#meanwhile 2019 feels like half a decade | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

denimbex1986 · 9 months

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'Coming to the end of Barbenheimer weekend, here are my stats. I have seen Barbie, but I have not seen Oppenheimer. This is not a feminist or aesthetic decision. It’s because Barbie is one hour and 54 minutes long, while Oppenheimer is just over three hours long.

I’m not alone in being perturbed by the length of the movie; over the weekend on TikTok and Twitter people posted the exact time that it was safe to go to the bathroom during Christopher Nolan’s epic. Others shared the app RunPee which is specifically created for this purpose (if you’re interested, it’s when Oppenheimer’s brother first comes on screen, apparently). These people are well practised at the art of knowing what parts of a cinematic epic can be missed because, lately, it seems filmmakers are well practised in the art of making movies and flat out refusing to cut them down to non-epic length.

James Cameron’s original Avatar came in at two hours 42 minutes. A decade later, Avatar: The Way of the Water, comes in at three hours and 12 minutes. The original Dune (1984) came in at two hours 17 minutes. Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming sequel to his reboot is slated to be three hours and 15 minutes. Even non-cinematic releases have embraced epic length; Netflix’s Blonde, released last year, was two hours and 46 minutes long, which felt reasonable given that three years before The Irishman ran for three hours 29 minutes. Ari Aster’s breakout horror, Hereditary, was a reasonable two hours and seven minutes. His follow up a year later, Midsommar, came in at two hours 28 minutes. Beau Is Afraid, released earlier this year, was two hours 59 minutes. Then there is Zac Snyder’s extended cut of Justice League that comes in at a criminally long four hours and two minutes.

Back in 2019 when Martin Scorsese released The Irishman, a long run-time was seen as a problem rather than what it is now; a thing to be endured or a badge of honour. “Meanwhile, traditional Hollywood studios beholden to box office sales have become progressively risk-averse in recent years (producing a three and a half hours-long film definitely counts as a risk, no matter how esteemed Scorsese is),” one article reported at the time. “A fact the filmmaker recently lamented when he argued that ‘cinema is gone.’ Perhaps The Irishman will help bring it back, if audiences can gear up for the long haul.”

It seems that the long movie is now a badge of honour for directors, screeners and filmmakers. Longer is more theatrical, more expensive, more intrinsically artistic. Compare this to previous cult movies that a generation before were noted both for their impact and for their short runtime; La Haine is only one hour 38 minutes long, Gummo is only 89 minutes long, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pink Flamingos, Kids, Trainspotting — all really very short! But nowadays the ‘kill your darlings’ editing method has been inverted. “Most long films could be promoted as special and prestigious,” Dana Polan, a cinema studies professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, told Variety. “There was an assumption that length equaled quality. It’s almost to say, we’ve spent the money — let’s flaunt it.”

I had a theory that, given these lengthy blockbuster examples, the 90 minute movie was simply gone, done, over. But then I looked back at the past year’s releases and was proved sadly wrong. Rye Lane was one hour and 22 minutes long. Aftersun also ran at just over 90 minutes. As did Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, and Sydney Sweeney’s Reality. Even Infinity Pool and A24’s The Whale were both under two hours long. Clearly 90 minute films still are around, but why does it feel like films are getting longer then. Why do we spend so much time talking about the long ones?

“These days, there’s a lot of talk about long running times,” Sarah Atkinson, professor of screen media at King’s College London, told The Guardian last year following the release of Tenet (which somehow didn’t even reach three hours). It’s all part of incentivising people to go out and pay for a ticket, which they won’t do unless it’s for something special – a big, epic film. Just look at the Marvel franchise: almost every one is well over two hours.” Film length isn’t going up, she concluded, but we think it is. Why? Sarah believed it was simply down to good, savvy marketing.

One other answer could be that our attention span is just worse now. That our attention span is destroyed, actually, by short form social media video and constantly having access to information chopped up to be digested as quickly as possible. We watch TV at double speed or 1.5 speed with the subtitles on. We can look up the plot on Wikipedia and even if we can’t be bothered to go to the cinema and figure out when it’s safe to pee, in six months or a year’s time we can watch whatever film we missed on TikTok anyway, chopped up into parts in a post-123 Movies age of piracy. Even if this doesn’t captivate us enough, someone will have edited those cut-up clips further, and put them above or alongside clips from Subway Surfer or Temple Run or people making cakes or pushing vodka bottles down flights of stairs to see if they break. We don’t ever have to concentrate long enough to take anything in. We can always be distracted.

It’s true also that longer movies always did exist, especially for vast historical epics like Oppenheimer. Lawrence of Arabia, released in 1962, ran at three hours and 42 minutes originally (it was cut down by both 20 and 35 minutes in later releases before being extended to three hours 48 minutes in 1980). Further back, 1939’s Gone with the Wind was three hours and 44 minutes long. Cleopatra, one of the world’s longest cinematic commercial films ever, was released in 1963 and is three hours and 53 minutes long. But a generation later, longer films made headlines when they tried to embrace the epic-runtime set by their predecessors. James Cameron’s Titanic – three hours 14 minutes – was originally released for home media in a two VHS bundle to account for its length. All of the Harry Potter movies were just under or over three hours long; Chris Columbus and later directors knew that the franchise’s rabid fan-base would watch, no matter the length, and so studios would pay for big, lengthy productions too. Even accounting for the amount of lore creators had to include, the length is frequently cited as one of the flaws of the series, which is now being remade into more easily digestible TV sized chunks.

For Oppenheimer though – Christopher Nolan’s longest movie to date – the length doesn’t seem to be off-putting, even with the fact the movie’s 70mm film reels are clocking in at over 600lbs (I did actually try to see it, but every cinema close enough to make is sold out even today). Perhaps we’re just more used to a modern lengthy epic than we used to be. It made just over $80 million in opening weekend takings, making it the director’s biggest non-Batman box office hit to date. Barbie, for transparency’s sake, did take $150 million in the same weekend. Despite its three hour length people still embraced Barbenheimer weekend, going to one movie and then the other, spending an entire day at the cinema, unfatigued and impressed. Maybe Barbenheimer weekend is not just what we needed to reinvigorate movie theatres, but what we needed to fix our broken attention spans. We have become death, destroyer of short films.'

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arpov-blog-blog · 2 years

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...."At some point, there will be a reaction against the half-century dominance of the Republican Party. That’s why I’m still bullish on 2022 being similar to 1982. That year was the start of our current cycle of political time, ushered in by Ronald Reagan. That midterm featured high inflation, too. Nonetheless, it produced no change.

A midterm producing no change would be a return to a historical norm after a long period of gothic politics, as I’m going to call it.

By gothic, I’m talking about a political and cultural milieu in which the ubiquity of greed, decadence and decay evoked a feeling of things being upside down, backwards and prolapsed. It made good things bad, bad things good. The concrete became unknowable. The unknowable became concrete. It atomized society, alienated individuals, disillusioned citizens, all with a dread-awe of doom.

The signs of gothic politics are many. The economy is still growing, unemployment has rarely been lower, but the press corps is focused with fears of inflation and a subsequent recession. Meanwhile, voters who want to choose the Republicans, but need a reason, have convinced themselves that the political party that ushered in the 2007-2008 financial panic would be better economic stewards.

Crime rates have rarely been as low as they are. But a majority of Americans, 56 percent, according to Gallup, believes crime rates are climbing in their communities. A stunning 78 percent thinks there’s rising crime nationwide. Their worry about specific crimes – like children being assaulted at school – has also grown significantly.

Rightwingers are purging school boards, who are banning books, on suspicion that teachers are indoctrinating students into trans culture or “critical race theory.” Fact is, students are usually assaulted by people they know, and indeed brainwashed into thinking that violence is love when perpetrated by uncles, fathers and brothers.

The rightwing reaction to gains made after George Floyd’s murder turned the term “woke” from a hallmark of antiracism into a political trope in wide circulation that’s infused with gloom and horror, an ominous miasma of mystery and death inherent to gothic politics.

The result has been a word that no one can define accurately but everyone, even defenders, can feel acutely. A feature in gothic literature is an atmosphere of suspense that feels so cringe-y that instead of sticking around to engage, most people want to flee. That, to me, is pretty much how things pan out when “woke” comes up.

More people have died from COVID-19 in GOP-controlled counties than in Democrat-controlled ones, according to two studies. Many Republicans believe face masks were intimations of treason and that vaccines symbolized disloyalty or even surrender to the enemy.

A new report shows that people die younger in counties controlled by Republicans than in those controlled by Democrats. It “revealed changing state policies to fully liberal could have saved more than 171,000 lives in 2019, while changing them to fully conservative may have cost over 217,000 lives,” according to a USA Today report.

The GOP says crime, death and disease are attributes of liberalism and the big urban centers drawing from it. But like all gothic politics, it’s the diametric reverse that’s true. The more rural a region, the more likely it is to see its residence die sicker and younger.

But perhaps the greatest achievement in gothic politics has been transmogrifying, in the minds of those in thrall to gothic politics, a potential life – such as an embryo – into a life so vivid and insistent that some states have banned access to abortion, forcing some women to carry dead babies in their wombs until their due dates.

The rhetoric of “pro-life” may be the most gothic form of gothic rhetoric, as it focuses the mind on the upside down, backwards and prolapsed nature of gothic politics such that it reaches new levels of aesthetic experience, something close to a sublime grotesque.

This age of gothic politics, which I’m describing, began in 1994. That was the year that the Republicans took the House for the first time in decades. Their success has been traced to House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s style of discourse, which was to transmogrify real people – Democrats – into avatars of corruption and graft, allowing anyone to pour all their free-floating fears, terrors and sorrows into them.

Once established, it was only a matter of time before gothic politics permitted the Republicans to hurt their own – for instance, by refusing to adopt provisions from the Affordable Care Act in states run by Republicans – if that’s what it took to hurt the Democrats. "

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boonesfarmsangria · 2 years

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Life Is Yours: How Foals danced away the doom and gloom

Dance-rock has always been one of Foals’ many flavours, but Life Is Yours - this week’s Feature Album – is the first time they’ve dedicated an entire record to the front half of that equation.

That’s bad news for fans of the British band’s heavier songs and moody indie rock odysseys, but it’s great news for anyone wondering when they’d get around to exploring more of the fidgety funk that made songs like ‘My Number’ and ‘Birch Tree’ fan faves.

Right from the opening title track, the agenda is clear: big, bright grooves that glide on clipped guitars, hypnotic synth patterns and chattering beds of percussion.

From the shout-along strut of lead single ‘Wake Me Up’ to the slippery bass and squelchy keys on ‘2001’, this is a set of celebratory disco and funk-driven bangers that are breezier and lighter on their feet than anything Foals have done before.

Cuts like ‘2am’ and ‘Under The Radar’ have the kind of unadorned simplicity the band have tended to avoid. They’ve described it as their “poppiest” material yet, and it’s easily one of the leanest, most accessible listens in the band’s expanding catalogue.

You can hear traces of greats like peak ‘80s Prince, Talking Heads, and LCD Soundsystem, but also a vibey electropop sheen that’s closer to Two Door Cinema Club, Foster The People, and Friendly Fires than the late ‘00s guitar-toting UK contemporaries that Foals came up with (and have long since outlasted).

Life Is Yours feels all the more immediate having come in the wake of 2019’s Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost: a two-part, doom-laden project that indulged the many sides of Foals’ sonic personality while tapping into the anxiety of post-Brexit Britain and the climate crisis.

“It was pretty heavy and pretty broad,” frontman Yannis Philippakis tells triple j. “After that we wanted to strip everything back again and make a record that was really focussed, unified, and dance-y: rhythmic, upbeat, full of energy.”

Slimming down from a five-piece to a trio in recent years also had an impact on the band’s sound, but there’s another more obvious inspiration – an apocalyptic scenario that nobody could’ve predicted.

“Once the pandemic hit, it was so bleak in the UK that we wanted to write these songs that were windows into another world,” Yannis says. “You could just climb through them and live in them and escape from the COVID winter in the UK. When the pubs aren’t open, you know it’s bad.”

Somewhat ironically, much of the material was written in a windowless studio during a bleak winter lockdown forcing Yannis – along with multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Smith and drummer Jack Bevan – to conjure up the soundtrack to a world re-emerging into the night and onto the dancefloor.

“Longing being able to go out, to go to the pub, to be back in the nightclub.” All of the songs on Life Is Yours share this same sense of wish-fulfilling transportation to a better time and place, whether it’s a utopian post-pandemic future or the nostalgic comfort of the past.

The burbling synths of ‘Under The Radar’ harkens back to 1980s New Wave (“bands like Devo and Haircut 100”, notes Yannis), while the springy riffs splashed through ‘Flutter’ are indebted to West African guitarists and desert blues. “It’s one of our favourite tracks on the record, it’s just chilled. It was written in one afternoon out of jam session.”

Meanwhile, the tropical groove of ‘Crest of the Wave’ dates back a decade with ties to Australia.

“We originally worked on it in Sydney back in 2012. It was an instrumental demo that we recorded with Jono Ma of Jagwar Ma and MYSTICS… But I could never write a vocal line,” the frontman reveals. “We unearthed the song recently and it all came together. We’re just really pleased we finally finished it and it felt perfect for this record.”

In another specific reference, the slinky highlight ‘2001’ draws upon Foals’ early days as an unsigned band, moving to Brighton and into a sharehouse together; partying and finding their feet as young adults.

“A time of hedonism and temptation set in the British seaside,” Yannis explains. “That whole experience of being at that turning point in your youth – having a ball but you’re transgressing something.”

Those fond memories manifest in vivid lyrics about being ‘lost in the sugar rush’ of ‘beachside candy cane’ and ‘blue tongues in summer rain.’

Many of Yannis’ lyrics are impressionistic, which fits the way his voice is sometimes mixed (for better or worse) on the album, taking a backseat to the drive and groove. But his words are often charged by a sense of reclaiming the good times and revelry we were all denied by the world shutting down.

‘Now that I’m less hungover, I can finally hear all the words you say’ is the first line that greets the listener on Life Is Yours – a sense of the gloom lifting as Yannis declares ‘The choice is yours, don’t be late/ Escape your fate and breakaway’ .

“We haven’t really written a song like that before,” the frontman says of the title track. “It’s indebted to hip hop and set in a very specific place – driving up the Pacific Coastal Highway of America.”

“Pine trees on your right, the ocean on your left, with somebody who’s dear to you and you’re having one of those chats you get into on a long car drive. Feet on the dash and you’re heading into the future.”

These are songs designed for blowing out of club speakers and stirring festival crowds into big, moving raves. But listening on headphones reveals the subtler details of a group working smarter, not harder.

You can hear their 15 years’ experience on arrangements decorated with percussion and layers of keys, guitars and vocals that augment the core grooves rather than overcook or distract from them.

Admittedly, the consistently dance-leaning vibes can get a little samey as the album wears on but it does close with two of its stronger, most ambitious moments.

Closer ‘Wild Green’ sounds more like a Foals remix than anything they’ve done before.

A near-shamanic chant of ‘Spring is on its waaaaay/Lilac April greeeey’ wings beneath a ravey euphoria that works its way out of a trance layer by layer. “It’s the album dismantling itself… each sonic level is stripped away and becomes a farewell to the listener,’ Yannis says.

“It’s about a lifecycle or a season being over. It’s full of life: wild and unstructured. I envision a field full of insects in the spring.”

The penultimate track ‘The Sound’ builds a shuffling beat inspired by UK garage and electronica into a rattling climax as Yannis bellows missives over the sweaty fervour: ‘Our dreams denied!’ ‘White roses in my dreams!’

“I was trying to get into my own Karl Hyde from Underworld vibe in the lyrics, allowing it to be dusty and repetitive. And a bit Caribou-y too, maybe. We love it, it’s going to bang live.”

Indeed, these are songs pining for the electricity of the live music arena. “When we come off a tour we might write more laidback, melancholic tracks because we’re tired,” Yannis says. “This time it was like ‘Get me on stage!’”

Thankfully, Foals have been recently able to do just that. “It’s been overwhelming. The shows in the UK are the biggest we’ve ever done – 40,000 people in London!”

“The shows were as rowdy as we’d hoped but I think there was this extra power in the room, which is the relief of people just being in rooms together and getting to embrace, mosh, and dance. When all of that was taken away from us, having it released again. With the physical power of loud music, the volume and lights, just makes the shows better than ever.”

The true ‘comeback’ moment will occur this weekend, when the band play to 200,000 people headlining The Other Stage at Glastonbury Festival. “To be honest, it’s the pinnacle for us,” Yannis admits. “It’s a coveted spot [and] a big deal for us.”

It’s their sixth time playing Britian’s long-standing cultural centrepiece. “It’s one of the only times in the UK that people let everything go… everyone goes and gets on. There’s no fighting or scrapping, people aren’t buttoned up. They become a bit more like Australians, it’s great!”

That begs the question: When will Foals return Down Under?

“It’s been too long now,” agrees Yannis, how’s been hustling his booking agent but says there’s “nothing concrete” yet regarding an Australian tour. “But basically, the first thing we can come and do, we’ll do.”

With borders re-opened, it’s not a matter of if but when Foals will bring the anti-pandemic positivity party our way, spreading their message loud and clear: Life Is Yours, grab at it with both hands and don’t let go.

Life Is Yours is out now via Warner Music Australia.

Triple J || Interview || Al Newstead

#FOALS #this is really good #yannis philippakis #life is yours

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fatehbaz · 3 years

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The 17th annual North American Caribou Workshop drew hundreds of people to Ottawa in November 2018 to talk, worry, grieve, plan and share resources about caribou. The situation for caribou on the continent is grim. Many populations have gone extinct in recent decades [...]. At the workshop, dozens of formal presentations and testimonies [...] attested to the catastrophic loss of caribou for Indigenous people: the loss of vital knowledge, of a family member, a way of life.

On and around their nations’ territories, industrial extractive development -- mines, roads, transmission lines, pipelines and cutblocks that drive caribou loss -- is booming. At the workshop, Jean L’Hommecourt, a Dene woman from Fort McKay First Nation in northern Alberta, used a metaphor to capture the frustration of watching industry spread while caribou disappear: “We’re in a whirlpool,” she said. “It feels like we are going around and around.” Development keeps swirling and caribou [...] continue swirling toward obliteration. Why?

Who Benefits from Caribou Decline? addresses this question by focusing on the endangered Central Mountain caribou habitat in northeastern British Columbia, where scientists have identified coal mining as a key driver of caribou extirpation. Our study focuses on the [...] impacts of three coal mines currently operating in the northeastern region of BC: Willow Creek, Brule and Wolverine. We conducted an analysis of publicly accessible data for the companies that own these mines [...] which we consolidated into a database for the period 1999-2019. [...]

Woodland caribou are listed under Canada’s endangered species legislation, titled the Species at Risk Act [...]. Caribou are crucial to many Indigenous nations [...]. In the most recent national assessment every caribou population is in some kind of danger, and more than half are listed as endangered. Scientific and governmental studies give robust proof that the proximate cause is land-use change stemming from extractive development. [...]

Caribou herds in the Peace River region are no exception to this broader decline. Known formally as the Central Mountain caribou, they are considered “irreplaceable component’s of Canada’s biodiversity” and are of crucial importance to Indigenous nations, including West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations.

Central Mountain caribou were listed as threatened under the Species at Risk Act when it was enacted in 2002. But the population has declined steeply in recent years, losing 64 per cent of its numbers over the past three generations.

Decades of widespread habitat degradation and loss stemming from rapid industrial development are the cause of these declines. In the 1960s, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam created a reservoir that cut off a major caribou migration route. [At] West Moberly First Nations [...] [w]hat had been a “sea of caribou,’ with thousands of animals, was reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1990s. Declines have only worsened since.

Land-use change has accelerated since the 1980s, exacerbated by the Northeast Coal Project [...]. A cumulative effects assessment of the Peace River region from 2012 estimates that at least 67 per cent of the region is now disturbed. [...] Meanwhile the provincial government moves expeditiously to approve hundreds of extractive developments, including coal mining. Upon approval of the Dillon mine, which was later expanded and renamed Brule, the mine’s owner, Western Canadian Coal Corporation, stated, “The expeditious processing of this coal permit reflects this government’s commitment to encourage mineral exploration.” [...] The BC and federal governments poured billions of dollars into the Northeast Coal Project.

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In 2013, the last member of Burnt Pine, of the Central Mountain herds, fell into a mining exploration pit and died.

Several other herds have declined to fewer than 50 animals. Central Mountain caribou were reclassified as endangered in 2014 and are now reduced to fewer than 250 individuals [...].

Recent science predicts the entire Central Mountain caribou population is likely to go extinct within our lifetimes.

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Heading, images, and all text published by: Robyn Allan, Peter Bode, Rosemary Collard, and Jessica Dempsey. Who Benefits from Caribou Decline? Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives and Corporate Mapping Project. Figures by Hugo Tello. Published 3 December 2020.

From elsewhere:

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dearest-bucky · 4 years

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Put your head on my shoulder (One Shot)

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: The team goes away on a weekend vacation. Things happen in the car ride and later.

Words: 3.5K

Warnings: only tooth rooting fluff!!

A/n: Hello! Please read this! I know there are people who have read this fic before, it is because I have posted it before, but my old blogs are both deleted now permanently so I had to start (once again, sigh..) from the beginning. Please, if you want, like and reblog this even though you might have done it when I posted it the first time. I would be infinitely grateful.

Because of some privacy issues I’m not writing my old blogs’ urls here, but I’m sure a lot of people will recognize the fics I will start reposting here every day and will know who I am. Thank you so much for your kindness and support on my old blogs, I am hoping to receive the same here, <3

Originally posted: October 21, 2019

It was one of those very rare occasions where being an Avenger wasn’t taking your whole time, so most of the team decided to do something about it. Going on weekend trips with your team members wasn’t something new for you, but what made this time special though, was the presence of a certain blue eyed ex assassin who decided to take the chance for the first time and join the rest of you.

As per usual, you being yourself and always late, but as Tony Stark would put it “fashionably so”, you were running out of the elevator to meet the rest of your friends in the car so you could finally leave the compound.

Sam was leaning from the passenger’s seat to the steering wheel, pushing the horn non-stop, succeeding this way to only piss off Bucky who was sitting behind with Natasha and Wanda.

“Stop that asshole. I’m here.” You yelled at Sam, putting the bag of your clothes in the trunk of the car and moving to get inside.

“Freaking finally!” Came the annoyed reply of Sam who apparently was tired of waiting.

It was only 10 minutes, you could argue with him if he said something again, but luckily Steve got in the driver’s seat so The Falcon decided to shut up for the moment.

You took a look at the behind seat of the car, spotting Nat, Wanda and Bucky all sitting there, not very comfortable but you supposed it was okay. However, there was no place for you to sit.

“Get in y/n.”

“Yeah, we don’t have all day.” Came another complaining from the bird of the team and you could just give him the middle finger, but you were preoccupied thinking of where to actually sit.

“Guys I don’t think there’s space for me here.” You talked calmly, almost not the same person who came running and cursing just a moment before.

Usually there wouldn’t be any inconvenience of this kind, because usually, there was not a huge mass of solid muscle and breathtaking smile taking almost half of the back seat of the car.

“Hop on Barnes.” Sam replied, matter-of-factly.

“Why me? I-I mean, it would be better if Wanda did, I weigh more than her and Bucky would be uncomfortable and..” you were blushing hard and stumbling upon your words, but this time Bucky cut you off just by taking your hand in his and tugging at it, suggesting you get in the car.

“It’s okay doll, I really don’t mind. You can sit on my lap.” He said quietly, almost shy, but he was sporting an easy smile on his face as if this situation was making him happy.

Maybe it was, you didn’t know.

You gave him a look, as if silently asking “Are you sure?” and when he nodded his head and kept his smile on his lips, you decided it was okay to actually sit on his lap.

While the thought made you blush, you and Bucky weren’t strangers to each other, so you contemplated there was nothing wrong about the situation, given the circumstances.

You hopped easily in the car and sat on his lap a little awkwardly to say the least, while Wanda was trying but miserably failing to hide a smile spreading from her face and Nat was not even bothering to conceal the knowing smirk from hers.

“Everyone ready?” Steve asked and only after a round of nods and ‘yes’-es, he finally started the car.

You had one of your hands glued behind Sam’s head trying to weigh as little as possible on Bucky’s lap and you were trying so badly to keep the composure in front of your teammates.

You weren’t necessarily uncomfortable being this close to Bucky, but what made it bad was the presence of your other friends, especially Natasha and Sam.

When Steve brought Bucky to the compound almost two years ago, he was as closed off in himself as he could be. Of course no one blamed him, he came from 70 years of horror and honestly only the fact that he was still alive was a miracle.

To say you were captivated by him as soon as you laid eyes on him, it’s an understatement. Being friends with Steve before and having him share all the stories from “back in the days” did not help your case at all. Only what you heard from Steve was almost enough to make you fall for The Bucky Barnes, the Sargent of the 107th. And then when the man himself showed up, you were definitely in love with him.

Despite everything he had been through, despite all the hard exterior, the history and all the killings he had in his back, there was something about him you couldn’t place. Maybe his eyes, blue like the ocean and deep and… kind? There was a kindness you could spot in them that not even decades of brainwashing couldn’t take it away.

The first few months Bucky would only talk to Steve, never join the common areas and stay in the confines of his own room. You never saw him and sometimes wondered if he was even there.

It was almost 5 months later when you literally ran into him well past midnight in one after your “quests for good food” in the kitchen that you had your first conversation with him.

It had been only one sleepless night for you after a grueling mission and of course another sleepless night for him (as all of them were) when you were walking around the kitchen in darkness to reach the cupboards trying to find any of the cookies Sam stashed away from the team when you ran into a solid mass.

You yelped in fear but calmed as soon as he spoke. It was somehow soothing to hear his voice.

You finally found what you were looking for and decided to share the cookies with him, along with two hot cocoas and a very pleasant conversation that continued until dawn, when Bucky asked for permission to leave for his morning run with Steve.

After that night, you had many more repeats of it. Sometimes both of you would talk over cookies and cocoa, sometimes you would watch a movie and other times you would just stay silent in the company of each other, only listening to your calm breaths until you would fall asleep and Bucky would put a blanket on you and continue to look at you for the rest of the night.

At first it was a little odd, but as time went on your friendship evolved. It wasn’t only the nocturnal rendez-vouz anymore, but you started spending more time with each other, training together too until Steve decided to finally let Bucky go on a mission with you and making you partners for most of them.

It was actually very pleasing to see Bucky become better and better everyday. Meanwhile your friendship was becoming stronger and your feelings getting deeper. Seeing more and more of the Bucky that Steve used to describe in his stories was the best thing you could hope for. However, the fact that Bucky was always touching you, hugging you, snuggling with you in his room while reading or watching movies and even sometimes cuddling when you fell asleep together wasn’t helping you at all. You welcomed all these things but you never said anything about what you felt, scared to ruin your friendship.

Now here you were, perched on his lap, as if sitting in a bed of nails, while feeling the eyes of Black Widow, staring at you with her peripheral vision while she was whispering something to Wanda.

You had been driving for almost half an hour, only listening to Sam commentary about every song that came on the radio and the whispering of Natasha and Wanda on your left.

Bucky was stiff beneath you but he was silent, having rested his head on the windshield and his eyes closed, but it was obvious he wasn’t sleeping. He let a long sigh escape his lips and only then you turned your head to look at him.

“I’m sorry, I know you’re uncomfortable and…” you began but he cut you off, explaining that he was just tired but it wasn’t because of you at all.

You gave him a sympathetic look. “Couldn’t get any sleep last night, could you?”

He only shook his head no.

“You can put your head on my shoulder and try to sleep a little now.” You suggested without thinking twice. He gave you a sweet smile and did as you said.

His head came to rest on your shoulder, his face hidden in the crook of your neck and you could feel his breath tickling the skin it hit softly.

He let out another sigh and closed his eyes.

The others were just looking at you two, not saying anything at all, until Sam decided to turn off the radio and play a song from his phone.

Put your head on my shoulder

Hold me in your arms, baby

Squeeze me, oh so tight

Show me

That you love me too

Natasha let out a chuckle at the choice of the song and you rolled your eyes, flipping Sam off. He just winked at you and let the song play in a relatively low volume.

A few minutes had passed, the song had changed and you were all enjoying the ride in silence.

You were silently mouthing the lyrics of “Every breath you take” when suddenly the car came to a halt, causing you to stumble forward and you were gonna get hurt if it wasn’t for Bucky’s hands gripping your waist and holding you in place.

“What the hell, punk?”

“Sorry Buck, guys.” Came the apologetic reply from Steve. “There was a dog crossing the road and I didn’t want to hurt him.”

You sighed and grabbed a hold of the seat behind Bucky’s head, the other hand on your lap. Bucky’s hands were still gripping your waist, but a little more loosely now, as Steve started the car once again.

Bucky resumed to his previous position, nuzzling his face in your neck once again. Your hand that was behind his head slowly found the way to his hair and you began to play with his hair, an action he welcomed with a smile spreading on his lips that you felt in your neck.

You rested your head on top of his, but your hand didn’t stop caressing his hair, playing with the long chocolate locks and twirling them between your fingers.

You closed your eyes and decided you were finally comfortable enough to at least let yourself enjoy the rest of the drive. It was going to be a long one for that matter, so you decided spending the whole thing as if you were sitting on glass wasn’t the best thing you could do.

After only a few moments you felt Bucky’s metal hand touch your hand that was resting on your lap and silently taking it to join your other hand in his hair. You smiled to yourself but obliged, putting now both of your hands in work and giving him this way double the pleasure.

It wasn’t long after that you felt his heavy breathing against your neck and realised he was finally asleep. You were glad he could finally get some rest so you made the best you could to not move, trying to maintain the comfort you gave him. So with nothing else to do you closed your eyes too and decided you could take a nap too. You could hear your friends whispering with each other but you couldn’t care less about them right now. Within a few minutes you let yourself succumb in a peaceful sleep wrapped up around Bucky.

“Y/n.. hey, wake up doll.” You heard Bucky’s voice call but you were so sleepy you couldn’t find it in yourself to open your eyes.

You let out a soft groan of displeasure and only snuggled closer to his chest.

“We’re at the cabin sweetheart.” He tried again. “Why don’t you get up and we’ll get you inside, hm?”

“Mm, but I’m so comfy here..” you mumbled sleepily and heard Bucky chuckle at your words.

“So warm Buck.”

“I know, but you’ll be more comfy in a bed and warmer for sure.” He continued but you could already feel the smile that was threatening to break from his face.

Finally giving up on sleep you opened your eyes and groaned in annoyance.

You had no idea how it had happened but unlike when you fell asleep, this time you were resting your head in Bucky’s chest and he had his arms around your shoulders.

“Come on doll, let’s get you inside.” He nudged you and helped you out of the car and inside the cabin.

You found Steve, Sam, Natasha and Wanda already inside, each of them sitting in a chair, talking to each other animatedly.

“Ohh, look who finally decided to join the world of the awake.” Sam teased as soon as he noticed you and Bucky enter the place. “You slept for the whole 4 hours of the trip, you’re unbelievable.”

You just shrugged but remained close to Bucky.

“So what’s up now?” You asked.

“Okay so now we have to deal with the 'space’ situation here.” Steve took the turn to speak, his 'captain voice’ activated, as if he was briefing a mission report.

You all looked at him, waiting for him to continue, so he did.

“There are only 3 rooms here, and 6 of us. We all have to share a room with someon-”

Before he could finish his word Wanda cut him off. “I’m with Nat.” She announced excitedly.

“Wanda!” You gave her a look.

“There’s no way in hell I’m sharing the room with Tin Man.” Came without a delay Sam’s comment.

Bucky glared at him, but said nothing as you took his hand in yours and your bag in the other hand and not waiting for any other comment or reply from the others started walking in the direction of the rooms.

“We’re going to have the room with the bathroom inside.” You said, not leaving any place for arguments, and walked to the room with Bucky. You got in and closed the door behind you with a loud thud.

You weren’t upset that you had to share a room and a bed with Bucky, after all it wasn’t the first time. What annoyed you though was the fact that your friends were doing all these things on purpose, first making you sit on Bucky’s lap during the car drive (not that you were complaining) and now this, leaving you to share the room with him.

“I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t say no to another nap Buck.” You talked first and opened your duffle bag to fish out some other clothes.

Not paying any attention to the fact that Bucky was standing in front of you, you popped open the button of your jeans and slipped out of them, getting inside a pair of cotton shorts you used as pajamas. Next to go was your shirt which you replaced with a very large grey sweatshirt you had borrowed from Bucky a few months ago.

After changing your clothes you got in bed and covered with a soft blanket without a word, while Bucky kept staring at you, like you had grown a second head.

Sure enough, he had seen you in your pajamas before, also you had changed in front of him when you were all getting dressed in your uniforms for a mission, but seeing you get changed in front of him and put on his shirt, that did stirr something inside of him he couldn’t really place.

He was glued in place and wasn’t planning to move anytime soon if it wasn’t for your voice pulling him out of the trance.

“Will you join me?” You asked simply and instead of answering verbally he too got rid of his clothes but unlike you, he didn’t get in pajamas, but headed to bed only in his black boxers and got under the blanket.

You could get used to this, you thought to yourself as he moved slightly to make himself more comfortable in bed.

“C'mere.” He offered shyly and opened his arms for you to cuddle him. You didn’t hesitate one second to do so.

You rested your head on his chest and his hands were wrapped around your shoulders, while yours were resting on his torso, tracing absent-minded patterns on his toned stomach. It was a familiar situation, you both felt safe like this.

After a few moments in total silence only enjoying the soft touches and calm breaths of each other, you finally decided to speak.

“You realise they did this on purpose, right?” You asked and turned your head to meet his eyes.

He let out a breathy laugh and nodded his head. “Yeah, they’re not very subtle you know.”

“Mhmm..”

He looked at you with adoration but you could also notice the shadow of conflict in his face. You were too afraid to ask if your friends were right to do this, or what was his opinion about it all, so you settled on approaching him differently, trying not to “corner” him with your doubts and fear of dejection.

“What is it?” You asked timidly. “What are you thinking about?”

He looked down at your face again, gave you another smile and his hand came to rest on your cheek, tracing the soft skin there.

“I’m thinking about you.” He stated simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Thinking about how happy I am to be here with you.” He continued and you gave him a smile of your own after hearing his words. You were more than happy to be there or anywhere else, as long as you were with him.

“Thinking about how lucky I am to have you in my life, and now in my arms. So beautiful.”

His voice was almost a whisper as he carried on.

“I’m thinking I was so stupid to make you wait all this time and to make myself wait when you have been always in front of me. It’s like you were always the answer to my every question and I have been a fool to not realize it before. I’m thinking I should have never waited for anyone to 'set us up together’ because I have been falling in love with you from the very first moment I laid my eyes on you and I shouldn’t have wasted all this time by not telling you.”

You could only listen to him and not quite believing the words leaving his mouth. It was like you were frozen in place by his confession. And because you did nothing to stop him or interrupt him, Bucky continued pouring his heart to you.

“I’m thinking how lucky I am to have you in my life and how much you have helped me become a better man. And I’m thinking how much in love I am with you and how I have been for a very long time now.”

You gasped when he said the last words and your eyes filled with happy tears in an instant.

“And I am thinking how much I want to kiss you.” He added finally and reached out for your lips slowly, afraid to not startle you.

You stared into his ocean eyes and when your eyes flickered to his lips for a second, you started leaning closer to kiss him too, but the magic of the moment was interrupted by a loud knock on your door.

“Dinner’s ready!” You heard Wanda’s voice on the other side and Bucky groaned in annoyance.

“We’ll eat later.” He spoke up for her to listen and only when he heard the answer of agreement from her he focused on your lips again, this time closing the gap between the two of you.

His metal hand found home in the back of your head and the other one was still around your shoulders, holding you close to him. His lips were soft and sweet and everything you had wished for and his kiss was breathtaking. You poured all you had in the kiss and only when it was hard to breathe you broke it off.

He had a sweet smile on his face while you were feeling drugged on his taste and staring at his now swollen lips you pecked him once again before speaking.

“I’m thinking I’m very much in love with you too.” You talked slowly.

He laughed heartily and attacked your lips once again with the sweetest assault possible.

It was going to be a great weekend.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes imagines

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swanlake1998 · 3 years

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Article: The Black Ballet Celeb Taking On Racism in Dance

Date: June 21, 2021

By: Mary Scott Manning

With a raft of Instagram followers and a modeling contract, the Washington Ballet’s Nardia Boodoo is as close as it gets to a pop celeb in the rarefied world of ballet. Now she’s trying to make that world more fair.

A ballerina, by definition, does not speak—at least not with words. The body is her language, and she spends her life mastering its vocabulary, usually at others’ direction: a casting list on the wall, a choreographer’s instructions, a critic’s review. For dancers of color, this fact has been doubly true.

But last year, after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, and organizations across the professional spectrum were called out by people of color for furthering systemic racism, the overwhelmingly white world of ballet wasn’t spared. One of the most influential voices in that conversation was a dancer with the Washington Ballet, 27-year-old Nardia Boodoo.

You may have seen her onstage, one of the company’s five Black dancers, or in the pages of Marie Claire—she’s a model repped by Wilhelmina who has starred in campaigns for Tory Burch, Chanel Beauty, and Nike. She began dancing only 13 years ago, but Boodoo, whose roots are Indo-Trinidadian, has soared into the pantheon of ballet celebrities, the object of teen worship and the subject of fan art (plus at least one look-alike doll).

What was never visible was the racism she endured on the way up. “Despite the fact that I work hard in rehearsal, throw myself into my art form and perform on international stages,” as she put it on Instagram on May 31, 2020, “when I return home”—to Bethesda—”I’m still most likely to be questioned and harassed for walking my dog late at night in an affluent area…that I reside in.”

This month, Boodoo appears in one of the Washington Ballet’s latest productions, choreographed by the renowned Black dancer Silas Farely. Yet some of her most important recent work has occurred behind the scenes over the past year as she pushed the company to own ballet’s history of prejudice and its responsibility to change. “She’s just been a really, really important voice in helping us to galvanize and discuss all very important issues,” says Julie Kent, the company’s artistic director, issues that “haven’t really been addressed previously, and not just at the Washington Ballet but in ballet as an art form.”

When Boodoo started training at 14, Misty Copeland was making history as American Ballet Theatre’s first Black soloist in two decades, following trailblazing Black ballerinas such as Lauren Anderson and Raven Wilkinson. Boodoo’s peers at the Baltimore School for the Arts, meanwhile, were majority-African American, a “strong base,” she says, for a young artist of color. Boodoo earned a scholarship to Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, then landed a coveted sport in the Washington Ballet’s studio company while still a teenager.

Leaving home, though, occasioned her first experiences with racial bias in ballet. “I’ve had someone who holds power say to me, ‘Well, because you stick out so much in the corps, you have to work so much harder, because everyone’s going to be looking at you,'” she says. “That’s not my fault that you only have one Black girl in the corps.”

It was the classic conundrum of a second generation. She wasn’t the one who broke down the door. But she still had to contend with an environment that was less than welcoming. And the pressure to fit a stereotype needled her. Virtually every professional Black dancer feels it: having to straighten curly hair, receiving costumes with mesh that doesn’t match their skin tone, wearing the pink tights that make light-skinned dancers look lithe but appear to chop inches off those with darker complexions. Sometimes Boodoo’s colleagues would make hurtful comments. “Stupid things,” she recalls, “like ‘Your hair smells like Black-girl hair.'”

Rachael Parini, a friend and the only other Black dancer when Boodoo joined the company, remembers when they were asked to wear white powder in Giselle, a tradition in the ballet but a loaded proposition for Black performers. At a rehearsal, the stager hollered over the loudspeaker: “Rachael and Nardia, why are you blue?” The powder apparently had turned their brown skin another hue under the cool stage lights.

Parini describes her friend as a force—”not one to back down from a fight.” But back then, the women endured the routine microaggression quietly. For all its glamour, a ballet company is a workplace like any other, governed by hierarchies and unwritten social codes. With one big difference: There’s usually no formal human-resources department. “You sort of get this vibe that this is how it is,” says Boodoo. “The more subservient you are…the better and the more instruction you’ll receive…the further your career will go on.”

After starting to model, Boodoo met a photographer who was perplexed by her acquiescence. He described how the New York dancers he knew were much more assertive. It was a revelation: Boodoo’s confidence and following grew. She became an apprentice at the Pennsylvania Ballet, then returned to DC, becoming a full company member in 2019.

By the time the country was protesting for racial justice and dancers of color began organizing over Zoom, she was ready to speak out. “To all the dancers that don’t feel supported by their companies,” she posted to Instagram on June 1, 2020, “I think it’s time to make some changes and to hold them accountable.” Andrea Long-Naidu, a former New York ballet star and a past teacher of Boodoo’s, looked on with pride: “When I had her at Dance Theatre of Harlem, she wasn’t aware of her powers yet.”

Seeing her staff in pain after George Floyd’s Killing, Kent convened an all-company Zoom. Voice cracking, Boodoo recounted her experiences, explaining that the bias often presented itself as overtly as it did implicitly: The problem wasn’t simply getting passed over for a role but also being told her face looked “too ethnic” for the part.

Kent, who is white, listened on the other side of the screen, distinctly aware of the vulnerability on display among her dancers. A former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, she performed on global stages and had a part in the beloved 2000 movie Center Stage. “I have a unique role and responsibility in order to move [the art form] forward,” she says, “and allow for the kind of career and love that I had to be possible for as many people as possible.”

Kent inherited one of the country’s most diverse companies from her predecessor, Septime Webre, who had recruited worldwide and electrified the institution’s cultural cachet. She had added 16 dancers to the corps, almost half of whom identify as BIPOC—and now they were hurting. There’s also the matter of competition. The Ballet has to compete with bigger acts imported by the Kennedy Center. In some ways, its relevance hinges on broadening ballet’s historically older, white audience with admirers whose woke-ness won’t tolerate notions of “diversity” that predate Black Lives Matter—or that feel performative.

Kent formed a working group with members from every department to tackle issues of inclusion and equity, and an outside consultant has been guiding their monthly meetings and homework. Boodoo, who represents the performers along with Oscar Sanchez, a Cuban dancer, had expected pushback. But her fan base and platform—a social-media audience that, at nearly 50,000 on Instagram, is within striking distance of some top New York ballerinas’—would have been tough for the company to ignore.

As wider discussions started, though, it became clear that white privilege was a new concept to some. Boodoo was dismayed that some colleagues were unfamiliar with certain civil-rights leaders, so she helped organize a remote study of the book The New Jim Crow. To prod management, she and fellow colleagues of color met privately to hash out ideas for the company at large. It’s been exhausting to divide her energy between institutional matters and the rigors of performing: “You want to just focus on your art form, you just want to focus on being beautiful, being a strong dancer, and contributing to the task at hand.”

Partly because of Covid limits on gatherings and partly because they had to start with building a shared vocabulary, the working group’s progress has felt slow. But they’re in the process of finalizing recommendations to address the places where inequity creeps in. Money, donors, time, and institutional commitment, meanwhile, all could limit their progress. The group, for instance, envisions a Nutcracker free of racist tropes—in particular, the traditional Arabian and Chinese dances, which play up offensive cultural stereotypes. But ticket sales help fund the annual budget. Will the public support changes to the beloved show? Can the company handle that financial risk?

The stakes—Black dancers continually being overlooked or leaving ballet—feel higher now that the work has begun. Still, Boodoo says she feels hopeful that the company will evolve. “She’ll be someone,” says Long-Naidu, “that’ll go down in the history books of Black ballerinas.” An artist who championed a new act for the ballet, or at least one who tried.

#article #nardia boodoo #ballet #racism #anti black racism

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

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National Enquirer, May 10

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince Charles orders Prince Harry to divorce Meghan Markle

Page 2: In a sniveling fit of pique, scorned Alex Rodriguez has trashed former fiancee Jennifer Lopez as a dud in the sack and A-Rod is moaning J. Lo drove him to chase excitement elsewhere because she couldn't keep up with his sex demands and Alex is defending his piggish behavior by saying Jennifer pushed him into it and their spark died long ago, and they were barely intimate for the best part of a year before calling it quits -- Jennifer would pack on the PDA for the cameras, but the moment they were in private she pushed Alex away and even made him sleep in a separate bedroom and he says it was like dating an ice queen and pities the next guy she ropes in -- Jennifer thought she and Alex had a pretty good connection during their happier times, even though she'd likely admit things really petered out toward the end when the lack of trust set in so it will sting her that he's trashing her skills in the bedroom

Page 4: Robert De Niro is getting pummeled by estranged wife Grace Hightower's free-spending ways and his bitter spouse is intent on taking the aging legend for every penny as their nasty divorce drags on -- Robert's lawyers argued in court that greedy Grace's extravagant lifestyle has forced him to take every job he can snag, causing the 77-year-old to toil 12-hour days, six days a week and what's more, Robert's Nobu restaurant business has hit hard times and his tax bills to Uncle Sam are piling up but he is reportedly worth a whopping $500 million, and Grace's lawyers have countered he's pleading poverty but regularly charters a helicopter to Sunday brunch, a charge denied by his lawyer and her attorneys also claimed Robert frequently flies to Florida on a private plane and spends millions and millions on himself -- meanwhile, Robert's relationship with 66-year-old Grace has taken such a nosedive, she's spending frivolously just to punish him and she's walked into a shop a spent $80,000 in 15 minutes and she will go on vacations to the Bahamas, stop at the duty-free store and pay four times the price of what things usually cost and she has more wigs than Imelda Marcos had shoes -- Robert met Grace in 1987 when she was working as a waitress in London, and they married a decade later but they split in 1999 then reconciled and renewed their vows in 2004 before finally calling it quits in 2018 -- De Niro has forked over as much as $375,000 a month to his spouse since their split and the financially squeezed star may resort to doing product endorsements just to pay the bills -- under the terms of the couple's prenuptial agreement, once Grace and Robert are finally divorced, she's allowed a $6 million home, $500,000 cash and $1 million in annual alimony, but her lawyers have argued she should be entitled to half his fortune

* Nearly two years after Hayden Panettiere accused ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson of brutally attacking her, the bully was sentenced to serve time in Los Angeles after he pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend, and the remaining charges of battery, assault with a deadly weapon and dissuading a witness were dismissed and he was hit with 45 days behind bars and four years' probation but he'll get credit for 12 days served -- he's done his own damage and will pay a permanent price for it -- meanwhile, Hayden is now in a great place in her life

Page 5: Danny Masterson has dragged Leah Remini into his rape case, claiming her docuseries Scientology and Its Aftermath influenced his alleged victims to file police reports against him -- former Scientologist Leah offered the women inducements and benefits to report Masterson to cops, his lawyer Tom Mesereau told a L.A. criminal court -- Danny, a 45-year-old Scientologist and That '70s Show alum, has pleaded not guilty to charges he raped three women in separate incidents between 2001 and 2003 -- Mesereau also called an LAPD detective who worked a second job as security for Leah a double agent and questioned how a 2000 police report made by one alleged victim went missing, but Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller dismissed Mesereau's double agent claims as hyperbole and said the defense got a copy of the missing report and Mesereau's request to push back Masterson's preliminary hearing, a Scientology delay tactic, was also rejected

Page 6: Kelly Osbourne's shocking relapse after nearly four years of sobriety occurred amid intense family drama for the former reality show clan -- Kelly's mom Sharon Osbourne's exit from The Talk amid racism claims by co-hosts and dad Ozzy Osbourne's struggles with crippling Parkinson's disease and excruciating nerve damage frazzled her and she confessed she relapsed and she's not proud of it, but she's back on track and she's truly learned that it is just one day at a time -- her parents' problems weighed heavily on 36-year-old Kelly, who first struggled with substance abuse in her teens, and there's no doubt her mother's scandalous exit from The Talk played a big role as Kelly was crushed over the beating Sharon took in the press and retired rocker Ozzy's relentless suffering also pains Kelly and throw in brother Jack Osbourne's progressive MS and she's dealing with a lot

Page 7: Distressed Dolly Parton is ready to stage an all-star country intervention for her party-hearty goddaughter Miley Cyrus after recent photos of the troubled wild child swilling booze triggered alarm bells for Miley's family members and inner circle, including Dolly who has acted as a mentor to Miley and Dolly has always fussed over Miley like a mother hen and she's worried Miley is going to throw away her career and her life -- 75-year-old Dolly is so concerned about 28-year-old Miley that she's talked about reaching out to other country icons to arrange a meeting with the former Disney child star and help her consider her options and Dolly wants to enlist women she knows Miley truly admires, like Reba McEntire and Loretta Lynn, and organize a sit-down and Dolly knows if Miley hears from legends who achieved so much in the music industry, she's likely to understand any mistakes she makes now can affect her life forever -- every time Dolly thinks Miley's got her demons beat, she hears of another slip-up, so she feels like it's time to take action and Miley's parents Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus, who are good pals of Dolly, are thankful for Dolly's concern because Billy Ray and Tish have tried talking to Miley, but she tunes her parents out and they agree their daughter is more likely to respond to Dolly and her legendary friends

* Angelina Jolie blamed her ugly divorce with Brad Pitt for dashing her dreams to direct movies -- she and Brad split in 2016 and the two have been locked in a mudslinging legal slugfest ever since -- Angie says she love directing, but she had a change in her family situation that's not made it possible for her to direct for a few years and Angie, who last directed 2017's First They Killed My Father, said she needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so she kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs

Page 8: Shamed sleaze Matt Lauer has been snubbed by his old Hamptons crowd, and it's got the scandal-scarred scumbag down in the dumps and the super-rich who live and socialize in the fashionable high-society playground won't forget how Lauer was axed from his longtime Today gig over bombshell allegations of sexual misconduct and Matt's done everything he can to regain his place in the community, from hanging out in the village to splashing money around and tipping too well and he's convinced he can make a comeback, but snooty residents turn their noses up and it must be difficult for him because it's tough for anyone who wants to get in with this crowd but for Matt it's become almost impossible -- with scandal raging, Lauer's marriage to Annette Roque collapsed and they divorced in 2019 after a two-year separation and they share three children, daughter Romy, 17, and sons Jack, 19, and Thijs, 14, and Lauer has denied any wrongdoing and insisted his reputation was wrongly smeared in a media feeding frenzy intent on destroying him -- after his divorce, Matt hooked up with public relations guru Shamin Abas and the two have reportedly been pals for years and were first linked when Matt took her to his New Zealand home in December 2019 and Matt's friends are saying he's talking about a big Hamptons wedding when he and Shamin make things official, but it would be a failure if no one attends but Shamin has a lot of connections, so maybe that will help in time -- Matt's obviously an embarrassment in the area and he's not getting much joy at the swanky country clubs he likes to frequent either and it's clear to see that doors from many A-listers, like Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson, who have had ample time to put out the welcome mat and Matt won't be getting invites to their homes anytime soon

Page 9: Kourtney Kardashian is packing on the PDA with new boyfriend Travis Barker and insiders said her desperate bid to compete with her sisters has gone way over the top and ever since Kourtney and Travis first went public, the oldest Kardashian sibling has made it a point to post the couple's passionate romps in racy pics and videos on social media and people in her circle feel it's beneath her to advertise her personal moments like this and even her family thinks it's unflattering, but she's getting a kick out of showing off her wild side and Kourtney has been desperate to raise her profile to keep up with internet-savvy sisters Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian, who promote themselves by posting incessantly and Kourtney was always more low-key, but now she thinks she needs to be outrageous to keep up but her friends and family say it's not who she is, and she should put a lid on the steam

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Alison Brie helped tend to newly planted trees in Malibu, Chris Rock tuned out the world with a set of headphones while walking in Miami, Dylan McDermott plays a bad guy on Law & Order: Organized Crime, Dancing with the Stars pro Sasha Farber buzzed around L.A. on an electric bike, Margot Robbie skating in Malibu

Page 11: Paula Abdul is filling in for Luke Bryan on American Idol, but she's gone crazy with fillers and Botox to the point where she can barely move her face -- 58-year-old Paula, one of the show's original three judges who left before the ninth season, jumped at the chance after Luke tested positive for COVID-19, but when she showed up for work, she was far from the familiar face everyone was expecting and she must have given her co-hosts quite a fright because her face is blown up like a balloon and her forehead has no lines and her eyes have no crinkling at the corners that you would normally expect on someone who's pushing 60 and people are saying she never did know when to quit and this time she's really gone overboard and it was a shame, since it's no secret she'd love to make a comeback on the show and she's still in fantastic shape, but it's kind of sad to see her fall victim to these Hollywood trends as she's a lovely lady and should leave well enough alone -- her heart-shaped face may predispose her to a slower aging process than longer facial shapes

* Jessica Simpson has plumped up her kisser, but one expert thinks her new inflated piehole would look better on a fish because she's gone overboard with filler in her lips and the end result is an unnatural and very unattractive look because the M-shape of the middle upper lip is distorted, creating a fishy appearance she surely wasn't going for

Page 12: Straight Shuter gossip column -- James Bond will be gunning for Top Gun: Maverick on movie screens in November, and Tom Cruise isn't happy -- moving the Top Gun sequel from July to November has left Tom shaken and stirred and no one is more competitive than Tom and going up against the new 007 film starring Daniel Craig has put the fear of God into him because Tom likes to win and coming in second is not an option so get ready for an all-out box office war between Tom and James Bond and this is going to get ugly

* Just out-of-the-closet Colton Underwood has been invited back to his old stomping grounds on The Bachelor but he won't be the new Gay Bachelor, but there's been talk about him returning to help contestants through the process -- he'll literally play the gay best friend who helps the straight contestants find love

* Bridgerton stud Rege-Jean Page won't be back for season 2, but crossing the show's powerful producer Shonda Rhimes was not smart because Shonda is not used to being told no, especially by an actor no one had heard of before she cast him -- Rege-Jean was naive about the business of Hollywood, but he's learning fast but saying no to Shonda is a move he's now thinking twice about

* Irina Shayk had her hands full during a photo shoot in NYC (picture)

Page 13: Racy reality series The Bachelorette has so disgusted some American viewers, they've flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with complaints and calls to yank the sexy show from TV -- according to documents, a season 16 dodgeball game that turned into a stripping competition among Clare Crawley's suitors in 2020 especially fueled viewers' rage, even though the aired footage was blacked out to protect the men's privates but the game was not over until one team was fully naked

* Matchmaker Olivia Newton-John is itching to play Cupid for longtime pal John Travolta as her Grease co-star approaches the one-year anniversary of the death of his beloved wife Kelly Preston and Oliva would like nothing more than to bring some joy and happiness back into John's life and she has lots of beautiful, fun-filled lady friends from the U.S. and Australia she could set John up with but he may not be ready for a new romance, and John himself has admitted mourning is individual and experiencing your own journey is what can lead to healing and John still hasn't gotten over Kelly's death yet and it feels like yesterday to him

Page 15: Tiger Woods' former mistress Jamie Jungers is dishing about her doomed 18-month affair with the then-married golf great and the fallout that triggered her harrowing spiral into drug addiction in a juicy new tell-all -- Jamie, 38, said she met the skirt-chasing links legend, now recovering from a shattered right leg after a February car crash, during her stint as a party host in Sin City and she claimed they kicked off a fling behind the back of his wife Elin Nordegren and Tiger would often fly his new squeeze to his L.A. home for their secret trysts and Jamie said she even once signed for a package at the newlyweds' pad that turned out to be wedding photos of Tiger and his bride, who divorced the sex addict in 2010 -- but it was not too hard for Jamie to convince herself the couple's marriage was on the skids because Elin spent so much time in her native Sweden and Jamie confessed she loved Tiger in a way but knew they'd never have a real relationship -- things came to a screeching halt when the tightwad millionaire refused to help her find new digs and Jamie kept her lips zipped about the hush-hush affair for three years, but she claimed her ensuing media appearances, in which she was dubbed Mistress No. 4, left her feeling humiliated, triggering a $500 a day pill habit that led to her getting hooked on heroin and meth and homeless Jamie endured failed stints in rehab, went through detox while behind bars and hit rock bottom before getting clean in 2018 and now sober, she said of her former flame she's not in love with him anymore

Page 16: Picky parents Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin have found one thing that's even tougher than raising six kids: finding the right nanny -- Alec and Hilaria have high expectations for prospective carers and exacting demands when it comes to their duties and Hilaria is so involved with the kids, so she's especially vigilant and has the final say when it comes to hiring and firing though Alec definitely has his checklist on what makes a good nanny and try as they might, they realize they can't do everything themselves and need help, lots of it, but it's been a logistical nightmare getting a team of nannies organized as Alec and Hilaria are tough on them and firm and long hours and multitasking are a must and of course they must be quick on their toes and know what to do with a cranky set of children without losing their cool and a good disposition, a clean and tidy appearance and the ability to step in last minute when needed are all prerequisites to be a Baldwin nanny -- Hilaria and Alec feel guilty about using more help than they initially thought they'd need and typically have at least two nannies on duty and they're doing their best to keep their home from becoming a nuthouse and stay sane and even when Hilaria and Alec are both home at the same time, they still need help changing diapers and doing endless loads of laundry, preparing meals and snacks and assisting homeschooling for the older ones and making sure they all get plenty of exercise and playtime -- it's been a challenge and they won't settle for anything but the most skilled nannies, and their friends can see the efforts are paying off

Page 17: Britney Spears has taken to social media to insist she's OK, but there are increasing concerns over the singer's state of mind -- Britney, 39, has shared bizarre Instagram posts showing her maniacally dancing and also bellyached that she's trying to learn how to use technology in this technology-driven generation, but to be totally honest she can't stand it -- the wacky videos followed the documentary Framing Britney Spears, which cast an unflattering spotlight on her troubled history amid her fight to have her conservator dad Jamie Spears removed from overseeing her personal and financial affairs and Britney, who has not had control over her own cash or major life decisions since her notorious 2008 breakdown, said the documentary's portrayal embarrassed her and brought her to tears and she cried for two weeks -- still, Britney reassured fans she's totally fine and she's extremely happy, she has a beautiful home, beautiful children, referring to her sons Sean, 15, and Jayden, 14, and although Britney, who's been coupled up with 27-year-old personal trainer Sam Asghari since 2016, insisted she's enjoying herself, she was caught on camera in Malibu appearing out of sorts and she looked a total mess and she looked like she hadn't brushed her hair in days and the truth is she's wracked with anxiety and she doesn't trust anyone in her orbit except her boyfriend

Page 18: American Life -- Like many dads, J.B. Handley couldn't understand his teenage son, but in this case, 18-year-old Jamison Handley is autistic and has not spoken a word since he was born -- using a breakthrough strategy called Spelling to Communicate (STC), J.B. discovered his son was hyper-intelligent and now Jamison is graduating from high school and will go to college to study neuroscience in 2022

Page 19: Newly single Kanye West is in the market for someone to cuddle with now that Kim Kardashian is out of the picture and the National Enquirer has decided to help him in his quest: Amanda Gorman, Bjork, Quay Dash, Marina Abramovic, Maria Cristerna

* While Kanye West is looking for a new lady to be his creative muse, his estranged wife Kim Kardashian sees the dating pool as the source of her next career move -- Kim has not been romantically linked to anyone since she filed for divorce in February and she's not dating anyone because, if she were, it would be a career move and Kim can't date quietly; she doesn't even understand what that would be like

Page 22: Katie Holmes and her boytoy beau Emilio Vitolo Jr. haven't been photographed together in more than a month, leaving people to wonder if the once snap-happy couple's romance is cooling off -- after being constantly caught on camera packing on the PDAs, the coosome twosome's vanishing act has sources suspecting work stress is taking a toll -- they're still together but things aren't anything like they were, and Katie seems pretty down and Emilio has been working long hours at his dad's restaurant, which was hit hard during the pandemic and that's meant less time for him and Katie to hang out and their romance may have gone from full boil to simmer

* Hollywood Hookups -- Danica Patrick and Carter Comstock dating, Zac Efron and Vanessa Valladares split, Madison LeCroy is dating a mystery man

Page 23: Lizzo stripped nude on social media for an unedited selfie to promote body positivity in all its glory and the 32-year-old defied the haters by bravely going makeup-free and wearing only her birthday suit -- she said she's letting it all hang out to encourage girls struggling with their self-image and self-confidence to embrace their natural beauty

* Bethenny Frankel plans to spend a whopping $10 million on her upcoming wedding -- she is set to wed Paul Bernon after she was spotted flashing a ginormous sparkler reportedly worth over $400,000 and movie producer Paul, 43, has given Bethenny, 50, carte blanche to spend whatever she wants so she's thinking 50,000 roses, champagne, gilt-edged glasses, a garden setting with fountains, dancers and a choir and Bethenny wants it to be perfect and she expects the best of everything

* Julianna Margulies has admitted things were hot on the set of ER, and it was because she and co-star George Clooney had a crush on each other and the chemistry on the beloved TV series between Julianna, now 54, and George, 60, was organic, she gushed in her upcoming memoir -- she also said when you create an environment that people feel safe in, then you do your best work and George taught her that and she felt so safe with him

Page 25: Troubled Tori Spelling is convinced having a sixth baby is the only way to bring her rocky 15-year marriage to Dean McDermott back from the brink -- Tori, 47, and Dean, 54, have been living separate lives for months and she has frequently been seen in public without her wedding ring and lately they've been more like brother and sister than husband and wife, but Tori is under the impression that another baby will give them a fresh start -- Dean has tried to repair their romance by taking on more dad duties and he even pushed for a recent family getaway to Palm Springs, where Tori socked her husband with the ultimatum to give her another baby or hit the highway and it's true they got along a lot happier when she was pregnant, but a lot of people think she's being delusional since they still have a lot of issues to work through and having another kid isn't going to be a magic fix and in fact, it may even add to their problems

Page 26: Cover Story -- Prince Harry's desperate bid to make peace with his estranged royal family exploded spectacularly when his father Prince Charles gave him an ultimatum to divorce Meghan Markle or you're out forever -- the secret showdown came after the funeral for his grandfather Prince Philip that forced family members to reunite for the first time following a year of bitterness and shocking allegations and any hope Harry had of mending fences and being welcomed back went out the window when he broke Queen Elizabeth's heart by snubbing her 95th birthday right after the funeral because he flew back to California the day before her birthday and it was the last straw for Charles, who was furious and he was stunned his son couldn't wait just 24 hours more to show respect for his grandmother and felt compelled to rush back to his pregnant wife Meghan and it would have meant so much for Her Majesty, who was still mourning her husband and needs all the comfort she can get but instead Harry headed back to his ritzy $14 mansion and Hollywood lifestyle, callously leaving his grieving grandmother on what should have been her big day -- the word is Meghan ordered him back as he'd been gone 10 days, their longest separation since they wed, and she didn't want his family playing mind tricks on him, trying to convince him he should return to the U.K. -- Charles confronted his younger son about snubbing Her Majesty during a phone call from his country getaway in Wales, where Charles was grieving his father Prince Philip and considering the future of the monarchy and Charles didn't mince words and he called Harry selfish and blamed Meghan for ripping the family apart and he bluntly admitted he and other royals, including the queen herself, were deeply disappointed and very angry by what the couple said in an explosive tell-all TV special and he couldn't believe Harry would agree to such a devastating interview without pressure from his publicity-obsessed wife or her advisors and Charles told Harry he was ashamed of him for turning his back on his family and breaking his grandmother's heart and Charles said he didn't believe Harry's marriage can survive long-term and suggested that Meghan was so ambitious, she'd dump Harry when something, or someone, better came along then he shockingly told his son he would only be welcomed back if he divorced that American actress and Charles insisted divorce was the only way to save the royal family and Harry himself -- Harry faced a great deal of frostiness from other members of the family after he arrived for Philip's funeral: Princess Anne, Prince Edward, his wife Sophie and other relatives didn't even look at Harry, they are so angry with him and Meghan, and Prince William and his wife Duchess Kate tried to put on a united front, speaking to Harry as they walked away from the service, but it was all for show as the queen had ordered a truce in the feud to avoid another public scandal, but family feelings are running very deep against Harry and Meghan for quitting royal duties and trashing the royals in their interview and the truth is if Harry doesn't divorce Meghan, this rift will never be mended

Page 36: Ellen DeGeneres confessed she'd swilled three cannabis-laced drinks and popped two snooze-inducing pills before driving wife Portia de Rossi to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy -- during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen said she'd downed a commercial beverage containing the weed compounds THC and CBD and admitted she didn't feel anything and then she drank three, and she also took two melatonin sleep pills and she's lying in bed and realizes Portia is not in bed -- after finding Portia on all fours and in pain, Ellen claimed her adrenaline kicked in and she rushed Portia to the hospital

Page 38: Gwyneth Paltrow knows at least one person who is not a fan of her catalog of sex toys: her mom Blythe Danner -- while Gwynnie loves to bang the drum for frisky female fun by hawking vibrators, whips, handcuffs, genital-themed jewelry and even a candle called This Smells Like My Orgasm, her 78-year-old mother is always shocked by her raunchy online inventory and is very proper, but Gwyneth said even proper ladies have sexuality too -- although her mom is not lining up to purchase the BDSM starter kit or the $15,000 gold-plated dildo, Gwyneth remains committed to tackling taboos related to female pleasure, saying she thinks that our sexuality is such an important part of who we are and one of the things they really believe in at Goop is eliminating shame from these topics

* The Entourage crew might get back together, with Charlie Sheen joining the gang -- the creator of the bro show and 2015 spinoff movie said he may bring the boys back with his buddy Charlie in the reboot and Doug Elin says whether he would ever be in Entourage as Charlie Sheen or whether he would create a character for him, he would be all for it -- Charlie hasn't been seen on the big screen since a 2018 guest spot on Saturday Night Live

Page 42: Red Carpet -- Sofia Vergara

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new-sandrafilter · 4 years

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Timothée Chalamet and Eileen Atkins Interview - British Vogue May 2020

“Maybe your knuckles weren’t bleeding, but there was ice,” Timothée Chalamet tells Dame Eileen Atkins. He is recounting, with no small amount of awe, how he first came to hear of the legendary 85-year-old actor with whom he is about to appear at The Old Vic. It transpires that Oscar Isaac, Chalamet’s co-star in the upcoming blockbuster Dune, was at the receiving end of Atkins’ fist in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (all in the name of acting, of course). Chalamet was duly impressed.

“I gave him the worst time of his life,” says Atkins, bristling at the memory, before merrily launching into several candid, very dame-like stories from her time on set – “That was a nightmare movie. A nightmare.”

It is a Saturday afternoon in late February, and the two actors – one a titan of British theatre with an eight-decade career; the other, Hollywood’s most in-demand young leading man, with an insatiable Instagram following – have just finished being photographed together for Vogue. Chalamet, 24, in louche, low-slung denim and a white T-shirt, has folded his Bambi limbs into a chair next to Atkins, whose hawkish frame, in a navy jumper and jeans, belies her 85 years.

“Do you like being called Tim or Timothée or what?” Atkins asks in her warm but brisk RP, all trace of her Tottenham upbringing erased.

“Whatever works,” he replies in a bright American accent, that shock of chestnut hair falling into his eyes. “Anything.”

“So you won’t object to ‘darling’? I call everyone darling. I’m told I mustn’t say it these days.” He assures her he is fine with it: “It’s a rite of passage, being called darling by Dame Eileen Atkins.”

“You always, always, have to put the dame in, otherwise you can’t address me,” she jokes.

It’s good the two are getting all this sorted now. A couple of days after our interview they will begin rehearsals for a seven-week run of Amy Herzog’s play 4000 Miles, in which they star as a grandmother and grandson, each quietly dealing with their own grief. Chalamet takes on the role of Leo Joseph-Connell, a somewhat lost 21-year-old who experiences a tragedy while on a 4,000-mile-long cycle ride with his best friend. Atkins plays Vera Joseph, his widowed 91-year-old grandmother, upon whose Manhattan doorstep Leo unexpectedly arrives in the middle of the night, unsure of where else to go. What follows is a wonderful, and wonderfully witty, study in human relationships, a portrait of two generations with decades between them trying to make sense of the world.

Its stars, who’ve met twice previously, in New York last year, are still very much getting to know each other – and are confident in the appeal. “There are things like this play – hoping I don’t butcher it – where you can just sit back and go, ‘Oh, this is a delicious meal,’” says Chalamet. Atkins agrees. “I have a phrase in mind that I shouldn’t really say because it’s going to sound terrible in print.” Which is? “I find it a dear little play, a really dear little play. I think it should be very moving. But who knows? We might f**k it up.”

It’s unlikely. Atkins has been a regular on The Old Vic’s stage since the 1960s, going toe-to-toe with greats from Laurence Olivier to Alec Guinness, and fellow dames (and close friends) Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. Chalamet, meanwhile, is a relative novice, with only two professional plays under his belt. But since his turn as Elio in 2017’s Call Me by Your Name (for which he was Oscar-nominated), his celluloid rise has been meteoric. Roles in Lady Bird, Little Women, The King and Wes Anderson’s upcoming The French Dispatch have not only earned him the slightly fraught badge of “heart-throb”, but proved him to be among the most captivating actors of his generation.

He says he couldn’t resist the opportunity to come to the capital. “There was something exciting about doing a play that feels very New York in London,” Chalamet explains of taking on the part. He’s a diehard theatre fan, too, revealing he saw the six-and-a-half-hour epic The Inheritance – twice. “There are films like The Dark Knight or Punch-Drunk Love or Parasite that can give you a special feeling. But nothing will be like seeing Death of a Salesman on Broadway with Philip Seymour Hoffman or A Raisin in the Sun with Denzel Washington.”

Herzog’s writing particularly spoke to him. “Leo’s in a stasis that was very appealing to me,” he continues. “We find our crisis in moments of stasis, but there’s an irony to it when you’re young, because the law of the land would have you think that to be young is to be having fun, to be coming into your own. But as everyone at this age who’s going through it knows, it’s often a shitshow.”

It’s safe to say that, in casting terms, director Matthew Warchus, also artistic director of The Old Vic, has hit the jackpot. He first took the play to Atkins three years ago, but it was only towards the end of 2019 that Chalamet came on board. When it was announced, in December, that Hollywood’s heir apparent to Leonardo DiCaprio would be making his London stage debut, the news was met with a level of hysteria not usually associated with the 202-year-old theatre’s crowd.

“Oh, my friends have told me who the audience is,” Atkins chimes in when I ask who they think will be coming to see the show. “It’s 40 per cent girls who want to go to bed with Timothée, it’s 40 per cent men who want to go to bed with Timothée, and it’s 20 per cent my old faithfuls.” Is Chalamet prepared for the onslaught? “I think it will be 100 per cent Eileen’s faithfuls,” he demurs.

On the surface, they can seem quite the odd couple. Chalamet, raised in Manhattan by an American dancer-turned-realtor mother and French father, an in-house editor at the United Nations, may be living a breathless, nomadic movie-star life but there’s an iron core of Gen Z earnestness there. He arrives on set with minimal fuss, even deciding to wear the clothes he came in for one shot, before knocking out some push-ups, politely ordering an omelette and generally being divinely well-mannered.

He turns on the star power for the camera, though, and I can confirm it’s as dazzling up close as it is on the red carpet, where he has, famously, casually redrawn the rules for male dressing. From that Louis Vuitton sparkly bib at the 2018 Golden Globes, to a dove-grey satin Haider Ackermann tux at Venice last year, he’s a true fashion darling. Then, of course, there’s his dating life – from Lourdes Ciccone Leon to Lily-Rose Depp – that remains an endless source of fascination to millions worldwide. (All this, it must be said, is of significantly less interest to Dame Eileen.)

Atkins started dance lessons aged three, shortly before the start of the Second World War. By 12, she was performing professionally in pantomime, not far from where she grew up in north London, the youngest daughter in a working-class family. A fast-established theatre star, wider fame didn’t find her until late in life. Despite memorable turns in Upstairs, Downstairs and Gosford Park, it was the 2000 television hits Cranford and Doc Martin, when she was in her early seventies, that finally made her a household name. Today, she lives alone in west London, since her second husband, the TV and film producer Bill Shepherd, died in 2016. She has often spoken of being happily childless, and has zero time for razzmatazz.

And yet, despite their differences, the pair appear perfectly matched. They already have their grandmother-grandson dynamic down pat. Atkins does a fine line in mischievous eyebrow-raising, and at one point recites a limerick that is, honestly, so rude it almost makes her co-star blush. Chalamet, meanwhile, is politeness personified, still trying to work out his thoughts on various subjects, less inclined to give so much of himself away. There is a physical likeness, too, in their delicate features and fine bone structure. They share a naturally melancholic look, one that melts away when they laugh.

Their upcoming play, which premiered to rapturous reviews Off-Broadway in 2011, “about a block” from Chalamet’s high school, LaGuardia, could have been written for them. “Other than not being American, I’m very like the old woman,” says Atkins of the Pulitzer-shortlisted play. “I can’t be bothered to learn the internet.” If there’s one thing she won’t tolerate in rehearsals, it’s people on their phones. That’s the only thing that will “piss me off ”, she says, brusquely.

Ah, phones. Are they really the symbol of generational disconnect? “It’s easy to point to these things,” Chalamet says, tapping his phone on the table, “as the cause or the symptom, but I think my generation is a guinea pig generation of sorts. We’re figuring out the pros and cons and limits of technology.”

Equally, Atkins is keen to distance herself from some of the criticism levelled at her age group. “There’s a saying isn’t there: if you’re not very left wing when you’re young, you’re heartless. And if you’re not very right wing when you’re old, you’re foolish. I’m not political, but I’m not with this government I can assure you – and I’m not with Brexit. I wanted to wear a sweater saying ‘I did not vote Brexit’, because it was all old people who did. Not me, not me,” she snaps. “I went on the march.”

Both are in agreement that intergenerational friendships are too rare these days. “So. Important,” Chalamet says, hitting the table between each word. “There is so much to learn from people who have walked the path of life. That’s why I’m so looking forward to these next couple of months.”

Atkins is thoughtful on the matter. “I don’t miss the fact I don’t have children, but I do envy my friends who have grandchildren,” she says. “About five or six years ago I met a couple of young people – they are just about 30 this year – and, do you know, we go out together. And people immediately say to me, ‘Are these your grandchildren?’ And I say, ‘No.’ And they say, ‘Your godchildren?’ And I say, ‘No, they’re just friends.’ Everybody thinks there is something weird about all three of us. They just don’t get it. But the boy makes me laugh more than anybody and the girl is enchanting. I have more fun with them than I do with almost anybody else.”

I remind Atkins about her description of today’s youth as being overly serious. “I do call them the New Puritans, yes,” she says, before motioning to her young co-star. “He probably drinks like a fish.”

Chalamet, currently single, is remaining tight-lipped about plans for his new London life, and how many late-night manoeuvres in Soho or Peckham it may involve. “I’ve got friends here, which is nice. But I’m here for this – to be terrified at The Old Vic.”

Before we leave, there is a final thing to clear up – Atkins’ aforementioned limerick. “Do you know about the Colin Farrell situation?” Eileen asks Timothée. No, comes his reply. “Better get it over with now because someone will tell you,” she says, proceeding to explain how, when she was “69, about to be 70” and filming Ask the Dust with a 27-year-old Farrell, “he made a pass at me. He came to my hotel room. He was enchanting. I let him chat for two hours, thoroughly enjoying it, but no not that. He was very cross I didn’t.”

But then, she explains guiltily, she later told the story during “some stupid TV show” (Loose Women), where despite her best efforts at keeping Farrell’s identity secret, the internet did its thing and news got out. An apology to Farrell was required. “So I left a limerick on Colin’s phone…” she says. She clears her throat: “There once was a **** of a dame…” she begins, in her imitable theatrical timbre, before reeling off one of the filthiest rhymes I’ve ever heard.

There is a moment of stunned laughter. “Wow, that’s sincerely amazing,” comes Chalamet’s response, as Atkins finishes the verse. He gives her a solemn oath: “I promise I won’t hit on you.”

4000 Miles is at The Old Vic, SE1, from 6 April

#timmy #timothee chalamet #4000 miles #british vogue app #Eileen Atkins #my edit

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How the Jaws Scene in Back to the Future Part 2 Predicted Modern Blockbusters

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Back to the Future Part II is a strange movie. As a sequel that director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale never intended to make, the ambitious follow-up to one of the greatest sci-fi comedies of all time was put into production simultaneously with Part III, which may have ultimately hurt the middle chapter since Zemeckis was still shooting scenes filmed in the Old West while editing Part II’s trippy vision of the then distant future…of 2015.

Even so, there are elements in the second Back to the Future that still play like gangbusters today, particularly in the sequences set during 2015. To be sure, part of the charm now is what those wild guesses about the future got wrong—such as the idea we’d all be driving around in flying cars, or even simply own cheap cars that didn’t run on fossil fuels. There were no real hover boards in 2015 (or 2021 for that matter), nor even automated Texaco pumps. Yet what Back to the Future Part II got very right is the numbing horror of something like Jaws 19.

Indeed, one of the best bits in the whole film is a slight dig at BTTF’s own studio, as well as the legacy of the film’s producer. The original Jaws is of course the first modern Hollywood blockbuster and it put Steven Spielberg on the map. With its innovative storytelling of leaving the monster to the imagination before finally providing the spectacle in the third act, Jaws is a masterpiece in narrative restraint that could still play for all audiences.

…Which is something no one would say about the three cash-in Jaws sequels that Universal Pictures green lit in the span of 12 years after 1975. In fact, when Back to the Future Part II was released in ’89, it’d only been two years since Jaws: The Revenge, the one where the ghost of Jaws went Bahamas and chased the Chief Brody character’s widow to the Caribbean while on a vendetta for what happened in ’75. It’s kind of hilarious.

As is the scene in Back to the Future Part II. In that sequence, Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly stands slack jawed in the middle of Hill Valley’s town square, the same space that was so memorably used in the first BTTF film where Marty was forced to finally accept he’d traveled to the year 1985. In the sequel, he comes to realize what it means to be in 2015 when he turns around to face the local multiplex, which has only one film on its marquee: Jaws 19. And then to demonstrate to Marty the state of 21st century special effects, the “HOLOMAX” release teases its thrills as a holographic Great White Shark emerges from the building and descends on Marty’s head.

Perhaps like many an audience member who choked on their popcorn kernels in ’75 with fear, Marty screams bloody murder—and then realizes it’s just a movie and scoffs, “The shark still looks fake.” Yes, it always did, but at least in the first movie that didn’t matter so much.

At the time, the scene was a nice dig at Universal’s expense as well as the Jaws franchise as a whole. What was once the most revolutionary Hollywood movie of 1975 had become a punchline by 1989: a once glorious title that’d been run into the ground with endless cash grab sequels. And the joke is even funnier because of the “19” in the title. Nineteen movies of the same franchise. Could you even imagine?!

Oh, how sweet the irony is, then, that one of the most absurd notions in Back to the Future Part II turned out to be the most true! No, there haven’t been 19 Jaws movies (yet), but that might be by virtue of the studio churning the franchise’s mystique into putty before Gen-Xers and Millennials could grow up with it beneath unsullied nostalgia glasses. Nevertheless, the future where Jaws 19 could exist came true.

Consider that we scoff at the idea of 19 Jaws movies being made in 40 years, but Marvel Studios has released 25 pictures in only 13, with two more due out before Christmas 2021. And that doesn’t even include the television shows that are now coming to dominate Disney+.

I know what some will say: Marvel movies are a series of interconnected franchises, as opposed to one amorphous content farm. But that’s not entirely accurate. There are exceptions, of course, which stand out as singularly distinct from other MCU efforts. There’s Black Panther, for instance. That 2018 Oscar nominee is totally removed from the events of The Avengers, you might say. Then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy and its wacky space opera shenanigans occurring literal light years away from the events of Iron Man 3.

And yet, the appeal for most moviegoers, and the brilliance of Marvel’s marketing strategy, is that they all seem like the same thing to the undiscerning eye. And even to the discerning one, there is a pat familiarity to the formula, story beats, and sitcom-esque ability to wink at the audience at its own silliness. Tonally, they all feel of one piece. Hence why the first Shang-Chi movie was gladly welcomed by the industry last month as Marvel’s latest blockbuster hit—a feat borne in large off it being the next Marvel movie, as opposed to a new original property without a built-in audience.

It’s an aspect to the whole series which caused Dune director Denis Villeneuve to suggest that some Marvel movies are “cut and paste.” It’s also a formula which aids the studio to force its millions of fans to see it “as all connected” and be encouraged to go see the Ant-Man sequel they might otherwise skip in order to discover how its post-credits scene will set up the deus ex machina for Avengers: Endgame.

And that aforementioned Black Panther originally had its protagonist introduced in Captain America: Civil War, an Avengers movie by another name. It’s also the only “Cap” flick to cross $1 billion because they stuck Iron Man in it. Similarly, James Gunn’s Guardians films are genuinely auteur-driven, yet they still worked as a years-long tease of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame’s big bad: Thanos. Hell, Infinity War’s biggest selling point in the trailer was seeing the Avengers and Guardians meet face-to-face for the first time.

The methods and talent being used to produce these endless sequels are far more sophisticated and entertaining than the hack work which produced Jaws: The Revenge, but then that’s why Jaws only lasted four movies and Marvel’s already mapping out its 30th “event” in the next few years.

This is not meant to only criticize Marvel, however. They are simply the most successful studio at exploiting their intellectual property in the 21st century. Universal’s own Fast and Furious movies aren’t half bad at that game, though. This summer just saw the 10th “Fast Saga” movie when you count Hobbs and Shaw. And while Vin Diesel claims the 11th main line Fast and Furious movie will be the last, you just know with its own Avengers-sized cast that Hobbs and Shaw will be merely the first spinoff franchise from “the family.”

Even Spielberg, who was reportedly never happy with the Jaws sequels and what they did to his first masterwork, has been much more ready to “open up” later successes like Jurassic Park. Considered a “smart” blockbuster entertainment in 1993 that inspired genuine awe from millions of moviegoers, that film’s fourth sequel (which was produced by Spielberg, like all the follow-ups) reveled in watching dinosaurs stalk around a haunted house, as if they were Frankenstein and Dracula. Next year’s Jurassic World: Dominion is supposedly intended to be the “final” film of the three most recent, Chris Pratt-led sequels, as well as another sendoff to the original 1993 movie’s cast. Yet it seems dubious that it’ll be the last film set in that “universe.”

After all, the “Skywalker Saga” ended with a whimper in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but Disney is preparing to churn out more Star Wars movies and TV shows than ever before in the next decade.

This is not to say you should feel ashamed for enjoying any of these movies or franchises. Folks like what they like. But what Back to the Future Part II perhaps unintentionally predicted was that audiences would have an appetite for a proverbial Jaws 19.

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When BTTF became a trilogy, sequels were still seen as a creatively risky proposition. Filmmakers often maintained artistic credibility by attempting to turn sequels into a larger thematic whole—often as a trilogy. Lucas set that standard with Star Wars, and only after his buddy Francis Ford Coppola claimed he’d never make another Godfather movie after Part II. Spielberg originally walked away from Indiana Jones after three movies, and many likely wish he’d stayed firm about that in retrospect. Meanwhile, Zemeckis and Gale have done the near impossible thing: refuse to allow Universal to make a fourth Back to the Future movie or reboot the series entirely.

But equivocations in the industry about a proverbial Jaws 19 are long gone. What was once a cheeky riff on the dystopian Coca-Cola billboard ads in Blade Runner have become a modern day reality in 2021. And hey, there’s now a real holographic Times Square billboard ad for that, too.

The post How the Jaws Scene in Back to the Future Part 2 Predicted Modern Blockbusters appeared first on Den of Geek.

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incorrectbatfam · 4 years

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Batfam during New Years?

This would’ve been more appropriate three months ago, so I’ll be doing it for the 2019-2020 New Year’s

Also I realize this is a lot more than just batfamily and is probably the biggest crossover I’ve ever done but it feels right

Instead of having a blowout gala, the Waynes just invite a few close families. Namely the Supers, Speedsters, Wonders, and Arrows

Lois, Joan, and Iris help Alfred prepare a marvelous dinner while Clark, Jon, and Conner literally fly in with tables from elsewhere. Conner brings a table that looks suspiciously like the one from Mount Justice

Bruce jokingly allows everyone to bring a plus one because he assumes that all the plus ones were on the original invite. He forgot to account for Barry and Bart’s partners, so they have to send the Kents out again to find more chairs

Speaking of speedsters, Dick forgot to keep an eye on his and Wally nabs all the champagne, much to Jason’s chagrin

They have an early dinner because there’s still a lotta people and they want time for other things. That and it takes forever to make speedsters and Kryptonians feel full

There’s a kids table with Damian, Jon, Jai, Irey, little Lian, and toddlers Don and Dawn. Bruce makes an executive decision to move Bart there halfway through the meal

The teenagers gather in Tim’s bedroom to play Never Have I Ever with a stolen bottle of champagne, with a little help from Wonder Girl’s lasso of truth. And after a few drinks, it turns into a really weird game of Truth or Dare where a couple couples officially come out and Tim admits to to eating ketchup with a spoon, which Khaji Da does not react well to for reasons unknown even to Jaime

Meanwhile, the Outlaws find a corner to themselves to play Cards Against Humanity, but it’s rather hard when Lian keeps peeking over Roy’s shoulders and ask difficult questions like “What’s a [REDACTED]”

The adults gather and gossip on the couch with some wine that Selina totally didn’t steal from another party. They talk and reminisce, bittersweetly wondering where on Earth the time has gone. Because at one point, they were all young superheroes, and now they’re together in a manor full of legacies and holy cow do they feel old

Dick bundles the children up in poofy layers before they go outside to play in the snow. Cass declares an official snowball war and single handedly takes down a team made of an assassin, a super kid, two speedsters, and Nightwing

Duke asks Damian what his New Year’s resolution is. Damian replies, “Try not to kill anyone”. Duke is proud but also yeets away from the conversation faster than the Flash

Alfred also had an enormous croquembouche prepared for dessert stored in the other room. Stephanie, Donna, Kara, and Emiko take turns keeping lookout and shoving cream puffs down their shirts

They hook up a karaoke machine and literally everyone scrambles to do a duet with Black Canary (but Oliver gets first dibs). Barbara tricks the machine out so everyone’s voices come out as hilariously autotuned

Jay, Barry, Bart, Wally, Jai, and Irey still continue their annual tradition of racing around the world and experiencing New Year’s in every country. Jean Paul, Mia, and Hal all have a stopwatch in each hand (like those have any use). Irey wins the race, and they suspect Grandpa Garrick threw the competition for her. Bart comes in last because he stopped in El Paso to chat with Jaime’s family

Harper Row arrives late because of a last-minute mission but everyone instantly forgives her because the mission led to her bringing an entire ice cream truck to the party

Diana jokingly dares Clark to kiss Bruce at midnight. She didn’t think he’d actually do it. Lois and Selina have pictures

Barbara puts the ball drop on TV about half an hour before midnight and everyone gathers around in the main room. Tim and Dick also bring a ton of phones and laptops so they can Skype all the folks that aren’t there, from other hero families like the Atlanteans to Arkham inmates like Harley Quinn and Riddler. After all, they had all been through a lot over the years and the turn of the decade seemed like a better time than ever to put differences aside for one night and celebrate as they count down the seconds together

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tswiftdaily · 4 years

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In the 2010s, she went from country superstar to pop titan and broke records with chart-topping albums and blockbuster tours. Now Swift is using her industry clout to fight for artists’ rights and foster the musical community she wished she had coming up.

One evening in late-October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became -- as it often does -- an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello -- the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in -- I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

Swift, who will celebrate her 30th birthday on Dec. 13, has been impossibly famous for nearly half of her lifetime. She was 16 when she released her self-titled debut album in 2006, and 20 when her second album, Fearless, won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2010, making her the youngest artist to ever receive the honor. As the decade comes to a close, Swift is one of the most accomplished musical acts of all time: 37.3 million albums sold, according to Nielsen Music; 95 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 (including five No. 1s); 23 Billboard Music Awards; 12 Country Music Association Awards; 10 Grammys; and five world tours.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop -- hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 -- reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation -- which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West -- as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family -- there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” -- 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year -- starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to -- in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary -- claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights -- and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists -- and make them nonrecoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come -- and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise -- but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year -- like Saturday Night Live and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert -- I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say.

That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way -- on your Tumblr page.

Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around -- they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

You’ve spoken in recent interviews about the general expectations you’ve faced, using phrases like “They’ve wanted to see this” and “They hated me for this.” Who is “they”? Is it social media or disparaging think pieces or --

It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue -- like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to?

Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop -- we all have each other’s numbers and text each other -- but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now?

God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally?

From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas.

The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent?

That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so.

“Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in -- if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about?

Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all?

I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists.

I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently -- staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals.

We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about recalibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers.

We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal -- not as a renegotiation ploy -- and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me.

Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take?

I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?

Oh, God -- I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but … I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

#taylor swift #interview #billboard #women in music #woman of the decade

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, April 26, 2021

California ponders slow growth future (AP) In 1962, when California’s population of more than 17 million surpassed New York’s, Gov. Pat Brown celebrated by declaring a state holiday. In the coming days, when the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release the state’s latest head count, there probably will be no celebrations. Over the past decade, California’s average annual population growth rate slipped to 0.06%—lower than at any time since at least 1900. The state is facing the prospect of losing a U.S. House seat for the first time in its history, while political rivals Texas and Florida add more residents and political clout. The reality behind the slowed growth isn’t complicated. Experts point to three major factors: declining birth rates; a long-standing trend of fewer people moving in from other states than leaving; and a drop in international immigration, particularly from Asia, which has made up for people moving to other states. California is in the throes of a yearslong housing crisis as building fails to keep up with demand, forcing more people onto the streets and making home ownership unattainable for many. The state has the nation’s highest poverty rate when housing is taken into account. Its water resources are consistently taxed, and the state has spent more than half of the past decade in drought. Freeways are jammed as more people move to the suburbs, and worsening wildfires are destroying homes and communities.

Armenians Celebrate Biden’s Genocide Declaration as Furious Turkey Summons US Ambassador (Newsweek) Armenia celebrated President Joe Biden’s recognition of the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide on Saturday, as Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador and strongly condemned the move. In acknowledging of the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide, Biden went further than his predecessors in the White House after years of careful language on the issue. The move risks fracturing America’s relationship with Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally and NATO partner. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan sent Biden a letter praising his statement. Meanwhile, officials in Turkey quickly denounced Biden’s remarks and summoned the US Ambassador to Ankara. In a statement, Turkey said its foreign minister, Sedat Onal, has told ambassador David Satterfield that Biden’s remarks caused “wounds in ties that will be hard to repair.” Onal also reportedly told Satterfield that Turkey “rejected it, found it unacceptable and condemned in the strongest terms.”

Ahead of Geneva talks, Cypriots march for peace (Reuters) Thousands of Cypriots from both sides of a dividing line splitting their island marched for peace on Saturday, ahead of informal talks in Geneva next week on the future of negotiations. With some holding olive branches, people walked in the bright spring sunshine around the medieval walls circling the capital, Nicosia. The United Nations has called for informal talks of parties in the Cyprus dispute in Geneva on April 27-29, in an attempt to look for a way forward in resuming peace talks that collapsed in mid-2017. Prospects for progress appear slim, with each side sticking to their respective positions. Greek Cypriots say Cyprus should be reunited under a federal umbrella, citing relevant United Nations resolutions. The newly-elected Turkish Cypriot leader has called for a two-state resolution. Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup, though the seeds of separation were sown earlier, when a power-sharing administration crumbled in violence in 1963, just three years after independence from Britain.

World’s Biggest Covid Crisis Threatens Modi’s Grip on India (Bloomberg) As India recorded more than 234,000 new Covid-19 infections last Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an election rally in the West Bengal town of Asansol and tweeted: “I’ve never seen such huge crowds.” The second wave of the coronavirus has since grown into a tsunami. India is now the global coronavirus hotspot, setting records for the world’s highest number of daily cases. Images of hospitals overflowing with the sick and dying are flooding social media, as medical staff and the public alike make desperate appeals for oxygen supplies. The political and financial capitals of New Delhi and Mumbai are in lockdown, with only the sound of ambulance sirens punctuating the quiet, but there’s a growing chorus of blame directed at Modi over his government’s handling of the pandemic. “At this crucial time he is fighting for votes and not against Covid,” said Panchanan Maharana, a community activist from the state of Odisha, who previously supported Modi’s policies but will now look for alternative parties to back. “He is failing to deliver—he should stop talking and focus on saving people’s lives and livelihoods.” Modi is seen by many as a polarizing leader whose brand of nationalism that promotes the dominance of Hindus has appalled and enraptured the nation. Whether the pandemic will dent his appeal remains unclear.

ASEAN leaders tell Myanmar coup general to end killings (AP) Southeast Asian leaders demanded an immediate end to killings and the release of political detainees in Myanmar in an emergency summit Saturday with its top general and coup leader who, according to Malaysia’s prime minister, did not reject them outright. The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also told Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing during the two-hour talks in Jakarta that a dialogue between contending parties in Myanmar should immediately start, with the help of ASEAN envoys. Daily shootings by police and soldiers since the Feb. 1 coup have killed more than 700 mostly peaceful protesters and bystanders, according to several independent tallies. The messages conveyed to Min Aung Hlaing were unusually blunt and could be seen as a breach of the conservative 10-nation bloc’s bedrock principle forbidding member states from interfering in each other’s affairs. But Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said that policy should not lead to inaction if a domestic situation “jeopardizes the peace, security, and stability of ASEAN and the wider region” and there is international clamor for resolute action.

Sunken missing Indonesian submarine found broken into pieces (Reuters) A missing Indonesian submarine has been found, broken into at least three parts, at the bottom of the Bali Sea, army and navy officials said on Sunday, as the president sent condolences to relatives of the 53 crew. Navy chief of staff Yudo Margono said the crew were not to blame for the accident and that the submarine did not experience a blackout, blaming “forces of nature”. A sonar scan on Saturday detected the submarine at 850 metres (2,790 feet), far beyond the Nanggala’s diving range.

At least 82 die in Baghdad COVID hospital fire (Reuters) A fire sparked by an oxygen tank explosion killed at least 82 people and injured 110 at a hospital in Baghdad that had been equipped to house COVID-19 patients, an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Sunday. “We urgently need to review safety measures at all hospitals to prevent such a painful incident from happening in future,” spokesman Khalid al-Muhanna told state television, announcing the toll.

Struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, people turn to strangers online for help (Washington Post) The pandemic has been disastrous for millions of families across the United States. Roughly 8.5 million jobs have not returned since February 2020. Meanwhile, more than 564,000 people have died of the coronavirus, and 100,000 small businesses closed permanently in just the first three months of the crisis. The government has provided help, including through multiple relief packages that sent out three rounds of stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits. But for many people it hasn’t been enough—or come quickly enough—to avoid eviction, put food on the table and cover a growing pile of monthly bills. Enter crowdfunding, which has taken off more than ever in the past year as a way to supplement income. Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause—or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020—a 150 percent increase over 2019. But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses. As pandemic fatigue worsens, it’s getting hard to raise cash for basic expenses this way. Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. “I saw a whole bunch of zeros,” he said. Crowdfunding still tends to work best when people have a compelling story to tell.

Older people are the one group egalitarians discriminate against (Quartz) Young people have always been critical of their elders. What’s noteworthy about the way millennials and Zoomers talk about Baby Boomers today isn’t their disdain but its particulars: They resent the older generation because they feel shortchanged, deprived of promising futures. Gen Z, for example, famously channeled their frustration with the generation they hold responsible for issues like climate change and wealth inequality into the simple, sarcastic meme “OK boomer.” Vaccines aside, these economic frustrations are grounded in reality. At the same time, younger people’s systemic objections to the distribution of wealth and power in the US can wind up curdling into ageism. A new paper, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, highlights the importance of guarding against this bias. Over 80% of Americans between the ages of 50 and 80 say they experience ageism in their everyday lives, according to a 2020 poll from the University of Michigan. “I think many people overlook ageism as a form of prejudice in American society,” says Ashley Martin, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, who co-authored the paper with Michael North, an assistant professor at New York University. “It is often overlooked as an “ism” altogether, not only being condoned but often even promoted.” The paper identifies a surprising link between ageism and egalitarianism. The more participants in the study supported the principle of equality for all, the more likely they were to be biased against older people.

#headlines #news

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therestorer · 3 years

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Not much gets leaked about what goes on behind the scenes of Supernatural but what HAS been leaked makes it clear throughout the years that Destiel wasn’t taken seriously and there were no plans to make it canon. Jensen has been made the scapegoat for telling fans the truth all these years and blamed for preventing it when there’s a whole team and network who felt the same way about Dean being straight and their relationship being platonic.

Misha and Berens (writer) concocted that one-sided Destiel scene between themselves. They probably only got round making it half canon because Castiel being an Angel has no established orientation while Dean has been made straight in canon several times. Jensen has been blamed for it being one-sided but again even if Jensen had said ‘go for it’ it wouldn’t have happened because again there’s a whole production team/network HIDING behind the scenes who feel same about keeping Dean straight.

Establishing a straight character early in a series and not giving him a gay crisis at 42 does not mean that the actor, the writers, the producers etc are homophobic it means that to them it doesn’t make sense for Dean.

What the show has been guilty of which you are valid for being angry about is the queer-baiting without intention to follow through but I’ll again remind you Jensen never been part of that, he’s taken a line out of script that he knows would tease but ultimately not deliver on and he’s never given false hope.

I included Shatners tweets about how obsessive shippers can make an actors life miserable so if you hear about Jensen being rude/defensive on occasion think about what the man’s been put through to make him react like that and we are talking a handful of occasions in a decade with a lot of positive stuff inbetween that rarely makes the social media headlines.

Also Shatner mentioned Misha wanting canon destiel to sell merch, maybe he’s teasing but I will say ‘Stands’ in association with Misha are currently selling a brand new Destiel shirt and limited edition wings-love pendant on the back of that ‘canon’ episode.

Finally Jensen is NOT homophobic and the jokes have gone too far, so far they’ve become a rumor that people believe without wanting any facts to back them up. He’s been made the scapegoat, he’s had targeted harassment, his family have been upset and trying to defend him (aunt on twitter and cousin on tiktok) and his name and reputation have been ruined in search engines over a fictional ship.

Meanwhile Jensen in real life is an ally. He donates and holds fundraising events for Out Youth in Austin, he’s welcoming and supportive of all lgbtq fans he meets in person and has never done ANYTHING to deserve that label so if you see crap online before believing it’s true fact check because people are making up shit to keep the attack going now.

For evidence of Jensen being an ally check these links and stories

Out Youth Gala

https://jensendaily.org/eng/2019/11/20/jensen-at-out-youth-glitz-gala/

A trans fan experience

https://twitter.com/frenchiedean/status/1325100006173499393

Fan’s coming out story

https://twitter.com/mishasdiary/status/1325104687222231040

Soul Cycle fundraiser for Out Youth

https://www.nerdsandbeyond.com/2018/09/17/cycle-for-charity-a-review-of-jensen-and-danneel-ackles-soulcycle-event/

From an old school friend

https://twitter.com/JustJensenDean/status/1325229354696237057

Thanks for being an ally

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4-hMaXFu2Z/

and

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4-bJPeBsp3/

Last but not least Jensen has already played a bisexual character in a mini series called Blonde.

#Jensen Ackles #Destiel #SUPERNATURAL #shipping #fandomwank #Dean winchester

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

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Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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falleninlove-archive · 3 years

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(does a funky little dance) OFFICIAL! LEAN ON ME! TIMELINE! HERE WE GO

1986 - carly, the oldest of the ruro siblings is born and months later adopted by grace (a former broadway actress and manager of a small local cafe) and arthur ruro (a former guitarist who now owns a local music shop), a couple living in the tiny town of misky, arizona who can’t have bio kids but want a large family regardless

1987 - cameron, the second oldest of the ruro siblings, is born and months later adopted into the family

1989 - kayleigh and mary, fraternal twins, are born and adopted at two days old

general childhood information, spanning about 1990 thru 2000 - all of the girls receive musical education and are pretty much constantly surrounded by music, whether it be around the house thru their parents always having some kind of vinyl record on or helping out at their dad’s music shop

all the girls love it but kayleigh takes to it like a fish to water and starts learning violin at just age 4, and her mother begins giving her vocal training soon after

the girls discover alternative music and subculture through the magic of the fledgling internet, and carly, kayleigh, and cameron pretty much all become baby punks at like, 10-15 years old

2001 - kayleigh is invited to a music competition for Prodigious Youth at 12 years old. she is paired with Blue Scott, a shy, lanky kid from chicago who is also a massive music nerd like her. they win the competition and over the course of the week that they are working, they become best friends

over the course of the following years, they are constant pen pals, and see each other 2-3 times a year in person

2002 - when carly and cameron are teenagers, they decide to start a punk band, except in order to use all of their parents music equipment their parents FORCE them to include their younger sisters (kayleigh and mary). there is much griping and groaning about this

2003 - hey wait, that band is actually pretty good despite kayleigh and mary being only 15. they play their first show that isn’t at their local community centre without the knowledge of their parents and officially christen the band poison pop

carly graduates much to the chagrin of her parents, she gleefully declares she is not going to college

2005 - cameron, against her own better judgement, takes a gap year because the band starts recording their first album at home with their own equipment, and also starts playing more and more shows. at this point their parents know but are trusting cameron and carly to keep 16 year old kayleigh and mary in line and safe

blue introduces the girls to his friend ryka, a teenager a year younger than kayleigh and mary, who is shockingly good at guitar. she takes up kayleigh’s guitarist spot and leaves her free to do vocals only

they get lucky and happen to play a show at a large alt rock festival in phoenix, catching the attention of rising chicago-based label dissociation records who immediately offer them a record deal. they take it on the spot and dissociation flies them out to chicago a month later to sign the paperwork

2006 - they drop their first professionally recorded single, poison killed the prom queen. it shoots to the top of the charts, making poison pop one of the biggest bands in the nation overnight

they release their album of the same name that year as well, and with their continued success with the other singles, they cement themselves as the first truly household name in emo

2007 - they tour with another emo band called watch the skies, who quickly rocket in popularity, and immediately begin work on their next album. meanwhile, the girls are dealing with their first tastes of fame and they’re not dealing with it well <3

kayleigh and blue start fake dating to get the press off kayleigh’s ass about her love life. this..................is going to go exactly how you think it’s going to go. they move to LA together <3

2008 - batwings and crowbeaks drops to another massive success, and they continue touring. dissociation records, by this time, have taken almost complete control of their image and discography, so despite the record itself being quite good, it is nothing like what poison pop originally tried to make, and they’re starting to get fed up with it

not to mention dissociation has them on a near-constant work schedule, and they can’t take any significant breaks, abandoning their family and friends and almost any social lives they mightve had outside the music world

the only good thing to happen this year is mary getting married to her highschool sweetheart, mark. it is a nice wedding and probably the last time the girls will be happy together for a long time.

2009 - kayleigh and blue “break up” and stop talking to eachother completely. six months later, as they’re working on their third announced studio album bruises, the band (except kayleigh) decides to break up. upon hearing about this decision, kayleigh has a minor mental breakdown and cuts off contact with the entire band

bruises is never released, and the band is officially broken up by the end of the year, breaking out of their contract with dissociation through a legal loophole

2010 - kayleigh begins to find a life outside the band, and starts doing songwriting work with what remains of her connections in the industry, which she’s really good at and she really enjoys.

she finally fucking gets mental health help. jesus christ my gal. im so glad u are finally getting better

2011 - kayleigh makes up with pretty much everybody, including blue, but it’s a slow process. they spend their first christmas together as a family in 2 years

kayleigh and ryka discuss the fact that they still yearn for the stage, and an idea begins to form

2012 - ryka forms sparrow records, her own record label, and its first signee becomes half-dead, a two piece band consisting of kayleigh and her.

ryka moves to LA with her boyfriend rowan, and invites kayleigh to room with her. kayleigh, who knows blue is looking to move to LA and properly start his music career, invites him to room with them.

this is an idea that absolutely won’t backfire or dredge up any old feelings i’m sure

(just kidding. they’re dating by christmas <3)

2013 - half-dead releases its first album, at which point i have to admit i do not know anything abt half-dead’s release schedule fJSDKFHSDF.

what i do know is that they tour that year with long shot for speedy as their opening act and they instantly become band moms to them despite literally only being five and six years older than them at most. they just have that energy having been in the music industry for much, much longer than they have

2014 - blue releases his first album, wallflower, to shocking success!

2016 - half-dead is relatively successful, but kayleigh and ryka are not going to make the same mistakes this time round and they take a break in 2016. ryka n rowan move back to chicago, and kayleigh and blue buy their first house together!

2017 - the girls all get together on new year’s day and talk about poison pop. this discussion leads them to decide to finally bring back the band.

2018 - jetlag life, poison pop’s first album in over a decade, drops that summer, and they begin touring immediately afterwards with watch the skies!

2019 - blue proposes to kayleigh after 18 years of knowing each other and 7 years of dating. <3

2020 - blue and kayleigh FINALLY get married and nothing bad happens because this is my timeline

also poison pop, around the end of year, start dropping hints at another album.... 👀

#dakota originals #lean on me #WHAM BAM THANK YOU MAAM #IT ONLY TOOK ME NEARLY AN HOUR #honestly that's a record for poison pop timeline infodumps #there's so much that happened that i didnt even mention #carly has a girlfriend #cameron gets married at some point #mary has a baby #there's so much #SO MUCH #but i focused on kayleigh and the bands for this one #this thing is 1.3k words #it's full fic length #i go so fucking feral when i infodump lean on me man

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