#quite accurate representation of my music taste

[t4tkaarija]

i was tagged by @yhtvialla thank you!! 💚

Shuffle your music and post the first five tracks, then tag your moots:

I'm gonna tag: @officerdougeiffel @demi-eurovision @damiannasworld and anyone else who wants to do it!!

#tag game #feel like this is quite an accurate representation of my music taste

[gnusnoteunuchs]

papyrus ⇢ if you put your ‘on repeat’ playlist on shuffle, what’s the first song that comes up? what do you like about it / associate it with?

i'll be perfectly honest and say that this is a slightly troublesome ask, because i listen to music weirdly. i have a single playlist on my phone composed of 451 songs that is 33 hours long. i play this whenever i drive somewhere. this isn't really my "these are only songs i absolutely adore" playlist, it's more like a whole batch of songs that are vaguely cool, and plenty of ones i don't recognize show up regularly.

also, i listen to music that i've ripped from CDs (to put on my phone) with itunes on my computer. i don't really have any playlists that i deliberately listen to, usually i just sort of put together a queue of things that i'm feeling at any given moment.

but also i listen to a lot of music through youtube, because it's free and doesn't require me to buy like six sabaton albums just to have something to listen to while doing dishes. this is also my source for music that i listen to at work.

so there's a number of answers i could give you that all vaguely fit the spirit of the question, so in the interest of fairness (and savoring actually getting asks for once) i'll give you all of them.

first, i'll shuffle the huge playlist on my phone:

Ultravox-Accent on Youth I'm not gonna lie, I have no fucking idea what this song is about. It just sounds vaguely cool and I like the album it's from. See? This is the consequence of having a playlist this huge, there's quite a few songs i love and then a whole shitload that are like "oh yeah that's cool"

next, i'll shuffle my Top 25 Most Played on itunes (desktop). this is not an accurate representation of my tastes, but may be the closest i'll get in terms of music I physically own. that gives us:

Stan Ridgway-A Mission in Life This song is basically the sequel to Piano Man by Billy Joel. Ridgway excels in constructing songs that give you little glimpses into the lives of variously mediocre, moribund, and horrible peoples' lives, typically set amid the misery and isolation of contemporary Americana. A Mission in Life is a barkeep's elegy for his ambitions; he had a mission in life to provide for people, to give them a space they could cherish and enjoy themselves in, but that's not how it turned out. Instead, he's stuck with a dive bar that exists purely to pump liquor into increasingly desolate people, because that's the only way they know how to seek comfort. but despite this, despite the knowledge he's only dooming people further, helping them along on their headlong slides towards absolute destruction, the narrator of A Mission in Life still just wants to help. he's a caring person who wants to give but all he can give is poison and all he can afford to care for is himself.

finally, I'll shuffle "My Mix" on youtube, the auto-generated playlist or whatever that's meant to reflect my music interests.

Mcbaise-She's a Big Boy I'm not gonna lie, I don't have much to say about this song, next to the fact that it's a little gender. I think this only came up because it was the last song I was playing while doing the dishes. Not much to say here, but the music video for this song is pretty wacky. You should watch it.

[traveler02361]

Guess this is another year of music wrapped. I've listened to quite a bit and am pleased with the 60 genres I've continued to explore and enjoy. Music has fallen away from my frequent listening and brought room for podcasts and audiobooks. I've also been trying to talk with others more often. Even if it doesn't feel like I have anything of use to say. Some listen. And I try to listen too but fail a bit. Music will always be a love and passion of my life. Thought this was an accurate representation of my music tastes. Be well, be safe, and happy holidays.

#taming of the shrubbery #me #sometimes

[patronsaint-prometheus]

hii 5, 18, and 23 for the oc verse asks

THANK YOU .. IM SO HYPED ABOUT THESE QUESTIONS.

5.) pick a theme song for the tv adaptation.

This is so difficult for me specifically. I can make any song be about the character(s) you must understand. But I’ll shoot for the song that I associate with the story as a whole which is this lovely local comedy band's signature haha. https://open.spotify.com/track/1bFgF9PAtl61J6gUd91Vbq?si=IgHi12bDT66J3svrXpISqg

Music is really important to the story. Especially since my dream for it is to be a short 10ep animated webseries so ideally It WILL include music. But this song is one of the main(e haha) pillars of it. It’s the goofy lighthearted starting ground that everything stands on before dipping into serious concepts or horror moments.

The environment of the story uses a lot of country/rock music that encapsulates the majority of people the cast interacts with day to day. Eliot is the “true” main character of the series and when he’s faced with this mix of country and rock he doesn’t really stray too far from it outside of having a more niche and nostalgic connection to oldies country than most. So if anything he takes the environment he’s born and raised in and runs with it.

Mikey is quite involved in the grunge movement with things like nirvana. He could kill a small army with his rhythm game skills(Keep in mind that includes DDR and Guitarhero almost exclusively at the time ahdhfh). He dresses in a style that would make dpop sellers today drool. BUT despite how deep he goes into it he’s not truly considered weird. Many guys in his generation are currently doing the same thing and because the older generation had just been the ones to popularize classic 70s rock. A teen boy shutting himself in a room and obsessing over another guy with a guitar is just tame enough that it gets taken at surface level and no one really listens to anything he has to say about his own music taste because of it. He’s just seen as a person in a crowed despite trying to make his own way.

Hannah (who is Mikey’s older sister I feel I should mention) nearly completely abandons her connection to the music of the environment. She’s very visibly scene lmao. She’s internet savvy and likes weird alt music and doesn’t hide it in the way she dresses. Wide open to be ostracized. But as time goes on you start to notice that even she has her connections. Specifically connections to any song about a rural woman getting drunk and/or violent.

18.) what aspect of the story would get you #canceled on twitter?

Oh definitely for sure the rural lifestyle parts of it. My characters handle guns in a fictional setting and unfortunately the real life version of that setting is already heavily demonized. This part definitely does worry me quite a bit. Because I’m not trying to make all that much commentary on gun laws believe it or not I do think they should be stricter. It’s just an important part of the plot and setting because it’s genuinely how people here grow up especially ESPECIALLY back then. I hope to god the majority of ppl who engage with THFH have the takeaway of rural settings not equating to cishet white biggest and not equating to uneducated or sloppy people. There’s people of color, lgbt people, people spanning religions, and people spanning languages and cultures all throughout these woods. Representation is insanely important and I take it seriously in this project. But I’m also not going to woobify and baby my characters in order to appeal to a close minded audience. They’re going to be a lot closer to real people then they will be a diversity point wet blanket. I hope to portray each culture I incorporate accurately. And if I fail to do so I hope it sparks people correcting me and having conversations about it.

23.) describe how everyones character gets butchered once in the public eye?

EASY. SPEED ROUND. Eliot gets whitewashed Mikey gets turned into an uwu twink and Hannah’s character growth is completely ignored because she’s a woman even though the other two have made similar levels of mistakes !!!! I’ve been in many fandoms can’t you tell AHDHFGF. No but fr I also kinda answered this in the previous question. If you go into THFH with your mind set that rural automatically means biggoted white cishet uneducated republican christians then you won’t get anything out of my plot whatsoever. Each of the classic fandom character-ruiners I listed represents a part of that. Eliot and Mikey would lose the traits that make them undesirable to a wider audience (Eliot being black and Mikey being a gay guy who ISNT used as a sex symbol) and Hannah's undesirable trait (her connection to womanhood) would be too blatant to ignore and therefore she would be torn apart as some kind of secret villain if you read between the lines.

#THFH #THANK YOU FOR THE NUMBERSSSS <33333

[jason3921]

UNIT 8 - PROJECT PROPOSAL

Candidate number: 346639

Pathway: Acting

Project Title: Collaborative Performance Project

Section 1: Rationale

I have a couple ideas that I will be working on when it comes to the play of “The Good Person of Setzuan”.

.The experience of working on a full-length show;

This is because in past performances the main focuses have been monologues and duologues. In the performance “Growth” all of the scenes were duologues where the main character was played by different actors(mainly playing the character Tobes) and in total we all had between one and two scenes. In the showcase that we did in March, we all had to do a monologue and a duologue, my monologue(Macbeth) and duologue (A taste of honey)which resulted in some minutes on stage acting, not including the ending musical number but just talking about Acting pieces we had minutes to show ourselves on stage not anything up to 10 minutes. My expectation is “The good person of Setzuan” is going to be an hour or two showing in front of a payed audience.I have never been in a full-length play, it will be a new experience and a lot more to experience and learning different variations of techniques and styles.

After doing the past two productions which were all naturalistic, it is a big change to act in a Brechtian style, It is hard not doing a style in this manner and my thoughts is to have touching moments whilst having props made out of sticks and have people hold sticks to resemble trees and having to hold a house together whilst acting, we will need facial expressions and good posture if holding sticks at all assemble into characters which I’m not sure about yet.

.Creating non-naturalistic characters

Portraying a character accurately without making them naturalistic is quite hard as it is easy to get lost in the character and making obvious choices to which makes a character very predictable and quite boring and not lost in making everything big and non-naturalistic, there is a fine line between Brecht and bad acting. It will be something completely different to what I’m comfortable with as I’ve never done Brecht properly, I will adapt and listen to notes with particular focus and adapt them to my characters when we go through run throughs.

Section 2: Project Concept

Everyone is familiar with the practitioner Brecht either due to GCSE drama or lessons we have had in college others who didn’t do drama in secondary school. This project is a play called “The Good Person of Setzuan” which we are making a representation of epic theater so that the audience can pick up more on the message, which is quite political when it comes to capitalistic and socialistic. In section 1 I went through all of the skills that would be gained and things that this production will develop. This tests our variation as actors as well as the struggle to act but stick to not having it be so realistic that the audience get lost in the emotion and don’t pick up on the political message that the play was written. For this specific play the main focus is epic theatre and doing techniques Brecht in cooperates to his piece of epic theatre techniques like, breaking the fourth wall,un naturalism and the v effect. If it is a story being told as well as adding comedic moments to these we will by for example breaking the fourth wall add un naturalistic moments to add to the comedy . When given this play to work on we also got roles in the production team that we needed to carry out. I decided to work on the props team and try to help the others on my team to get props for the production.

Section 3: Evaluation

In this project I aim to learn more about Brecht as he is a German practitioner who has had a big impact on todays theater and productions, This project will also help me try to learn lines quicker as we have shorter deadlines and more lines to learn so I will focus on trying to keep up with my logbook so I’m not falling behind everyone. All of these goals are clear as I will not just have proof of written research but I will be able to incorporate the research into my acting. Learning lines will be easily seen as I will have my lines learned by deadlines which I will set for my lines to be learnt by Easter holidays or after them for when we have returned back to college. Then also gives me more time to focus on characteristics of the people I am playing.

[incorrectbatfam]

2020 Creator Wrap

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

(I’ll do 6 because I can’t decide between two of them.)

2020′s been a big year for me in terms of writing. With all the extra time downtime, I’ve been churning out fics like nobody’s business and I’m so grateful people enjoy what I put out. Selecting my top five was kinda difficult, but I think I’ve picked the ones that reflect this year the best.

Also, I was tagged by my good friend @distance-of-song

6. All The Pretty Misfits

So this was a ridiculously angsty MCU fanfic that I began back in 2018, then took a break from for about a year or so. It started out as a vent fic when I was in a dark place, and it explores themes of mental illness, drug use, and sexual assault. Writing-wise, the style is inconsistent, it’s riddled with plot holes, and I definitely could’ve handled some contents better. Somehow, though, it’s my most popular fic to date. I finished it this year, and I’m putting it on my list not because it’s my magnum opus, but because this is where my growth as a writer and a person is most visible. Thankfully, I’m in a better place now and I can view this fic as bittersweet nostalgia instead of an emotional outlet.

5. … . -. … . .-.. . … …

In case you guys don’t know, the title is Morse Code and translates to “Senseless”. Technique-wise, this was where I really stretched my imagery skills, because for both parts I had to omit a sense that writers (and people in general) tend to take for granted. I was influenced in part by the novel All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and by some personal stuff I was working out, including some internalized ableism that I didn’t realize I had until someone pointed it out. I did a ton of research for this fic because I’m not physically disabled and the whole writing process was eye-opening for me.

4. In Every Beat

The entire fic, from outline to finish, was so much fun. I loved researching other cultures and learned about the significance of different elements like food, decor, language, etc. One of the comments I got was from a person of that culture who said that I captured everything accurately, from overarching beliefs to tiny character mannerisms, and that is super cool because I was afraid of getting something wrong and upsetting people. I also rewatched Coco quite a few times to get the setting right, and I’m not gonna complain ‘cause it’s one of my favorite Disney movies.

3. A Non-Offensive, Tasteful, Conventional Show

I’ve talked about this one quite a few times. This was my fic for the Batfam Big Bang 2020, and the first real collaborative fandom event that I did. I wanted to do some sort of music or entertainment AU so I combined the concept of Radio Rebel with the theme of homophobia and Hollywood’s reluctance to provide good queer representation. I had so much fun working with the talented artists and I learned so much as a writer from the betas. I’ve done I think one (?) small fandom event before this but this Bang was what made me want to sign up for future ones.

2. Today Until Forever

This took me like a month and a half to write because I know that I cannot rely on personal experience alone to craft the narrative. I wound up doing a lot of research into the legal system, namely family law and foster care systems. All the characters I used exist in DC canon, but some are woefully underdeveloped, so I took some liberty in their characterization. I love giving minor/lesser-known characters the spotlight because as a reader, I know how frustrating it can be to like someone but not find any fanworks about them, so this is my way of sorta mitigating that feeling in others.

1. Akhi 

I know all my fics tend to be very different from each other in content, but this one stands out the most. Generally, my fics tend to be on the lighter hurt/comfort side and I don’t like writing heavy emotions for prolonged periods. Akhi is kinda the exception here. I took the typically fluffy and silly Baby Damian concept and considered what it’d be like for Jason, who knew Damian from the League days. This was an interesting character and relationship exploration with a morally gray protagonist. I think having a large batfamily fandom following helped because this is my most popular DC fanfic to date, and that’s like the coolest frickin’ thing ever.

I tag @queerbutstillhere @bisexualoftheblade @crystalinastar @wisdom-walks-alone @doc-squash @an-ace-bi-the-stars @padre91 @bluepulsebluepulse @paintingwithdarkness @preciousthingsareprecious @ivyxwrites

#tag game #batfamily #batfam #batclan #batman family #young justice #jason todd #red hood #damian wayne #robin #tim drake #red robin #conner kent #superboy #timkon #superfamily #bart allen #impulse #jaime reyes #blue beetle #flash family #bluepulse #dc comics #dc fanfic #alternate universe #my writing #tw just in case

[passionate-reply]

This week on Passionate Reply: We all know “Don’t You Want Me,” but the early Human League is a totally different beast, featuring a different line-up, and songs about killer clowns and wanting to be a skyscraper, on their debut LP, 1979′s Reproduction. Transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. In this installment, we’ll be investigating one of the most surprising debut LPs around: The Human League’s Reproduction, first released in 1979.

Pretty much anyone with a general understanding of Western pop will already know the name of the Human League, and associate them, rightfully, with their early 80s hits like “Don’t You Want Me.” For many, the Human League were the first genuine synth-pop that they had ever heard, and their work in the 1980s has been immeasurably influential in bringing the notion of electronic pop into the mainstream. But before they were hitmakers and game-changers, the Human League were a very different band.

Music: “Being Boiled”

“Being Boiled” was the first thing the Human League would ever press to wax, way back in 1978. In most respects, this track is everything that “Don’t You Want Me” is not: its pace is languid, its structure is shapeless and meandering, and rather than a simple and relatable love story, its lyrics offer us a strange and opaque condemnation of the tortures endured by silkworms during textile production. While fascinating, and endearing in its own morbid way, “Being Boiled” does not exactly scream “hit record.” The Human League were not only a different band in a stylistic sense, but also with respect to their personnel, driven by a creative core comprised of budding synthesists Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Prior to the release of the breakthrough album Dare, Marsh and Ware would abandon the group over creative differences, and go on to form Heaven 17 instead. It was vocalist Phil Oakey, and producer Martin Rushent, who would create the sound that their name is now so strongly associated with, and this early incarnation of the group is probably best thought of as an entirely different entity. This album, Reproduction, was their first full-length release, and is perhaps the best introduction to their pioneering sound.

Music: “Circus of Death”

“Circus of Death” had appeared as the B-side to “Being Boiled,” and was included once more as the second track on *Reproduction.* It has a lot in common with the other track it accompanied: a plodding pace, a dark and obtuse lyrical theme, and a sparse, fully electronic instrumentation. The Human League were among the first British groups to utilize a totally electronic sound, devoid of any traditional instruments besides the voice, though in this underground and more experimental context, it doesn’t present a threat to the status quo of pop the way that Dare would a few years later. Alongside fellow proto-industrial acts associated with "the Sound of Sheffield," like Clock DVA and Cabaret Voltaire, they dwelt on the fringes of good taste, crafting subversive music for subversive people. “Circus of Death” introduces us to a demonic figure called “the Clown,” who controls, and torments, human beings by use of a drug called “Dominion,” in a scenario that sounds a bit like Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s worth remembering that while younger generations are quick to think of clowns as icons of evil and terror, clowns were unironically beloved as bringers of joy for most of the 20th Century, and these early portrayals of clowns as killers were indeed shocking at the time. Preceding “Circus of Death,” and opening the album, is “Almost Medieval,” a track with some similar themes, but a rather different composition.

Music: “Almost Medieval”

While “Circus of Death” is slow and dirgelike, “Almost Medieval” showcases the more aggressive side of *Reproduction.* It opens the album with a starkly simplistic tick-tocking beat, reminiscent of an unaccompanied metronome, before bursting into its punk-like sonic assault--a musical representation of how seemingly predictable and deterministic machines can also create something outrageous and unexpected. The lyrics of this track seem pointed towards the past, with the narrator exclaiming that they “feel so old,” and as if they’ve died many times before. Juxtaposed against the thoroughly modern setting of an airport with tarmacs and jet engines, it might be taken as an expression of the horror a person from the past might feel if they were shown the world of the future, created by capitalism and high technology. While it isn’t very accurate, we have a tendency to think of the “Medieval” world as a barbaric, unclean, and uncivilized era, full of witch hunts, chastity belts, and the deliberate erasure of “ancient wisdom.” “Almost Medieval” turns that idea on its head, suggesting that perhaps our world is the one that’s truly barbaric. The image of its narrator, “falling through a rotting ladder,” can be taken as a rejection of the notion of a “ladder” of progress. Similar themes of open-ended symbolism, and the sorrow of modernity, can be found on “Empire State Human.”

Music: “Empire State Human”

Like “Almost Medieval,” “Empire State Human” is lively and faster-paced, with driving percussion. With its straightforward rhymes and repetitive structure, it readily encourages the listener to sing along, almost as if joining in some sort of ritual chant. It’s an idea that Marsh and Ware would return to in their Heaven 17 days, with tracks like “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang.” “Empire State Human” was the album’s only single, and thanks to this exposure, and its (relative) palatability compared to the rest of their catalogue, it remains one of the best known tracks from the early Human League. “Empire State Human” makes its concept pretty clear, with less ambiguous lyrics and an easy to follow mix that brings Oakey’s voice to the fore: the narrator wishes to become a building, and a mighty skyscraper no less, which might rival the achievements of the Pyramids of the ancient Egyptians. While it is clear that that’s what the song’s about, what we do with this once again high-concept subject matter is up to us. I like to think that this is some kind of perverse commentary on the unnatural and alienating experience of urban living, which may come with the feeling that the concrete and rebar structures that surround us are more significant to our lives than the people who may live or work in them. City life is addressed more directly by the track “Blind Youth.”

Music: “Blind Youth”

“Blind Youth” is probably the most “grounded” track on the album, in terms of its theme, making pointed remarks about “dehumanization” and “high-rise living.” It’s tempting to think of it as a sort of parallel to “Empire State Human,” with a broadly similar musical backdrop, and a more literal expression of the theme hinted at more obliquely by “Empire State Human.” With its focus on the experiences of the titular “youth,” “Blind Youth” can also be contrasted with “Almost Medieval,” whose narrator keens about feeling old. Where “Almost Medieval” deals with the disgust an older person feels at the decrepit state of the human race, “Blind Youth” shows the demented, unthinking joy of the youth, who have grown up in an industrialized and urbanized world, and don’t know different--or better.

While there have been many classic underground albums whose covers aimed to shock and displease polite society, the cover of Reproduction is one of the few that I feel would still be seen as offensive, over 40 years later. It was allegedly the product of a miscommunication between the group and the illustrator commissioned to create it; the band requested a scene in which people are dancing above a ward of babies in glass-topped incubators, and the striking angle, which seems to show people crushing infants underfoot, is an unintentional aspect of the design. Unintentional or not, this crudely violent aspect dominates the final composition, and lends it vileness and immediacy. Like the lyrics of many of the songs, the combination of the cover and title can be interpreted a number of ways. Perhaps it’s a glib commentary on human reproduction as fun and games: we partake in the “dance” of courtship and sexuality, and babies drop beneath our feet. Or perhaps it suggests a contrast between life’s enjoyments, like dancing, and its stressors, like the responsibilities of parenthood. It’s hard not to see so many crying, seemingly distressed infants without becoming upset oneself, and I think the deep instinctual revulsion that this piece inspires is part of why it’s remained so resonant in its subversiveness.

As I mentioned in my introduction, the Human League have gone down in history chiefly for the music they made later, which has largely buried this early period as part of their legacy--at least in the public eye and outside of the dedicated diggings of motivated enthusiasts. If you’re a fan of what you’ve heard from this album, you’ll probably enjoy their 1980 follow-up Travelogue, as well as their EP, Holiday ‘80. Given the emphasis on long-form albums among music aficionados, EPs and their exclusive tracks are quite frequently missed, but Holiday ‘80 is a gem from this short-lived line-up, featuring the fragile “Marianne” as well as a cover of the stadium favourite “Rock ‘N’ Roll,” made famous by Gary Glitter. Thumbing its nose at everything the culture of “rock and roll” stands for, and transposing this hymn to its greatness into an abrasive and sterile lunar landscape of synths, this is one of my favourite covers of all time, and seems to prefigure how a very different Human League would later become the archnemesis of all that rock fans held holy. It was also one of very few tracks to be performed on Top of the Pops, and subsequently see not a rise, but a drop in the singles charts!  

Music: “Rock ‘N’ Roll”

My favourite track on Reproduction is one that appears on its second side, unlike the other tracks I’ve talked about so far: “Austerity / Girl One.” Side Two of Reproduction is mainly focused on longer and more narrative-driven tracks, and this is no exception. Like the opener of the second side, “Austerity / Girl One” is a medley, albeit one of two pieces that are original compositions and not covers, as medleys usually are. This track’s story is both timeless and modern, a bit like a contemporary King Lear: the “Austerity” half deals with an aging father, incapable of understanding his children, dying alone and ignored, while the “Girl One” half puts us in the mindset of his daughter, a New Woman whose life is hectic, but also bleak. It’s a story that many of us will relate to, about people who try their best with what they’ve got, but still feel as though they’ve failed in life. Its simple, but effective musical backdrop of wan synth pulses allows the narrative, and Oakey’s evocative portrayal of it, to take center stage. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening.

Music: “Austerity / Girl One”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #human league #the human league

[latinobirds]

So I noticed that you are Brazilian, can I have some tips on writing Brazilian people (I don't want to accidentally have the characters be bad representation)

Okay this is going to be long because i’ve been waiting for someone to ask me this for who knows how long. Also thank you for asking ;w;

1.What to avoid

-If your character is the only brazillian/latino in the story, avoid making them orbit around the white character(s). Which means, give them their own lifes, their own relationships, their own hobbies, likes and dislikes, that don’t involve an usamerican or european! You don’t need to do all of these if it won’t fit your story, but it’s good to just make at least one of these so they are their own person

-The character fighting style is capoeira...it’s alright if they took classes and it kinda stuck with them, but capoeira is not learned to be used in actual fights, it’s more of a dance then a fight if anything. it’s just that the dance moves happen to be like fighting, but it’s just like dancing in the regard of both parts need to get ready to fight in harmony, plus there’s literally people singing and playing instruments like berimbau in capoeira fights...

-Making your only brazillian/latino character in the story be the comedic relief or punchbag. It’s not bad to have comedic relief characters, or to make your br character be a jokester! Brazillians have a huge sense of humour, and we love joking and not taking things very seriously. But to make your character boil down to the butt of the joke or the punchbag is just mean to your audience. How do you think we feel if our only rep is shown when we’re being made fun of or being beaten up?

-It’s not exactly bad to have your character like music/samba, be from Rio de janeiro, be a jokester/malandro, be an animal, play futebol, and/or have a green/yellow color palette. But it would be great to have something new for once. 97% of brazillian characters fit into these cattegories, and it’s not only not very relatable but kind of feels like it’s the only things you guys know about us, or care about enough to write.

-On that note, it’s also not bad to have a flirty br character, or a handsome character, or a character that everyone falls in love with, but that may also fall into the sexy latino trope, which is not good because it objectifies us. Your character can be pretty, and they can like to flirt, and they can be loved by many, but make it be because that’s who they are, not because they’re brazillian.

2. Billingual characters in media

So, i’m just going to sum it up because my opinions on this topic aren’t something new, in fact i’m quite indifferent. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about characters that switch mid phrase to speak their native language for no reason, and like...no billingual person would do that, that kind of confuses us and the people we’re talking to. However, like i said, i don’t really care. Of course, i’d love a character that would be like “it’s like! um...what’s the word again? damn it how do i say cocada em inglês?”, but i also don’t care so much if i get a character that goes “olá amigos!!how are you doing?”

However here’s some scenarios i'd like to see in a billingual character, because they’re hella relatable for billingual people. Doesn’t mean you have to do them tho, consider them some ideas that you can or can not use

-The character remembers a word in another language instead of the one they were currently speaking, and gets frustrated because they can’t remember no matter how hard they try!...then 20 minutes later, after changing topics, they shout the word because they finally remembered it

-The character talks to themselves in the opposite language they’re currently talking with(if i’m talking english, i’m thinking in portuguese. if im talking in portuguese, im thinking in english)

-The character acidentally mix words in both languages they know, and it makes sense in their head but no sense when they say it

-The character has a great vocabulary in their second language, and a lazy vocabulary in their first language.(we tend to get more relaxed in our native languages, and more anxious about mistakes in a second language)

-The character speaks in their native language to joke with someone that doesn’t speak it, or speaks in their native language when talking bad about someone or anything they don’t want others to hear

-The character tries to translate a slang in portuguese to english because they forgot it wasn’t a slang in english, and it makes no sense at all, confusing everyone but them

3.Some details that we’d love to see in brazillian characters!

-If the character is from another place that isn’t rio de janeiro/são paulo/bahia. Bonus if their behaviour and/or taste in food is affected by where they’re from!

-The character enjoys other types of songs/dances besides samba&capoeira. we have several genres of music and dances that your character could love! funk, technobrega, bossa nova, sertanejo, mpb, forró...it even could tell a lot about a character, where they’re from, when they were born, they’re personality...

-The character mentions some brazillian food they like. This one is super easy, and it’s a small detail that doesn’t even have to change much in a story. Just have your character, idk, say they love pão de queijo, or have a scene they’re making brigadeiro, or have them wake up to eat beiju...it’s small details that are very appreciated.

-The character mentions some accurate detail about a place in brazil(that isn’t rio oh my godddd). Like them just thinking about the candy colored houses in bahia, just that. 

Once i’ve readed a ttc fic where the author made Zé mention tarsila do amaral, a brazillian artist, and i couldn’t belive my eyes. i was so sure the author was brazillian! but she wasn’t! she just researched!!! i was smiling so much that day

Basically just something that makes us know you actually researched or spent time while making this character. The bar is so so low

Anyways, hope this was helpful! If you have any questions or want me to be more specific about a certain topic, don’t be afraid to ask! I love rambling about my culture, and i love being helpful, so i have a great time answering questions like this!

#rambling #ask #brazillian culture

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

  ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.  

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.  

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.  

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

  61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.  

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.  

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.  

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

  GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

  Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

  This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

  Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

  4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

  An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.

[ask-void-family]

What kind of music do you listen to?

“A question that I can answer to ! Being interviewed for the first time like this is exciting, I must admit ! I usually listen to piano or intrumental music that isn’t too loud when writing articles, I can’t say that I really have a style, though I end up listening to classical music most of the time. Techno and rock are really a no, I can’t understand how that even is music - I mean, it’s just loud noises put together.”

"I try to avoid listening to music while I paint, i-it just kinda distracts me a little, and I try to focus really hard while I'm doing that, um.. Ooh! I loove vocaloid though! I'm especially a huge fan of Honeyworks and 40meterP, but to be honest- I'll listen to anything cute and happy sounding! That's kinda how I end up listening to Kikuo sometimes, and I don't stop until I realize what the lyrics are talking about, haha-!"

"Don't really have a taste either, usually I go with anything that matches what I'm trying to do. I'll put on something with a strong beat while I'm working out or training- rock and whatnot, whatever helps get my blood flowing better. But for calmer stuff like while I'm cooking, I'll put on some of that 'lo-fi' stuff. Big thanks to Emma for introducing me to that genre by the way, didn't expect to like it as much as I do now."

"I’m mostly a classical music nerd myself too, like Nikei. I mean - orchestral music and piano and everything just sounds so nice! I’ve got a lot of musical tastes though... Pop and hip-hop are always nice to listen to... Ooh, and musical theatre too! Plus lo-fi and just anything I can vibe to otherwise..... It’s always just a roulette for what I’m feeling that day, I suppose, fufu!”

“Fuhu... Music interests? Such an easy question has an even easier answer, Miss, Mister, or Mx Anonymous! Without a doubt, I can even link you to a song I quite enjoy playing in my spare time! I recommend playing it at full volume whilst everyone else is asleep- it never serves not to wake everyone else up! Here you are.” A YouTube link briefly displays on the screen. “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub82Xb1C8os“ “Please, do enjoy it to your heart’s content~!”

“Ah... Please, do ignore him. Since he was made to think and act like myself- I can give you a more... accurate representation of our likes and dislikes. Without the added need to try and annoy others, aha...” “And the answer to that effect is- I don’t listen to much music. Most of the time I’m working on... things, and I don’t often have the time to...- it’s much better to work in silence after all. And even when I do, I don’t have a specific taste... My apologies, that I couldn’t answer your question in full.”

#sdra2 #Super Danganronpa Another 2 #sdra2 Void #sdra2 askblog #Nikei Yomiuri #sdra2 nikei #Iroha Nijiue #sdra2 iroha #Hajime Makunouchi #sdra2 hajime #Emma Magorobi #sdra2 emma #Mikado Sannoji #sdra2 mikado #sdra2 spoilers

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 1995

There’s way more filler on this list, which is a relief because 1994 had almost enough material for a top 20.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

This is a strange list because I adore the first four songs but everything before them is mostly filler. No honorable mentions this time.

10 - Wonderwall (Oasis)

US: Not on the list / FR: #96

My brother was only 2 in 1995. Ten years later, he discovered Oasis and played the album Definitely Maybe on a loop in his room for days.

This is on the list just because of him.

9 - You Don’t Know How It Feels (Tom Petty)

US: #61 / FR: Not on the list

Aaaaaaaaand this is on the list just because of my father, the major Tom Petty fan. Moving on.

8 - Be My Lover (La Bouche)

US: Not on the list / FR: #28

Perfectly standard good eurodance despite a mediocre rap bridge. Again, I don’t have anything to say about it.

Ok. Maybe I can admit this was brought back to my attention after all these years by this video which is a pretty accurate representation of my last three braincells.

7 - La Corrida (Francis Cabrel)

US: Not on the list / FR: #66

Surprise. This charted two years in a row and it was a honorable mention last time, and since I needed some stuff to fill the 1995 list this will do in a pinch.

So yeah, it’s a song about  bull fighting sung from the perspective of the bull. Here’s a translation. It’s great. You’re welcome.

6 - Tombé Pour Elle (Pascal Obispo)

US: Not on the list / FR: #71

This is the only Obispo song I ever liked, mostly because his voice does some weird shit on this song, and also because it’s very catchy. And it also was on one of these hit compilation things I had back then and I would never skip it.

The funniest part is that it sounds exactly like a love song, except the guy is, in fact, singing about his love for a random island. And that’s kind of hilarious. Check it out if you’ve never heard it.

5 - L’Instant X (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #44

The Anamorphosée album is my least favorite Mylène Farmer album from that decade. Yet this song is #5 on this list. But we’re not yet in the “very good” part of this top 10, so eh. Fair enough.

To be honest, it’s refreshing to hear a song with fun lines from her after her Ultimate Goth Phase Of 91-92(tm), even if the lyrics are still about her wanting “fun, antidepressants and wings” for Christmas. But I’m a sucker for sinister stuff packaged in funny lines, so... yeah. The guitar doesn’t hurt either.

I tend to hum this from time to time around Christmas, too. I’m sorry.

4 - Zombie (The Cranberries)

US: Not on the list / FR: #3

I started to actually own cds when I was around 9 (1997), a few years before I actually owned a cd player. Most of them were hit compilations and ambiant stuff. Only three of them weren’t.

I’m not gonna pretend Zombie wasn’t scaring the shit out of me as a kid, especially because I couldn’t understand a single word of the lyrics. But it sounded so intense, and dark, and epic, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by it, even if the mental image I had of the chorus was close to a banshee screaming about my own death somewhere in the highlands.

3 - Scatman (ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop) (Scatman John)

US: Not on the list / FR: #2

You have every right in the world to not enjoy this novelty dance track. I understand. It’s okay. Everyone has their own opinions and taste. I can get behind that.

However, anyone who doesn’t like Scatman John himself, as a person, I mean, is free to come fight me in the pit, where I’ll be waiting with that tambourine I've been holding threateningly ever since my 1992 list has been posted.

Also, this was one of the favorite songs of one of my cousins, who died way, way too young several years ago, and every time I listen to this, I remember us listening to this song on his father’s cd player in my grandparents’ tiny garden, laughing like idiots, trying to sing as fast as Scatman John and failing. Good times. I miss you dude.

2 - Gangsta’s Paradise (Coolio)

US: #1 / FR: #7

I really, really debated if this one should top the list, I swear. I adore Gangsta’s Paradise, like a ton of people did at the time and still do. I had no idea what the lyrics were saying at the time - I only knew this was about a gangster, because that was in the title, and that his life clearly made him unhappy, because the song sounded dark and had menacing voices chanting over the chorus.

Deciphering the lyrics years later and trying to translate them only cemented my opinion that this was a very important and fantastic song that deserved every kudo it ever got.

Also it was the first track of the first hit compilation I ever owned, so you can bet I listened to it quite often, on top of hearing it constantly on the radio.

1 - Missing (Everything But The Girl)

US: Not on the list (...yet. #12 the next year) / FR: #41

This is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard in my life and I’m not saying that lightly. And I’ve been thinking that for, uh...

...quite some time, actually.

It’s sad (devastating, even. Holy shit.) and full of melancholy but weirdly tense and dark, and that dance remix makes it sound even colder and more distant. And yes, if you’ve noticed, it was also on that hit compilation cd I’ve posted earlier, and since that was one of the only cds I owned around 1998, I listened to this a lot. Weirdly enough, at the time, I was convinced that the person singing this song was a guy, and I’m not sure why.

Also, “and I miss you like the deserts miss the rain” was simple enough I could understand it very quickly after I started to learn English, and that sounded so profound and devastating to me at the time, you don’t even know.

Bonus: here it is on the list of my favorite songs I made back in February 2006, right next to Erasure (which made the previous list), Depeche Mode, and some other acts that will appear on future lists, because the years may have passed but my favorite songs kinda stay the same.

Next up: a list which is all over the place but has, in fact, no eurodance on it

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw

[hylukotranslations]

Pati Pati - vol 76, April 1991 Album: Kurutta Taiyou (Mad Sun) 2nd picture is a visual representation for the track: My Funny Valentine  

Yutaka Higuchi (Bass) Interview by Yoshito Kubota

How do you consider yourself the album "Kurutta Taiyou" ?

Maybe I should say it's an album that doesn't deny what I was before... We've completely changed our impression with the album "Taboo", right ? Since then, our fans were divided in two : the ones who like the latter album and "Aku no hana", and the ones who like our first and second albums. I have the impression that these fans who were listening to us in that selective way were united again with our new album.

So this album isn't a sequel of "Taboo" and "Aku no hana".

No. How to say, about this album, I think no one would say : "it became excessively joyful", neither the contrary : "it gives an extremely miner impression". Because the two are true. It's like if all the tastes we've been having so far were mixed in this album. But I won't go up to say that it's a general anthology (laughs).

Just like Sakurai-san wrote lyrics evoking his mother who died, is there a role that you, Yutaka-san, confided to this album ?

Personally, I didn't have anything of that domain. As always, I was only thinking about making something of a better quality than what we did previously, and that would satisfy me. But if there was something particular this time, it's that I cared very much about the sounds. Even if there were bass lines that I perfectly played and I was told : "nothing to say, that's ok", if I thought : "the sound isn't correct", I completely changed it. It's something basic, but I didn't agree with the idea : "since I played to that extent, I will let the mixing arrange the rest". I've always been keeping the exigency of : "I'll be rendering this sound perfect, especially that one".

And in the end you got a satisfactory result.

Yes, this album is my favourite one among all what we've done so far. You know, I tend to think that all our albums are master-pieces (laughs), but this one gives the impression to be a brand-new album.

For you, the most big point for this album was the fact that you have used a fretless bass, right ?

Not only that. I used a fretless because, at the beginning Imai-san said he wanted to give a floating impression. Since he said he will use a fretless guitar, I thought, then me too. You know, I spent a whole day thinking about the sound, so I was convinced about it. I somewhere think that maybe I could give more range to the phrases for example... But well, I think I can give the mark of 80 (note : out of 100) to the result.

What about other points ?

I used a synthe-bass in "MAD", and there is the song "Speed" : we never did that kind of rhythm before. The phrase of the bass is very simple, but it didn't mach at all with the rest. I really worked hard on that one. From the point of view of the play, there are some parts where I don't completely feel satisfied with, but I think I succeeded from the point of view of the sound. It's wild but we can clearly feel the sensation of detachment. And the quite audacious change of the rhythm patterns of each song worked fine too. Anyway, what is big is the fact that each song gives a different impression.

Concerning the composition of the songs, you didn't participate to it this time.

That was unconsciously but, there is for sure characteristics for an album. That was also the case of "Aku no hana", I was afraid to break that with what I myself have... And this time the patterns of the rhythm weren't easy, so I thought it was better to renounce it. Well, it's like if I and the band didn't synchronise well.

Then, don't you think you could do what you want in a solo album ?

Well, not at all. Even if I did it, I think it would be boring. I think that if I do that know, it would still be self-satisfaction (laughs). If I had to release a solo album, I think it would be better after I've reached Satori (note : the Awakening in Buddhism) being in the band (laughs). Today it's so interesting playing as five members. And there are still so many stuffs we can do. By the way, I think that with this album we could strongly pull out the aspect of being a "band". Maybe that was the biggest result.

Then the songs which were the closest ones to Buck-Tick's image were Hoshino-san's ?

Yes. Hide's songs in "Aku no Hana" had a great effect. But then, Imai-san's songs are breaking them, right ? I think that this subtle interlacing is well done. So, for the listeners it must be......

A delightful album (laughs)

Absolutely (laughs)

What about the lyrics ? They've become quite straight, right ? Maybe the fans would feel disoriented ?

From the beginning we asked Acchan if he could write them all... It's true there isn't almost any term in English, and in "Speed" he says "girl, boy". Ordinarily we would feel embarrassed saying that, like : "what, is it Go Hiromi ?" (laughs). But the fact they could feel disoriented is interesting for us. Just like when we released "Taboo" and people said : "Oh, what's that ?". Even the ones who think that the lyrics are weird will certainly remember that phrase, right ? It can be interesting that way.

I see. I change the subject, for what reason did you chose again a Japanese engineer ?

At the beginning we had a certain number of ideas, like doing the recording session abroad, or asking a famous engineer to come in Japan, all these things. But then time would have been severely limited, right ? We couldn't permit that. So we decided to choose a Japanese.

Do you think it's easier to work with the one or the other ?

I would say with a Japanese from the point of view of the communication... But since the sensibilities are totally different, we can't compare at all. In Japan people try to record big sounds in a place which is perfectly soundproofed, but it's completely the opposite overseas. They rather record sounds in a noisy studio and then try to arrange them. But for this "Kurutta Taiyou", I think our choice was right.

I've heard that despite of that, you hadn't enough time.

We (note : U-ta and Toll) are the first ones to have our sounds recorded, so it's Acchan and the others who have the disadvantages...... The release date is decided at first, right ? like it will be released on such day of such month of such year. So it's like : "the tour has ended, so it's time for the recording rehearsals, after that the recording", it's calculated upside down and then they decide "the last delay". What's that "last delay" (laughs). There are so many obligations in Japan...... If I say it audaciously, we would rather like to decide the release date after we have begun the recording (laughs). But in Japan only 3 or 4 bands can do that.

Would you like to go back at your indie time where you were free about time (laughs) ?

Our label Taiyou record was even worse at the time we belonged to it. Today in the contrary it can happen many good stuffs. It's the same thing as : "which one is better, the livehouses, the Loft or the Dome ?" And it's difficult to give an answer (laughs).

Do you want to play again at the Loft ?

Of course ! Since we are a live band, I think we should be able to play anywhere. We will never say something like : "Now that we are accustomed to big halls, the livehouses have become a bit...". Even if we had to play in a place where there would be only one light, we should be able to show our talent at 100 %.

I see. Then how will be the next tour of Buck-Tick ?

Since we haven't begun the rehearsals, nothing precise is yet decided. I will probably play a fretless bass. Well, it won't be something like, we play the eleven songs of the album and "it's all over" (laughs), we'll have to chose among the songs we've played so far. But since this new album can match, I think, any song, the lives would be more strengthened than the previous ones.

Then, what do you wish for the band after "Kurutta Taiyou" ?

When we released our first indie album, I think that no one thought we would make an album like this one. And in the contrary, I can't think it was to make this "Kurutta Taiyou" that we've been doing all this so far. We've just been doing passionately what we were able to do. We moved to Tokyo from our country and even when we had only 3 persons in the audience, we played with passion. So I think we will always be keeping preciously that sensation. No matter if we can't see the result, we'll be doing feverishly what we want to do. We don't want to twist our style to be accepted. And we especially don't want to be imprisoned in a scope, it would be like falling into our own trap. I think that we don't want to be influenced by the others, we'd rather like to be always on the side of the ones who influence the others.

Which kind of persons do you want this "Kurutta Taiyou" to be listened by ?

Actually, by everybody. Japan is really a weird country. Saying rock, people think about too many stuffs. If it's the bands that are like that I won't say anything, but from the moment the band doesn't think that way, this is music before being rock. It doesn't belong only to the young. It shouldn't be weird if 80 or 90 years old persons listen to it, right ?

This would be the band's final aim ?

For me that's the principal aim. We wish we could also become "Taiyaki-kun (note : apparently an old hit song ^^)" (laughs). Since we are doing music as well.

--fin

translation: hyluko [livejournal] scans: tigerpal [livejournal]

NOTE: these translations are not mine also might not be very accurate. i took them from hyluko’s site using the wayback machine. thought they’re great to share. if the owner is around and wants me to take them down i will!

#バクチク #樋口豊 #狂った太陽 #Buck-Tick #Yutaka Higuchi #Kurutta Taiyou #translation #pati-pati

[crimsonredemption]

11 Questions

Big thank you to @flonfymicah for thinking of me!! 

1. What’s one thing that always helps you to sleep at night?

Fortunately, I fall asleep very easily I don’t think I need special help with it! But I absolutely can’t stand when it’s noisy, I really need absolute silence when I’m going to sleep. If that isn’t given I’ll use earplugs. :) 

2. Do you have a favourite smell and if so, what is it?

I love the smell of flowers! I don’t have a particular one in mind but I just love love love passing flowers on the street and smelling their scent. I also really love the smell of Thai cooking! 

3. What’s one thing you’re proudest of doing?

I volunteer to teach refugees German and English and while I love doing that it takes a lot of time, dedication and patience. I’m really busy at it is already so I’m proud of doing it, despite the lack of time in my schedule.  I’m also really proud of running this blog and finding the courage to start writing fanfiction! 

4. What trope are you an absolute sucker for?

Oh damn, all of them? I don’t think I have a favourite one. As for character tropes I fall for every god damn time: The tall, quiet, snarky, sarcastic sometimes brooding type? Like?? EVERY TIME 

5. What’s one thing that lots of people like that you just never “got”? Why?

Milk and Butter. I hate both with a burning passion, but I can drink milk if it doesn’t taste like it? Chocolate milk etc is fine with me. 

6. If you could play any musical instrument in the world, what would it be and why?

I play the Cello! If I could play another it would be the Harp or the Guitar I think. 

7. What got you into videogames?

I always loved them, in every form they came in! It started with Super Mario and Pokemon and just gradually evolved as I got older. I never stopped playing Pokemon though! I didn’t play for a long time cause I never had spare money to buy the games I wanted, so I watched many Let’s play videos on youtube. 

8. Earliest memory?

Spending my third birthday on the Maldives! My father was bitten by a moraine and I remember very vividly handing him band-aids and such things. I actually remember quite a lot from my early childhood and that vacation in particular. 

9. What’s quirky or unique about the place where you live now?

ooof. Nothing quirky or unique about, aside from the fact that the German Rapper “Haftbefehl” is from here? 

10. Do songs get stuck in your head easily?

Yes, all the time! There are usually two to three songs that rotate...

11. What would you like to see more of in fiction?

More (accurate) representation of minorities, less glorification of paedophilia

#personal #tag game #sorry this took me forever and a day

[irarelypostanything]

Unforgettable Scenes - “Be good, Morty.  Be better than me”

I’ve been asking myself for a long time what makes a good story, and I think I’ve found at least one common thread: Good stories are about characters who care about people.  I would argue that even successful movies like Deadpool and Iron Man, the latter of which focuses on a pleasure-seeking weapons designer who seems to care about no one but himself, work well because of how the characters reveal that they do care.  Some characters care more about movements than in individual people, which is how Fight Club works.  Some characters get overly obsessed with individual people instead of with larger groups of people, which is how the Star Wars prequels work.  At the end of the day, though, I think all good stories feature characters who have a profound concern for others.  If characters don’t care about others, then why should we care about them?

I think this is why I’ve always liked The Simpsons more than Family Guy.

*****

I’m no physics expert, but my understanding is that Schrodinger’s Cat works something like this: You put a cat in a box.  The box has a 50% chance of killing the cat because it either has unstable gunpowder, or a far more elaborate contraption that has a 50% chance of poisoning the cat.  The very act of opening the box and looking inside actually determines whether the cat is alive or dead--Hank Green says the thought experiment exists to show that the rules of our “known world” don’t really apply to the “world” of particles.  A particle exists in a superposition--it seems to simultaneously be different observable states, but the very act of observing it makes it collapse into one.  We’re not sure why this is the case.

Rick and Morty takes some creative liberties in this episode.  The representation of uncertainty is fairly accurate, but they make up rules regarding time travel and “time stability.”  They are within their rights.  I figure that once we get to “time crystals,” the topic becomes so theoretical that any fiction writer can basically do whatever he/she wants.

Okay, so...the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aUowoykENE

It’s pretty simple, actually.  In one of the many, many possible versions of Rick, Morty’s collar doesn’t work because Rick presumably made a mistake, and this puts both of them in jeopardy across every possible state.  So Rick tries to sacrifice himself.  He accepts death in every possible scenario, just so he can save his grandson.

To the uninitiated, this seems like a pretty reasonable and even cliche thing for a grandfather to do.  But this is Rick we’re talking.  This is a man who routinely reminds hie family members that he doesn’t care about them, since he can simply transport to another universe where they’re still alive.  One of the top comments of this video quotes Jerry as mentioning that Rick cares about no one but himself.

He seems pretty selfless in this clip.

The animation works well, and to render something like this is difficult to achieve with even the best software.  It’s one of the series’ most poignant moments, but it doesn’t require a sudden shift to melancholy music.  It just works.

That was 13 minutes.  Here are my closing thoughts.

Rick and Morty fans have a reputation for being pretty edgy, so you can imagine what the comment thread is like in this video regarding religion.  Someone brings up the unavoidable discussion about God, and as you might expect this discussion is...

...tasteful, and well thought-out, and reaches conclusions that seem to be satisfying for both the Christian and atheist fans of the series, alike.  I figure you can’t get very far in Rick and Morty without at least brushing on how it addresses religion.  Rick is characterized by the creators as someone who stands between the realm of mere man and some sort of god, someone who knows everything but isn’t all-powerful.  The best theory I’ve seen is quite simple: He’s an agnostic.  He believes there may exist some entity more powerful than him, but he certainly doesn’t bother practicing a faith.

Rick understands the cosmic.  Rick knows...everything.  Rick can prevent death, cure disease, outwit every alien and whole governments and Satan himself using science and reason.  And he’s not happy.  His happiest moments involve spending time with people he loves, but he either doesn’t know or doesn’t truly want to change.  He doesn’t want to settle down now...why would he?  He can do anything because he knows everything.

But in this scene, he simply asks that Morty be better than him.  Maybe happier.  Maybe moral.  Maybe just...

...better.  And he accepts death but narrowly avoids it.

#20-minute freewrite #rick and morty

[kevin-for-what-ails-ya]

Monday Music Shuffle 8/6/18

So much fun, I may do it every week (if I remember).

1. “She’s a Saint Not a Celebrity”--Foxboro Hottubs

2. “A New Kid”--Screaming Females

3. “Raspberry Beret”--Prince and the Revolution

4. “So Rock On”--Luscious Jackson

5. “Funeral March”--Scum of the Earth

6. “A Storm in a Teacup”--Kelli Ali

7. “Intro III”--Awkwafina

8. “Spoon”--Mazzy Star

9. “You Still Believe in Me”--The Beach Boys

10. “Raped at Birth”--GWAR

What a thoroughly accurate representation of my musical tastes. BTW, Pet Sounds is the only Beach Boys album I own, okay, so suck it. Maybe we’ll get some proper hip-hop one of these days on one of these. I actually have quite a bit of it, it just rarely if ever seems to show up.

#music #monday music shuffle #shuffle

[rugeon]

The level design of V&A Design/Play/Disrupt

Recently went to the V&A expo on videogames and thought it might be fun to try and think about it’s ‘level design’. I realise its silly to call it that and is more informed by planning an exhibition/ event planning and architecture, but w/e.

[pictured:  how do you Do it?, 2014 - Nina Freeman, Emmett Butler, Decky Coss, and Joni Kittaka]

This is mostly gonna be some simple thoughts on the experience of traversing the space of this exhibition, and how that space is used effectively to create different effects/ experiences, as well as notes on the smarter considerations on how the experience is paced/sequenced.

This warped/truncated/inaccurate/drawn from flawed memory map roughly shows the layout of the V&A expo:

The whole exhibition can be roughly broken up into four fairly distinct parts:

Exhibits of the design of different video games from differently sized studios ~2009 onwards. [blue]

Articles, talking points, video discussions and exhibits of games as part of our broader social context, concerned with violence, gender, sex, sexuality, race, language, protest etc. [orange]

A large video theatre showing some of the communities that form around games. [red]

An arcade showcasing several more experimental games and projects, that is open to free play. [yellow]

DESIGN

When you walk in you are greeted by a huge projector flashing between collages of the various exhibitions and the alternating titles DESIGN, PLAY, DISRUPT.

[pictured slides from Jenny Jiao Hsia’s talk on prototyping to make her game: ‘Consume Me’, 2016]

Seeing this is unavoidable when entering, and it serves as something of a banner to signal the transition into the formal exhibition space. YOU HAVE ENTERED THE WORLD OF THE VIDEO GAMES.

Mapping this first area of the 1. Design section of the exhibit we get something like this:

Note that these numbers are in an arbitrary order of roughly when I encountered them, and are not indicative of density, just general location of possibly several bits of each exhibit. Also this list is not exhaustive, nor is the map strictly accurate, I do not have an eidetic memory, but I do have a notebook and a smartphone.

Design/Play/DIsrupt screen

Large Print Text Binders

‘Journey’ gameplay montage projection

Notebooks, sketches, a headphone + video prototype demo, inspo photos/footage, graph and board of intended player journeys/narrative threads

‘Last of Us’ Dual screen demo showing gameplay and some of the work relevant to make that part of the game happen

Sketches, notebooks, board plotting out story events/setpieces in seasons, film made for atmosphere reference, blue sky concept art, colour scripts

Mocap footage +suit

Matt Lees @jam _sponge describing the anxious, excitable play of ‘Bloodborne’ between 3 screens.

Notebooks, sketches+concept art, level design docs, and SketchUp pics of early levels, headphones to listen to a recording of the soundtrack

Bunch of top designs for ‘Splatoon’

Early Prototype, creature sketches, fashion asset design

Playable prototypes from the making of Consume Me

Notebooks, corkboards, workplace ephemera, unity project demo, headphone + video 40 minute talk on prototypes

Music from ‘Kentucky Route Zero’ / KR0, visual representation of branching dialogue in twine, Margritte’s ‘Spring in the Forest’

Inspirations, typeface considerations, group wiki, twine showcase

Realtime Art Manifesto, Even more notebooks, with sketches and details of designing Tale of Tale’s ‘The Graveyard’

Playable demo of The Graveyard

Bench

Multi-screen montage of generated worlds in ‘No Man’s Sky’

Blueprint tool for spaceships, terrain debug tool, sci-fi inspirations

Visual inspirations

So what are some of the ways we can think about how this expo was laid out? 

For a start it’s fairly linear, there are no branching paths at Design/Play/Disrupt, it’d be a layout ill-suited to somewhere like this where there’s a strong desire for the audience to see all the content and assets (the exhibits) and not miss any pieces that time was spent curating. Thankfully unlike some videogames, this linearity is not gated. There are no attendants fiendishly running up behind you and closing doors as you move from one game to another, people might have missed something, or want to visit an earlier piece while friends are preoccupied with something for a little longer.

Exhibits are visited for the most part in a defined order, with some freedom in the Kentucky Route Zero/Graveyard room as well as the Splatoon/Consume Me room. You are encouraged to experience what is on display for each work and are being guided in a deliberate order, as opposed to set loose in an open hall with no boundaries where some attendees might skip or miss a part of the exhibition.

One thing tying sections you can explore or skip is their loose thematic / tonal linking:

To put it another way, there is a good reason that Bloodborne is next to The Last of Us. Both are triple-A big budget, rated 16+, 18+ action games for blood guts and all the cheery stuff. Consume Me and Splatoon work well next to eachother as the cute aesthetic and playable prototypes hanging from the ceiling work well across from Nintendo’s colourful and playful Splatoon. It would be a bit less natural to have the grotesque and rapacious sounds of Bloodborne echoing within the exact same room as Splatoon. I’m not saying any of these works don’t have some commonality beyond the arbitrary border I’ve drawn, but they fit better together. 

- Plus this open space invites an atmosphere of play after having just been cramped into two games rooms that feature horror elements

[Pictured: Splatoon’s section, as well as Consume Me minigame prototypes open to play, suspended from the ceiling]

This also showcases another thing about this event applicable to level design: the same space can be made appealing to different types of audiences. This is an exhibit about video games. I’ll admit this is just my gut but I’d be willing to bet that this exhibit is more likely to be attended by parents and their children than it would most other exhibits. I don’t know exactly what the V&A’s idea of the ideal attendant is, and that’s probably owed to the fact that this event catered to lots of different levels of assumed knowledge and engagement with videogames. 

Parent’s who might be a little out of touch with mainstream games, are quite likely to have been put off by bringing their kid to something that was entirely wall to wall Bloodborne, Dark Souls and other things as frightening (as much as I personally would have enjoyed that). Standing watching a parent pull their rapt child away from dulcet descriptions of how deadly mistakes are, in the big monster game, the success of the exhibition is apparent; the next room is a bit more targeted towards that kid’s age range (even though they did seem pretty into Bloodborne). 

[The concept art from Bloodborne is such a treat]

It’s no surprise as well that the first game is not The Last of Us, but Journey. More people are playing games now than ever but there remains a fair few people who still don’t really know what’s going on in games. As an exhibition that in part is attempting to show the breadth and depth of games being designed, it makes sense that the first introduction to what games are being made is a game without much in the way of traditional combative interaction. 

To wafflingly reiterate: the sequence of how things were placed matters: The accessibility options: 2. [Large Print Binders] are available at the start. Benches and places to sit are placed later throughout the exhibit (including rather wittily across from The Graveyard; a game where the entire goal is to make an old woman sit on a bench).

Reinforcing this point of how the same space can be made to cater to different people this event was extremely Multimedia. Explanations of parts each games design process written up, sketchbooks, and lots of different drawings, scrawled graphs, charts and plans. Concept art, drawings. Video of prototypes and animation, Sounds of ‘Long Journey Home’ echoing up the hall, and the omnipresent dread of Matt Lees echoing down, as well as headphones to listen to specific parts of the exhibition that might be less suited to how crowded the soundscape is or be for a more narrow audience (I wonder how many of the attendants listened to all ~40 Minutes of Jenny Jiao Hsia’s talk on prototyping. I did. It was good). Just in this section of the exhibit, there were so many different means of engagement, and they all felt very well matched to the story of each games development that they wanted to tell, while still offering different types of engagement. People can be looking at a video display showing how the layers of environmental concept art become important and manifest in The Last of Us, while someone else is poring over sketches of Ellie’s design. 

[Corkboard plotting out events + setpieces across the timeline of The Last of Us]

As an exhibition space, it is made with the fact that multiple people are occupying it at the same time in mind. If something is not available you can engage with something else. And if one type of engagement is not to your tastes there’s a good chance something else will be- not bothered about the wiki used to help the team of KR0 to communicate? Maybe you’ll be more interested in some of Ben Babbit’s sonic improvisations, or the visual inspirations involved in the creation of the game.

There’s more I could talk about wrt this first sections layout of how it winds you around instead of giving you a straightline to the exit, the choice of games playable being fundamentlly simple, an anecdotally sweet image of a child holding the obscenely big original xbox ‘duke controller’  on a pedestal and their dad cradling their hands. But I’ll just leave off this post here for now and maybe continue looking at V&A things and posting about it later.

To be continued..?

#gamedev #design #v and a #heposttoobig