigen is a different type.” Ootsuka; “I’d say Reigen is more dishonest/sly than Dimple... nah, actually they’re about the same. (Laughs)”

When asked if there was anything he finds difficult about playing Dimple, he says that with other acting jobs he finds it hard to play a character where he can’t connect, but “there’s a similar kind of guy to Dimple that lives inside me. So I just go, ‘oi, come out’ (laughs)”.

Says he thinks we all have a bit of Dimple in us.

Ootsuka is also the narrator in MP100. Said that originally he felt there was a difference in the way he played Dimple & the narrator, but that difference kind of became smaller.

He was told to no longer put on a voice that sounds similar to the person Dimple is possessing for season 2, which disappointed him as he wanted to put on a Mob-like voice for when Dimple possesses Mob in S2E4.

Discussion of how director didn’t like Hoshino’s [Serizawa] original takes as they were too silly. [TN: this is mentioned again by Inoue [Suzuki] and Hoshino [Serizawa] in this interview.]

He recalls bursting into laughter over Iwasaki Hiroshi’s performance as Ishiguro in S1E12.

“Reigen becomes able to see Dimple as well in the last bit of Season 1, so he gains another conversation partner.” Ootsuka; “Reigen and Dimple, they both view the other as unnecessary (laughs). So the back-and-forth they have with that in mind is pretty fun.”

Asked about his favourite scenes or episodes, he says the end of S1E3. Dimple’s “Great morning, isn’t it, partner?” line really stuck with him.

Compares Dimple to a dog by Mob’s side.

“Dimple has the kind of face that you just might want to slap (laughs).” Ootsuka; “Well, that’s why I was careful to not give him a too audacious manner of speaking.” Says the interesting thing about his line of work is really having to think about how to say lines.

Also voiced Dimple for the live action adaptation [TN: AKA Netflix ver]. Says it was fun but found it a massive shame that he wasn’t able to bounce lines off of anyone.

“I really didn’t do much in middle school. I was just a chuunibyou (laughs).”

When asked to give a message to MP100 fans, “You guys wanna see more, right? There’s still more to adapt, isn’t there ;) (laughs). So, we can make a sequel to S2 a reality if everyone works together. A ‘if you speak up, then your dreams might come true!’ vibe (laughs).”

He makes a sneaky reference to Broccoli Arc and wanting to see it animated.

IRINO MIYU  [Ritsu]

On being asked his initial thoughts on MP100, Irino states he originally thought it was a lighthearted jokey manga based on the art style and the way the story was introduced, so he was surprised as the story progressed.

States that Ritsu is a relatable character with the issues that he faces (eg wanting something that’s out of reach so hiding your want).

Asked about anything that was difficult to perform as Ritsu, he states his two-sided nature; his general honour-student self and the other side of him.

Says that when Ritsu enters into his darker side, rather than playing some kind of bad guy Ritsu is simply more frank with how he expresses himself. “He lets the emotions in his heart be heard one by one.”

Irino is asked if he personally admires Mob, to which he replies that he’s jealous of the fact that Mob is so unbeatable.

He says Ritsu must also have the experience of looking at Mob and thinking something like, “Compared to him, I’m just...”

States he himself, Ritsu, and just about anyone has likely yearned to become something overwhelming, but we don’t believe in our ability to achieve that.

Following this, interviewer comments that Mob carries feelings of unease in his heart even though he’s so unbeatable. Irino comments that something fun for him with MP100 is that Mob doesn’t really realise how unbeatable he is.

Something that Ritsu admires about his brother is that he doesn’t show off the fact that he’s unbeatable.

“Even with powers, there’s plenty of things you can’t do.” Irino; “Such as not being able to confess to the girl you like (laughs).”

“Seems like even if he abused his powers he’d still be able to turn heads.” Irino; “Because he’s charming - that’s something good about him. That’s why everyone loves him, and why he gives off main-character-of-a-shounen-manga vibes.”

Asked about his favourite scenes/episodes from seasons 1 & 2, Irino says around when Ritsu's powers are awakened in season 1. He found it interesting to watch how his heart becomes disturbed.

"He finally obtained the thing he'd been longing for, but everything around him that was once so calm gets thrown into disarray."

He also liked it when Ritsu stands atop the telephone pole in S1E7.

Speaking in terms of Power Rangers & character colour association, ever since he was a kid Irino has admired characters that are more blue or black rather than red.

Interviewer comments that Ritsu holds the ‘blue’ role in MP100.

After Mob & Ritsu reconcile, Irino states that he feels Ritsu has come to understand his brother more.

“How should I put it; Ritsu is overprotective, or there’s a side to him that’s too fussy over his big brother...” Irino; “but that kind of brotherly love is pleasant to see.”

“In Season 2, Ritsu and Shou go through a joint struggle.” Irino; “Shou’s father has tremendous powers, and he has one fear with that; he doesn’t know when his father will go on a rampage. Their circumstances are similar, in that sense.”

“Truth is, in parts MP100 is quite like your typical shounen manga.” Irino replies that there’s a bunch of great lines in the manga, and importance hidden within casual words.

Following this response he’s asked if there’s certain line(s) from MP100 that have stuck with him, to which Irino replies quite a few of Reigen’s. “During the last part of season 1 when he marches into Claw’s hideout, you get to hear a lot of his thoughts. It’s hard to tell if he’s being truthful with the things he says or if he’s lying, and on top of that he says quite a few important things. That unbalance is interesting.”

“The broadcast of season 2 has already come to an end...” Irino replies that he’d like the MP100 anime to continue and adapt the manga to the very end.

“I’m sure all the fans feel the same way.” Irino; “Everyone worked together as one to create the MP100 anime. For it to continue, we need your support; so please continue to give that to us.”

MATSUOKA YOSHITSUGU [Teru]

Asked his initial thoughts on MP100, Matsuoka says it was that it’s a piece that you can easily empathise with; regardless of if you’re in primary school, middle school, high school, an adult, an old man or woman...

Matsuoka thinks of the anime as something you watch and go, “I’ll try my best tomorrow, too.”

Matsuoka voices both Teru and Tokugawa in MP100. He was first offered the voice of Teru, and then it was decided he’d also voice Tokugawa.

It’s brought up that Tokugawa appears earlier in the show than Teru. “They’re two very different people, so in that sense performing both roles was easy. If they’d been similar characters I think there would be some confusion.”

Regarding Tokugawa, Matsuoka describes him as being quite firmly in the “student council” role with how strict and resolute his character is, in a way that Matsuoka himself very much isn’t.

Describes him as a cool-headed person, but given the way he interacts with Kamuro and is able to persuade him, says he has a hot-headed element to him as well. Matsuoka uses this as an example of how MP100 shows us the multifacetedness of human nature.

Regarding his other character, Teru; describes him as the personification of ‘chuunibyou’. “I think of him as the embodiment of the answer to the question, ‘if you had powers, what would you do?’”

One line he still remembers from S1 is Teru’s “Muscle training? Studying? That’s for ordinary people!” Matsuoka says that there’s a part of him that agreed with that line, and he says that if he were to get powers he’d likely be as conceited as Teru was.

States that Mob’s “From my perspective you’re just ordinary” line also stuck with him.

“From S1E5?” Matsuoka; “Yes - and then Teru replies, 'shut up!', and strangles Mob.” He says that he was really able to project his own emotions during this part and mix them with Teru’s own.

“People can’t change so easily” - Matsuoka says the things that Teru was saying to Mob, he was also saying to himself, like looking in a mirror. Uses this as an example of Teru’s own multifaceted nature.

Matsuoka says that the original Teru we see (who the interviewer describes as having a "poisonous nature" & putting on airs) is simply playing the role of what he considers to be an 'ideal' person, but then that comes away and we're left with the real Teru.

Interviewer makes a joke that Teru gets his personality trimmed along with his hair.

Is asked about Mob & Teru's rivalry, and says "No way, no way - there's no way they're /actually/ rivals." Says the power difference between Mob and Teru is way too big for that to actually be the case - "compared to Mob, Teru is ordinary."

Calls MP100 a work from which you realise "Everyone is a hero, and everyone is ordinary".

Asked on his opinion on MP100 season 2; says that there's more moments that get to you emotionally than season 1. Brings up S2E8 as an example (when Mob's house burns). "Say if that was actually Mob's family who burned in there... I think he'd destroy the world."

Asked about his favourite scenes from season 1 & 2, he says (as previously mentioned) the part where Mob says “From my perspective you’re just ordinary”. He also likes when Teru says to Onigawara, "it must be sad to be ordinary."

He likes the whole of S1E4, and calls Dimple a "famous-saying-production-machine".

Continuing on the topic of Dimple, interviewer says that Dimple is an ally, but teeters between good and evil. Matsuoka; “Setting aside his actions for a moment - the things that he says are essentially evil (laughs). He tries to tempt Mob and the other characters.”

He is asked if he has anything to say to fans of MP100. Matsuoka; “Season 2 is over, and now you’re holding this Character Guidebook in your hands. The fact that we’ve reached this point is thanks to the support of you all, the fans.” [...] “Season 2 brings an end to the grand fight between Shou and his father, but as those of you who’ve read the manga know, Mob Psycho 100 doesn’t end there. The giant broccoli is yet to come (laughs). I personally would like to do the whole of Broccoli Arc. As for when we can do that, I don’t know - I don’t even know if it’ll be possible to do it - but I’d like to believe that we’ll do it. I think that if you all believe in it too, then it’ll become reality.”

TACHIKAWA YUZURU [Director]

On being asked why he decided to work on MP100, Tachikawa; “Naturally, it was because of how charming the characters are.” There’s a lot of main characters who hold immense power, but Mob doesn’t want those powers, which is rare - this is why he finds Mob charming.

He compares and contrasts to Reigen - “[He] has no powers, but puts on a bold front and deceives people… well, that’s a misleading way to put it (laughs).” He thinks Mob and Reigen’s combo is amusing as a result.

He’s asked about MP100s character design, to which he describes Kameda drawing up a whole bunch of ideas. There’d be designs that were similar to ONE’s, and designs that made Mob a bit more handsome, “since at the time, if you looked at Mob Psycho 100 fan art on the internet, there were plenty of depictions of Mob being all sparkly and good-looking.”

“But looking at that, Kameda-kun and I decided we both wanted to go for something more akin to ONE-san’s art. When we showed ONE-san the rough sketches of the more handsome designs, he said ‘they’re attractive - I'm good with that’, but Kameda-kun and I replied ‘no, no - ONE-san, your art leaves more of an impression than this, so let’s go for something more like what you draw.’”

Tachikawa wanted to include the more ‘catchy’ kinds of stories in the anime. He brings up that Mob and Reigen dressing in women’s clothing and infiltrating the school happens in Volume 7 of the manga, but they decided to bring that to S1E2.

Asked about convos that happened with ONE regarding scenarios in the anime - Tachikawa mentions how in S1E11, there’s a segment where a younger Mob and Ritsu are lost in a forest. “I expressed to ONE-san that I’d like to witness why Mob respects Ritsu, to which he gave this idea.”

“In the manga, what Reigen did before he began S&S isn’t shown to us, but we get an implication of his past based on a line he says to do with businesses. I said the following to ONE-san; ‘An insurance salesman, or water marketing?’, to which ONE-san replied ‘water marketing.’”

Also mentions that Tsubomi coming to S&S in S2E8 wasn't something they adapted from the manga, but something ONE specifically created for the anime because Tachikawa expressed he wanted to see that kind of scenario, and then ONE added it as an omake to the manga. [TN: This is mentioned again here.]

He thinks he would have had the choice to handle both the screenplay and the series coordination but decided to ask Seko to handle Series Co-ordination instead.

He is in charge of the screenplay for S2E6-7 (Reigen arc). It was decided that Tachikawa would be in charge of storyboards for S2E7 before it was decided he’d handle the screenplay.

“Do you feel you have an emotional attachment to Reigen?” Tachikawa; “Yes, I do (laughs).” Calls him a character surrounded by mystery back in S1, and other than his courage and the occasional line that would resonate with Mob there’s a lot about him that’s unclear. “But with S2E6-7, we step into his uchizura (more private, “real” self). It’s interesting to see who a character appears to be on the outside, and their uchizura.”

Tachikawa finds stories in which someone falls to their lowest point and then recovers charming - thus, Tachikawa was charmed by S2E6-7 which depict Reigen’s fall and his subsequent recovery. Says that Ritsu and Teru also go through something similar (fall and recovery).

He loves when you can feel the humanity of characters. Says that when you show character development the charm of that character increases, and so does the popularity of the whole work. “I suppose it’s not just me who likes that, it’s all the fans, too”.

Makes a point of mentioning that all the characters have reached a turning point by the end of season 2, apart from Dimple.

Asked on his opinion of Mob, he says he relates to him and he was the type of kid in school to be in a position removed from everyone else. “He’s a character I really like, though I’m told by others that I’m ‘Reigen-ish’ (laughs).”

“I think there’s a few ways you could take ‘Reigen-ish’...” Tachikawa; “To put it another way, ‘shady’. Kameda-kun made that clear to me (laughs). As if I’m feigning friendliness.”

Tachikawa handled the rough layout of the illustration cover (Kameda finalised it). “It’s something I could imagine happening that wasn’t shown to us during S2E8. I thought to myself, it would be nice to show Dimple, Reigen and Ritsu working together for Mob’s sake. A theme of season 1 and 2 is Mob’s growth, so I thought the marathon episode would fit as a cover for this guidebook. As a result of his growth, he’s got people gathered around him…”

“I think Reigen would’ve run with them on the first day they trained together, but then he’d start using the bike instead. Since his muscles hurt (laughs).”

Asked to give a message to fans, he says that all the support from fans gave them a lot of energy throughout the production of seasons 1 & 2. Tells the fans to enjoy the OVA.

SEKO HIROSHI [Series Co-ordinator]

Asked on his thoughts of the MP100 manga, Seko; “it’s a work in which the characters are all charming. This is a misleading way to phrase it, but they’re a hopeless bunch; yet, the way ONE-san deals with them is very warm.”

“They’re not just characters, they’re much like us - nothing but human.”

Asked about how he wanted to deal with coordinating the series; “At the time of season 1 discussions, the most recent volume was around 9. I’d read up to that point and thought that if the anime is covering 12 episodes, then we should reach up to the fight with Claw’s seventh division in volume 6. My thought process from there was, ‘in what way can we make it so season 1 ends there?’, and with that I began.”

Asked if there was anything he fussed over, “making sure to not tar what makes the manga so charming. For example, when Mob reaches 100% for the first time in S1E3, that’s a highlight of the story, and I wanted to keep it that way.”

Reason for the movement of the high school infiltration from Vol 7 of the manga to S1E2 was to help build up to Mob’s 100% in S1E3.

The “student council” part of the manga spans S1E6-7 of the anime. The decision to condense it was due to the anime having only 12 episodes.

Reigen & Mob’s initial meeting being portrayed in S1 is brought up; “In a screenplay meeting with Tachikawa-san, we discussed depicting their initial meeting from Mob’s point of view, whereas in the manga it’s from Reigen’s. It comes up a little later in the manga but we thought it would be good to show their meeting in S1. And, if we ever got the chance to make a S2, we’d have the scene again much like it appears in the manga from Reigen’s perspective. So they wouldn’t be entirely the same scene.”

To being asked if there were any requests from ONE regarding the screenplay of the anime, Seko; “We had a discussion in which he said that while the final part of S1 has a serious atmosphere due to the fight, he didn’t want it to end that way. For that reason I proposed that we could end S1 with the tsuchinoko segment. I think ONE-san is uncomfortable when there’s nothing but seriousness.”

Seko says he had a feeling that they’d get a season 2. Much like season 1, he finished off season 2 in such that way as to give off the impression that there’s more to come.

“Did you struggle figuring out how to start S2E1?” Seko; “Regarding that, I’d already decided that if we were to make a S2 we’d start it off with Wriggle Wriggle.”

A deliberate choice was made to start off S2, and finish S2, with the broccoli (Mob receives the broccoli seeds at the start; broccoli becomes the giant broccoli at the end).

The interviewer describes an important part of S2 as being “hold your emotions dear to you”.

Seko; “Wriggle Wriggle is a pretty silly story, so I thought having a pleasant story after that would keep the balance. I think that balance between silly and serious is representative of what Mob Psycho 100 is.”

“Season 2 has one more episode than season 1, making it a total of 13 episodes. Could you tell us why?” Seko; “The original plan was 12 episodes. Had we kept to that, the scene in which Mob’s house burns would come at the end of part A of episode 8. But Warner Bros. producer Matsuda-san said, ‘I’d like that to come at the end of the episode.’ However, doing that would mean we’d have to give the battle with Claw that follows that a squeeze... so Matsuda-san said, ‘let’s go for 13 episodes then.’” [TN: This is mentioned again here.]

“Are there any scenes from S1 & S2 that you feel an emotional attachment to?” Seko says when Reigen is invincible in S1E12. “The scene in which he scolds the 7th division embodies what Mob Psycho 100 is all about.”

Says that in typical shounen manga the situation would be resolved with a fight but MP100 isn’t like that. “The things that Reigen says are completely justified, realistically. The things an evil organisation does are a crime; the clothes that they wear are weird... (Laughs)”

“Speaking of Reigen, a phrase of his that leaves an impression in S1E11 is, ‘When things get tough, it’s okay to run away!’” Seko; “In conventional shounen manga, there’s the belief that the protagonist shouldn’t run away, but with ‘it’s okay’, ONE-san’s personality shines through. Reigen is truly an intelligent person. The things he does are questionable, yet he has common sense that comes out at strange times.”

“You can’t sum up his character in a single word.” Seko; “I think he’s a respectable person, but he also cons people (laughs).” He enjoys the back and forth Reigen has with clients, and his stinginess and the way he edits ghost photos. “He’s both eloquent and skilled, which is unbearable (laughs). Despite that, he doesn’t rip people off with what he charges. You get the idea that he’s got some sense of ethics, which is calming.”

“He’s simply a difficult character to understand.” Seko; “Honestly, at first I couldn’t understand him at all. It was difficult to think of things that he might say when creating scenes that weren’t in the original manga. But when it became clear to me that he has morals, it all fell into place. I’ve forgotten when exactly this happened - it was at some point near the start or middle of season 1 - but I came to understand the kind of person Reigen is.”

Speaking about Mob, “He’s introverted, quiet and bad at socialising, but he has this immense power inside him... when you hear that, some other works will probably spring to mind, but when you read MP100 you realise this is different. Mob is Mob[.]”

“It’s interesting to see a character as powerful as he is work very hard at training his muscles.” Seko; “And his incentive for that is that he wants to be popular (laughs).”

Seko was in charge of the next episode previews (which Reigen would announce in a meta-ish way). He says that he ran out of ideas of what to end them with by season 2 so they start repeating a little.

Asked to give a message to fans, he says thank you for watching S2 and look forward to the OVA.

KAMEDA YOSHIMICHI [Character Designer]

Asked his thoughts on the MP100 manga, Kameda says he didn’t have much of a clue what direction the story would take upon finishing the second volume. “After Claw gets introduced the story takes on an action-like atmosphere so I thought it would carry on that way, but then the story starts digging deep into uchizuras. I was surprised at that. That’s a true-to-life middle school boy being depicted.”

Kameda says that he took on working on the MP100 anime after reaching the part of mob psycho that explores uchizuras. “The way I felt was, ‘I want us to make a season 2, so we can definitely animate this part. I’m doing season 1 for this purpose.’ (Laughs)”

“What were your first thoughts with the character design?” Kameda; “In the manga there aren’t really any illustrations that are coloured. Even the front covers of the volumes aren’t too expressive with how they use colour. The way lines are drawn is dependent on colour, so the first decision to be made was on that subject, while checking my choices with ONE-san. In the manga, Reigen’s tie is black. But in the anime Mob is painted all black, so I thought it’d be a bit too heavy to leave his tie that way. Reigen was the only one with a coloured illustration in which his hair is painted yellow, so based on that I tried creating a whole bunch of tie patterns - purple, green, blue, pink, etc. ONE-san wanted to go for a blue tie, but I thought that was too salary man-ish, and didn’t give off fraud vibes. The final decision was made based on a colour necktie that the average person wouldn’t buy - it would be pink, wouldn’t it.”

Asked if there was anything difficult after colours, he describes having difficulty trying to figure out how to convert ONE’s style to the screen. “It would’ve been interesting to leave his art as it was for the anime, but it seemed like it would’ve been very difficult to do so.”

Describes ONE’s talent as being the way he applies shadow, calling it very real.

Interviewer follows on this by asking anything else that marks ONE’s art as ONE’s, to which Kameda replies the shape of ears, and describes his struggle trying to replicate the way ONE draws them.

Kameda would correct the ears drawn by the other animators to try and match ONE’s style. Leading on from this the interviewer mentions hearing that Kameda would touch up any cuts that caught his eye. Kameda; “Around 10 cuts an episode.”

Calls Mezato a favourite character of his, to the extent that he volunteered to do the part that she appears in S2E13 (and did so).

Says that S1E5 was the only episode in S1 he didn’t touch, which Fujisawa Kenichi was animation director of. “The character design in that episode is a little different but I thought that episode would be better off with Fujisawa-san’s style.”

Kameda proposed the scene that happens at the start of S1S1 (Mob fighting the “evil apparitions”) by saying he wanted a depiction of a middle school boy fighting with his powers as our start, but he actually proposed it in anticipation of the kind of action we’d see in S2E5. [TN: I think it’s been a rumour for a while that the start scene is from Mogami arc and this sorta confirms that the line of thought there is correct]

The first episode in S2 that they started drawing production work for was S2E5.

When Kameda watched S2E5 what he was most surprised by was Part A of the episode (ie. Mob’s day to day life), rather than the action scenes. “The layout is good, as are the use of bugs as an expression device[.]”

Kameda speaks of S2E7 as a part of Mob Psycho 100 so important to him that if it didn’t exist he wouldn’t have chosen to work on MP100.

He fussed over the press conference and Reigen’s expression(s) when he talks to Mob by the river at the end of the episode.

Interviewer mentions that we don’t see Reigen’s face in the manga when Mob calls him a good person, so seeing it in the anime leaves an impression. Kameda; “we struggled with that cut, but we struggled with Reigen’s expression when he’s walking alongside the river more so. Originally his expression was hidden as he approached, but when the camera pulled in close you could see his face.”

We end up seeing his face the whole way through. Kameda calls Aoyama Hiroyuki (who animated the whole end segment) a “super(hero) animator”.

Kameda makes an edit to Reigen’s expression upon being told by Mob that he’s a good person, with respect to the expression Reigen pulls in the final volume, “when [he] lays bare his real emotions to Mob.” [TN: This appears to be implying Reigen was originally drawn with tears in his eyes that were removed to make sure that the scene in which Reigen finally cries maintains its impact.]

“The performance by Reigen’s VA, Sakurai-san, was amazing... and I loved Mob’s ‘By the way, Shishou. Happy birthday.’ Itou-kun’s way of speaking is so gentle... I can’t quite express the feeling properly, but hearing him say those words, I was brought close to tears.”

Kameda is asked if there’s anything that proved a lot of work, to which he says, “Hmm... there’s a lot of characters in MP100, aren’t there. (Laughs)”.

Describes that he designed ~90 characters for S1. “I thought I’d get to relax a little for S2, but in the end I ended up having to design around 90 more. (Laughs)”

“Some of the main character designs that were established in S1 changed a little for S2, didn’t they.” Kameda; “Ritsu changed a little with S2. In S1 he had a bit of antagonism toward Mob, so I had the hair that frames his face be a little longer to try and hide those emotions.”

“A character’s state of mind is something that can be expressed through their hair.” Says that Ritsu’s hair gets a refresh in the final part of S1 when he’s talking to Kamuro in the park, to represent that the “demon plaguing him is gone”.

He’s asked if there are any characters in the huge cast of MP100 that are memorable for him. He mentions Tarou and Hanako as two characters that were fun to draw as they set the trend for the other “guest characters” in the show.

Also says he likes Mitsuura as a character with high energy who was fun to pose, though he’s unpopular with the animators due to the patterns on his clothes being a pain.

“I’ve mentioned this here and there before, but I really love Shinra Banshoumaru. The reason why I was the animation director for S2E2 is because it’s his entry episode (laughs).”

“Why did you want to draw Shinra Banshoumaru so much?” Kameda; “Because he’s chubby!! The swell of his cheeks, his tummy, his large butt... I’m obsessed (laughs). I was so charmed, thinking, ‘I want to make him even bigger and move him around!’”

He’d do things like add extra belly sways to the storyboards. “I didn’t intend to go as far as I did, but I think I went overboard in a lot of ways (laughs).”

Asked to give a message to fans, Kameda; “I’m happy that you all continue to involve yourselves with Mob Psycho 100. Since we’ve come this far, I want to finish off animating what remains of the MP100 manga. A television season 3 - no, wait, perhaps even a film...? Please be sure to continue to support Mob Psycho 100.”

[TN: this marks the fourth mention of a MP100 film I’ve seen from Kameda, and also marks him as the only member of production staff interviewed in this book to explicitly state anything to do with season 3.]

ONE [Original Author]

He is asked how Mob Psycho 100 came to be. ONE; “I love psychic powers as a theme, so I thought to myself, in what way can I make the most of that theme? How can I add colour to it? Through that thought process, I incorporated puberty, stress, ‘being used’, complexes, unrequited love, ‘shishou’, lies, the dual nature that exists in many things, and so on… then, the protagonist; a passive, introverted person, but someone who is able to become the eye of a hurricane, someone who through the influence of their relationships changes, grows… it was with that foundation that I began developing the plot, and through that process I solidified the setting; this protagonist would have their heart burdened by a buildup of stress and the shift of their feelings, and after passing a certain boundary they’d explode, and their powers would run wild… I thought it would be nice if the manga was a little strange, with the buildup until the boundary crossover being shown to the reader via a numerical percentage value. Ideas for titles included things like, ‘Mob Psycho’, ‘Psycho Helmet’, and ‘Mob Psycho 100%’.”

He is asked to recall how he felt when the MP100 anime was confirmed. ONE; “I was delighted. A lot has happened in relation to Mob Psycho 100, but for me the anime has been the thing to make me the most happy.”

He is asked what he hoped for with the anime, to which he replies the happiness of the fans, and for MP100 to bring a smile to the faces of the staff working on the anime.

What he looked forward to was the way the voice actors and animators would approach the characters, and how they’d flesh out the MP100 world as a result.

“What kinds of conversations did you have with director Tachikawa?” ONE says he doesn’t really remember their initial conversation(s) but he knows that he told Tachikawa that he has the freedom to be as creative as he wants. “I didn’t want to be a nuisance.”

He recalls being told by series coordinator Seko that he may need to shift around a few of the chapters to make the story in the anime flow a little easier.

Asked his thoughts on Kameda’s character designs, ONE; “Amazing. I’d resigned myself to the fact that the characters would get an overhaul for the anime and become more handsome, but Mob has remained Mob, Reigen has remained Reigen. Their anime designs are charming. I was moved.”

He says he holds several pages of character designs drafts that Kameda drew up dear to him, and mentions that the Body Improvement Clubs designs were perfect from the get go.

ONE says that he feels blessed with the amazing voice actors giving depth to the characters, describing how when they’re given voices it feels like they’re alive, and regrets that he didn’t go to recording sessions more.

“How did you feel when season 2 was announced?” ONE: “Season 1 was amazing, so I expected there’d be a season 2.” Describes Tachikawa and Kameda’s hard work, to which he responded with his own. “It was around the time that I was ending the manga, so I buckled down to finish it.”

He looked forward to seeing how the anime would deal with adapting the more “drama” feel of season 2, with human emotions being explored.

He describes his process with writing problems and their solutions in MP100. “Mob & Reigen each have their own way of dealing with a problem, so I’d say, ‘this is how this problem would generally be dealt with’, and from there I’d explore different ways of solving that problem.”

“I let the characters start thinking for themselves - that kind of delusion awoke within me. Like, ‘Hey, Reigen, I’m going to sleep, so think it over for me.’ With that, it became easier to plan.”

He is asked his thoughts and feelings on the anime; he states he doesn’t really watch anime but was reminded of how interesting it can be, and the power of anime as simple entertainment. “I was able to recognise anew just how amazing the production team is. [...] I felt so grateful that they chose to work on Mob Psycho 100, devoting their precious time to really putting their all into the production work. It’s how I’ve felt with every episode. Right now I’ve watched up until the end of S2E5, but I’m already running out of tissues.”

He is asked anything that’s left an impression on him during the broadcast of MP100; “The amount of correspondence I’d receive from overseas Mob Psycho fans increased with the anime broadcast.” Says that it’s amazing that even with a translation foreign fans are able to laugh at the same things, be moved by the same things, etc.

Finally, he is asked to give a message to the fans who purchased the guidebook. ONE; “Thank you for always supporting Mob Psycho 100. The way I see the situation regarding Mob Psycho 100 as a work is as something that overlaps with Mob’s own development. Mob Psycho’s value as a piece of entertainment greatly increased with the powerful aid of the anime, and with everyone who offered a hand, gave their opinions and support, and reached out. I’d always thought to myself, ‘I want to create a manga that’s able to influence those who read it in some way, if only even a little,’ but as it turns out it’s Mob Psycho 100 that has become what it is now thanks to all of you. I’ve still got my eye on what Mob Psycho 100 will become in the future. Nothing would make me more happy than for all of you to continue enjoying Mob Psycho 100.“

--

Thank you for reading!

Posted on twitter here.

ONE & Director Tachikawa’s comments on the main five are here.

#mp100 #mob psycho 100 #kageyama shigeo #reigen arataka #dimple #kageyama ritsu #hanazawa teruki #tachikawa yuzuru #seko hiroshi #kameda yoshimichi #one #ekubo #my stuff #this is a long one!

[thingsreadinthedark]

An audacious time-waster.

DNF at 41%..

Okay, so boom.. it’s been a minute since I DNF’d a garbage book.

American Psycho reminds me that white men got away with so much nonsense in the 90s.

This book was gratuitous, shallow, vapid, absolutely nonsensical, almost latently homoerotic, racist. I couldn’t push myself to get through any more of it as soon as I hit the passage of the dog getting gutted and then the gay man getting gutted. It was just fucking nonsense. I guess he’s aware that he’s a troll and has been an OG troll since the beginning of time. See below:

As earlier stated, I came to this book after the novel cure recommended it for people suffering from over-spending/excessive shopping and I think you get the cure in the first couple of chapters, I’ve been feeling cured.. absolutely no need to read this in it’s entirety.

You know what’s funny about this book — I’m not even offended by it, I just find the fact that it was so hyped and exalted by the culture for so long, stupid.

Maybe it’s good as a movie, I can’t speak to that really because of the fact I’ve never seen it in it’s entirety, just clip after clip, but I really thought that because it was so overhyped there was some quality to be appreciated about the writing. Maybe I didn’t wait around for the payoff, but fuck - with how tasteless each scene played out… it was hard to put myself through the nonsense for what result? *It’s all in his head? * — read that in another person’s review, but that shit ain’t worth the time. This book reads like it may have been edgy and cool when it came out but now 30 years in the future, it’s aged like milk left out on a hot counter.

There’s levels to the mania in the book and that might be its only redeeming quality. You can see that the main character Patrick Bateman hates himself, though he’s pretending like he loves himself. I just couldn’t go through it with him anymore because I can’t give myself over to screaming white male rage, violence or madness anymore than we already do in the real world. If I can bypass engaging with it when I don’t have to, I will.

#chantel’s reading notes #chantel’s reading diary #weekend readers #weekend reads #american psycho #trash #bret easton ellis #white trash

[moonshinemonty]

I started thinking about Littlefinger asking Sansa why she’s not happy and I can’t stop. I know this is often referenced as a Jonsa scene, which I get, but even beyond that the context is baffling.

Imagine asking that of a woman who

watched her beloved wolf be murdered for no reason

watched her father be gruesomely executed and later made to look at his severed head

was beaten, used and humiliated as a political pawn as a CHILD in a place she had no one

found out her eldest brother and mother were murdered in the same night (the same 2 family members who were supposed to win a war to liberate her and also take down the house who killed her father)

was married to tyrion as a further act of humiliation and a reminder that she has no control over her life (again, still a child here)

was held hostage by a creepy older dude who was in love with her and made her call him father

was then almost murdered by her crazy aunt because she saw said creepy older dude kiss sansa (against sansa’s will)

was sold like a goat to a man who violated and invaded her home, allegedly murdered her two baby brothers and raped her repeatedly

saw a maid murdered and flayed for trying to help her escape

then saw her baby brother who she recently learned was not dead after all be murdered trying to escape her psycho husband

Like that’s not even everything but...I mean. That scene is truly the most audacious “you should smile more” of all time. 

#got #sansa stark #game of thrones

[thedeaditeslayer]

Sam Raimi on his favourite horror movies.

This interview from Den of Geek showcases a look at the horror movies that influenced Sam Raimi. The interview is below.

Sam Raimi might not have directed a movie since 2013’s Oz: The Great And Powerful, but he remains one of the industry’s most beloved and respected genre filmmakers. As the creator of the Evil Dead series and the man who rescued Spider-Man from development hell and introduced him to the big screen, Raimi has more than earned his geek stripes. And while he hasn’t stepped behind the camera for a while, he has been supporting other horror filmmakers as a producer, on films such as Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe and, most recently, Alexandre Aja’s gator thriller, Crawl.

A snappy (pardon the pun) creature feature that clocks in at under 90 minutes, Crawl is a lean and tense example of effective genre filmmaking. And that’s just one of the reasons why Raimi was tempted on board to produce the project. “I’ve never been a brainiac or a guy who works with very deep horror themes,” he admits when Den Of Geek catches up with him to talk about Crawl and horror movies in general. “It’s really a primal experience, and for me the simpler the better, the more direct the more effective, the shorter the better.”

“I think what Alex understands so well – and certainly demonstrated on Crawl – is that the audience wants a rollercoaster ride that kicks them in the butt, flips them on their head and then dumps them out before they’re ready. I don’t think two-hour stories – or longer nowadays – suits the subject matter. A campfire ghost story is the right length for me. If you could make horror movies that were eight minutes long, that would be perfect. Unfortunately, movies don't let you do that – no one wants to go into a theatre and be kicked out before they’ve even finished their popcorn.”

Funny, affable and an all-around good egg, Raimi is happy to chat at length about the genre in which he made his name. Having been a flag-waving supporter of horror since his breakout movie, 1981’s The Evil Dead, Raimi is clearly a man who knows a thing or two about what makes a decent chiller. He might not have directed Crawl, but it’s clear to see how it fits with his sensibilities as a genre lover. He’s also, as it turns out, a big fan of a monster movie.

The premise of Crawl is, as Raimi says, simple and direct. Uni student and aspiring swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) and her dad (Barry Pepper) are trapped inside their Florida family home during a hurricane, faced with rising flood waters and a congregation of invading alligators. “What I liked about the movie was that it’s a plausible scenario: alligators seek high ground in the floods and more and more in the US, the southern area of our country is being flooded,” Raimi explains. “It’s like instant horror.

“I love the fact that it doesn't take a science fiction premise to bring this to life,” he adds. “I don't need a giant monster – I'll take my radiation at the beach and I’m happy to cook a hot dog with it, but I don’t want my monsters to be radioactive. I love the fact that these monsters just live in Florida and the circumstance of this screenplay brings them into a person’s home.” Or, as Raimi’s co-producer Craig Flores puts it (while still chuckling to himself at Raimi’s take on mutated monsters): “The invasion of this natural element into an unnatural environment like our homes, where we have TVs and computers and couches, is a terrifying thought. It's a very disturbing image.”

Not only does Raimi love a good old movie monster, but he’s also a fan of the less-is-more philosophy, too – the “great craftsmanship” of Spielberg’s Jaws being a prime example (although, Raimi says, he counts that as “more of a brilliant adventure film with very effective elements of horror” than a horror film per se).

“It's true, the audience can craft more frightening things than we can show them, but it’s also the filmmaker’s responsibility to plant the fertile seeds in the minds of the audience so they can grow their own monster,” Raimi explains. “On Crawl, I think Alex was aware of not showing the creatures too much. You have to let the audience use their imagination and just give them the right amount to build their nightmare.”

Producing films is one thing, but there’s one big question on our lips: will we see Raimi returning to the director’s chair in the near future? “I’m trying to find a good script,” he says. “I don't want to give the audience something they expect. You know, it’s hard to find a great original script and it’s even harder to recognise it as that because it is so different. So that’s the nutty search I'm on right now.”

In the meantime, given all this talk of horror, monsters and “primal experiences”, we decided to ask Raimi about his favourite genre movies – and here’s what he had to say…

The first horror movie I saw

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

Raimi says that he was just a boy when he first encountered George A Romero’s seminal zombie movie, and it left a huge mark on the future filmmaker. “I was about nine years old, and my sister snuck me in because I wasn't old enough,” he recalls. “In Michigan [Raimi’s home state], we have tremendous winters and so she had this long coat, and I was tiny enough that I could do this little shuffle walk underneath it and believe it or not sneak into the theatre.

“God I wish I had stayed in that coat,” he laughs. “I really had never been so terrified in my life. I was screaming and shrieking, begging my sister to take me home, and she was trying to shut me up. I'd never experienced horror like that before. It felt so real, like a docu-horror. I had never seen a black-and-white movie in a movie theatre before; it looked like a documentary. There was nothing Hollywood about it – it was just unrelenting and complete madness and very upsetting for me. It left a tremendous impression on me as a filmmaker and I think that’s why The Evil Dead was so influenced by Night Of The Living Dead, because that’s really what a horror film was for me.”

My favourite Hitchcock horror

Psycho (1960)

When Flores and Raimi showed early cuts of Crawl to two of their peers, they both independently referenced the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, saying that it felt like “The Birds with alligators”. But The Birds isn’t Raimi’s favourite Hitch flick… “I love Psycho,” he says. “Bernard Herrmann's music is so thrilling, so rich. I love that Hitchcock recognised the greatness of making the audience identify with the hero and then ending her life and introducing the real horror of the story, completely blowing our minds.

“It’s shocking even to this day that he had the audacity to do that. When that happens, you realise you're in the hands of a filmmaker who's capable of doing anything. The whole grasp of the experience is quite terrifying: anything can happen, nothing is sacred, the hero can and does die. So nothing is off-limits. But his choice of shots, his composition, and the brilliant performances that he gets from all the actors are stunning.”

My most influential horror movie

Night Of The Demon (1957)

While Night Of The Living Dead ignited Raimi’s love of the genre, there was one film that cemented it – Jacques Tourneur’s occult classic, Night Of The Demon. “That was such a great film,” says Raimi. “I’m very much influenced by that film even today. My brother Ivan [a scriptwriter] and I were affected by it so much that its influence can be seen directly in a movie we made called Drag Me To Hell, which really is based on Jacques Tourneur’s film. The whole idea of a curse that can be handed down to another, of an unstoppable thing from hell that's coming to get you, is really terrifying. That was really the basis for our movie.”

The modern horror that impressed me

Switchblade Romance (2003)

One of the reasons that Raimi wanted to produce Crawl was the opportunity to work with Alexandre Aja, a director who’d been on Raimi’s radar since his audacious breakout, Haute Tension – better known as Switchblade Romance in the UK. “Around 2004, I asked Alex to direct a movie I was producing called The Messengers, starring Kristen Stewart, but he was busy on The Hills Have Eyes at the time so he couldn’t,” Raimi reveals (the gig eventually went to The Eye’s the Pang brothers).

“I love Haute Tension,” he continues. “I think it was as simple as the way I felt in the theatre – terrified and on the edge of my seat. I didn't know what was going to come next – my expectations kept being thwarted and I really felt that he as a filmmaker knew what I was going through. He was like a puppeteer, pulling one string and then another, and then knowing that I would react one way and then and waiting for me down that alley, where he’d planned yet another surprise. I really felt he had the mind of a maze-maker. He seemed to have a complex awareness of the audience and what their thought process must be, and understanding the timing of things. It’s really a kind of frightening ability if you think about it: how could he know what I would be thinking; how would he be prepared for my reaction? And yet he was. I felt like I was in the hands of a master.”

The last horror I saw and loved

Get Out (2017)

Jordan Peele’s much-lauded social horror Get Out was the last film to really get under Raimi’s skin. “I think that was the last one that really knocked me for a loop,” he says. “It’s just brilliant and original. I love the social commentary, I love the brilliant performance from the lead actress, Allison Williams – she was great. Great directing and funny, too – I just thought that was beautifully done.”

But, as a filmmaker with experience on both indie horrors and big-budget studio pics, Raimi says that Get Out’s awards-season success, while deserved, could come at a price for the genre. “That respectability – it's something gained and something lost, honestly,” he reckons. “I love that makers of the genre are finally being recognised as artists, and yet personally I like working as a filmmaker in disrespected genres - they are better places to hide out and practice my craft. Somehow it's healthier making horror movies there in the darkness away from the sunlight, where things can fester and mould, decay…”

#Sam Raimi

[harrison-abbott]

In Psycho (1960) there is the famous shower scene, the famous stairwell scene and the climax scene with the chair and Mrs Bates. But, watch this one. Watch the way the dialogue works. How crafty it is. Martin Balsam and Anthony Perkins are cast perfectly. The way Perkins stutters when Arbogast asks him which morning she left. I don’t think anybody can fault Psycho. It’s perfect as a film. 100%. I think the audacious thing about the movie (and of course the novel by Robert Bloch) is that the whole film is essentially inverted. The lead protagonist gets murdered a third of the way through the arc of the narrative. The money is made obsolete. The storyline is snuffed out and then it remade, alters direction … and yet there is a seamless sense of tension, which in fact only intensifies as the plot continues. And by the end we are all gobsmacked. Do you now that Hitchcock bought as many copies of the book as possible before the film was released, because he didn’t want audiences to know what would happen at the end? … And they used maple syrup for the shower bit because the regular fake blood was too light. … And when Hitchcock first sent it off to the production company (Shamley Productions) they rejected it – because of the shower scene. Because they thought they had caught one of Janet Leigh’s breasts. Or too much of one of her breasts, and they sent it back to Alfred so he could revise it. Alfred left it a few days, and sent the film/scene back to them, without making a single change. And they accepted it. … I first watched Psycho as a millennial, somewhere in the early years of this century, when films are far, far less censored these days. And I was still shocked and terrified by it. … Think how shocking this film would have been in 1960. For instance, this was the first American flick to show a toilet being flushed on screen; and to be heard being flushed: it was as crazily censored as that, back fifty sixty years. … Alfred was nominated for the Best Director Oscar for this achievement, his final nomination, and didn’t win; was nominated four times before that and never won an Oscar. (The soundtrack is made up entirely of stringed instruments in the film; there is no other instrument in there which belongs to another category. Many thanks, Bernard Herrmann.)

[matttankard]

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was an iconic English film director and producer, known as the ‘master of suspense’. He is widely credited as someone who changed the cinema and the film industry with his bold and expressive style. His most well known film is ‘Psycho’, which released in 1960 and cemented his place as a Hollywood icon. Using extremely bold cuts and loud audio effects and manipulation Hitchcock created a tense, suspenseful atmosphere that the cinema hadn't seen before. In my opinion the mainstream success of pyscho is down to the strong emotional effect it has on the audience. For example in the murder scene Hitchcock uses Jump cuts, smash cuts and box cuts with deafening, unsatisfying music which really makes the viewer feel they can see more than the characters in the film and they know the inevitable outcome, and this just makes the supense build and build.

However the 6 time Oscar winner, was a big influence of  the thriller genre of film decades before. His first successful film was called ‘The Lodger: A story of the London Frog’ - A film based around a serial killer, who targeted young blonde women on Tuesday evenings, and was also inspired by novel based on Jack the Ripper. Hitchcock wanted the film to end in ambiguity, with the original script intending the loger’s innocence was unknown to add mystery. However the lodger was played by actor Ivor Novello and hitchcock was demanded by his studio to change the script as they didn't want to do anything controversial or that would give them bad publicity. This almost saw Hitchcocks movie completely cancelled, but through his long career he made lots of very controversial decisions with risky and audacious plots, like in Pyscho when he killed of American actress ,Janet Leigh in a brutal murder scene early on in the film. I Think the way hitchcock did this was genius as he got the big names on his films and definitely got the people talking, which ultimately brought more attention to him and his work. As the director of our film i want to trying incorporate the same commanding mindset, and have the boldness to make audacious and risky choices to make the final outcome unique and outrageous.

Hitchcock is famous in hollywood for his choice of using B&W, even when coloured film was being used by most big film producers. In my opinion i think this bold choice is really effective and the way he uses high contrast to really exaggerate it just adds to it. I think his decision to do this is genius and suits his genre of film really well. I think this because with black and white you restrict the audiences understanding of a frame of scene as you can't see any colours which our brains usually associate with emotion or anticipation, but with hitchcocks work you don't get that and it makes his work really orphic. I also believe using black and white makes it easier to manipulate light and express impressionism effectively in film, by using different camera angles which Hitchcock did extensively through his career. 

In conclusion i believe looking at hitchcock's work will be big for this project. His unique and expressive style of characterising scenes and the amount of precision in the excessive cuts has inspired me the most. Hopefully it won't even be that hard to replicate these effects as i have much more advanced technology at my disposal. Making cuts, changing the contrast and manipulating lighting, can all be done very simply on photoshop and after effects so thats convenient. I also really like Hitchcock as a person and i admire his audacity to stuff his way and still be successful.

[thotyssey]

On Point With: Charles Busch

A native-born playwright of considerable success both on and off Broadway, Charles Busch captured our hearts and funnybones with material that hearkened gently back to to a time when stories were told with a glamorous  sheen and a heavy hand... yet their comedic appeal remain timeless. Soapy melodrama, hilariously earnest dialogue and fabulous fashions are his bread and butter, and his most famous leading lady has always been Busch himself. Now bringing a new cabaret show about growing in in 1960′s New York to town, Charles sits down with us to talk about his incredible life and career, the people and things that influenced his own work, and the queens of today whom he’s inspired.

Thotyssey: We’re so honored that you’re talking to us, Charles. Let’s get right into it! This summer at the Pines, you performed a show called Naked & Unafraid. Was that literal?

Charles Busch: Whoa!!! I was not actually "naked." It was metaphorical in that I was performing my cabaret act NOT in drag. Of course, what I call "not in drag" would be considered "full drag" by some. That's funny that you thought I was actually nude. People are doing that sort of thing now, and I think it's very cool. But for me, I'm happy with myself from the neck up and the waist down. In between, I need some work.

You are known largely for writing comedic plays that pay homage to the melodrama and style of movies from the 40s through the 60s, and for starring in them as the female lead. It’s a very enjoyable experience for audiences that are fans of that era of film, but as younger generations become farther removed from that period, do they respond differently to your work in that genre?

Good question. Well, my audience has certainly aged with me, but there are SOME gay people under thirty who watch TCM and love classic film. I may be delusional, but I like to think that my plays and performances are funny in themselves and not totally reliant on a knowledge of old movies and stars. But  a familiarity with that type of star certainly adds to the experience. 

I've never actually done a parody of a specific movie. It's always an homage to a movie genre, and usually one so obscure that it's a given that 90 per cent of the audience has never seen any of those movies. It doesn't seem to be a problem. Funny is funny. 

I was raised on the film versions of two of your best known works where you play female characters, Psycho Beach Party and Die, Mommy, Die. Were you happy with the adaptation process in these cases? 

Both films were great experiences for me, particularly Die, Mommie, Die. I loved every minute -- and I mean every minute -- of making that film. Every day I couldn't believe my incredible good fortune at being able to star in my own movie and get to play all those wonderful scenes: love scenes, suspense scenes, mother love scenes. I suffered real withdrawal when the filming was over. I would lie on the sofa, replaying the entire movie in my head over and over. 

Needless to say, I would kill to make another film. Both Psycho Beach Party and Die, Mommie, Die were basically handed to me and put together very quickly. Now I'm in the position of trying to get a movie made, and it's been very frustrating. One week it sounds like we're about to start shooting in a month, and the next week the entire movie has fallen a part. 

Will we ever see a film adaptation of your first stage hit, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom?

Years ago, there was some talk that evaporated. However, these days it's looking optimistic for movies of both The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and The Divine Sister.

There’s a rumor that Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under fame may take the lead of a My Fair Lady revival! Lauren got her breakthrough as Chicklet, the heroine of the Psycho Beach Party film (a role you originated). What was it like working with Lauren during that early period of her career, and do you think she’d make a good Eliza?

I think Lauren would be a wonderful Eliza. She is a trained opera singer, and has great comic and dramatic skills. We haven't stayed in touch. But I like her a lot, and she was a joy to work with on Psycho Beach Party. We were very, very fortunate to have found her. She carries that movie with great authority.

You’re a native New Yorker. Can you describe the NYC that you grew up in, and were exploring, during your early creative years? Were you going to the bars and clubs, off-Broadway, etc.?

Oh honey, New York in the late seventies and early eighties was so much fun. Sex in the seventies was the best sex in the history of the world. I was in my twenties, and while I was too much of a hypochondriac and broke to get into drugs or alcohol, I adored going to the baths and back room bars. Orgies! I would leave the bar with seventeen gentlemen callers. It was my only experience enjoying the physical camaraderie of men. Sex was a great sport, individual and group. We thought "what's the worst that can happen to you?"  

As far as my creative life, I was full of hopes and dreams and gritty determination to carve out a career in the theatre. I think the older men I dated found me a bit exhausting, when they'd take me to the theatre and afterwards I'd be shaking my fist. "That oughta be me  up there!!"

Did any drag queens in the city influence your look and performance style? I know that famous female impersonator Charles Pierce was an inspiration. Charles Pierce was hysterically funny and terribly glamorous, and that certainly intrigued me. I was very influenced by the work of a brilliant actor/ playwright/ director named Charles Ludlam, who had his own theatre company, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Before I saw him, I had no idea that I could have a career creating my own theatrical universe. His plays employed drag and camp humor, and film and theatre history references. His plays were wildly funny but also at times poignant. He was dazzling, and changed my life forever.

One of our city’s top queens today, Paige Turner, credits working on an early production of yours as an inspiration for her own drag. She’s gonna be a reality TV star soon! I adore Paige Turner. She is a true original. Paige in her boy alter ego has had a very full career as an actor/ singer/ dancer in plays and musicals. Many well known drag performers seem to have been in my plays early in their careers. My plays seem to be a halfway house for young actors who become drag stars. 

Tale of the Allergist’s Wife was a hugely successful production that ran on Broadway in 2000, which many consider your first foray into “mainstream” playwriting. When you were writing that, were you conscious of how different it was from your previous work? Did you intend it to be different?

I had actually had something of a commercial success five years earlier with a very mainstream comedy called You Should Be So Lucky. It was conveniently forgotten when The Allergist's Wife moved to Broadway and the narrative about me was streamlined into "East Village drag queen writes Broadway comedy." Everyone has a publicity narrative, and the simpler the better. 

I'm beginning to think that the only difference between "downtown" and "mainstream" is the size of your publicity budget. If the Broadway play A Doll's House Part Two or even Dear Evan Hansen were done below 14th Street with very little publicity, they would be downtown. Conversely, if some very obscure avant garde piece was produced on Broadway and had subway posters and TV ads, it would be considered mainstream.

There are so many great works of yours that we can talk about (Our Leading Lady! The Third Story! The Divine Sister!), but then this would stretch into the longest interview ever. Is there any one work of yours at this point that you are the most fond of, or have the happiest memories attached to?

I'm very sentimental about a play of mine called The Lady in Question that was first done in 1989. It was the apogee of the work we were doing with my theatre company Theatre in Limbo. It was a beautiful and rather lavish production, and we all loved each other and were so proud of the work we were doing. And it was the last show we did with the original company before we lost two of our great colleagues, Bobby Carey and Meghan Robinson, to AIDS.

Do you think that Hollywood lost a little bit of its flavor when actors, writers and directors moved towards more “realistic,” grounded storytelling? It seems like even in these outlandish comic book blockbusters today, there is an attempt to tell the story like it is really happening, and that the superheroes and villains are these real, multi-layered people.

That's a very good point. I'm often asked to compare today's stars with the great pantheon of stars of old Hollywood. It's not really fair, since the actual technology influenced story telling and style. The stars of the past were seen in silvery black and white, and in a highly stylized world. It's an entirely different art form, and a different kind of actor is required.  

Whose take on Joan Crawford did you enjoy more: Fay Dunaway’s in Mommie Dearest, or Jessica Lange’s in Feud?

I love both. I think Faye Dunaway's performance defines the word "brave." So audacious and committed. I've never seen any actor convey such undiluted rage. However, I also appreciated Jessica Lange's more vulnerable Joan. You must remember that Mommie Dearest was an adaptation of Christina Crawford's book, and Christina had a definite point of view of her mother which was definitely not sympathetic; whereas Ryan Murphy in Feud wanted the audience to see more facets of Crawford's character, and what prompted her more outrageous behavior.

As I’m writing this, I’m watching this goofy “psychedelic” movie called The Big Cube on TCM from 1969, where this heiress and her evil boyfriend are trying to poison the heiress’ poor stepmother Lana Turner with LSD. It’s ridiculous fun, and I never heard of it before. Have you ever seen this?  

It's one of the great truly bad movies. Lana Turner's array of blonde wiglets alone makes it a camp semi-classic. It was actually one of the many movies that I was evoking in Die, Mommie, Die. It was very interesting in the sixties and early seventies, when Hollywood was taking the old genres and trying to be more hip and putting in references to LSD and sexual promiscuity, but they couldn't really pull it off without looking silly and exploitative.

This is a good segue to discuss My Kinda 60’s, your new cabaret revue that’s coming to Feinstein’s for four nights starting Tuesday, October 17th! You’ll be telling stories about growing up in the 1960s, plus covering songs from the stage and the pop charts of that decade. What inspired you to do this?

I love the intimate quality of cabaret. My act is a combination of music and true stories of my life in a very conversational way. I love the music of the sixties. It's the decade in which I grew up. This show is all about my childhood and coming of age in the sixties, when I was raised by my indomitable Aunt Lillian in Manhattan against the background of that fascinating decade. All of my shows are personal, but this one is very much a dual portrait of my Aunt and I.  My musical director/ arranger Tom Judson and I have put together a very eclectic and fun collection of songs.

What’s your favorite song to do in this show?

We loved singing duets, and we're doing a very cool arrangement of the Henry Mancini film theme song Two for the Road. 

Also oddly enough, the Glenn Campbell song By the Time I Get to Phoenix.  Every performer hopefully brings something unique to a song. And for me singing it, it can be read as a gay man who has led an inauthentic life and finally has left his girlfriend to become his true self, and how painful that decision is for both of them. I haven't changed a single word. It's just interpretation and the audience creating their own subtext.

Are you mad at hippies for not fulfilling their promise of creating world peace and harmony, or is that an unfair expectation of anyone?

That would expecting far too much. The hippies made their mark. They did influence the gay rights movement. They did influence the civil rights movement and the women's movement. Let's not discount the influence of the counter culture.

What’s something about 1960’s pop culture that should inspire younger people today?

Well, it was the beginning of every movement that we're still fighting for today; gender and racial equality. A relaxation of gender roles. Rebellion against government authority. These song,s and hopefully my personal stories, should not seem like something redolent of the past and sweetly nostalgic. These are cool, tough songs that could be written today.

Would a Melania Trump-inspired character in a future, theoretical Charles Busch production be a villain or a tragic heroine?

Well, you're talking to someone who has always felt great sympathy for Marie Antoinette. She does seem like someone who signed on for one thing and got in way over her head. I would not like to be Melania.

Piggybacking from that -- you’re famous for writing about nostalgic eras, but do you ever want to tackle the gritty reality of times like this in a play, script, etc.?

I have written contemporary plays, ya know! Not all of my plays are based on classic film. Some of my more recent plays, Olive and the Bitter Herbs and The Tribute Artist, were very much about life in NYC today, and how real estate forces so many life choices onto people.  I'm not a didactic or issues-oriented political writer. If I attempted something like that, it would come off fake and pretentious. A creative artist has to have the insight to know what they personally have to offer.

So, what else is coming up for you?

I've written a new play that we'll be doing for a very limited run this spring called The Confession of Lily Dare where I age from a sixteen year-old convent girl to an old crone. Gotta get it done now, while I can still put off the sixteen part. No wisecracks, please.

In closing: OMG. when will we be seeing you judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race!? These queens out there need to go through the Charles Busch musical theater challenge!

Start the whispering campaign. Start it now! I would love to appear as a judge, It's such a fun show, and RuPaul deserves all of those Emmys. World of Wonder, sign me up! I think I have something to offer those girls. I would be encouraging, loving but tough.

Thanks so much Charles, and have a great show!

Charles Busch’s stage show “My Kinda 60′s” runs from October 17th through the 21st at Feinstein’s. Check Thotyssey’s calendar for other scheduled appearances, and follow Charles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and his website.

On Point Archives

#onpointwith #charles busch

[inanawesomewave]

Psychopathy & The Myth of Moral Obligation

I’m going to kick this particular post off with an overwrought analogy if I may, because this is a knotty subject and I can’t dive into it just assuming that the neurotypical understanding of antisociality/amorality/sociopathy/psychopathy/whatever term we’re to use for the sake of ease, at least, is as rudimentary as it seems. It’s obviously not, and why should it be? You have no obligation to empathise those who will not empathise with you, but if you’re going to dilly-dally between these apparently mutually exclusive and monochromatic in nature opinions, then it might be worth reading this. Or anything at all that goes some way to explain the experience of antisocial personality disorder et al, straight from the psycho’s mouth. So if there’s a website that has some good-looking stuff on there you might want to buy, maybe it’s heavily discounted designer clothes, for example, and your friends have been hyping it for some time, of course you’re going to check it out and make your own mind up. So you go there, and you browse, and pretty instantly, you’ve added several things to your basket and you’re happy you came here -- it’s almost too good to be true, you wonder if the seller is aware of how high quality these clothes are. Click, beautiful dress. Click, insanely cheap fine leather boots. You’ll look fucking amazing in those. However, it’s not long before some of your friends warn you that the whole site in fact hinges on a phishing scam, and they’ve all been conned out of hundreds of pounds, and you’d be wise to stay away. You have other friends who used the site without a hitch, but they’re kind of unreliable friends. In fact from hereon in, assume that everyone in your life is unreliable as a narrator in some way. Anyway, you are now faced with a decision - do you want to risk it all and input your sensitive information on the off-chance that you’ll get lucky, be spared, even, or do you walk away and know fully that your bank account is safe and protected? You have reason to believe you are about to be left vulnerable, so ultimately, if you choose not to hand over your sort code and account number, are you discriminating? You notice the site is operational from China, you fucking racist, mate? You a fucking racist now? You privileged? Wanna check that privilege? And conversely, if you do disclose your information, are you advocating fraud? Are you going to contact the site’s owners and empathetically tell them they can be saved? Are you going to loudly advertise the site to your friends and, when they say they’ve heard it’s a scam, are you going to say: “You fucking racist, mate? You a fucking racist now? You privileged? Wanna check that privilege?” You’re poor and losing money would fuck things up for you for a long time, but those boots, those amazing boots will make everyone jealous and project an image of a version of you you’d like to be more often. So what do you do? What’s morally right? What dozen things are you doing when you perform the singular act of making a should-I-shouldn’t-I decision? The truth is blindingly and infuriatingly simple, and that is - you’re doing none of those things. If you take the risk, you’re merely taking a risk. If you protect yourself, you are merely protecting yourself. You are aware that “bad” people exist, that exploitation is real, but you don’t have to have any strong opinions on it. The only thing you have to do is decide if you want to be in it or not. And it would be you putting you in it - in this case the threat you would be facing is not violent or unexpected, it’s not that someone will break into your home, locate your safe, shoot at the lock, threaten you with knives. It’s that you willingly left your doors unlocked and advertised to your neighbourhood that this was the case. But who would do that? Who would ever do that? As it turns out, a lot of you would. When you White Knight the psychopath you are protecting your own morality to a degree that will potentially cause you harm, and signalling that your acceptance and altruistic levels of empathy are - to you - far more important than protecting yourself from real — not guaranteed, but potential — danger to yourself and maybe even your loved ones. But it seems we have reached a place in our endless search for good, that we are — okay, you are — putting yourselves at risk. And it’s interesting what that says about you. Think about what that says about you. Because no matter what, the psychopath isn’t suffering. You cannot be sectioned for psychopathy/ASPD alone, same as with narcissism. You are not experiencing pervasive distress and upset because of your disorder. You’re doing just fine. So mercy isn’t wanted, there is an ambivalence in its reception; not being a welcome surprise and not being an outrage, it’s a nothing, and if the psychopath ever does thank you for it, they are being insincere and you have become the mark (probably in a minor way, calm down). Why? Because psychopathy is at the stark end of ASPD, and ASPD is a pervasive and persistent disorder with a dazzling array of rigid symptoms that make no sense to a lot of people; disregard for societal norms (i.e the law), amorality, a marked deficit in/maybe even complete lack of spontaneous empathy, varyingly low levels or remorse/guilt/shame. Hard to understand, yes, but nobody is asking you to. This is the ugly truth: it’s not that psychopaths are running on hot at all times just maintaining this facade because it’s no facade. It's not that psychopaths simply don’t understand morality because they do. It’s not that psychopaths are overcompensating for not being loved because mostly psychopaths can be loved whenever the hell they want. Don’t feel sorry for the psychopath, they don’t feel sorry for you. Do you see where I’m heading with this? 

I feel this lack of understanding breeds a frantic need to know it all. And that makes sense, the truth isn’t palatable or even rational. But it's the truth. Instead of sainting the psychopath, sate your need for closure by learning about what and how the psychopath thinks, without any desire at all to change their systems and constructs, and you may begin to understand why no antisocial (at the very least) on this whole earth is ever going to sincerely express upset if they feel they are being essentialised, or that people are over-cautious around them. When you speak on behalf of psychopaths and demand compassion in place of them, you are assuming that antisocials and psychopaths are not capable of grabbing compassion all on their very own. At best, you are reaching at the tragically tenuous idea that antisocials et al are able to change with specifically your intervention, that love and affection and a warm cup of cocoa will fix them, that the reason we are seemingly so cold and blunted is because we've never known real love, or that some tragic life event has left us broken, we’ve seen some things, man, and you’re the hero who noticed the tears behind the scowl and decided to bandage our wounds and begin the healing. But listen to me: ASPD is no insanity defence. It is no excuse. It is no justification or rationalisation, and we’re not fighting for that (or anything). The empaths are. Because really, antisocials don't need saving, and we’re not interested in giving you retribution via a sincere self-improvement that metaphorically pats you on the back and says, “good job”, I mean if we don’t have to save ourselves then we certainly have no desire to save you, that's for sure, however indirectly (and we do notice when you’re doing that. We see you.). Because at worst, you are making the blind assumption that the traits of the antisocial personality - specifically reduced capacity for empathy, remorse… aren't even real, that you know better than they do, than anybody does. However, it makes sense that people want to understand something that seems a directionless and motiveless threat, something or someone that goes so against the grain of what is good and right that their whole personality is based on not caring about you -- that is a deeply unpalatable thought to mostly everyone else, because people run from the truth, and if they can’t do that then they’ll just go to great lengths to hide it from themselves, and construct quasi-fantastical distractions to participate in, delusions to hide in, because the truth of badness as a concept is too much. For many the delusion is “they have some light in them somewhere”. But it’s not your place to go looking, and to think otherwise, does not make you the bad person. Thinking otherwise does not make you the psychopath, stop worrying, calm down, go home. Walk it off. Take a nap.  This isn’t a call to arms, none of this is a rousing declaration of intent — leave your card details or don’t, you’re your own person. But if you’re reading this and thinking, “but I CAN change them, societal revolution will change them!” or find yourself caught up in any more of this hysterical and labile sense of moral obligation to the broken, baby birds you see in us, twitching on the snowy ground, then please do consider my final three questions, and answer them to yourself before doing anything else at all?  1. If you can change someone’s entire personality can you also change a person’s sexuality? Give that a go and get back to me.  2. What about you is so special that — after leaving yourself open to attack in order to prove some altruistic point — you’ll be spared, even celebrated and revered? And 3. With a messiah complex as audacious and inflexible as yours, have you ever considered you might have a personality disorder? Because I can save you. Don’t tell me what it is. I’ll save you. 

#antisocial #antisocial personality disorder #aspd #psychopathy #sociopath

[tpf1138]

It's clear that mother! Is divisive and it's reviews will be mixed. Do you think we will see more negative than positive out of Tiff?

Don’t know. Don’t care. Though it’ll probably just continue as it has been. Mostly positive. Some negative.

What is abundantly clear is that this is a movie that will have a life LONG after its initial release. Like Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, mother! it seems is warped and disquieting enough to cause initial divisions, but is ultimately destined to enter the pantheon of great horror/psycho thriller masterpieces, alongside A Clockwork Orange or Rosemary’s Baby. Movies so audacious and unique they stand alone, and only grow in acclaim as the years pass.

Then again, perhaps I’ll change my mind once I’ve seen the movie. I doubt it, but you never know...

[extremedivas]

SKYDRAGON (CL & G DRAGON) Relationship now.

1. General situation between CL and G Dragon?

The Queen of Wands Reversed mean G Dragon talks of line being crossed. Of course, an argument is imminent, but its reason can be taken as very evil. CL is trying to brainwash the G Dragon in obvious manner. Unfortunately, it will not be taken lightly and things will just go out of control. For the personality of the date or love interest, reversed Queen of Wands is definitely a curse. CL is just way too rude and does not mind being impetuously aggressive in public.

CL thinks that she is efficient and organized, and who likes to be in control at all times. This may be mistaken for arrogance by those who resent her domineering and interfering attitude.  She may believe that others cannot manage efficiently or effectively without her influence, supervision and direction. CL become quickly impatient with those who show weakness to her.

2. How G Dragon feels about CL?

The Empress reversed is CL whom is over-protective of possessions, people and relationships. This may cause her to be bad-tempered, domineering and sarcastic. She lacks emotional satisfaction and as a result may appear to be bitter with the world. She is not instinctively maternal and so is unlikely to want to become a mother, partner or wife. She would find a family unrewarding and somewhat tiresome, and this could lead to domestic upheavals between the two.  

 In relationship situation, the Empress reversed can also mean severe sorrow being felt by both of them. Arguments become apparent and the depression runs aggressively for the two. Unfortunately, it usually takes a lot of work to make things better once again. However, It’s not going happen not yet because of CL future plan in her careers.

3. How CL feel about G Dragon?

The Magician reversed depicts G Dragon is a secretive man. That is, he has hidden mission to get something out of CL. In details, G Dragon is not only self centered but is also good at exploiting CL. Unfortunately, what he does not realize is that whatever he is doing for his own gain is making him look like a villain. Yes, he is unaware of the fact that CL can see the real him no matter how he is trying to hide it with pretense. G Dragon abuse of his power and the use of manipulating words and actions to suit his own selfish wants and needs. There are hidden truths and possible deceit, CL look deeper into G Dragon situation.

CL feel that G Dragon is audacious con man to his friends and the public. She feel like G Dragon can have what he want and use manipulation to try to get his way. CL see G Dragon quite messy person trying to work with him. I feel like CL felt G Dragon is becoming a overbearing bully to her.

4. Obstacles to a relationship their relationship?

The Moon reversed it meant that they are  able to get a glimpse of their real character/personality and thus his or her opinion about him and her changed. Apparently, the moon reversed represents a psycho relationship between them. I would like to mention here that it should not be taken for granted. The main keyword for the Moon reversed  is truth. Now they are all react differently to the bitter or positive truth of their relationships. While one of them go into a state of shock, others lose interest in their relationship. Overall, how they behave after hearing or seeing each other truth about them? It’s really up to their own personalities will their relationship last or finished. 

5. Outcome of their relationship?

The Ace of pentacles reversed mean that CL & G Dragon relationship are  toxic and  their environments is toxic. I see their entourage (friends) are toxic people who does a lot of partying and drinking also there is sexual activity in their group of friends.  I see  corruption, greed and ‘dirty deals’ in regards to financial matters into their relationship right now.There’s a possible issues of greed and jealousy between CL & G Dragon relationship. They need to don't compare  each other and becoming a team. Their  overly-possessive toxic relationship need to go! Before someone gonna get hurt or exposed their truth relationship.

#Skydragon #CL&GD #G Dragon #CL #Chaerin Lee #tarot reading #celebrity tarot reading

[mrmichaelchadler]

Larry Cohen: 1941-2019

Since the creators of B-movies generally do not have such luxuries as famous actors, familiar properties and large budgets to work with, they have to rely more heavily on an ingredient that is just important but much lower in cost—a great idea. Not just any great idea, of course, but the kind of idea that makes you stop in your track and think “Man, I’ve gotta see that.” The problem is that, in many cases, even if they do manage to beat the odds and come up with that killer idea, they don’t always have the resources or talent to do it justice. 

One B-filmmaker who never had that problem was Larry Cohen, who passed away this weekend at the age of 77. He may have never had the same level of name recognition as such contemporaries as George Romero or John Carpenter, but his films, in which he took often outrageous premises and built upon them with witty dialogue, incisive social commentary and colorful characters, were among the best genre films of their era and continue to pack a punch today.

Cohen was born on July 15, 1941 in Manhattan and from a young age, he developed a fascination with movies. In an interview I did with Cohen a couple of years ago, he professed a special fondness for the films produced by Warner Brothers during that era. “It was a great studio—they had really ballsy movies and political movies … They were shot at a fast pace with a lot of action and fast talk, as opposed to MGM movies, which were a lot slower and more luxurious. He began his career as a writer for television, first by writing for such shows as “The Defenders, “The Fugitive” and “Rat Patrol” and then by creating such shows as the 1965-’66 Western “Branded” (sorry fans of “The Big Lebowski”) and the 1967-’68 paranoid sci-fi saga “The Invaders.” Watching the shows that he created today, one can actually see the ideas and conceits that Cohen would embrace throughout his career—especially in the mixing of standard genre tropes with sly commentary about what is going on the real world, including the blacklist and the Red Scare—coming together in distinctive ways that set them apart from a lot of what was going on in television at that time.

He then began to make the move into writing feature films in 1966 with “Return of the Seven,” a largely forgettable sequel to the hit Western “The Magnificent Seven,” “I Deal in Danger” (1966), a spy film comprised of the first four episodes of another series he co-created, “Blue Light,” and the psycho artist horror film “Scream, Baby, Scream” (1969). Later in 1969, he would come up with what would prove the first great example of his kind of audacious storytelling that would eventually become associated with his name. In “Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting,” on which he cares a co-writing credit with Lorenzo Semple Jr., Cathy (Carol White) arrives from London to live in San Francisco and immediately meets and falls in love with the seemingly nice and clean-cut Kenneth (Scott Hylands). She soon becomes pregnant but then begins to discover that Kenneth is deeply disturbed and elects to not only break up with him but to have an abortion as well. Some time passes and Cathy has now married a rising politician and given birth to their child when Kenneth turns up again with a shocking demand—Cathy must kill her baby to even the scales for having aborted his child. Channeling real-world concerns into a thriller framework, this was a truly startling screenplay (one that almost certainly would not pass muster today) and if the execution did not quite do it justice—although the screenplay required a daring test pilot of a director to do it justice, Mark Robson, fresh off the success of “Valley of the Dolls,” was strictly United material—it certainly promised better things to come in the future.

"Bone"

Like so many screenwriters, Cohen tired of directors messing with his material and finally moved into the director’s chair in 1972 with the bizarre dark comedy, “Bone.” As the film begins, Beverly Hills couple Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) and Bill (Andrew Duggan) interrupt their latest round of bickering when they discover a strange man (Yaphet Kotto) on their grounds and invite him in, assuming he is an exterminator. The man, Bone, isn’t and takes the two hostage but soon discovers that his captives are not as rich as they appear to be. Nevertheless, he sends Bill to the bank to get more money and threatens to do great harm to Bernadette if he doesn’t return. While in line, Bill gets distracted by a sexy young woman (Jeannie Berlin) and decides to abandon his wife. While all this is going on, Bernadette gets increasingly drunk, seduces her captor and launches a plan for them to murder Bill and collect his insurance money. Making the most of what were presumably limited resources, Cohen devised an ingenious work that tackled racial, sexual, and class concerns in a manner that pulled no punches and got great performances from his cast to boot. Although closer in tone to something like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?” than anything else, the film ended up being sold more along the lines of a straightforward exploitation movie—one wonders what the typical grindhouse crowd must have thought when they encountered this instead of the usual junk that they were presumably expecting.

Cohen was then contacted by Sammy Davis Jr., who wanted to do a film where he was the central character for a change, and the idea of doing a contemporary version of the Warner Brothers gangster films of the Thirties came up. When Davis couldn’t pay for the script for “Black Caesar” (1973) due to tax trouble, Cohen ended up selling it to American-International Pictures and wound up directing the film as well with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson in the lead. Charting the rise and fall of Tommy Gibbs (Williamson), who begins as a kid struggling to survive on the streets of Harlem, becomes the head of the black crime syndicate and wages a war against his enemies that leads to his downfall, the film was fairly conventional in its structure, Cohen added any number of twists that are still startling to observe today—in perhaps the most infamous bit, the adult Tommy gets the drop on the racist cop who beat him as a child when he was doing shoeshines on the street, smears the guy’s face with shoe polish and forces him to sing before beating him to death with a shine box. These wild bits, coupled with Williamson’s undeniable screen charisma and a driving soundtrack by James Brown, helped make the film a hit and AIP clamored for a sequel despite the fact the central character had definitively died. 

Needless to say, that didn’t stop Cohen and by the end of 1973, he had “Hell Up in Harlem” in theaters with Williamson again in the lead. Like most rushed sequels, this is a relatively undistinguished programmer but it does contain one magnificently inspired sequence in which Tommy chases an attacker through the streets of New York that seems to end when his quarry eludes him and boards a plane taking off for Los Angeles. That doesn’t stop Tommy—he boards the next flight to L.A., spends the next few hours flying out and lands just in time to finish things up at the baggage claim at LAX.

"It's Alive"

Not wanting to be pigeonholed solely as a blaxploitation filmmaker, Cohen made his shift to the horror genre where he would achieve his greatest fame. His first effort there, and one of his most famous films, was “It’s Alive” (1974), in which he took one of the squirmier premises in screen history—a woman gives birth to a monstrously deformed baby that slaughters anyone unlucky enough to cross its path—and embroidered upon it with a narrative that managed to make its so-called monster somehow sympathetic in the manner of Frankenstein’s Monster, presented some extremely pointed commentary regarding the pharmaceutical industry (who devised the pills the mother took that presumably caused the mutation and who need the child killed in order to cover up their culpability) and included moments of jet-black humor as well as well as impressive contributions from makeup maestro Rick Baker and famed composer Bernard Herrmann. Completed in 1974, the film was released by a regime at Warner Brothers that did not get it and thus the film only received a limited release. Three years later, the film was re-released with an inspired new ad campaign (“There is only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. It’s alive.”) and became a box-office hit that would inspired two Cohen-directed sequels, “It Lives Again” (1977) and “It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive” (1987) and a 2009 remake that was so bad that Cohen claimed that the head of the studio that made it actually apologized to him for it.

From this point, Cohen embarked on a series of wildly ambitious films (especially considering the low budgets that he was working on) that continued to join together familiar genre tropes with increasingly pointed social satire and commentary. In “God Told Me To” (1976), he tackled religion with a story of a New York cop (Tony Lo Bianco) trying to solve a rash of bizarre violent crimes perpetrated by people who claim that God told them to kill and stumbles upon a cult whose leader (Richard Lynch) inspires some startling revelations about his own past and possible connection to the increasingly bizarre happenings. “Q-The Winged Serpent” (1982) involves a giant flying serpent that is flying around decapitating New Yorkers and a small-time crook (Michael Moriarty) who happens to discover the beast’s hiding place and tries to trade that information to the police in exchange for a big payday. “The Stuff” (1985) was a broad satire target crass commercialism and corporate indifference in telling the tale of a brand new dessert treat, known as The Stuff, that sweeps the country and turns those who eat it into addicts. An industrial spy (Moriarty) hired by the now-struggling ice cream industry investigates and it turns out that the Stuff is a living parasitic organism that is essentially eating the very same people who are eating it—a minor fact that those selling the substance seem blithely unconcerned with in their quest for profits. In “The Ambulance” (1990), a comic book artist (Eric Roberts) investigates the disappearance of a woman he just met—after collapsing on the street, she was picked up by an ambulance but never made it to any hospital—and uncovers the expected mad and elaborate conspiracy.

Among genre movie fans, the films that I have just cited, with the possible exception of “The Ambulance,” are justly famous, not only for the films themselves (which expertly blend the comedy and horror genres with style and ease) but for the stories regarding their productions. In “God Told Me To,” there is a scene in which someone dressed as a policeman begins to shoot up New York’s St. Patricks’s Day parade. Considering the number of elements that would be occurring, there was no way that he could possibly get the required permits to film during the actual parade and recreating it would cost far too much money. Instead, he just took his actor—a then-unknown Andy Kaufman, just to add to the weirdness—and stuck him into the parade and filmed without any permits. As for “Q,” that film came about when Cohen was fired from another movie that he was directing, a big-budget adaptation of the pulp classic “I, the Jury” and decided to conceive another movie to do instead—not only did “Q” beat “I, the Jury” into theaters, it cost only a fraction of that film’s budget and wound up being a bigger hit to boot.

"Full Moon High"

Although these horror/satire hybrids would be the films that he would become most associated with, Cohen would occasionally change things up with unexpected forays into different types of filmmaking. “The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover” (1977) was an ambitious biopic that centered on the 40-year career of the former FBI director (Broderick Crawford) but which also served as a corrosive look American history during that time. Although the budget limitations are a little more obvious this time around, the film hit more than it missed. “Full Moon High” (1981) was a sweet-natured comedy in which Adam Arkin plays a teenager in 1959 who is bitten by a werewolf while on a trip to Romania—rendered ageless by this attack in addition to the usual side effects, he returns to his old high school 20 years later to reenroll, this time posing as his son. Although it had the misfortune to come out in the midst of a mini-glut of werewolf movies (that included “The Howling,” “An American Werewolf in London” and “Wolfen”) and disappear from view, it remains a charming work that suggests what the later “Teen Wolf” might have been like if it was actually good. 

Cohen then returned to his early thriller roots with two 1984 films that he shot back-to-back. In “Special Effects,” Eric Bogosian plays a filmmaker driven mad by a massive flop who accidentally films himself murdering a one-night stand (Zoe Lund). After discovering a lookalike (also Lund), he elects to make a movie about the dead woman utilizing that footage but when it gets destroyed, he becomes convinced that he needs to recreate it. In “Perfect Strangers,” a Mob hitman (Brad Rijin) discovers that a young, pre-verbal boy has seen him committing a murder and is ordered to kill the kid but before he can, he finds himself getting into a relationship with the boy’s mother (Anne Carlisle). “Wicked Stepmother” (1989) was another overt comedy but one perhaps better known for its own oddball behind-the-scenes story—after filming for a couple of weeks in the title role, star Bette Davis suddenly left the production  and rather than shut everything down, Cohen rewrote things so that her character would suddenly change her appearance so that the rest of the part could now be played by Barbara Carrera.

Although it would become harder over time for Cohen the director to get work—especially since the studios were now specializing in expensive versions of the B-movies that he specialized in—he still found work as a screenwriter and his name turned up on the screenplays for such films as “Best Seller” (1987). “Maniac Cop” (1988), “Body Snatchers” (1993,” “Guilty as Sin” (1993), and “Cellular” (2004). Of his work as a pure screenwriter during that time, his best-known project is probably the 2003 hit “Phone Booth,” a thriller in which a fast-talking publicist (Colin Farrell) with a messy personal and professional life impulsively answers a call at the last phone booth in New York and finds himself targeted by an unseen sniper who threatens to kill him if he attempts to leave. Cohen originally pitched the basic idea for the film to no less than Alfred Hitchcock but it was abandoned when they could not conceive of why the guy would have to remain in the phone booth. 

Cohen’s final film as a director was “Original Gangstas,” an entertaining blaxploitation revival that brought back some of the genre’s greatest icons—including Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Ron O’Neal, Richard Roundtree and Pam Grier—to kick some young punk ass. However, while he wasn’t doing anything new, his legacy continued to flourish. A member of an informal club of genre filmmakers known as the Masters of Horror, he would go on to direct an episode of the horror anthology series by the same name in 2006. He had reportedly been working with JJ Abrams on a project anthology series for cable television. 

"Q: The Winged Serpent"

His oeuvre returned to the spotlight in 2017 with the release of “King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen,” a wildly entertaining documentary in which Cohen looks back on his crazy career and which features additional testimonials from friends and coworkers as well as a slew of mouth-clips that will make you want to see the full features immediately. Among students of the genre, Cohen’s influence as a storyteller cannot be denied.

Of course, any discussion of the works of Larry Cohen at this site cannot conclude without mentioning an anecdote that Roger and others would often cite. In 1982, “Q” screened at that year’s Cannes Film Festival under the original title “The Winged Serpent.” As those who have seen the film know, the movie is largely dominated by a brilliantly out-of-left-field performance by Michael Moriarty, the kind that might have earned awards had it not been included in a film where giant creatures tear the heads off of topless sunbathers. Anyway, after the screening, there was a luncheon and the following conversation was said to have taken place between Samuel Z. Arkoff, the B-movie legend who produced “Q,” and film critic Rex “Myra Breckenridge” Reed.

REED: Sam! I just saw “The Winged Serpent!” What a surprise! All that dreck—and right in the middle of it, a great Method performance by Michael Moriarty!

ARKOFF: The dreck was my idea.

A great story, of course, but the genius of Cohen—and I do mean “genius”—was that he took concepts that others could have easily reduced to dreck and transformed them into witty, provocative works that pushed all the right buttons. As a filmmaker, Larry Cohen was a true master—not necessarily of horror alone. For film fans who have long sparked to his offbeat output, his passing will prove to be a great loss.   

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[learnthisphrase]

Best books of 2017

The top 10

1. The Idiot (2017) by Elif Batuman There was never going to be any other contender for my #1 favourite. The Idiot isn't just one of the best books of the year, it's one of the best books of my life, an unforgettable, transformative novel. Only a few books make such an indelible impression that they come to feel like part of your identity, and The Idiot is one of these rare finds. The Idiot weaves an idiosyncratic and charming plot around Selin, a fish out of water in her first year at Harvard, a young woman of enormous intelligence struggling to untangle the mysterious codes of behaviour that seem to come naturally to everyone else around her. (Her deadpan observations are often utterly hilarious, and although it is also heartbreaking, I don't think any book has made me laugh this much in years.) Many of her choices are almost random, since she has little idea which path to take. Central to Selin's development throughout the book is her close, tense, peculiar friendship with Ivan, a slightly older maths student. She becomes infatuated: her decision to spend the summer teaching English in Hungary, his home country, is a result of that. I loved Selin so much that, by the time I reached the end of the book, I felt like I was being wrenched away from a real friend. She is so palpable, so true-to-life – the perfect mix of naive and sarcastic, rebel and conformist, book-smart and ignorant. The Idiot is the sort of book I want to recommend with real passion and precision; not by shouting about it to anyone who'll listen, but by seeking out those I know will appreciate it and ardently pressing it upon them. So good I could WEEP.

2. Based on a True Story (2017) by Delphine de Vigan, trans. George Miller Leave it to a French author to turn what sounds like the formula for a standard psychological thriller into a kaleidoscopic, existential meditation on writing, identity and friendship. Continually inviting speculation as to how much of it is autobiographical, Based on a True Story follows an author, Delphine, who has recently written an unexpectedly successful novel and is unsure what to do next. When she meets the glamorous L. at a party, she seems to have found the perfect confidante. But L.'s influence grows more and more toxic, and Delphine begins to lose her hold on her own identity. The story is sinister and edge-of-your-seat gripping, yet fiercely intelligent and philosophical: an utterly fascinating maze of fact, fiction and perception. 3. Devil's Day (2017) by Andrew Michael Hurley John Pentecost returns to his family home, a farm in a tiny and decidedly old-fashioned rural community, after the death of his grandfather. As Devil's Day – an eccentric village holiday linked to local legend – grows closer, old rivalries are resurrected and secrets come spilling out. Incredibly vibrant and masterfully paced, this is a bucolic tale of family and nature, death and renewal, history and folklore, and what lurks beneath the surface; it only gestures towards the macabre, and is all the more unnerving for it. It's like Robert Aickman rewrote a Thomas Hardy novel. While Hurley's debut The Loney was effective, I thought this was ten times better. 4. Harriet Said... (1972) by Beryl Bainbridge Despite the pervasiveness of coming-of-age themes in adult fiction, it's rare to come across a writer who is able to truly capture the strange contradictions of adolescence. In Harriet Said..., Beryl Bainbridge gets it exactly right and it is terrifying. This is a remarkable, nuanced character portrait of two precocious girls at the younger end of their teens: the unnamed narrator and her manipulative friend Harriet. Over the course of a claustrophobic summer, the narrator grows dangerously close to a much older man. It's a powerful and beautifully written story that drips with unease, feels horribly real, and is perhaps even more disturbing today than when it was published.

5. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2016) by Iain Reid This year I read a handful of books that resembled nightmares in both construction and imagery. This was the best, the most effective, and the most memorable. A young couple are on a long, lonely drive, with one – the narrator – wondering whether she should end the relationship (hence the title). What unfolds from there is probably best described as 'psychological horror', replete with uncanny details. It steadily ramps up the disquiet, constantly veering off-course so you're left disorientated, asking yourself what the hell you're reading (in a good way). A masterclass of suspense and restrained weirdness. 6. Children of the New World: Stories (2016) by Alexander Weinstein In these tales of our incipient future, virtual lives are ubiquitous and the real world is rapidly deteriorating. However, it's the human element that makes these stories so successful and emotionally affecting. The sharply observed details, the rich characters, the imaginative visions of a world to come: everything about it is brilliant, my list of favourite stories is practically the entire book, and there's barely a flaw to be picked at. The best short story collection I've read in years and the definition of 'all killer, no filler'. 7. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017) by Angela Nagle The best political book I have read in aeons, maybe ever. In an accessible but unpatronising study, Angela Nagle draws a line through history from the 'culture wars' of the 1960s to those of today, and undertakes a review of the many, many factions of what is often sweepingly referred to as the alt-right. She writes even-handedly and with a fair critical eye about recent iterations of disruptive political groupings on both the right and left, achieving a perfect balance between academic critique, political commentary and assured, intelligent, non-embarrassing writing about the internet and its unique subcultures. In a year of political turmoil, Nagle's voice felt not just refreshing but essential.

8. The Answers (2017) by Catherine Lacey Broke, sick and out of options, Mary replies to a mysterious ad promising an 'income-generating experience'. This turns out to be a role as one of a series of Girlfriends to an A-list celebrity who thinks he can solve the 'problem' of romantic love by deconstructing and segregating its elements. Lacey writes Mary brilliantly, teasing out unique insights, naive and profound at the same time, about love and relationships. Her observations are so clean and sharp, her voice in a class of its own. I loved absolutely everything about the way this unusual, wonderful book was written – it's magical. 9. A Natural (2017) by Ross Raisin There were other books I rated higher this year, but few have stuck with me quite as vividly as A Natural. Tom is a talented young footballer whose promised success has failed to materialise; instead, he ends up playing for a middling League Two team. Introverted and sensitive, Tom doesn't feel he fits in, and that only gets worse when he embarks on a new relationship. It's a tender, honest novel exploring sexuality, repression and self-hatred. It's painful and precise on growing up and what 'success' looks like. I see it as a feminist novel about masculinity, looking at how patriarchal norms fail men who don't conform. 10. The Furnished Room (1961) by Laura Del-Rivo Published in 1961 and a bestseller in its day, this remarkable thriller seems to have (very unfairly) slipped into relative obscurity. Like the lost halfway point between Crime and Punishment and American Psycho, it charts the mindscape of a nihilist, chauvinist clerk, Joe Beckett, through his life of numbing excess in the bedsits, offices and cafés of 1960s London. When an insalubrious acquaintance asks him to murder his ailing aunt, Joe approaches it – in typically cold fashion – as an interesting moral dilemma, but things inevitably spiral out of control.

Honourable mentions

Books published in 2017

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud The title is apt: Messud takes a tired premise – two teenage girls growing up and growing apart – and sets it ablaze with knockout writing. Incandescent, razor-sharp, breathtakingly confident.

You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, trans. Ross Benjamin Brilliant modern take on the haunted house – like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves if it'd been ruthlessly edited down to only its most authentic and menacing elements.

This Young Monster by Charlie Fox Sublime collection of feverish, phantasmagorical essays that pull apart the distinctions between fiction, fact and surrealism, exploring the intersections of pop culture, queerness and self-image.

The Party by Elizabeth Day An irresistible formula (unreliable outcast narrator enters into golden world of privilege) executed flawlessly. My pick of the year for sheer unadulterated enjoyment.

American War by Omar El Akkad An extraordinarily rich dystopian vision in which a future USA is riven by civil war. Absorbing, emotionally wrenching, and complete with a brilliant heroine in the shape of rebel fighter Sarat Chestnut.

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell Not so much horror stories as stories about a country (Argentina) haunted and menaced by history. Powerful, memorable and wonderfully bizarre.

How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza After her abusive partner leaves, Mary becomes obsessed with a wild fox and begins to lose her grip on reality. Hands down one of the strangest, most audacious and uncomfortable stories I've read; it will leave you queasily transfixed.

Ties by Domenico Starnone, trans. Jhumpa Lahiri A portrait of a disintegrating marriage structured like a dossier of evidence, analysing the perspectives of wife, husband and daughter. Packed with emotion, yet elegant in its approach to the damage wrought by destructive behaviour.

Sweetpea by CJ Skuse If you've ever wondered what American Psycho reimagined as chick-lit would be like (and I mean, who hasn't?), this is it. Very bloody, very funny.

Books published before 2017

Call Me by Your Name (2007) by André Aciman You're probably familiar with the film; the book it's based on is more than worth your time, too. A heady evocation of first lust that brings its Mediterranean setting vividly to life, it's agonising as often as it's sexy.

This is the Ritual (2016) by Rob Doyle Lacerating short stories that approach (and rip apart) the trope of the tortured artist from a working-class perspective.

Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) by Mary Gaitskill Chronicles the friendship between two very different – but equally idiosyncratic – women, and traces their tortured histories. Startling and insightful, with unforgettable characters.

70% Acrylic 30% Wool (2013) by Viola Di Grado, trans. Michael Reynolds An Italian girl living in England deals with terrible grief, unrequited love and the mysteries of communication. Funny and twisted and dark, furious and bittersweet and raw.

FantasticLand (2016) by Mike Bockoven An oral history of the bloody disaster that unfolded after a hurricane left a few hundred employees of a theme park cut off from civilisation. Unbelievably fun horror with great worldbuilding.

The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing (2014) by Nicholas Rombes A curious and remarkable book which somehow makes descriptions of imagined films mesmerising. Dreamlike and disquieting.

​The Babysitter at Rest (2016) by Jen George In these surreal-yet-mundane stories, George plays with her characters like they're figures in a very peculiar dolls' house. She's amazing at combining the painfully real with humour and fantasy.

Coming up in 2018

The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton You're probably already familiar with how much I loved this, so I won't go on about it, except to say again that it is a breathtaking patchwork of genres, a triumph of wordplay and a total joy to read. (If it wasn't a 2018 title, it would be in my top 10.)

A few more for the road

Life and all its ugliness, glory, grief, joy and horror: The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek; Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell; The Animators by Kayla Rae Whittaker; All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg; Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle Dark futures, the terrifying possibilities of technology, and what comes after its collapse: UnAmerican Activities by James Miller; Broadcast by Liam Brown; No Dominion by Louise Welsh; The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy Creepy shit (need I say more): The White Road by Sarah Lotz; The Wrong Train by Jeremy de Quidt; The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell; The Lost Village by Neil Spring; The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements When you just need to get stuck in to an engrossing thriller: He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly; Bonfire by Krysten Ritter; If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio; Last Seen by Lucy Clarke

[mrmichaelchadler]

It Was All a Ridiculous Mistake!: Brian De Palma's Sisters Hits Blu-ray

A few years ago, I found myself writing an article for this very website in which I did anoverview of the films of Brian De Palma. Initially, I wrote about the films in a straightforward chronological order but towards its completion, it was decided that I should rank them in preferential order. As someone who considers De Palma to be his favorite filmmaker, this was a dream article to write. While I still pretty much agree with the order that I put them in, my only regret is that it appears as if I am underrating or outright dismissing some highly worthy works. Take “Sisters,” De Palma’s 1973 film that marked his first full excursion into the horror/suspense genre that his name would be synonymous within a few years of its release. When I wrote the article, despite praising virtually every aspect of the film and complaining only that the ending came across as a little rushed, I placed it at #14, right between “Mission: Impossible” (1996) and “Body Double” (1984). Now, having just watched “Sisters” again on the occasion of its Blu-ray debut as part of the esteemed Criterion Collection, I find myself thinking that perhaps I should have ranked it higher, partly because of the significant effect that it would prove to have on De Palma’s career and partly because it is just as striking, shocking and startling to watch today as it was when it debuted more than 45 years ago.

Just before making “Sisters,” De Palma was in the first real low point in what would eventually prove to be a roller-coaster career. Having begun his career with the low-budget underground films “The Wedding Party” (which he made in 1964, though it wasn’t released until 1970) and “Murder a la Mod” (1968), De Palma scored a cult hit with “Greetings” (1968), an outrageous satire about a trio of friends (including a then-unknown Robert De Niro, who De Palma worked with on “The Wedding Party”) navigated the social, political and sexual upheaval of the late Sixties, and followed that with the equally audacious semi-sequel “Hi Mom!” (1970). The attention that De Palma got from these films was noticed by Warner Brothers, who hired him to direct “Get to Know Your Rabbit” (1972), which was intended to be a studio version of the kind of contemporary social satire that he had been doing on the streets for practically nothing with his friends. Perhaps predictably, De Palma’s iconoclastic sensibility put him at odds with both the studio and his star, Tommy Smothers, and after numerous clashes with both, he was eventually fired from the project. The resulting film, which sat on the shelf for a long time before being briefly released, was a total flop that was all the worse for De Palma because his name was still on it even though he had nothing to do with its final form. 

After that bruising experience with the world of studio politics, De Palma elected to return to the world of low-budget independent filmmaking that allowed him to have more control over his work. The initial inspiration for what would eventually become “Sisters” came when De Palma read a 1966 article in Life magazine about Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, a pair of sisters from Moscow who happened to be conjoined twins. In particular, he was struck by a photograph that pictured one of them looking as sunny and cheerful as can be, while the other had a darker and more disturbing expression. In addition, the photo had a caption that mentioned that while the two sisters were perfectly healthy from a physical perspective, both were beginning to develop psychological problems. Using that as a jumping-off point and determined to make a film with a more concise and straightforward narrative than his previous, improv-heavy works, he and co-writer Louisa Rose, whom he had met when both were attending Sarah Lawrence College in the early Sixties, penned a screenplay that would take that notion and spin it out into a grisly mystery/thriller that would also pay obvious homage to such favorite filmmakers as Alfred Hitchcock, with nods to such classics as “Rope” (1948), “Rear Window” (1954), “Vertigo” (1958) and “Psycho” (1960), and Roman Polanski. 

(At this point, I am about to describe the plot of the film so if you haven’t seen it yet and want to go into it as fresh as possible, feel free to put this essay aside until after you have watched it.)

As the film opens, ad salesman Philip Woode (Lisel Wilson) is getting dressed by himself in a locker room when a blind woman enters and begins to undress. As it turns out, Phillip is the victim of a “Candid Camera”-like game show entitled “Peeping Toms” and the contestants have to correctly guess whether he quietly stood there and watched as she continued to strip or if he did the noble thing and left. After being reunited on game show stage, Phillip and the woman, who is not blind at all but an aspiring French-Canadian actress-model named Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder), are presented with their prizes—Danielle gets a full set of cutlery while Philip, who is African-American, receives dinner for two at a supper club called the African Room—and decide to go make use of Philip’s prize. Although their meal is briefly interrupted by the arrival of Emil Breton (William Finely), who claims to be Danielle’s ex-husband and who insists that she come back with him before being thrown out of the place, the two hit it off and wind up going back to her Staten Island apartment. Once inside, Philip sees Emil standing watch outside and creates a ruse to convince him that he has left and after Emil departs, he returns and spends the night with Danielle on her sofa bed.

Up until this point, the film has been playing like one of De Palma’s previous films—especially in regards to the acute satire on display during the game show and dinner date sequences—with the presence of Emil and the brief shot of a bizarre scar on Danielle’s thigh the only suggestions that something else is going on. The next morning, however, things begin to take a turn when Philip wakes up and overhears an argument between Danielle and an unseen person in the bedroom. When he asks, Danielle tells him that the other person is her twin sister Dominique, who is there to celebrate their shared birthday. Philip goes down to a nearby drugstore to pick up a prescription for Danielle, who is feeling ill, and impulsively buys a birthday cake for the sisters as well. When he returns, he brings the cake out to the sleeping Danielle but it turns out to be the far more crazed and manic Dominique, who grabs the knife—one of the new ones, naturally—and viciously stabs him in the groin multiple times before disappearing. Mortally wounded, Philip drags himself to the window and writes “Help” in his own blood before finally dying. 

The entire gory crime is witnessed by another resident of Danielle’s apartment complex, Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt), who immediately calls the police and runs downstairs to wait for them. As it turns out, Grace is a reporter for a Village Voice-like newspaper and her recent series of articles about police brutality have not made her a favorite among the force—when a pair of cops do arrive on the scene, they spend more time with her in the lobby bitching about what she has written than in actually getting up to Danielle’s apartment. As we see in a marvelously staged sequence that demonstrates one of De Palma’s most effective uses of his beloved split-screen visual technique, this gives the dazed Danielle and Emil, who has arrived on the scene as well, to clean up the apartment and hide the body in the sofa bed before the cops and Grace finally knock on the door. A search of the place turns up nothing, Danielle insists that no one resembling Grace’s description of the alleged assailant ("Shorter and with a twisted face") and when Grace actually finds a piece of evidence to prove that someone else was there, she herself inadvertently destroys it. The cops leave and, assuming that the whole thing was a stunt pulled by Grace in order to get material for another story about police incompetence, warn her not to mess with them anymore.

Still convinced of what she saw, Grace decides to investigate the case on her own for the paper and her editor hires a private investigator, Joseph Larch (Charles Durning), to work with her. Larch manages to gain access to the inside of Danielle’s apartment in the hopes of finding any evidence. Since the sofa bed is so much heavier than it should be, he becomes convinced that the body has been hidden inside of it but before he can do anything, movers arrive to cart it away. While Larch follows the couch on a journey that eventually takes him to Quebec, Grace continues to investigate and gets information from a Life magazine reporter (Barnard Hughes) who had written about the sisters years earlier when they had become briefly famous as Canada’s first conjoined twins. She then follows Emil and Danielle to a nearby mental hospital where she ends up getting the rest of the story, albeit in the most nightmarish and gruesome manner imaginable. 

Even though “Sisters” was De Palma’s first full-out attempt at the suspense genre, one would never be able to discern that thanks to the sheer filmmaking skill that he demonstrates here. After lulling viewers into a state of complacency during the long opening sequence, De Palma begins turning the screws on them with his ability to generate tension thanks to his detailed visual approach. The scene in which Grace’s argument with the cops is juxtaposed with Emil and Danielle trying to clean up Dominique’s mess before anyone else arrives is a virtual master class in filmmaking all by itself in the way that it effortlessly supplies a wealth of information regarding the relationship of Emil and Danielle and the mutual antipathy between Grace and the cops while simultaneously generating equal levels of tension on both fronts. It is a bravura moment that still stands as one of the greatest set pieces in De Palma’s filmography and while nothing else in the film can quite match it, a darker and moodier feel begins to dominate the proceedings—aided in no small part by the spectacularly moody score by the legendary Bernard Herrmann—and the nightmarish final sequence in the asylum, featuring key flashbacks shot in 16mm by De Palma in a manner designed to resemble “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), is a knockout.

One aspect of “Sisters” that makes it a pure product of De Palma is in the usage of voyeurism, a theme that the director would return to time and again throughout his career. In this film, everyone is watching each other, it seems, but from skewed perspectives that prevent them from actually seeing what is right before their eyes. The game show where both Philip and the audience are seeing two different things that are not quite as they seem. Philip sees Emil but can only look at him as a jealous ex-lover of Danielle’s and not as a potential warning sign. Grace witnesses the murder but cannot actually prove anything that she saw and when she does find proof, her inability to watch where she is going ends up destroying it. It is only at the end of the film that people like Grace and Larch are able to see the truth head-on but due to circumstances, neither one is able to communicate the truths that they have seen to anyone, a notion that is perfectly articulated in the haunting shot that brings the story to a close on a deeply ambiguous note.

Even De Palma’s most devoted fans will admit that narrative logic and structure is not always of interest to him and that some of his stories do not exactly stand up to rigorous analysis when all is said and done. Therefore, watching “Sisters” proves to be a bit of a shock because the screenplay that he and Rose have conjured up is actually pretty strong and sound in the way that it provides a sturdy dramatic structure for him to build upon with his weirdo humor and elaborately designed suspense sequences. The opening 20 minutes or so are interesting in the sense that nothing really happens—none of the sex or violence that viewers might be expecting—but the characters of Danielle and Philip are so likable and engaging that it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of complacency that only makes Philip’s murder at the hands of Dominique all the more horrifying. (By employing this kind of slow burn opening, De Palma is utilizing the same approach that he would later deploy in his original version of “Raising Cain” (1992) before restructuring it into the eventual theatrical version.) With all of that going on, he manages to deftly introduce another winning and appealing character in Grace, a contemporary version of the kind of hard-driving crusading female journalist that Glenda Farrell used to play back in the day—the kind who is all about the work and becomes exasperated when her mother (Mary Davenport, Jennifer Salt’s real-life mother) keeps noodging her about when she is going to give up her hobby and finally settle down and get married. As the story progresses, things become increasingly strange and outlandish but De Palma never departs from the logic that he has established early on and indeed, one of the pleasures of watching the film again, once the surprises have been revealed, is to observe just how intricately the elements come together. 

One of the more intriguing, if unexpected, things about watching “Sisters” today is the number of elements on display that now play much differently now than they did in 1973. For example, the opening sequence, in which nothing of much import happens up until the moment of Philip’s murder, presumably startled new audiences back in 1973 because they didn’t have preconceived notions of De Palma as a figure of suspense. Nowadays, if someone watches it for the first time and has some vague knowledge of De Palma’s output, they will almost certainly watch that sequence with the expectation that something is going to happen. This sensation doesn’t ruin the scene, of course, but it does add an unexpected edge to the proceedings. In the booklet accompanying the film, there is even a 1973 interview with De Palma in which he discusses an argument he had regarding the opening with Herrmann, who protested the fact that nothing happened and that audiences would get restless. When De Palma responded that nothing much happened during the first 40 minutes of “Psycho,” Herrmann responded “He is Hitchcock and they will wait. They know something terrible is going to happen and they will wait until it does!”

“Sisters” is also an interesting film to watch in the wake of the #MeToo movement because it is, to a large degree, about women who are either ignored or abused by men in power. Throughout the film, for example, Danielle seems to be in the thrall of Emil but once the full extent of his background is revealed to us, we learn the full degree of the monstrous acts that he perpetrated on both her and Dominique, both in the name of “love” and science, and was able to get away with his actions because there was no one to challenge him. As for Grace, she is a perfectly competent and capable reporter but is still forced by her editor to be aided in her investigation by an older white guy—one who depart just before things start getting ugly and who then inexplicably never bothers to check in with her. Meanwhile, the cops are wildly hostile to Grace for having the temerity to expose the failings of their colleagues—so much so, in fact that they allow all of the evidence to a murder to disappear before they arrive on the scene. Even more appalling, when the lead cop (Dolph Sweet) finally realizes that Grace was right all along about there being a murder, his pathetic attempt make things right with is to give her a box of chocolates—the kind of thing that a dumb boyfriend might have done for his girlfriend after standing her up on a date in a Fifties movie. In the end, the women in the film do get some kind of closure for the traumas that have been perpetrated on them but unfortunately, none are in a position to fully appreciate it.

The aspect of the film that might be the touchiest for contemporary viewers to deal with is that it is a film that deals in large part with mental illness that itself stars an actress who herself would go on to have well-publicized mental issues herself. Obviously, this is just a ghastly coincidence but it does lead to a couple of uncomfortable moments in the early going—especially once we have seen the movie before and now have a better idea of the degree to which the outwardly charming Danielle is struggling to keep it all together. This sensation doesn’t last too long, however, because Kidder’s performance is so effective that one becomes completely absorbed in her character. Although Kidder would become a secret crush object to several generations of youngsters due to her appearances as the intrepid Lois Lane in the “Superman” films, she was ultimately one of those actresses that Hollywood could never quite figure out what to do with—she just came across as too smart, sexy and offbeat for most of the female roles being offered at the time. With “Sisters,” Kidder had a role that was tailor-made for her (indeed, she had been dating De Palma at the time and was roommates with Salt—De Palma presented them with scripts for the film as Christmas presents) and made the most of it. As Danielle, she is sweet as can be when we first see her but, as previously noted, it is taking a lot of effort on her part to pull that off and the way that she gradually shows what is just beneath that pleasant, placid veneer is beautifully handled—by the end, she comes across as both utterly terrifying and utterly sympathetic. 

Although the rest of the cast is strong as well—Salt is entertaining enough to make one wonder why her career didn’t quite take off either and Finley, who was a regular presence in De Palma’s films until his death in 2012, is a scream as Emil, who comes across as a strangely Eurosleaze version of John Waters—this is Kidder’s show and if the Blu-ray doesn’t actually have any features that could serve as a tribute to the actress on the occasion of her passing earlier this year (though it does included a revealing 1970 appearance that she made on “The Dick Cavett Show”), it could be argued that the film itself is perhaps the best and most effective possible celebration of her unique and much-missed talents.

When “Sisters” was released in 1973 by the legendary American International Pictures, it proved to be a success at the box-office and earned De Palma a number of good reviews, many of which cited the influence of Hitchcock over the proceedings, the start of what would prove to be a standard (if often inaccurate) observation about his work in general. De Palma would go on to make bigger and better-known movies over the years but few would prove to be as influential on his career as this one—many of his classic films from that point on contain ideas and images that one could trace directly back to his work here. As a result, it would also prove to be an influence, both directly and indirectly, with the countless number of filmmakers over the last four decades or so who have themselves been influence by De Palma and his work. There was even a remake of the film produced in 2006 and while it certainly had an intriguing cast—the Kidder, Salt and Finley roles were filled, respectively, with Lou Doillon, Chloe Sevigny and Stephen Rea—the fact that there is an excellent chance that you are hearing about this film for the first time right now should suggest how well it turned out.

Criterion put out a DVD of “Sisters” way back in 2000 and for this long-awaited upgrade, they have included an nice array of old and new extras. The best feature, of course, is the nice-looking 4K digital restoration that was supervised by De Palma that makes it look better than it probably has in its entire existence. In addition to the aforementioned Kidder interview, the extras also include a new interview with Salt, archival interviews from 2004 with De Palma, Durning, Finley, editor Paul Hirsch and producer Edward Pressman, the audio portion of a 1973 talk De Palma gave at the AFI and a booklet that includes another 1973 interview with De Palma and an informative essay on the history and meaning of the film penned by critic Carrie Rickey. All in all, a more-than-respectable presentation of a film that really deserves a higher ranking in the annals of suspense/horror history than it currently maintains—it is funny, unnerving and engrossing in equal measure and once it is all done, there is an excellent chance that you will never look at a birthday cake the same way again.

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