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theuntitledblog · 2 years

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The Walking Dead (2010-2022) - REVIEW

SYNOPSIS

In the wake of a zombie apocalypse, various survivors struggle to stay alive. As they search for safety and evade the undead, they are forced to grapple with rival groups and difficult choices.

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Let's face it; from the moment Rick Grimes woke from his coma to find himself in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, we were hooked. The premise was very strong, it was action packed and visually it could live up to it with consistently excellent make up effects and solid, although occasionally shaky, computer generated imagery. The rural Georgia location has always been used to great effect and has managed to consistently imply the scale of the disaster even if the shows budget meant that they couldn't fully show it. Keeping things grounded also worked to establish the tone of the earlier seasons. The abandoned towns, houses and photographs of lost families and destroyed lives convincingly and believably conveyed the overall tragedy of the event.

As the show progressed, the story became less grounded as it shifted focus and expanded season after season with the morality changing along with it. In earlier seasons the idea of our lead characters killing a human was shocking; think back to the fascinating ethical debate in season two's excellent 'Judge, Jury and Executioner'. However by later seasons, killing became common place and with really the only real shock being who died and the show's willingness to suddenly sacrifice anyone was always to its advantage.

Like the decaying title cards; the show has seen normal, everyday people, like Jon Bernthal's Shane, gradually deteriorate and lose parts their humanity to this horrifying world of the undead. Season three and four in particular focused on themes of humanity with the parallel between Rick and David Morrissey's Governor being the central conflict of that story. It's a thread that has occasionally popped up again from time to time (Morgan and Carol in Season 6) but by season five, Rick and co are a shell of their former selves while the more outlandish villains such as the Whisperers, were devoid of it altogether. Compared to the rather ordinary residents of the Alexandria Safe Zone, the group seemed like monsters who were disconnected in parts from their humanity. It also must be said that the collective performance of the whole long term cast acted out these changes perfectly and often without the need for words.

Now while I would certainly agree that the Walking Dead peaked by the end of season five, it managed to demonstrate the ability to be adaptable. This is a show that has introduced and killed off popular characters time and again yet still retained popularity none the less. But what has kept it essential viewing for me at least is in the general continuity to the overarching story. At no point during its entire run did I ever feel that events from season one and onwards didn't matter or had no bearing on the present story. 'What Comes After' was an effective mini series finale because of that continuity. This may not necessarily mean much to others reading this but for me it matters a great deal because being one interconnected story gives greater satisfaction than a series of separate stories. The first five seasons remains my favourite period of the Walking Dead when the stories, characters and action were when the show was at its absolute best and the stakes felt their highest.

It goes without saying therefore that The Walking Dead's greatest asset has always been the characters, no matter who made up that group. The wave after wave of horrifying Walkers and human threats count for nothing if you don't care about the survival of anyone involved. Even when the show was at its weakest (S7 and S8) or had characters doing really stupid things (Carl and the Walker S2, Rosita and the gun in S7, Rick trusting Jadis S7 and 8), I've never not cared about those characters and their fate. The Walking Dead hasn't treated all of its characters with the care they've needed at times (Heath, Jesus and Noah), but it frequently succeeded in introducing new characters along the way that we've come to care for just the same even in the final season. This if nothing else, along with the above mentioned general continuity, has always made the Walking Dead very rewatchable for me and the generally satisfying series finale will continue to make the show an experience worth revisiting time and again.

The Walking Dead is not a perfect show by any means, this is a show that has long needed to know how to pace a story as every season between two and eight have had problems to varying degrees. On the plus side, the latter few seasons appear to have turned over a new leaf in this regard with the Whisperer storyline in particular and even the Commonwealth story benefiting from better pacing and less filler. But there's no question that some seasons have contained too much filler dedicated to characters and/or threads we didn't need an episode about (Prey, Say Yes, Swear). That's not to say that there haven't been great episodes like this either (Days Gone By, The Grove, He's Not Here), but the Walking Dead has told its stories better when it follows multiple characters and multiple plot threads within a single episode format (Judge, Jury and Executioner, Too Far Gone, No Sanctuary, Season 9 and 10).

Worse still was that the repetitive season structure meant that fans came to know or guess which episodes contained the essential storytelling and which ones may just contain filler. No show should be that predictable and season seven in particular represents The Walking Dead at its worst from a storytelling perspective as the writers dragged out a story across 16 episodes that could've been told in 8. While season eight was an improvement in many regards, the war of the Communities storyline was plagued by pacing issues and some absolute stupidity in the storytelling (Rick vs. Negan in How It's Gotta Be and exploding guns in Wrath). Angela Kang's subsequent takeover as showrunner gave the show a much needed breath of life by adopting a better storytelling structure and also by taking things back to basics with a renewed focus once again on actually surviving the undead instead of the living.

Like any story, the heroes are only as good as their villains and the Walking Dead has had many villains ranging from the more grounded such as corrupt cops and elitist politicians to the rather outlandish including cannibals and cultists. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan is undoubtedly the MVP when it comes to villains and remains the shows most charismatic villain. There Will Come A Day When You Won't Be is a masterclass in introducing a new villain but also of a showrunner taking things way too far than they need to. Negan's subsequent progression/redemption story was far better told and was one part that would drive the shows resurgence during the final few seasons. But no villain arc was as captivating to watch or had as lasting consequences on the narrative, main group of characters and particularly on Rick than Jon Bernthal's Shane. For me, Shane remains the best villain of the Walking Dead.

The departure of Andrew Lincoln is perhaps the one real drawback of the latter period of the show as Rick's absence is definitely felt throughout but was surprisingly not fatal. The new structure allowed more secondary characters such as Aaron, Gabriel, Rosita, and Tara the chance to step up with more storytelling opportunities. But there is no question that a great hole was left by Rick's absence with Norman Reedus'a Daryl not quite fully able to fill that void entirely. These changes gave the show the opportunity to revitalize itself and allowed it to choose its own ending rather than having the decision made for it.

VERDICT

The Walking Dead is a show that has had its fair share of ups and downs but the journey is definitely a satisfying one overall. With a strong sense of continuity running throughout, the Walking Dead feels like one story all the way through with many twists and turns that have kept it feeling like essential viewing. With creative gore and frequently tense set pieces, The Walking Dead is one of my absolute favourite television shows and one I will continue to return to over again.

4/5

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glass-rose-paperweight · 4 years

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The Narrative Structure of Sherlock - And Why Season 4 Seems So Off

A lot has been said about why Season 4 just seems wrong (for a more complete list than I could ever hope to make, go here and here). And while all of those are great points that point to something strange going on, I want to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I propose that what’s wrong with Season 4, ignoring plot holes and inconsistencies and things that seemed to have just been done for shock factor, is that the narrative structure itself is just incorrect. We all know what big proponents of the 5 act structure Mofftiss is. Let’s take a moment to look at the five act structure for a moment, shall we?

The Five Act Structure

The five act structure has its basis in the narrative structure of the ancient Greeks, of telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end. However, it was really solidified starting with German playwright Gustav Freytag in 1863 and his mapping of a narrative structure. He identified the different parts of a story: the Exposition (which sets up the story, introduces characters, gives the audience the background needed to understand the story, and, most importantly, contains the inciting moment, the conflict that the story and the protagonists will revolve around), the Rising Action (which are the obstacles placed in the way of the protagonists resolving the conflict and any more information needed for the audience to understand the story narrative and the characters; often here is where you really start getting a good understanding of what characters are like and understanding their complexities), the Climax (the turning point of the story, the point with the highest tension; often the Big Showdown or big battle), the Falling Action (the end of the climax and the aftermath of whatever happened; things are starting to calm down and resolutions are being reached), and the Dénouement (the final resolution and tying up of lose ends. This is the moment of emotional release, when the characters you have been watching and hopefully grown attached to are reaching their happily ever after and you get to see what their life is like after going through the climax). This is a well known narrative structure that basically everyone learns in grade school. You’re probably familiar with the Story Triangle.

A lot of stories revolve around this narrative structure. Most of Shakespeare’s plays revolve around this narrative idea. The plot triangle is one of the most commonly used ways of telling a story. Supposedly, this is the model that Mofftiss are trying to shoot for with Sherlock. Lets take a look at how this structure generally fits within a typical 5 act play.

Well ... we already have a bit of a problem when it comes to Sherlock, don’t we? The climax is in the wrong spot. If we try and fit Sherlock into the Freytag narrative structure, the first episode really serves as the exposition while everything leading up the The Reichenbach Fall serves as the rising action. And then we get the fall itself as the climax. But, if we think of each season as being like an act, then the climax comes at the end of the second act. Which would leave all of season 3, 4, and 5 to act as falling action and dénouement, which generally leads to a slow, drawn out story. However, lets take a look at the Freytag narrative in a 3 act play, shall we?

The Three Act Structure

Now, a 3 act structure can really just be thought of as a condensed 5 act structure. The Exposition and Rising action are somewhat combined together to serve as an act 1 with a mini climax at the end of act 1. Then, in act 2, there’s more Rising Action, more obstacles to overcome, usually with some sort of midpoint in which a big twist happens. In Buddy Road Trip Movies, this is usually the annoying point at which they split up for some reason before coming back together for whatever the climax is, which falls at the end of Act 2. Act 3 is composed of the end of the climax, the falling action, the resolution, and the dénouement, the time of emotional release and seeing our characters ride off into the sunset.

Well, I’d say Sherlock fits much more securely in this narrative structure. You have the exposition of the fist episode, with the inciting incident coming at the Cabbie saying Moriarty’s name. The rest of the season is more buildup, with the end of The Great Game acting as the climax of act one (and one of the biggest fucking cliffhangers ever). Then we have the resolution of the climax of act one, more rising action, and the the big climax of act 2 with Sherlock jumping. The first two seasons of Sherlock fit much better into the 3 act narrative than into a 5 act narrative.

Sherlock’s Structure

That’s not to say the show doesn’t fit into the 5 act narrative at all. It isn’t uncommon for stories to have multiple ‘climaxes’, smaller ‘peaks’ in the narrative structure that add tension and draw audiences in to the story being told. Each peak just needs to be ‘higher’, with the stakes rising and the climax getting more and more tense each time (this is one of the reasons why big superhero movie franchises constantly feel the need to one up themselves when it comes to the size and scope of the final climax of the movie and why its often so hard to do that with later movies - once you create an ‘Avengers level threat’, where do you go with the story from there?) And, admittedly, the end of the ‘third act’, the end of season 3, does come with a pretty big climactic moment that ‘one ups’ the previous climaxes: Moriarty returning. There’s just one little problem: this is almost immediately resolved.

If we ignore The Abominable Bride for a moment and focus just on the ‘actual’ episodes of each season, act 3 ends with Sherlock shooting Magnessun and Moriarty returning and act 4 starts with both of those issues already resolved. It’s the gaming playthrough equivalent in Minecraft of ‘I did some mining offscreen’. Even though, technically, there wasn’t anything done ‘offscreen’ to resolve the conflict (except for editing a video of Sherlock shooting Magnessun), we never see anything done on screen to resolve the problems, especially not the problem of Moriarty. Sherlock simply dismisses it as not real and moves on. ‘Moriarty isn’t really alive, this is just some plan from beyond the grave that I can deal with easily because I am the great Sherlock Holmes.’ The climax wasn’t really a climax. It just kinda fizzled out, and then the story moves on to instead deal with Mary. Now, we later come to learn that Moriarty had, actually, returned ... in a round about sort of way. We learn of Euros and everything she had done behind the scenes, directing Moriarty, and how the climax at the end of act 3 is linked with her. Ignoring all the plot problems that come with her, the biggest problem with her is placement: her story is in the wrong spot. Her story, the part that finally gets around to explaining and resolving the ‘big climax at the end of act 3′ doesn’t happen until the end of act 4, when we’re supposed to be drawing to the end of the falling action and about to enter the dénouement. That’s not to say that ‘climaxes’ can’t happen in the falling action, because they can. The caveat is that they have to be smaller than whatever the ‘big’ climax of the story is (and that the big climax of the story needs to be resolved in a satisfying way). The climaxes in the 4th act have to simply be what happens while trying to tie up the lose ends of the story. The Final Problem acts as a resolution to the climax of act 3, but it happens almost an entire act after when it is supposed to, with no sort of rising action or narrative structure to fit the two stories, the two pieces of the narrative puzzle, together. Nothing in The Six Thatchers or in The Lying Detective really link Moriarty’s return at the end of act 3 with The Final Problem. The other issue with The Final Problem is that it attempts to fit all of the falling action and the dénouement into the end of the episode. Not even all into one episode, but to fit everything into, like, the last 5 minutes of the episode. The end montage with Mary’s voice over feels very much like a ‘riding into the sunset’ kind of moment, even if you believe there will be a fifth season. You just can’t resolve a story in 5 minutes. You can’t fit two whole acts into 5 minutes and it feel like a satisfying story. And if there is another season, the end sequence of The Final Problem just throws another wrench in the Freytag narrative structure.

Basically, what I’m getting at is, no matter which way you try to look at it, Sherlock doesn’t fit neatly into clearly established narrative structures. Which isn’t inherently a bad thing. Stories don’t have to fit into a 3 act or 5 act structure or even follow the Freytag narrative structure at all to be good stories. However, most of the stories we consume today, most of the books we read and movies we watch and, to a certain extent, the overarching plot of many TV shows we watch, fall into this narrative structure. While there are plenty of stories out there that don’t, in any way, fit into these structures, the point is that it is a narrative structure we are familiar with and that Sherlock attempts to fit into it. Sherlock makes it look like it’s going to fit into that narrative structure. And then it doesn’t. After growing up experiencing all these stories that very clearly follow the Freytag narrative structure, we expect stories that attempt to fall into that narrative structure to stay in that narrative structure. To follow it all the way through. It leaves audience members extremely unsatisfied if it doesn’t. This is why even if all the plot holes and inconsistencies and the characters being out of character were resolved, even if the Extended Mind Palace theory turns out to be true or John’s Bungalow theory or whatever other theory you could come up with to resolve season 4, the narrative structure of Sherlock will never be satisfying. It’s the reason why people have proposed different orders for watching the Star Wars movies or watching the Avengers movies. Because we understand how these stories are supposed to work and end up feeling unsatisfied when the curtain closes and the lights come back up. We want that familiar structure, that release of emotion that we have come to expect from clearly established narration that we are accustomed to. This is the problem inherent with Sherlock. Not the secret sister that seemed to come out of nowhere. Not the inconsistencies or characters knowing things they shouldn’t or doing things they shouldn’t. Not even Redbeard being a boy and not a dog, but the very foundation of the show itself. It’s narration. Because the ‘final’ climax is likely going to have to fit itself into the 5th season (especially if the Extended Mind Palace Theory is correct and we have a ‘it was all just a dream moment’), a resolution to the problem, all the falling action, AND the dénouement are all going to have to be shoved into the 5th act. Which is likely going to make for a story that feels very rushed.

That’s why I have a proposition: a restructuring of the story. This doesn’t resolve plot holes, but it does, I think, make the story more satisfying. It’s moving things around kind of a lot, so things might get a little messy.

Okay, everything is almost exactly the same through season 3, with the one change being that the clues pointing towards another sibling, the build up of it, happens over the course of season 3 instead of season 4. The Abominable Bride doesn’t really matter in this retelling, so take it or leave it as you wish (personally, I choose to take it). The first episode of the 4th season still has Rosie being born and the very beginning of the episode (with the footage of Sherlock shooting Magnussen being altered and Sherlock being dismissive of Moriarty’s return), but everything that happens in The Final Problem happens in this episode. So, discovery of a secret sister, Sherrinford, confrontation of a secret sister, murder games, all of it happens in the first episode of the 4th season. The climax with Moriarty’s return is resolved when it is supposed to be. However unsatisfying it is that he isn’t actually back, at least the narrative flows in this way. The second episode of season 4 is an entirely new story, something that starts the resolution of Sherlock having a secret sister and of obvious trauma from when he was a child. In The Final Problem, Mycroft mentions that he gave Eurus ‘gifts’ for her assistance in fixing problems, so perhaps a problem comes up that Mycroft and Sherlock can’t solve, and they have the moral dilemma of whether or not they should go to Eurus and whether or not her demands will be worth her help. IDK, I’m just spit balling here. The last episode of the season is also a new episode, something that emphasizes the Johnlock dilemma, something that brings into focus John’s feelings for Sherlock and Sherlock’s feelings for John. Something that explicitly shows their attraction for each other and the problems getting in the way of them being together (Mary, heternormativity, maybe John having internalized homophobia, idk), but they don’t actually get together. The first episode of the 5th season is The Six Thatchers, and Mary dies. That episode plays out basically exactly as it is. The episode still ends with John extremely mad at Sherlock and not wanting to be around him. The second episode is the Lying Detective, basically completely as it is. The final episode of the season and the show is them talking through everything, The Reichenbach Fall and why Sherlock left for two years (because that’s not something they seem to have discussed at any point), the pain John still feels over Mary being dead, the feelings both of them have towards each other, and some sort of case to show them that they are still the good friends of the first two acts, that things haven’t really changed. That regardless of whatever romantic attraction they may or may not have for each other, they still deeply care about each other and want to be in each other’s lives. Something to show us how their lives will play out in the future, that they’ll continue to solve cases together. Hell, you can still have the end montage with Mary’s voice over if you want. It’s certainly a lot more fitting there. In my personal opinion (though others can disagree with me if they like), the most fitting ‘resolution’ to John and Sherlock’s attraction towards each other isn’t actually a resolution, but a beginning. I say, after the end montage and Mary’s voice over, cut to the two of them on a nervous date with each other, obviously not knowing what the hell to do but excited about the possibilities of the future. It leaves things open to the imagination for the audience (which is always nice, especially for fanfiction potential) and it doesn’t try to cram too much into a short amount of time (I really feel like trying to show them long term dating or getting married or anything like that would just be pushing it as far as narrative flow).

I’m not saying my proposed solution solves everything. There’s still plenty of issues to either have to work through or ignore with my version of events. Plenty of plot holes and character inconsistencies. But at least my version of events makes sense, at least narratively speaking. It follows the five act structure Mofftiss say they are so fond of. (If you want to say that The Six Thatchers would work better as the end of act 4, serving as the last episode of season 4, and then have The Lying Detective serve as the first episode of season 5 with a completely new episode as the second episode and then another new episode as the final resolution of what life for our Baker Street boys will be like in the future, I would also accept that proposed version of events; it does allow for more evolution of John and Sherlock’s relationship as a couple, though it does leave things less open ended for the two of them. If you prefer that, that’s valid. If you would rather stick to a 3 act structure, then keep The Empty Hearse exactly as it is, have The Sign of Three as it is but with Sherlock and John getting married, and pretend like season 3 ends with the montage of John, Sherlock, and Rosie and just pretend like John and Sherlock adopted a little girl. If you would prefer that version of events, that is also valid.) Even with all the other issues that come with seasons 3 and 4, this version of events just feels more satisfying, at least to me.

(Something I wanted to point out but couldn’t find a good place to insert it, so I’m just adding it as a footnote now: that’s why The Hounds of Baskerville feels kinda out of place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great episode, but it always seemed to stick out like a sore thumb to me. And that’s because it does, narratively speaking: it doesn’t contribute to the rising action. All the other episodes in the first 2 seasons contribute and lead back to Moriarty in some form or fashion; they act as an evolving narrative leading to the Reichenbach Fall. Except for The Hounds Of Baskerville. It is it’s own, separate narrative. It’s a good narrative. It’s one of the best narratives in the show, if I’m being honest. But it still is out of place. It would fit much better as the second episode of the first season, acting as a continued exposition of the first act before we get the first (not so) mini climax with The Great Game. Narratively speaking, it would make more sense to switch The Hounds of Baskerville with The Blind Banker.)

TL;DR first of all, understandable, this is a very long post. Second, the narrative structure of the show itself is fucky, and that’s why season 4 will never feel satisfying, no matter what happens in a possible season 5 to try and resolve the fuckery of season 4

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yourdailykitsch · 4 years

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Taylor Kitsch on 'Shadowplay' and Taking on Darker Roles: "It's the Most Fulfilling"

Kitsch plays a Brooklyn cop sent to post-War Berlin in the period crime drama, which premieres at the CanneSeries TV festival.

For a fan of Friday Night Lights, it's hard to sit across from Taylor Kitsch and not picture high-school bad boy Tim Riggins, the character — part womanizer, part wounded man-child — Kitsch played for five seasons in the acclaimed, Emmy-winning NBC drama.

But Kitsch has spent the last decade of his career carving out a darker path, with stand-out roles in Ryan Murphy's TV movie The Normal Heart, on the second season of True Detective, and as cult leader David Koresh in Paramount Network's Waco.

For his latest role — as Max McLaughlin in Shadowplay — Kitsch has again gone deep and dark. The period crime drama, from the creators of Nordic noir series The Bridge, sees Kitsch playing a Brooklyn cop assigned to set up a police force in the chaos of post-World War II Berlin and to take down the Capone of post-war Berlin, "Engelmacher" Gladow (played by Sebastian Koch). Max is also on a mission to save his brother Moritz (Logan Marshall-Green). Both siblings share a common, childhood trauma, but have taken very different paths. Moritz, who served in World War II, has returned to Germany and begun to hunt down unrepentant Nazis, killing them in increasingly brutal ways.

Michael C. Hall, Nina Hoss, Tuppence Middleton, and Mala Emde co-star. Kitsch spoke to The Hollywood Reporter's European Bureau Chief Scott Roxborough while on a break from shooting Shadowplay in Prague. The series, from Studiocanal’s Tandem Productions and Canada’s Bron Studios, premieres at TV festival CanneSeries.

There have been a lot of movies, and TV series, made about World War II, but almost nothing from when Shadowplay is set, the immediate aftermath of the war. I had no idea what things were like in '46. I don't know what I thought but it wasn't this. The violence didn't stop after the war. Everything just went rogue. I got here a few weeks before we started shooting and went to Berlin to see all the sites for myself. I took a week and went to Auschwitz to study that. You can look at these pictures all day but being there you have a sense of the gravity of it all.

This series seems much bigger, and more ambitious than much of the television you've done in the past. [Creators Mans Marlind's and Bjorn Stein's] vision is so big. Even shooting-wise, we have huge action set pieces but then also very beautiful scenes. Today we have a huge scene, where we blow up the police station. It looks unbelievable. Dust rising like a huge cloud before the firefight ensues. It's the biggest action sequence we have in the whole series. But it's the heavier stuff, the emotional stuff, that is going to drive the show. And that's what I find most challenging. Me and my brother Moritz go through trauma, our mom is shot in the kitchen by our father and we see it. My character, Max, deals with that trauma completely differently from Moritz. So every time we have a scene together, the stakes are so high. I was talking to [Shadowplay co-star] Nina [Hoss] yesterday and was saying how the scenes I struggle with are exposition. I hate exposition, talking to drive a storyline. In the scenes that are black and white, where it's clear what's happening and what the stakes are, those are the scenes you live for. Waco was like that: it was clear what I was doing in every scene. It's similar here.

You've been taking on meatier roles recently. Is that deliberate on your part? Absolutely. I think it's more my wheelhouse now than it's ever been. I think that's originally why I went to study acting. I never ever thought it would be a possibility to end up leading crazy big movies or series. I just wanted to do indies. I love it. It is the most fulfilling.

How are you picking your roles now, what do you look out for? I ask myself: "Does it scare me? Can I do it?" If it's on the verge, where I'm scared I can't do it, then I'm interested. Then, of course, it's about who's the director, what's the subject matter, what's the voice? But I think it's the fear that drives me most of the time. I say to other actors I admire all the time: there are going to be things where you swing and miss, but there are going to be others where you hit it out of the park. Failure is OK. As long as it doesn't completely end your career [laughs].

The actors I admire don't worry about the repercussions, of "what are people going to say?" People like Benicio [Del Toro], he's had a lasting effect on me. Or Josh Brolin. He and I are still close [since working together on 2017's Only the Brave.] He's had a major swing with Avengers but at the root, he's just a great actor. When you take the greats you can put them in anything and they'll still be great. Brolin is awesome. Joe Mantello sticks with me. I always think of him from Normal Heart. He just blew me away.

In Shadowplay, you're acting alongside Nina Hoss, who's a big star here in Germany. What's that been like? I was just told when I signed on: "oh, you're going to love her." Now she is one of my favorite actors or actresses I ever worked with. I'm a fan for life. She is just incredibly giving. No ego. There are actors out there that are more worried about themselves than the scene alone or reaching the potential of a scene. She wants to reach the potential of the scene. And that doesn't matter if it's at the cost of her or whatever it is. She's very engaging and comes prepared, and is a pro. She's just all-in. And she's really, really good. I'd love to work with her again.

You have been trying to get Pieces — your first film as a director — off the ground. What the state of that? Basically, it goes back to me just wanting more indies to get made. Or just original films. My agent told me that something like 20 of the last 21 highest-grossing movies have been sequels or franchise films. That's pretty fucking alarming.

It's been tough to get financing [for Pieces]. And this is for a low-, almost no-budget movie. The genre is tough too. It's not like I'm going to do a young adult horror or a rom-com. This is an ode to the gritty, 1970s kind of character-driven movie. Tough to say to financiers: "You want to make this with me?" And they are like: "I don't know how many people are going to see this."

#taylor kitsch #Shadowplay #Max McLaughlin #nina hoss #interview

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arthurrosj548 · 3 years

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The hosts head into this recreation on the again of four wins from their last four matches, three of which they've scored exactly 4 objectives in. Man Utd have won five of their final six encounters with AC Milan and each groups have scored in four of those matches. Man Utd have picked up three wins and three draws from their last six outings, bringing an finish to Man City's long successful streak final outing. Both teams have scored in 4 of AC Milan's final six fixtures and the visitors have only won twice throughout that period. Lyon beat PSG 1-0 when the two sides collided in December and this time, they have the home benefit. Both groups are level on 60pts in Ligue 1 and Lyon have secred three wins and two attracts from their last 5 fixtures.

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See all Both teams to attain predictions for football video games. Btts ideas and stats primarily based on last teams games performances. Alongside the same old ideas and predictions, you’ll also get to take your pick of the most effective football betting provides every single day. We have those new buyer presents rolled out for you every time they’re out there alongside In Play presents, all buyer price boosts and plenty extra from the likes of bet365 and Betbull. Next to our soccer predictions we offer every day tips on our bet of the day web page which is well-liked amongst our visitors. All of the football betting suggestions that you just’ll discover on Footy Accumulators are a hundred% free.

This sort of wagering permits you to resolve uponon your bets depending on the unfolding motion, whether that’s a cup ultimate between two European giants or a tussle on the bottom of the desk in one of the lower leagues. For our tips, it’s difficult to submit them on web site because of the timing of matches, however you'll be able to comply with us on Twitter for the most effective stay tweets, stats, reactions and most importantly In Play suggestions as the fixtures unfold. During summer time when common soccer leagues are in a break we keep offering football ideas and predictions.

Three of the last four conferences between these two golf equipment have produced under 2.5 targets and we're predicting one other carefully fought ninety-minutes on Sunday. Under 2.5 objectives have additionally been produced in every of Man Utd's final six outings in all competitions. You can again Sassuolo to win & BTTS @ 15/four (4.75) with bet365. As you'd count on we provide in-depth betting advice for the main racing festivals and races such as the Cheltenham Festival and Grand National. You’ll discover a lot of help with the way to bet on football in our posts and of course you possibly can all the time ask questions in the feedback part in case you have any questions. You should also create a twitter account when you do not have already got one, and begin to comply with some key accounts, together with official football staff accounts where as much as the minute group information shall be posted.

The most effective ‘betting formulation’ is to put money into your knowledge as that is also the best way of enhancing your chances of winning. Football Predictions will help you increase your betting capability by offering numerous betting methods and guides where you're certain to search out some helpful methods of the commerce that can assist you polish your betting tactics. Have no worries, as your betting companion we are right here to information you want a guru and offer you knowledge that you can really apply in order to make some revenue alongside the way.

21 Soccer Ideas

Where you really see the distinction is over the long term. One particular person it is all the time necessary to listen to is your coach. They spend their week thinking about how each player can improve, how the staff can carry out better and dealing on achieving this. There are numerous choices that your targets could possibly be. Maybe it’s to score extra consistently or maybe its to be more assured at heading the ball. To see a fast enchancment in your recreation take the time outdoors of game time to work in your expertise and fitness.

It is very important that each time you'll method to the opponent you do it with confidence, security, and conviction. In this way, you impose your presence as a defender in the subject and they'll assume it twice earlier than trying to get previous over you. All defenders need to make the attackers feel their presence. You must be sure that each time they are going to get the ball, they know you'll be right next to them. When doubtful, maintain it simple and kick the ball out to a nook, sideline or to your forwards!

If you wish to go deeper examine our Free Betting Prediction all soccer matches part the place you can find all our betting predictions. Use our LiveScores for extra info, H2H statistics, group kind, standings and so on. To view all of our ideas for tomorrow's video games, go to predictions tomorrow. WinDrawWin is one of the best supply of free soccer betting tips and football predictions and betting statistics, soccer outcomes, soccer statistics and tendencies. Browse these free soccer predictions for at present and the weekend. Football match previews include statistics, betting odds markets & the most recent bookieoffers.

It takes an knowledgeable opinion or educated guess regarding the result of a specified sport of soccer to type each individual prediction. At oddschecker we offer a variety of betting recommendations on the extensive choice of betting events we cowl each day. All of our tips are free for you, the person, and we aim to provide you with the most effective research and stats to higher inform you when choosing a guess on your chosen match/occasion. This feature will enable you to generate a betting ticket in your bet slip. You can also choose between a variety of two and sixteen matches with soccer betting suggestions. Just generate a ticket with our betting tips and replica it under your bookmakers wager slip.

The worse thing that a defender can do is being “fancy” back there. When in doubt, just kick the ball out, and let all that artistic stuff to the attackers. The scenario in the picture above is something you need to totally avoid.

As mentioned in the final tip, positioning is important as it gives players that additional bit of time on the ball. But with a great first touch you can take the ball beyond the incoming tackle and open up space. By hovering between the central defenders or the gaps that emerge between them and the fullbacks, you can simply create confusion as to who is supposed to be marking you.

The stakes are higher, the lines are sharper and the betting handles are higher. Without further ado, listed here are a few suggestions to keep in mind as you wager on the insanity. To do this, a mix of algorithmic and human components are thought of. For an upcoming recreation let's say that a prediction was made by utilizing a heavy check here weighting on the last six results for both groups. It's one thing that many mathematical suggestions sites use as certainly one of their main factors.

A Novices Information To Betting On Soccer 2021

You have a way to redeem your self on the online sportsbooks as a result of they submit odds at halftime on the sides and the totals. This can be a second probability, nevertheless it may also be a method to hedge your authentic bet. If you go this route, the team that you just choose has to win the game outright, and the rating doesn’t matter.

In an effort to make baseball and hockey more interesting to point spread bettors, the sportsbook operators provide run and puck lines, respectively. Betting on the NFL remains by far the leading single driver of sportsbook enterprise. It's no shock that America's hunger for the newest and best NFLpoint spreadscontinues to develop, together with soccer damage updates and matchup data to help them win more bets, and ultimately more cash. While there are lots of high NFL betting sites on-line, we believe Bovada to be the most effective web site to bet on NFL video games. Having stated that, each online sportsbook is totally different and presents their own distinctive incentives. Bovada, nonetheless, has fast withdrawals, exclusive bonuses on certain deposit options, in addition to a bunch of special promotions.

The 2nd half line accounts for what happened in the first half to help determine how the rest of the game will play out. Now that you understand the basics of NFL spread betting you’ll wish to take a look at ourSports Betting Strategyguide which has some great NFL strategy articles written by a professional bettor. Here you can see that the Rams are +three.5, while the Cowboys are -3.5. So for this instance the Cowboys are three.5 level favorites, whereas the Rams are underdogs of three.5 points.

The data discovered on Gamblingsites.org is for leisure purposes only. It is a purely informational web site that doesn't settle for wagers of any sort. Gamblingsites.org makes use of associates links from a number of the sportsbooks/casinos it promotes and reviews, and we might obtain compensation from those specific sportsbooks/casinos in certain circumstances. Gamblingsites.org does not promote or endorse any form of wagering or playing to customers beneath the age of 18.

Online NFL prop wagers aren't offered for every sport every Sunday; they're usually limited to video games that are the only focus inside a time slot, like Sunday and Monday night time frays. A proposition wager, or prop, is a bet on a selected focused side of a recreation or the individual performance of a player. You might even see a prop on the over/under on total area goals made by each teams in a contest, the entire interceptions thrown, or whether or not there will be a particular groups touchdown scored. Live NFL betting is another choice that involves inserting wagers after the sport has started, however they are often posted at any time during the sport. This lets you make subtle wagers primarily based on your analysis of what you could have seen on the field, and it’s one other sort of wager that can be utilized to hedge.

This provides you the power to run by way of a bunch of different prospects before you place your guess. Our presents change frequently, so you can at all times ensure there’ll be one thing to make the weekend’s fixtures a little spicier. Register for free and make your predictions forward of the subsequent massive recreation. We have all the latest motion from the English Premier League and the excitement of European soccer, from ‘El Clasico’ to the Belarusian league. lots of them supply extra rewards to current clients too.

This would imply in order for a wager on the favored group on the spread to win they would need to win by more than 6.5 points in order to win the wager. It additionally implies that a guess on the underdog team would win if the underdogs lost by lower than 6.5 factors or received the game outright. Major League Soccer the top soccer league within the United States and Canada has expressed sports betting as a attainable approach to gain reputation.

Free Tennis tips

Below we are able to see an example of set handicap odds listed at Paddy Power for an upcoming match between Caroline Wozniacki and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Set winner betting works the identical as match winner betting, besides that somewhat than betting on the result of a whole match, you might be only betting on the result of an individual set. In this example, we will see that Nadal is at very brief odds to win the opening set of the match.

youtube

The grass floor favours some gamers while different players have types appropriate for clay or onerous court docket. Clay is the slowest of the ATP surfaces and hard courtroom is considered the center floor. Take these components into consideration when putting bets and which surfaces favour a specific gamers type. Likewise, it is essential to keep in mind previous matches between the 2 gamers. Some gamers might be thought of of lesser expertise within the event, but typically they have a enjoying fashion that troubles gamers that others contemplate to be of far higher capability.

Thus, while Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer have often entered the French Open ranked #1 on the earth, Nadal has typically been the overwhelming favourite in the tournament. The handicapping, sports odds information contained on this web site is for leisure purposes solely. Please confirm the wagering regulations in your jurisdiction as they range from state to state, province to province and country to nation.

Tennis futures bets may be very entertaining as a result of you'll be able to observe a participant through the match or the year. Continuing with the Medvedev vs Djokovic instance, the total is set at forty.5 video games. If you suppose it is going to be a protracted, drawn-out match, guess on over. If you assume one participant will dominate and that the match will be over rapidly, ideally leading to a straight units win, guess on beneath. All you care about with these bets is the entire video games performed in the match.

PointsBet has listed 42 totally different outcomes on the ladies’s side versus 27 different outcomes on the boys’s. Remember, we are attempting to predict who may win the Australian Open in 2021. At the time of writing, this sportsbook thinks there are significantly fewer males who stand an opportunity of profitable than girls. It is simply much harder to beat the best gamers in a five-set format. The men’s and ladies’s draws are played concurrently at the Grand Slams and 4 different premier mandatory tournaments each year, with equal prize money supplied to each genders. The males’s Association of Tennis Professionals Tour and the Women’s Tennis Association Tour play most different tournaments separately and for different amounts of prize cash, with a couple of exceptions.

Tennis Consultants Predictions And Every Day Free Betting Tips

This is a tip for the players which are both playing tournaments or wish to bounce into the competitive aspect of things. Whether you are a superstitious player like Nadal or a cool and calm participant like Federer, make your self snug on the tennis courtroom. If you're at any stage of your tennis journey, whether or not you are a beginner, intermediate and even advanced, I actually have compiled an inventory of 20 tips which is able to surely take your recreation to the next stage. For all of the advanced players out there who assume the following tips may simply be too fundamental, I advise you to learn by way of the article.

Make sure you allow them to know the shoes are for taking part in actual tennis. This easy tennis tip will allow you to get your shots precisely the place you need them. If their shots appear to fall in the midst of the court docket as an alternative of the baseline…hang on the market as an alternative. You will need to know how to change your serves and strokes on a windy day when compared to taking part in in stillness. Be ready by taking part in on a lot of completely different courts and in all types of climate.

The spin will hold the ball in the service box, whereas making it more difficult to return. three.When running to a ball from one nook to the opposite, take a couple of large strides giant at first, after which switch to smaller steps as you get into place to hit the ball. Those faster, smaller steps will allow you to stay balanced and let you make needed adjustments for dangerous bounces, wind, etc. Visit Tennis to study more about tennis applications, coaches and the Tennis Centre at North Vancouver Recreation and Culture. If there's a doubt about court net dividers remaining open or closed, the desire is given to teams who want to hold the nets closed. Even should you’re on the way to accessing your courtroom, please don’t discuss in your telephone or keep on loud conversations.

Because it's so enjoyable to play, teammates have a great time with one another and the relationships amongst them get stronger and stronger. It is fundamental that staff members have nice hyperlinks and chemistry among each other. I think that the best way to tell if the court has the correct size is to play some video games and look should you feel comfy with the scale. The return of serve is a troublesome shot except your opponent has a very bad serve. The

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cesarjned982 · 3 years

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Think You’re Cut Out for Doing free soccer tips? Take This Quiz

Free football Tips

Sevilla returned to successful methods towards Real Betis on the weekend and now face an Elche aspect which have misplaced their last five away games, failing to attain in 4 of their last 9 away video games. Bayern Munich have scored 22 objectives in their seven Champions League video games this season and hammered Lazio 4-1 in the first leg. The Bavarians have scored a minimum of three targets in every of their last four video games. Blackburn are winless of their final 5 residence games and have misplaced seven of their final ten, whereas Bristol City are on a 3 match profitable streak away from house. Championship leaders Norwich have received their last eight games and have the best away report in the league, winning 12 of their 18 journeys so far this season. IIt’s not only faculty football we've consultants in, we even have school basketball picks together with March Madness.

In some instances, you might have considered trying extra insight into what’s happening in the recreation at the moment. We present this betting analysis in our Football Betting Predictions for that purpose. Bielefeld have lost 3 and drawn 1 of their last four league games.

You could have been a supporter for years, but your love for the group is not going to make them play any better or enhance their probabilities when enjoying Liverpool or Man City away. Picking the right wager is about using your head not your heart. With 22 gamers, plus substitutes, plus a complete vary of backroom employees influencing the outcome of each recreation, there may be lots of research to be done if you are to make an knowledgeable bet. This is the place skilled analysis actually comes into its personal. Chelsea only sit one place and one level above visiting Everton, however the Londoners have not lost at home to the Toffees since a 2011 penalty shootout within the FA Cup.

There are countless methods to bet on soccer matches other than a simple prediction of who will win. The extra you understand concerning the game, and concerning the teams concerned, the more markets will speak in confidence to you, which is where oddschecker’s free soccer betting suggestions can help. These football bets are created by the FA team and include football suggestions for the biggest video games in the entire top leagues & tournaments on the earth. However, we don’t restrict ourselves to just the highest leagues, we analyse the smaller ones in order to guarantee we’re bringing you the best soccer betting suggestions attainable. If you need regular, dependable, confirmed soccer predictions at present, oddschecker is the place to head.

The hosts head into this sport on the back of four wins from their last 4 matches, three of which they have scored precisely four targets in. Man Utd have gained five of their last six encounters with AC Milan and both groups have scored in 4 of those matches. Man Utd have picked up three wins and three attracts from their final six outings, bringing an finish to Man City's lengthy successful streak last time out. Both teams have scored in 4 of AC Milan's last six fixtures and the guests have only received twice throughout that interval. Lyon beat PSG 1-zero when the two sides collided in December and this time, they've the home advantage. Both teams are stage on 60pts in Ligue 1 and Lyon have secred three wins and two attracts from their last five fixtures.

Our every day football tips are put collectively by our skilled staff using the previous match statics as well as the present staff information and kind. This means there are absolutely no half measures on the soccer betting suggestions we recommend. Want to kick off your weekend with a Premier League winner? Searching for some midweek value in the home and European leagues? Looking for the most recent insight for the Nations League, Euros or the World Cup qualifiers?

See all Both teams to attain predictions for soccer games. Btts tips and stats based mostly on last groups video games performances. Alongside the same old ideas and predictions, you’ll additionally get to take your decide of the best soccer betting provides every day. We have these new buyer presents rolled out for you every time they’re obtainable alongside In Play presents, all buyer worth boosts and many extra from the likes of bet365 and Betbull. Next to our soccer predictions we provide every day recommendations on our wager of the day page which is in style among our visitors. All of the soccer betting ideas that you simply’ll discover on Footy Accumulators are 100% free.

This kind of wagering permits you to resolve uponon your bets dependent on the unfolding action, whether or not that’s a cup last between two European giants or a tussle on the backside of the table in one of many lower leagues. For our tips, it’s difficult to post them on site as a result of timing of matches, but you possibly can observe us on Twitter for one of the best stay tweets, stats, reactions and most importantly In Play tips because the fixtures unfold. During summer time when common football leagues are in a break we hold providing soccer tips and predictions.

Three of the final 4 conferences between these two golf equipment have produced underneath 2.5 targets and we're predicting one other carefully fought 90-minutes on Sunday. Under 2.5 objectives have also been produced in each of Man Utd's final six outings in all competitions. You can again Sassuolo to win & BTTS @ 15/4 (four.75) with bet365. As you'll count on we provide in-depth betting recommendation for the most important racing festivals and races such because the Cheltenham Festival and Grand National. You’ll find a lot of assist with how to guess on soccer in our posts and of course you can all the time ask questions in the comments section when you have any questions. You also needs to create a twitter account should you don't already have one, and begin to observe some key accounts, together with official soccer group accounts the place up to the minute staff news might be posted.

The best ‘betting method’ is to spend money on your data as that can also be the best way of enhancing your probabilities of winning. Football Predictions will allow you to increase your betting capability by offering varied betting strategies and guides the place you are positive to seek out some helpful tips of the trade that will help you polish your betting ways. Have no worries, as your betting companion we are right here to guide you want a guru and give you data you could actually apply so as to make some revenue along the best way.

21 Soccer Tips

Where you actually see the distinction is over the long term. One individual it's all the time essential to take heed to is your coach. They spend their week thinking about how every participant can enhance, how the staff can carry out higher and dealing on attaining this. There are numerous options that your goals might be. Maybe it’s to attain extra consistently or perhaps its to be extra confident at heading the ball. To see a speedy improvement in your recreation take the time outside of recreation time to work in your expertise and fitness.

It is essential that each time you will method to the opponent you do it with confidence, security, and conviction. In this way, you impose your presence as a defender in the field and they will suppose it twice earlier than attempting to get past over you. All defenders must make the attackers really feel their presence. You must be sure that each time they will get the ball, they know you will be right next to them. When unsure, hold it easy and kick the ball out to a nook, sideline or to your forwards!

If you want to go deeper examine our Free Betting Prediction all soccer matches part the place you can find all our betting predictions. Use our LiveScores for additional information, H2H statistics, team form, standings and so forth. To view all of our tips for tomorrow's video games, go to predictions tomorrow. WinDrawWin is the best source of free football betting ideas and soccer predictions and betting statistics, football outcomes, football statistics and trends. Browse these free soccer predictions for right now and the weekend. Football match previews embrace statistics, betting odds markets & the newest bookieoffers.

It takes an knowledgeable opinion or educated guess relating to the outcome of a specified game of soccer to form every individual prediction. At oddschecker we provide a wide range of betting tips on the intensive number of betting events we cover each day. All of our suggestions are free for you, the consumer, and we aim to offer you the most effective analysis and stats to higher inform you when selecting a guess in your chosen match/occasion. This function will allow you to generate a betting ticket for your guess slip. You can even choose between a spread of 2 and 16 matches with soccer betting ideas. Just generate a ticket with our betting suggestions and copy it underneath your bookmakers guess slip.

The worse thing that a defender can do is being “fancy” again there. When unsure, just kick the ball out, and let all that creative stuff to the attackers. The scenario in the picture above is one thing you wish to completely avoid.

As stated in the final tip, positioning is essential because it offers players that further bit of time on the ball. But with an excellent first touch you'll be able to take the ball beyond the incoming tackle and open up house. By hovering between the central defenders or the gaps that emerge between them and the fullbacks, you'll be able to easily create confusion as to who is supposed to be marking you.

The stakes are higher, the strains are sharper and the betting handles are higher. Without further ado, listed here are a couple of ideas to remember as you wager on the madness. To do this, a mixture of algorithmic and human components are considered. For an upcoming recreation for example that a prediction was made through the use of a heavy weighting on the last six results for each groups. It's one thing that many mathematical tips websites use as one of their major components.

youtube

A Beginners Information To Betting On Soccer 2021

You have a approach to redeem your self on the online sportsbooks as a result of they submit odds at halftime on the sides and the totals. This could be a second probability, nevertheless it can also be a way to hedge your unique guess. If you go this route, the team that you choose has to win the game outright, and the rating doesn’t matter.

In an effort to make baseball and hockey extra interesting to point spread bettors, the sportsbook operators provide run and puck traces, respectively. Betting on the NFL remains by far the leading single driver of sportsbook enterprise. It's no surprise that America's starvation for the newest and best NFLpoint spreadscontinues to grow, together with soccer injury updates and matchup information to assist them win more bets, and ultimately more cash. While there are numerous high NFL betting websites online, we believe Bovada to be one of the best web site to wager on NFL video games. Having said that, each on-line sportsbook is different and presents their very own distinctive incentives. Bovada, nonetheless, has fast withdrawals, unique bonuses on sure deposit choices, in addition to a bunch of particular promotions.

The 2nd half line accounts for what happened in the first half to assist determine how the remainder of the sport will play out. Now that you understand the basics of NFL spread betting you’ll need to try ourSports Betting Strategyguide which has some great NFL technique articles written by an expert bettor. Here you'll be able to see that the Rams are +three.5, whereas the Cowboys are -3.5. So for this instance the Cowboys are 3.5 level favorites, while the Rams are underdogs of 3.5 points.

The information found on Gamblingsites.org is for entertainment functions solely. It is a purely informational website that does not accept wagers of any kind. Gamblingsites.org uses affiliates links from a few of the sportsbooks/casinos it promotes and evaluations, and we may receive compensation from those explicit sportsbooks/casinos in certain circumstances. Gamblingsites.org does not promote or endorse any form of wagering or playing to users underneath the age of 18.

Online NFL prop wagers aren't supplied for each game each Sunday; they are usually limited to video games which might be the only focus inside a time slot, like Sunday and Monday night frays. A proposition wager, or prop, is a guess on a selected centered aspect of a sport or the individual performance of a participant. You may see a prop on the over/under on whole field targets made by both groups in a contest, the whole interceptions thrown, or whether or not there shall be a special groups touchdown scored. Live NFL betting is an alternative choice that entails putting wagers after the game has started, however they can be posted at any time in the course of the sport. This permits you to make refined wagers based in your evaluation of what you have seen on the field, and it’s one other kind of wager that can be utilized to hedge.

This provides you the facility to run through a bunch of different possibilities before you place your bet. Our provides change regularly, so you can always be sure there’ll be one thing to make the weekend’s fixtures somewhat spicier. Register for free and make your predictions ahead of the subsequent massive game. We have all the newest action from the English Premier League and the joy of European football, from ‘El Clasico’ to the Belarusian league. lots of them supply extra rewards to current clients too.

This would imply to ensure that a guess on the favored staff on the unfold to win they would need to win by more than 6.5 points in order to win the bet. It also means that a guess on the underdog staff would win if the underdogs lost by lower than 6.5 points or won the sport outright. Major League Soccer the highest soccer league within the United States and Canada has expressed sports betting as a potential way to achieve popularity.

Free Tennis tips

Below we can see an instance of set handicap odds listed at Paddy Power for an upcoming match between Caroline Wozniacki and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Set winner betting works the identical as match winner betting, except that somewhat than betting on the outcome of a complete match, you're solely betting on the outcome of a person set. In this example, we will see that Nadal is at very brief odds to win the opening set of the match.

The grass floor favours some gamers while other gamers have styles appropriate for clay or onerous courtroom. Clay is the slowest of the ATP surfaces and exhausting courtroom is considered the middle ground. Take these components into consideration when putting bets and which surfaces favour a selected players type. Likewise, it is necessary to remember past matches between the 2 players. Some gamers might be thought of of lesser expertise in the tournament, however generally they have a playing fashion that troubles players that others consider to be of far greater capability.

Thus, while Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer have typically entered the French Open ranked #1 in the world, Nadal has typically been the overwhelming favourite within the match. The handicapping, sports odds info contained on this website is for entertainment purposes solely. Please verify the wagering laws in your jurisdiction as they differ from state to state, province to province and country to country.

Tennis futures bets can be very entertaining as a result of you are able to observe a participant via the event or the yr. Continuing with the Medvedev vs Djokovic example, the entire is ready at 40.5 games. If you suppose it will be a long, drawn-out match, bet on over. If you assume one player will dominate and that the match might be over quickly, ideally resulting in a straight units win, guess on beneath. All you care about with these bets is the whole video games performed within the match.

PointsBet has listed 42 completely different outcomes on the ladies’s facet versus 27 completely different outcomes on the men’s. Remember, we are trying to predict who would possibly win the Australian Open in 2021. At the time of writing, this sportsbook thinks there are considerably fewer males who stand a chance of profitable than ladies. It is simply much harder to beat the best gamers in a 5-set format. The males’s and women’s draws are played concurrently at the Grand Slams and 4 other premier obligatory tournaments annually, with equal prize cash provided to each genders. premier league tips The males’s Association of Tennis Professionals Tour and the Women’s Tennis Association Tour play most different tournaments separately and for various amounts of prize cash, with a few exceptions.

Tennis Consultants Predictions And Day By Day Free Betting Suggestions

This is a tip for the gamers that are either playing tournaments or want to bounce into the aggressive side of issues. Whether you are a superstitious participant like Nadal or a cool and calm player like Federer, make yourself comfy on the tennis court. If you are at any stage of your tennis journey, whether or not you are a beginner, intermediate and even advanced, I have compiled an inventory of 20 ideas which is able to certainly take your sport to the following stage. For all the superior players on the market who assume the following pointers might simply be too basic, I advise you to read through the article.

Make positive you let them know the sneakers are for enjoying precise tennis. This easy tennis tip will assist you to get your photographs exactly where you want them. If their pictures seem to fall in the middle of the courtroom as an alternative of the baseline…grasp on the market as an alternative. You will wish to know tips on how to change your serves and strokes on a windy day when in comparison with enjoying in stillness. Be prepared by playing on plenty of different courts and in all forms of weather.

The spin will hold the ball within the service box, while making it more difficult to return. 3.When running to a ball from one corner to the opposite, take a few large strides large at first, and then swap to smaller steps as you get into place to hit the ball. Those quicker, smaller steps will allow you to keep balanced and permit you to make essential changes for dangerous bounces, wind, and so forth. Visit Tennis to be taught more about tennis packages, coaches and the Tennis Centre at North Vancouver Recreation and Culture. If there's a doubt about courtroom web dividers remaining open or closed, the preference is given to teams who wish to maintain the nets closed. Even if you’re on the way to accessing your court, please don’t discuss in your telephone or keep on loud conversations.

Because it is so fun to play, teammates have a good time with one another and the relationships among them get stronger and stronger. It is key that group members have great hyperlinks and chemistry among one another. I think that one of the simplest ways to inform if the courtroom has the correct size is to play some video games and look when you really feel snug with the dimensions. The return of serve is a troublesome shot until your opponent has a extremely unhealthy serve. The ball is coming at you at a very different angle than you're used

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nothingnothingaaa · 3 years

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‘We all have Hoop Dreams’: Bittersweet tale of first 'reality TV show'

By Motez Bishara, May 4 2019 (CNN)

When Dwyane Wade was a 12-year-old shooting jumpers on the playgrounds of Chicago, a movie came out that would help navigate him through his future Hall of Fame career.

Released in 1994, "Hoop Dreams" shadowed the bumpy fortunes of Arthur Agee and William Gates, two inner-city Chicago youths dreaming of NBA stardom.

Wade's path to the Final Four with Marquette and championships with the Miami Heat would be lined with the same challenges faced by Agee and Gates, including the pressures of injury and young parenting, and the avoidance of drugs and gun violence.

Twenty-five years since its premier, "Hoop Dreams" still impacts Wade. "I watched it many times, and it resonated with me because we all have hoop dreams," the recently retired three-time NBA champion tells CNN.

"Growing up in Chicago you struggle," he adds, "I look at "Hoop Dreams" and I can see myself in those individuals at the time."

Film critics like the late Roger Ebert lauded the three-hour documentary for exposing a side of America rarely depicted at the time: A class system stacked against the poor, coinciding with rising corruption in youth basketball.

Filmmakers Steve James (left), Peter Gilbert (centre) and Fred Marx worked on a very thin budget until three years into "Hoop Dreams," when they were able to secure enough funding for the project.

So what has changed since then?

College basketball is coming off a thrilling season, but faces intense scrutiny as a second corruption trial involving shady figures and illicit payments around the sport unravels in court. Meanwhile, Agee and Gates remain close -- bonded not just by their fame from "Hoop Dreams," but two devastating murders in their families.

"You can't script this stuff," says Gates, 47, a youth basketball coach in San Antonio, Texas, to CNN. "Our stories continue to (overlap) like that, because he lost Bo and we lost Curtis."

Gates' brother Curtis, a former high school star who flamed out, and Agee's father Bo were both featured on screen. Curtis was shot in 2001, reportedly in a dispute over a woman, while Bo - whose redemption from crack addiction and jail time was a seminal part of the film - was killed in a robbery three years later.

"It was very heartbreaking," adds Agee, who still lives in the West Side of Chicago, not far from where he grew up. "It's so eerie that me and William always say "Hoop Dreams" was a gift and a curse, and we both lost people that played a big part of our lives.

"And then for both of us not to make the NBA, you know, that eeriness, that gift and a curse is there."

Though neither athlete played in the NBA, both received college scholarships -- no small feat coming from the dire housing projects they grew up in.

Agee, 46, who attended Arkansas State, went on to play professionally in the now-defunct USBL and had a stint with the Harlem Globetrotters. He then turned to acting, with small parts in a film and commercials.

Agee remains tied to "Hoop Dreams," which provides his motivational speaking platform in schools, and still inspires viewers to send warm messages from places as far off as Australia and China. He also sells apparel inspired by the film, including a throwback jersey from his school days.

Gates was the more heralded of the two, receiving interest from top college basketball programs and a grant to attend the prestigious St. Joseph's high school -- the same school that is shown releasing Agee, seemingly for not playing well enough as a freshman.

But Gates blew out his knee at 16, then rushed back to the court after surgery and re-injured it. Though he played at Marquette University, the injury crippled his pro potential.

"For me, it's bittersweet on many levels," says Gates about the film which he has not watched in over 16 years. "It was a constant reminder of what could have been and what didn't happen, and also a reminder that Curtis is no longer here to hear his voice."

Nevertheless, he looks back on "Hoop Dreams" as a "life turning situation," one that led to an allegiance with Michael Jordan, who invited him to pickup games before his comeback with the Washington Wizards. (An injury derailed Gates' own tryout with the Wizards, however.)

"It has opened doors," he says. "It has done things that I never thought would happen in my life."

Dwyane Wade is pictured dunking the ball.

THE FIRST REALITY SHOW

What began as a short film idea from director Steve James and producer Frederick Marx to shoot Chicago playground basketball in 1987 with a budget of $2,000 quickly took on greater ambitions.

The pair hired Peter Gilbert as a cinematographer (later added as a producer), and the trio followed Gates and Agee on and off for nearly five years. With 250 hours of footage to edit, the production took seven years in total, eventually raising the $750,000 necessary for completion.

When it was finally released in 1994, "Hoop Dreams" went viral, though the term had not yet been coined. It was nominated for best film editing at the Oscars, but snubbed for best documentary and picture, which had critics like Ebert up in arms.

"I've actually gotten way more mileage personally as a filmmaker out of not being nominated than I ever would have by getting nominated," says James, who stays in contact with Agee and Gates. "Over the years a lot more people seem to be upset on our behalf than I was personally."

By the time it ended its theatrical run, "Hoop Dreams" became the then-highest grossing documentary of all time, paving the way for hundreds of sports documentaries and streaming series currently on air.

"I call it the first reality show," says Gates. "I think it was groundbreaking."

Gates' enrollment in Marquette was mirrored exactly 10 years later by Wade, who also struggled to qualify academically for an NCAA scholarship and sat out his first year for academic reasons, the university confirmed.

Wade shared other similarities with both Agee and Gates, including feeling the pressure to rush back to action after knee injury which required surgery at Marquette. Though the operation was successful, Wade later said it led to complications as a pro.

"I watched it when I was at Marquette from a different (angle), knowing that (Gates) was staying in the same dorm that I was standing in," says Wade, who -- also like Gates -- was caring for a child (son Zaire) while in college.

Wade was separated from his mother Jolinda at a young age when she succumbed to drugs, leading to spells in jail. Like Agee's father Bo, she turned to religion after getting clean, now serving as a church minister.

"Obviously, I was able to make it," but there are challenges, he adds. "What I learned at the time is you learn a lot about other people sharing their story."

William Gates was a 17-year-old high school junior when his daughter Alicia was born.

CONTROLLED CORRUPTION

Rewatching "Hoop Dreams" 25 years later lends perspective to how fast top college recruits are forced to grow up, and how much is at stake early on.

Gates' daughter was born when he was 17, during his junior year of high school. Trying to be a father and student while rehabilitating from two knee surgeries to make it as the next Isiah Thomas -- the former St Joe's and NBA star who makes a cameo in the movie -- became too much to bear.

By the movie's final scene, with his passion for the game already waning, Gates remarks, "When somebody says, 'When you get to the NBA, don't forget about me,' I should say to them, 'Well if I don't make it, you don't forget about me."

It's no wonder he needed a break from the sport by his third year at Marquette.

"I didn't feel like a 19 or 20 year-old-kid, I felt like a kid who had been working 10 to 12 years at a job," Gates says, estimating that basketball practice and travel would take up to 60 hours a week in college. "I had a lot on my plate."

Agee had his own growing up to do, with his academics thrown into disarray after his brief spell at St Joe's, followed by Bo walking out and his mother Sheila losing her job.

In one scene, Sheila cannot pay her electricity bill and the family is left without power, while a clearly humiliated Agee broods at the camera.

(The filmmakers pitched in to get the power back on, leaving that detail out of the film. "We didn't want to look self-serving, but we felt an obligation to do that much for them," says James.)

Agee transferred to Marshall High, leading the team on an improbable city championship and state semifinal run.

In recent years the public high school has been rocked by gun violence, leaving seven former basketball players dead and two paralysed, including Agee's ex-teammate Shawn Harrington.

"I didn't let St. Joe's defeat me; I didn't let my neighbourhood and my environment pull me in to gain drugs, carrying the guns -- that whole lifestyle," Agee reflects.

It helped that the teenagers had the right people on their sides. Gates and Agee admit they were given cash during their basketball ascent by the likes of so-called street agents, drug dealers and university affiliates who often helped promising players.

In "Hoop Dreams" Agee pays for Air Jordan gear at a store with money received from drug pushers. While at Arkansas State, he says a "big street pharmacist" whose team he played for in a high school summer league bought him a car.

"That was part of the deal," says Gates of being offered gifts from universities as a highly touted recruit, before committing to Marquette. "It was like, 'Hey, you need anything let us know.' And you let them know and they took care of stuff.

"Hey I need transportation, hey I need clothes, I need shoes. They figured out how to get it to you," he says. "They did it through a friend of the program that you didn't even know was a friend of the program. That's the way it was."

In response, Marquette said it "is committed to the highest ethical standards for the recruitment and retention of our student-athletes," while Arkansas State said it had no knowledge of Agee's car purchase and that "there are too many unknown variables to comment further about a relationship from approximately 25 years ago."

Arthur Agee was recruited to play at St Joseph Arthur Agee was recruited to play at St Joseph's prep school as an eighth grader. A year later he was asked to leave, and his parents were billed for tuition they struggled to pay for.

Arthur Agee was recruited to play at St Joseph's prep school as an eighth grader. A year later he was asked to leave, and his parents were billed for tuition they struggled to pay for.

Somewhat fittingly, Gates is now a full-time coach in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the collection of summer leagues that insiders say has replaced high school basketball as the launching pad for college prospects.

Among the players that have passed through Team Hoop Dreams are all three of Gates' sons, William Jr., a recent graduate of Houston Baptist University, Jalon, a junior guard at Houston Baptist, and Marques, currently in high school.

AAU has come under fire by an ongoing FBI investigation involving sneaker companies funnelling money towards recruits to land at big university programs. The AAU told CNN it does not fund its teams, calling the situation an "apparel company scandal, not an AAU scandal."

"People are buying and selling players; it's a human trafficking market." says Michael Sokolove, author of "The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino," which sheds light on college basketball corruption.

Multiple federal investigations have led to guilty pleas from four college assistants on bribery charges, the conviction of an Adidas executive, and the firing of Pitino from Louisville.

Pitino maintains he had "no knowledge" of infractions during his tenure as Louisville's head coach. James Gatto, Adidas' former head of global sports marketing, is appealing his nine-month prison sentence for wire fraud and conspiracy charges in connection with a $100,000 offer to the father of a Louisville recruit.

With athletic wear companies paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to support top AAU programs, the potential to use them as a means to distribute money to the families of top players or an influential coach is high, says Sokolove.

"Some of this is laundered money. These teams can be used as pass through," he says, adding that the ultimate goal is to breed loyalty with players who become walking advertisements for the shoe companies on the court.

The stakes have become much higher to land top recruits like Gates was in the days of "Hoop Dreams," notes Sokolove. "There are more people with their hands in the cookie jar and the kids are largely pawns in this whole endeavour."

In 2017 the NCAA surpassed $1 billion in revenue, mostly through TV rights, while top players like Zion Williamson of Duke are limited to a compensation of tuition, room and board with a modest stipend.

Like many around the sport, Gates thinks college players need to get paid. He suggests universities contribute $100,000 towards a "graduation fund" for the player if he stays in school four years "to get prepared to live life."

Gates sees the current NBA age requirement of 19 as an obstacle towards paying black athletes, calling it a "controlled corruption" not seen in mostly white sports like baseball, tennis, golf or soccer.

"The two sports that are heavily dominated by African-Americans, it seems like there is always an issue when it comes to money," he says. (The NFL enforces a three-year rule before most college football players can turn pro.)

NCAA president Mark Emmert told the Associated Press this month that the organisation has "serious issues which require serious change," but paying players will remain unlikely.

William Gates (centre) is now an AAU coach in Texas. His sons William Jr. (left) and Jalon played together at Houston Baptist University.

PART OF A BIGGER STORY

Coinciding with the movie's anniversary, Gates and his wife Catherine just celebrated their 25th year of marriage. The eldest of their four children Alicia, who was born during filming, is 30 and works as a dental hygienist.

For years Gates would not allow his sons to watch all of "Hoop Dreams," fearing the scenes of his injuries would spook them. He finally relented, though Will Jr underwent four knee procedures of his own in college.

Agee has fathered five children, with his youngest Devin a budding youth basketball player in his own right. Devin's mother Jennifer Genovesi stood by Agee in the wake of a 2017 arrest after a woman accused him of battery.

Agee was quick to call James -- who he refers to as an uncle -- to assure him of his innocence. The charges were dropped shortly afterward.

"I'm part of a bigger story in this film. I never want to bring any despair or negativity into the story," Agee says. "He was like, 'We'll get through it together,' and that was good as that."

"I feel like they know that I'm here for them," says James, the film's director.

The special bond between the parties involved in the film was reflected once "Hoop Dreams," which was never expected to be a commercial success, caught fire. In a highly unusual step, Agee and Gates were made equal partners by the producers.

"They weren't just filmmakers," says Agee. "They came in over a period of time and got to know me and my family, and then stayed in touch."

Arthur Agee bought his mother Sheila a house with royalties earned from "Hoop Dreams." He now uses the film as material for his job in motivational speaking.

Gates and Agee first received nearly $200,000 each, and Agee promptly brought his parents a four-bedroom house in a suburb.

His mother, Sheila Agee, who was seen at the end of the movie graduating tops in her nursing class, relocated to Alabama in the wake of Bo's death.

After Curtis' murder, Gates was given an unlikely last shot at the NBA at age 29 with a tryout with the Chicago Bulls. But bad luck struck again when he caught the flu on the day of the workout.

"I said maybe God doesn't want me to play basketball," he reflects. "That's when my ministry life began to open up."

Gates received his master's in biblical studies and worked as a pastor at the Cabrini Green housing project he grew up in before settling in Texas.

He is thankful that Curtis got to meet Jordan before he was killed -- another imprint tied to his fame from the film.

"What came along with that was the responsibility to teach, educate, be a friend, have some compassion and show some understanding," Gates says.

"I've been very honoured, privileged and grateful to be part of "Hoop Dreams," he reflects. "It's been super amazing to be a part of something that has withstood the test of time."

#Hoop Dreams #basketball #documentary #film

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Friday, October 30, 2020

U.S. refugee admissions (Foreign Policy) The number of refugees allowed into the United States in the coming year will be at its lowest level in modern times, after the White House announced just 15,000 refugees would be allowed settle in the country next year. According to a White House memo, 5,000 of those places will go to refugees facing religious persecution, 4,000 are reserved for refugees from Iraq who helped the United States, and 1,000 for refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras; 5,000 open slots remain, although refugees from Somalia, Syria, and Yemen are banned unless they can meet special humanitarian criteria. The future of U.S. refugee policy hangs on Tuesday’s vote: Former Vice President Joe Biden has promised to increase annual refugee admissions to 125,000, while the Guardian reports that a second Trump administration would seek to slash such admissions to zero.

Days From Election, Police Killing of Black Man Roils Philadelphia (NYT) There is a grim familiarity to it all. In the final days of a bitter election, it is a reprise of the terrible images that the country has come to know all too well this year: The shaky cellphone video, the abrupt death of a Black man at the hands of the police. The howls of grief at the scene. The protests that formed immediately. The looting of stores that lasted late into the night. It began on Monday, when two officers confronted Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old with a history of mental health problems. A lawyer for the family said that he was experiencing a crisis that day and that the family told officers about it when they arrived at the scene. In an encounter captured in video that appeared on social media, Mr. Wallace is seen walking into the street in the direction of the officers, who back away and aim their guns at him. Someone yells repeatedly at Mr. Wallace to “put the knife down.” The officers then fire multiple rounds. After Mr. Wallace falls to the ground, his mother screams and rushes to his body. Mr. Wallace later died of his wounds at a nearby hospital, and the neighborhood exploded in rage. In the days since, dozens have been arrested, cars have been burned and 53 officers have been hurt. On Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf called in the National Guard. On Wednesday, the city declared a 9 p.m. curfew. And once again, the people in the neighborhood where it all took place were left to consider what had happened and what, if anything, could be done about it.

Zeta soaks Southeast after swamping Gulf Coast; 6 dead (AP) Millions of people were without power and at least six were dead Thursday after Hurricane Zeta slammed into Louisiana and made a beeline across the South, leaving shattered buildings, thousands of downed trees and fresh anguish over a record-setting hurricane season. From the bayous of the Gulf Coast to Atlanta and beyond, Southerners used to dealing with dangerous weather were left to pick up the pieces once again. In Atlanta and New Orleans, drivers dodged trees in roads and navigated intersections without traffic signals. As many as 2.6 million homes and businesses lost power across seven states, but the lights were coming back on slowly. The sun came out and temperatures cooled, but trees were still swaying as the storm’s remnants blew through. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state sustained “catastrophic” damage on Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish, where Zeta punched three breaches in the levee. Edwards ordered the Louisiana National Guard to fly in soldiers to assist with search and rescue efforts and urged continued caution.

Violent criminal groups are eroding Mexico’s authority and claiming more territory (Washington Post) Organized crime here once meant a handful of cartels shipping narcotics up the highways to the United States. In a fundamental shift, the criminals of today are reaching ever deeper into the country, infiltrating communities, police forces and town halls. A dizzying range of armed groups—perhaps more than 200—have diversified into a broadening array of activities. They’re not only moving drugs but kidnapping Mexicans, trafficking migrants and shaking down businesses from lime growers to mining companies. It can be easy to miss how much the nation’s criminal threat has evolved. Mexico is the United States’ No. 1 trading partner, a country of humming factories and tranquil beach resorts. But despite 14 years of military operations—and $3 billion in U.S. anti-narcotics aid—criminal organizations are transforming the Mexican landscape: In a classified study produced in 2018 but not previously reported, CIA analysts concluded that drug-trafficking groups had gained effective control over about 20 percent of Mexico, according to several current and former U.S. officials. / Homicides in the last two years have surged to their highest levels in six decades; 2020 is on track to set another record. Mexico’s murder rate is more than four times that of the United States. / Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes to escape violence; the Mexican Congress is poised to pass the country’s first law to help the internally displaced. / More than 77,000 people have disappeared, authorities reported this year, a far larger total than previous governments acknowledged. It is the greatest such crisis in Latin America since the “dirty wars” of the 1970s and 1980s. / The State Department is urging Americans to avoid travel to half of Mexico’s states, tagging five of them as Level 4 for danger—the same as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has created a 100,000-member national guard to reclaim areas with little state presence. It’s not clear that will make a significant difference. Years of Mexican and U.S. strategy—arresting drug kingpins, training Mexican police, overhauling the justice system—have failed to curb the violence.

Many Cubans hope US election will lead to renewed ties (AP) Not so long ago the tables at Woow!!! restaurant in Havana were filled with tourists ordering mojitos and plates of grilled octopus. But as President Donald Trump rolled back Obama-era measures opening Cuba relations, the restaurant grew increasingly empty. Now entrepreneurs like Orlando Alain Rodríguez are keeping a close eye on the upcoming U.S. presidential election in hope that a win by Democratic challenger Joe Biden might lead to a renewal of a relationship cut short. “The Trump era has been like a virus to tourism in Cuba,” said Rodríguez, the owner of Woow!!! and another restaurant feeling the pinch. Few countries in Latin America have seen as dramatic a change in U.S. relations during the Trump administration or have as much at stake in who wins the election. Former President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations, loosened restrictions on travel and remittances and became the first U.S. chief of state to set foot in the island in 88 years. The result was a boom in tourism and business growth on the island. Trump has steadily reversed that opening, tapping into the frustrations of a wide segment of the Cuban American community that does not support opening relations while a communist government remains in power. He put into effect part of a previously suspended U.S. law that permits American citizens to sue companies that have benefited from private properties confiscated by the Cuban government, put a new cap on remittances, reduced commercial flights and banned cruises. The president has also forbidden Americans from buying cigars, rum or staying in government-run hotels. A Trump reelection would likely spell another four years of tightened U.S. sanctions while many expect a Biden administration to carry out at least some opening.

Winter gloom settles over Europe (Washington Post) The clocks were dialed back an hour across Europe this week, and the long nights come early now. The hospitals are filling up, as the cafes are shutting down. Governments are threatening to cancel Christmas gatherings. As new coronavirus infections surge again in Europe, breaking daily records, the mood is growing dark on the continent—and it’s not even November. The reprieve of summer feels a long time ago, and Europe is entering a serious funk. Germany and France announced national lockdowns Wednesday to try to get the virus under control. The new measures are less restrictive than in the spring, and yet they face more resistance. People are no longer so willing to remain confined to their homes, venturing onto balconies in the evenings to applaud health-care workers. Many people remain scared of covid-19, but they are exhausted and frustrated—and growing angry and rebellious. In a sign of the times, the head of the World Health Organization recognized the “pandemic fatigue that people are feeling” but urged “we must not give up.” The smugness in Europe about having bested the Americans under President Trump is fading with the daily record-breaking counts.

Young and Jobless in Europe: ‘It’s Been Desperate’ (NYT) Like millions of young people across Europe, Rebecca Lee, 25, has suddenly found herself shut out of the labor market as the economic toll of the pandemic intensifies. Her job as a personal assistant at a London architecture firm, where she had worked for two years, was eliminated in September, leaving her looking for work of any kind. Ms. Lee, who has a degree in illustration from the University of Westminster, sent out nearly 100 job applications. After scores of rejections, and even being wait-listed for a food delivery gig at Deliveroo, she finally landed a two-month contract at a family-aid charity that pays 10 pounds (about $13) an hour. “At the moment I will take anything I can get,” Ms. Lee said. “It’s been desperate.” The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly fueling a new youth unemployment crisis in Europe. Young people are being disproportionately hit, economically and socially, by lockdown restrictions, forcing many to make painful adjustments and leaving policymakers grasping for solutions. Years of job growth has eroded in a matter of months, leaving more than twice as many young people than other adults out of work. The jobless rate for people 25 and under jumped from 14.7 percent in January to 17.6 percent in August. Europe is not the only place where younger workers face a jobs crunch. Young Americans are especially vulnerable to the downturn. In China, young adults are struggling for jobs in the post-outbreak era. But in Europe, the pandemic’s economic impact puts an entire generation at risk, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

3 dead in church attack, plunging France into dual emergency (AP) A man armed with a knife attacked people inside a French church and killed three Thursday, prompting the government to raise its security alert status to the maximum level hours before a nationwide coronavirus lockdown. The attack in Mediterranean city of Nice was the third in two months in France that authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher. It comes during a growing furor over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were republished in recent months by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo—renewing vociferous debate in France and the Muslim world over the depictions that Muslims consider offensive but are protected by French free speech laws. Other confrontations and attacks were reported Thursday in the southern French city of Avignon and in the Saudi city of Jiddah, but it was not immediately clear if they were linked to the attack in Nice.

Germany does not believe Thai king has breached state business ban: source (Reuters) Germany does not believe that Thailand’s king has so far breached its ban on conducting politics while staying there, a parliamentary source said on Wednesday, after lawmakers were briefed by the government. Following a meeting of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, the source said the government had briefed lawmakers that it believes the king is permitted to make occasional decisions, as long as he does not continuously conduct business from German soil. When asked about the status of the king, the government told the committee he has a visa that allows him to stay in Germany for several years as a private person and also enjoys diplomatic immunity as a head of state. Thailand’s political crisis has made the king’s presence a challenge for Germany, but revoking the visa of a visiting head of state could cause a major diplomatic incident.

China’s New Confidence on Display (Foreign Policy) The Chinese leadership is currently meeting in Beijing to set economic and political goals for the next five years. In the run-up to the plenum, speeches by President Xi Jinping and others have demonstrated a bold confidence that this is China’s moment. As economic policymaker Liu He put it, “Bad things are turning into good ones.” Despite the damage to China’s global reputation this year, its leaders seem to believe that Western economic weakness and mishandling of the coronavirus have created opportunities. That may be true, but it may also encourage dangerous overconfidence, as happened in 2009, when the Chinese leadership was convinced the economic crisis had significantly weakened Washington. That overconfidence is most frightening when it comes to Taiwan, where recent saber-rattling has again raised the specter of an invasion. Distinguishing signal from noise on Taiwan is difficult, but the traditional restraints on Chinese military action—fear of U.S. intervention, reputational damage, and corruption inside the People’s Liberation Army—have weakened. The odds of Chinese action in Taiwan increase if the U.S. election doesn’t produce a clear result, or if a lame duck President Donald Trump embarks on a scorched-earth program on his way out—since Beijing may be convinced that a distracted Washington has no will to block it.

#headlines #news

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taffystake · 5 years

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My Hero Academia - Training Arcs

My Hero Academia is a shonen manga about superheroes, borrowing a lot of its story elements and general setup from comic books produced by the likes of Marvel and DC with a shonen edge to the story telling. This....isn’t exactly a new or radical statement. In fact, anyone who has seen more than five minutes of the anime or read more than two chapters could tell you this. But it’s thanks to this little mix of genres and styles that I have become deeply invested in the story and growth of the characters, especially with the most recent story arc that has been focused on the villains training the same way the students of UA have been focused on since the beginning of the story.

But why am I calling this a training arc? The villains aren’t actively trying to improve themselves. The arc started with them simply attempting to beat one of All For One’s allies so he would respect their strength through sheer attrition. But the moment the League of Villains goes off to rescue one of their number from a rival group, this entire arc gains the same level of nuance and multiple objectives that have characterized the majority of My Hero Academia’s arcs. I’ll demonstrate a few of these before explaining how things are going with the current arc and why exactly this entire subject has me so interested.

The first four arcs of My Hero Academia (Or the first season of the anime for those who only watch that) are the most blatant with the focus on training. Meanwhile the secondary focus for those arcs was mostly set on establishing the world, the characters, and the upper limits of the power scale in the world. All of which were pretty well required in order to give the world the organic feel it needed to be believable. But the thing this leads to is how it creates limits for the majority of the students, setting the stage for them to build up from and create these moments of training and growth.

The first arc where training ends up taking a secondary role compared to the narrative is the UA Sports Festival, where the tournament and the conflicts it creates take center stage. Through this, we get to see the bias towards certain quirks within this society for certain vocations in Shinso’s match against Deku, a theme that is still standing strong and even creating more sympathetic backstories for the villains as recently as the last manga chapter. But back on topic, this arc still contains the notes of a training arc in the second fight that Deku has in the tournament against Shouto Todoroki. In this fight, Deku clearly witnesses his absolute limits with the methods he currently uses when utilizing One For All and it leads directly to his training during the Hero Killer Stain arc that follows this.

However, this match also manages to give a moment of training and growth to Todoroki. To those familiar with the manga, they know what happens but I’ll explain anyways for those who want to be informed but aren’t very far into My Hero Academia. Todoroki was born with a quirk that allowed him to utilize both fire and ice projection, a very powerful Quirk that could easily make one able to reach the highest ranks of Hero Society. However, Todoroki only utilizes the ice portion of his Quirk due to constant abuse from his father and the toll this abusive family life took on his mother, driving Todoroki to utilize the ice manipulation that came from his mother and reject the flame manipulation gifted by his father. The fight with Deku allows Todoroki a moment of introspection that forces him to confront his power as being his own, not simply as being handed to him by his father. And we get to see this growth during the Hero Killer arc, where Todoroki now has the training from this event to utilize both halves of his quirk to great effect.

And this is how the arcs progress from here, either establishing a new physical or mental limit for the heroes who the arc focuses on, showing them surpassing that limit through training or sheer determination, or showing a character’s backstory to reveal how they surpassed a limit like this in their past. Just to list off a few examples that won’t be a spoiler for the anime watchers, we have the backstory for Mirio Togata and his efforts to utilize his quirk to its maximum potential, the backstory of Eijiro Kirishima and the events it took for him to bring his Hardening quirk to its massive potential that it reached during the arc against the Hassaikai, and most notably during the conflict between Bakugo and Deku in the aftermath of All For One’s arrest and the story events that transpired there.

Now then, when the current manga arc began to focus on the League of Villains, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Given how a few of the recent arcs have had a mild focus on the villains initially before we jump to other characters, I was fully prepared for that to happen again. Except....we kept watching. And as the League of Villains get cornered, get pushed beyond their limits, pushed to the point of nearly breaking, they begin to improve right before our eyes on the page. And that’s when I realized what exactly was happening: the villains were getting their own training arc, something on the level of the training increase seen during the Provisional License Exam. And all while the main focus of the story is on the League of Villains proving themselves as an organization after many setbacks beyond the loss of their leader.

Now, for why this is so big. Both of the genres that this manga borrows inspiration from do not typically have the villains improving to keep on pace with the heroes. While both genres do this for different reasons, comics have heroes and villains at near-peak potential already and manga typically move onto having a new villain after killing the old villain rather than let the old villain live long enough to improve, it makes it exceptional when the story allows us to follow the villains through their efforts to improve themselves like this. And it gives you a moment to almost sympathize for the villains even if they might not have a very sympathetic backstory due to the fact they are putting all this effort towards becoming better. Its also this level of focus and ability to see things from the villains’ view of the situation that keeps me reading the most recent Justice League run in the comics.

And honestly, I enjoy this sort of thing immensely. Rather than having to deal with establishing a new villain, or create a new mechanism or relic for the villain to use to be powered up as a threat, we instead get to witness the villains improving themselves in order to better threaten the heroes and drive the stakes through the same methods the heroes use to be able to contend with bigger threats. And this method allows for a greater focus on the villains and their relationship with the hero, while also allowing the fights to naturally escalate throughout the narrative smoothly.

#my hero academia #mha #deku #bakugo #todoroki #bnha bakugou #bnha spoilers #midoriya izuku #katsuki bakugou #todoroki shouto #manga #anime #taffys take

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samstiels-deactivated20201212 · 5 years

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This is a really good article. Idk how much people know about Cogman, but he wrote the episode where Sansa was raped, and was immediately chased off all social media by angry fans. There is an incredible paragraph explaining his reasonings for the scene, and Sophie Turner’s as well. Cogman also wrote most of Jaime x Brienne scenes, and was the driving force behind most of the actual plot that makes sense, including Brienne being knighted.

Vanity Fair gives 3 free articles per month, then requires a subscription, so you’ll find the whole article under the cut.

Before the cast and crew of Game of Thrones threw themselves into their final season of grueling night shoots, dragon rides, and death scenes, they gathered in Belfast for one last table read. It was the largest group ever assembled for such an occasion, all crammed in around a massive conference table made from the soaring gates of the show's lavish Season Two city of Qarth. HBO executives and trusted friends of the show lined the edges of the room as, over two days, everyone finally learned how the saga of Westeros would end.

Kit Harington had tears streaming down his face; Liam Cunningham, who played the salty Ser Davos, was cursing a blue streak. Halfway through the read, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reached out to squeeze the shoulder of co-executive producer Bryan Cogman, who had started trembling as the body count on the page started to rise. In the end it was Cogman—who had read out every stage direction at every table read since the first in 2009—who had the final word that day: “End of Game of Thrones.” More than a year later, Sophie Turner still isn't over it. “That motherfucker,” she says with a laugh.

“It was a lovefest,” Cogman says of that table read, when the often brutal conditions of shooting seemed a world away. “And then we went and made the show and wanted to kill each other 11 months later.”

Turner, who began playing Sansa Stark when she was 13, says Cogman is the backbone of Game of Thrones. Coster-Waldau, who played Jaime Lannister, refers to him as the “walking encyclopedia.” But George R. R. Martin, who wrote the books that show-runners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss adapted into what may be the last universally agreed-upon hit TV show, leans on his own Westerosi mythology to pay the highest compliment: “Dave and Dan—even though there were two of them, there really needed to be three. Bryan was the third head of the dragon.”

Hired as Weiss and Benioff's assistant when Game of Thrones first began production, Cogman wrote 11 episodes of the series—second only to the show-runners and more than Martin himself—and as a producer has three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series displayed in his living room. Martin personally asked Cogman to pitch a Thrones prequel series to HBO; when the network passed, he moved on to a deal at Amazon Studios, where, to borrow another phrase from Martin's books, he can cast a very large shadow of his own on this post-Thrones universe.

“You're only number two on the biggest show of all time once,” Cogman says, aware that Thrones-sized success may be a thing of the past for television as a whole. “So what do you want to do with that opportunity when the show ends? You try to see if you can tell your own stories.”

More than 10 years ago, Weiss and Benioff had finally convinced both HBO and Martin that they were the right pick to turn Game of Thrones into what they called “The Sopranos meets Middle-earth.” But they had a problem: neither of them knew the first thing about TV. Luckily, Benioff knew someone who did—his nanny's husband.

Once just another Juilliard-trained actor struggling to make it in Hollywood, Cogman first caught Benioff's eye with a script about, well, struggling actors trying to make it in Hollywood. Fed up with jobs that include a telemarketing gig in the Valley selling toner cartridges—a job that theater nerd Cogman describes as “like Glengarry Glen Ross, but worse”—and with watching former classmates like Lee Pace and Anthony Mackie smile down at him from 14-foot billboards, the then 28-year-old Cogman was attempting to re-write his way out of a familiar story of Hollywood despair.

Benioff, best known at the time for well-received novels such as the one he adapted into the 2002 Spike Lee movie 25th Hour, liked what he saw but didn't have a job for Cogman yet. So he called in a favor to his childhood friend NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman and landed Cogman a job as the executive's assistant (there were two others) and driver. Cogman nearly wrecked Silverman's car on his second night behind the wheel.

“You're a terrible driver,” Cogman recalls Silverman saying, “but I like hanging out with you.” Perhaps in an attempt to protect the paint on his other cars, Silverman eventually got his driver a writers'-assistant job, fetching coffee and the like, on an NBC show: My Own Worst Enemy, which ended after just two months, in December 2008.

However short-lived, the show was an education for Cogman in the basics of breaking a story for television. When Weiss and Benioff snapped up Cogman as their own assistant, they set up shop in a dingy suite of now demolished offices on the former Pickford-Fairbanks Studios lot and asked the guy who thought he was just there to fetch lunches where they should start.

“I got my marker and David sat in his chair and Dan sat in his,” Cogman remembers. Without any other staff hired, the three of them went to work figuring out how to introduce TV audiences to the scheming Lannisters, the honorable Starks, the looming Wall, Daenerys Targaryen and her three baby dragons. “None of us knew really what we were doing. No one was really bothering us or telling us we were doing it wrong. We cooked up Season One, the three of us in that room in the winter and early spring of 2009.”

Cogman still likes to joke that the only reason he got the job is because Benioff—who was about to set off to Europe with his wife, actor Amanda Peet—wanted to hold on to the excellent child care provided by Cogman's wife, actor Mandy Olsen. “That backfired! As soon as I became a TV writer, she quit,” Cogman says, laughing. “Joke's on you, Benioff!”

Tipped off by his wife to Benioff's early interest in the books, Cogman had read the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series in the hope of a small role in the show—“Maybe I'll get to play a guy with a spear!” By the time he was in the room with Weiss and Benioff, Cogman had started re-reading—he estimates he's read the first book, A Game of Thrones, at least 20 times now—and boiling down the dense and complicated world of Westeros into digestible outlines, family trees, and quick little summaries. “We thought we knew the books pretty well, but Bryan was just on a different level,” Weiss and Benioff wrote in a joint e-mail. That work landed Cogman a seat in every meeting and was a godsend to every confused HBO executive, director, production designer, and actor.

The show-runners quickly deviated from the Hollywood norm of treating their assistant like a glorified errand boy; while working on Season One, they surprised Cogman with an offer to write his own episode, “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things.” As Weiss and Benioff recalled, “We'd never written a season of television before, and we'd underestimated how long it would take. Then we looked across the room and there was Bryan. Smart, tireless, passionate Bryan. Sure, he wasn't experienced, but hell, neither were we.”

Martin's review of Cogman's work was straightforward: “An excellent episode! Straight from my books!”

Weiss and Benioff dubbed Cogman “lore master”; Gwendoline Christie, who played Brienne of Tarth, jokes, “I have never once seen Bryan with George R. R. Martin, and the rumor is that they could be the same person.” Martin, for his part, likens Cogman to the helpful and well-read character Samwell Tarly, a comparison the author usually reserves for himself. As the series grew bigger and Martin repeatedly delayed the release of his final books in the series, the author grew noticeably distant from the show, with no writing credits after Season Four and no recent appearances at the splashy premiere events until the final one, in April. Responding on his LiveJournal to a controversial Season Five scene that differed dramatically from the books, Martin described the show and his work as “two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose … but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place.”

Martin hasn't commented much on his relationship with HBO and the series, but he is unreserved in his praise for Cogman: “I feel simpatico with Bryan,” Martin says. “He's helped keep the show true to my books, and the characters true to the characters I created, which may not be important to everybody in the world, but is certainly important to me.”

In the beginning Cogman clung doggedly to some less essential parts of the books. (He's now mortified to recount a fight he picked over cutting a minor Season One character named Marillion. “Nearly in tears! Over Marillion! And I was the fucking assistant.”) But he also used his book knowledge to suggest killing off Ned Stark in the ninth episode of the first season, rather than saving it for the finale, a shock that went on to define the high stakes of the series. Cogman, a lifelong student of drama, knows how differently stories can play when acted out. So while others may compare Cogman to Samwell Tarly, he favors another character: Varys, the slick spymaster who uses political maneuvers and access to the most powerful players to keep himself in the game. Or, at least, he says, “I'm the good parts of Varys.”

From the very start Cogman homed in on the basic character details that made Thrones a success beyond its spectacle. “It's about one buddy going back to his old buddy's house for dinner,” he says, describing the simple power of the pilot. “If you don't have that, then you have a lot of other imitators that have come along since and haven't been as good.”

Production on Game of Thrones was massive from the start, and Weiss and Benioff quickly put Cogman in charge of some pivotal scenes at the end of Season One, featuring Peter Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister and his scathing father, Tywin Lannister, played by Charles Dance. Cogman, who claims he didn't know any better, wielded so much authority that director Alan Taylor just assumed he was a producer. “Why the hell have I been taking orders from you the past few months?” Cogman recalls Taylor joking when he discovered the truth.

The show sprawled after Season One, with at least two units—named the Dragon and the Wolf—shooting simultaneously. Weiss and Benioff leveraged their titles to take charge of the sets in exotic and temperate Spain, Croatia, and Morocco, leaving Cogman as their man on the ground in Belfast, where the show filmed the bulk of its interior scenes.

In Belfast, Cogman worked on behalf of Weiss and Benioff as fastidious keeper of the script, earning the nickname “Shakespeare” from Dance when he insisted that a line be read word for word. As a former actor, Cogman developed a reputation as an actor's writer. “He gets the life of an actor,” Coster-Waldau explains. “He's extremely respectful when it comes to not getting in your way.” Adds Turner, “Bryan's lines are always the ones that affect me the most.”

When it came time to divvy up who would actually write each episode, Weiss and Benioff preferred season premieres, finales, and the big, splashy set pieces in between.

Cogman, on the other hand, preferred the performance episodes, full of scenes, he says, of “people talking in rooms.” He wrote the two key moments of the Jaime and Brienne love story, from the Season Three bathtub scene in “Kissed by Fire” to the emotional Season Eight climax “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which sees the former Lannister antihero knighting the unlikely lady warrior. These quiet, shared moments stood out among all the dragon fire, shocking deaths, and big-budget battle spectacle.

“He has been a champion of my character Brienne and actually of me as an actor,” Christie says. “He had a real understanding of the trials the character had to overcome in order to achieve a sense of self-worth and how far we sometimes have to travel to move the narrative society has prescribed to us.”

“I can't imagine what it would have been like without Bryan,” Coster-Waldau says. “Thank God I don't have to.”

In Season Five Cogman volunteered to write what would become one of the show's most controversial episodes, in which the sadistic Ramsay Bolton rapes Sansa Stark, with Theon Greyjoy looking on in horror. Cogman, a father of three, had always taken a particular interest in protecting the show's younger performers on set. Turner compares him to a father figure, and Cogman felt he owed it to her to write the episode himself. “Why the hell did I choose ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’?” Cogman asks years later, then responding, “Good question.”

The scene was lifted from another character's story in the books and incorporated into a larger gothic nightmare plot of Sansa's being held prisoner in her childhood home at Winterfell—a practical, and carefully considered, way to give Sansa, who isn't in the fifth book at all, a bigger role in the story. Weiss and Benioff suggested closing the bedroom door on Sansa, Ramsay, and Theon rather than showing the act itself. “I am the one, God help me,” Cogman says, “who said, ‘If we do this are we being dismissive of what that real horror would be behind that door? Are we being disrespectful of the severity of that situation?’ But we, of course, never wanted to make Sophie go through a graphic scene.”

The result was still graphic enough to spark immediate online backlash and heated think pieces; then senator Claire McCaskill publicly declared she would no longer watch the show. HBO issued no official response to the controversy, and Weiss and Benioff have never commented publicly, even deleting a question about it in e-mailed responses for a recent Rolling Stone story.

Cogman stands by the scene, though he acknowledges it served as a pivotal point in a larger cultural discussion about sexual assault on-screen, which had also been used as a plot device on Mad Men and Breaking Bad, among others. “I will never presume to tell someone how they should feel about the scene itself. And believe me, I really tried to listen to all the criticism surrounding it and will continue to listen,” Cogman says. “I do take issue with the presumption of bad faith on our part—the idea that we treated Sophie or the character or the subject matter callously. I think if you watch the scene and see how it fits into the character's larger narrative arc over the subsequent seasons, you'll see that's not the case. At least I hope so.”

“It was a very difficult scene to write,” Cogman says. “It was a very difficult scene to shoot.”

“You see Bryan standing there, crying and wanting to hug you, he did that often,” Turner says. “He was the one that held me afterwards and we both cried together. He's apologizing because he wrote the scene. It was kind of beautiful. It felt like I was safe and not exploited in any way because I was with him. He's always been something of a protector, so it's really special to have him there.”

The controversies around Season Five, which saw many beloved characters used, abused, or shipped off to Dorne, did not dampen the show's popularity. That September Cogman and his fellow producers picked up the first of three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series, among a pile of others the show won.

As Game of Thrones headed toward its conclusion, it also moved away from the intimate, theater-like moments Cogman excelled at—partly a function of the large-scale conflict built into Martin's story, but also the TV landscape that Thrones transformed, bringing C.G.I.-heavy blockbuster spectacle to the small screen and daring other networks to keep up. HBO underwent a transformation as well. Once best-known as a boutique home for prestige TV, the premium cable channel was acquired last summer by AT&T, and an executive revealed plans to increase HBO's output of original content by 50 percent in 2019.

For a while, Cogman thought one of those new shows would be his to run. He had no ambition to do any kind of Thrones sequel until Martin asked him personally at a dinner with Weiss and Benioff in May 2017. There was a particular story he felt only Cogman could tell. (Many fans have guessed that it's the Targaryen-centric Dance of the Dragons tale, but for now Martin and Cogman are keeping it to themselves.) “The logical heir was Bryan,” Martin says. “He had been there since the very beginning.”

Despite himself, Cogman yielded to the excitement of the project. But the timing couldn't have been worse. Cogman had to pitch HBO his prequel idea while the final season of Game of Thrones was in production, and he was in a bake-off with four other writers, some of whom had also worked with Martin. Weiss and Benioff gave Cogman their blessing but were busy wrapping up their own time in Westeros, which meant any advice they gave was incidental: “Every now and then we'd discuss something or other while we were shivering in the writer's tent in Northern Ireland,” they wrote.

Collaborating with Martin on the prequel pitch, Cogman felt both a pressure and an arrogance that came from being the only contender in the race who had both worked on the original series and was handpicked by Martin. He spent the bulk of the final season's shoot under the impression that this wasn't truly his final season. “I wasn't really doing the kind of emotional, cathartic work one needs to do to say goodbye to everything,” he says.

Cogman found out he didn't get the job in spring 2018, and that Jane Goldman would, instead, be helming a series centered on the earliest days of Westeros. At the same time, his wife—who had put her own acting career on hold for most of a decade to support Cogman's work—was suffering from a herniated disk. Disappointed and suddenly having to move his family out of their home in Belfast, Cogman has no memory of his last day on the set of Game of Thrones: “I was exhausted and Mandy was hurting. We were packing up our lives of 10 years.”

“It hit me hard, not because I thought there was any great injustice. I'm sure Jane's show is going to be great,” Cogman says. “But all the insecurities come up: What, I can't even write Game of Thrones now?”

The story Martin so favored may live on at HBO, but Cogman is ready to try new things. Last September, Amazon Studios snapped him up and put him to work—the day after he picked up his third Emmy for Thrones—consulting on a hotly anticipated project he can't yet disclose. But, most exciting for Cogman, he will be developing a whole raft of shows that may have nothing whatsoever to do with dragons.

Martin still texts regularly with Cogman, and has offered occasional friendly input as Cogman searches for new books that Amazon might adapt. “I hope to work with him again someday if the various corporate entities that we work for allow it,” Cogman jokes. But Martin himself is locked into an overall deal with HBO, and Cogman, finally, is ready to move on. He attended the splashy Game of Thrones Season Eight premiere at Radio City Music Hall in April, but the following Monday he was back to work at Amazon, with a large-scale poster of a trio of his favorites—Arya, Sansa, and Brienne—watching over him.

“I was number two to the captain, and now I've gotta see if I can sit in that captain's chair,” Cogman says. “I'm looking forward to finding my people the way Dan and David found theirs.”

#got #bryan cogman #i would fucking pay to have him work on WoT

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nflfanpointii · 5 years

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40 is the new 35 when it comes to NFL quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Drew Brees

Back in the day, it was less common for quarterbacks to excel past their mid 30’s. Sure, there was Warren Moon, Vinny Testaverde, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, and John Elway. But that short list is dwarfed by a painfully longer one filled with Hall of Fame quarterbacks who seemed to crap out well short the 40 year marker.

Even these all time greats experienced precipitous drop offs in their mid to late 30’s. For Roger Staubach, Steve Young and Fran Tarkenton, it came at 37. For Bart Starr, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino and Dan Fouts, 36. For Johnny Unitas, George Blanda, Bob Griese, Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw, 35. For Otto Graham, Joe Namath, and Troy Aikman, 34.

This makes it all the more amazing that so many older quarterbacks are still playing at an elite level in today’s NFL. There might very well be five to seven future Hall of Famers starting in the league right now. Tom Brady and Drew Brees are officially in their 40’s. Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger are both 36. Aaron Rodgers is 34 and Matt Ryan is 33; and both signed extensions in the past couple years at times in their careers when former quarterbacks usually retired.

It’s true, quarterbacks are more protected by the rules of the NFL than ever before, and this certainly has played a part in their new found longevity. In 1978, the league restricted contact between defensive backs and receivers to within five yards of the line of scrimmage. This resulted in a dramatic increase in passing attempts per game, which in turn suddenly made the quarterback position more valuable.

Since 1993, quarterbacks could simply escape the pocket and throw a pass out of bounds without incurring an intentional grounding penalty. This made it harder for pass rushers to get to them before they got rid of the ball, therefore avoiding a sack or quarterback hit.

Roughing the passer penalties have become more and more common as the definition has broadened to include late hits, forcible hits below the knee, hitting the helmet, and landing on the quarterback with one’s own body weight.

Last year, former Packers linebacker Clay Matthews was flagged twice for roughing the passer while making what seemed to be perfectly executed sacks. Ironically, it was probably a hit on Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers the previous season that may have led to the rule change that cost the Packers two victories a season later.

One would think that with these modern day quarterbacks dropping back more times throughout a game than ever before, their careers would be shorter, not longer. That’s why I think there’s more to it than the implementation of more rules that inherently protect the quarterback.

Because they played before GMO’s and modern day fast food chains, many old school players of the past had access to better food. But that doesn’t mean they took full advantage of their timely access to healthier lives. Joe Namath smoked cigarettes on the sidelines for god’s sake.

I doubt they were paying attention to the pH of their foods like Tom Brady or paying upwards of $200K a year like James Harrison did on therapy treatments like massage and acupuncture. The modern day athlete has to be almost obsessive in their quest for success. Talent alone won’t cut it anymore if you want to stick around in today’s NFL.

Extremely strict diets, fitness, and recovery programs have taken the place of binge eating like Babe Ruth, snorting cocaine like Diego Maradona, and binge drinking like Lawrence Taylor. The two oldest current quarterbacks in the NFL also happen to keep two of the strictest diet and fitness regimens across all sports.

Drew Brees has been working with Todd Durkin in San Diego, CA since his days with the Chargers. Brees loves working with Durkin every offseason. “Whenever I come back for the summertime to get in the best shape of my life for training camp, he’s always got something new or a few new things that make me feel like we’re way ahead of everybody else.”

What’s interesting to me, however, is that even though Brees isn’t Durkin’s biggest, fastest, or most agile athlete, he may have benefited the most simply because he’s willing to work harder than everyone else. And that’s saying a lot considering Durkin’s vast client list also includes Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers, Darren Sproles, LaDainian Tomlinson, Mark Sanchez, Alex Smith, Brandon Cooks, Reggie Bush, Charles Tillman, Zach Ertz, John Brown, Dontrelle Inman, Malcom Floyd, Ryan Griffin, Chase Daniel, Sean Canfield, Josh Freeman, and my fellow Saints Ignatius College Prep alumnus, Igor Olshansky.

”Drew Brees, first and foremost, is a special person. I will probably not have the opportunity to work with a guy like that in the next 20 years. His concentration and focus are amazing, and he works extremely hard. He’s not the biggest guy or the fastest guy, but he’s going to beat you with his athleticism, his smarts and because he’s such a competitor. I don’t care what it is, the dude wants to win at anything. He’s always restless and never satisfied,” said Durkin.

Brees is absolutely methodical in his training and game preparation. “I know where I’m going to be at a specific time,” he says. “I know what I’m going to be doing; I know what needs to be accomplished for me to feel confident and go out there and play at the highest level.”

His focus has shifted from the archaic meathead approach to training he learned in college at Purdue to a more functional and efficient approach. “I think maybe those [exercises] served the purpose at the time.” Drew says. “But now I’ve wised up to the things that I need to do in a position-specific and functional fitness kind of way to benefit me as a quarterback.”

If you have 30 minutes to kill, watch this video of Brees’ workouts with Durkin.

I’ve been a fitness trainer and instructor for 12 years and I’m telling you, Durkin is the real deal. I love his approach to fitness. I stopped lifting heavy weights years ago and have focused more on agility ladder work, TRX training, yoga, and generally maximizing my strength and endurance gains while also minimizing sheering forces on my joints, tendons, and ligaments.

Tom Brady takes his fitness protocol in an even more holistic, and dare I say, Eastern direction. He and his trainer/business partner Alex Guerrero founded the TB12 training facility next to Gillette Stadium in 2013. Guerrero, though highly controversial, isn’t a total quack in my opinion.

Of course claiming his supplements could curemultiple sclerosis, AIDS, concussions, and other diseases with no shred of testing or evidence based proof was incredibly disingenuous and downright dangerous. Settling with multiple investors out of court for defrauding them is no better either.

But I have to hand it to him: he has kept Tom Brady in phenomenal shape to survive and thrive in the NFL past the age of 40. Guerrero earned a Masters Degree in traditional Chinese medicine from a school in LA that closed after losing its’ accreditation. He is not a physical therapist and does not hold any Western degrees that would qualify him to do a lot of the work he does with his clients.

Yet, Guerrero is highly respected and retained by many professional athletes including Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Wes Welker, Danny Amendola, Willie McGinest, Jimmy Garoppolo, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Chris Hogan. Instead of focusing on lifting huge weights and tearing muscle fibers, Guerrero prescribes more body weight moves and exercises with resistance bands that are designed to increase the muscles’ “pliability.”

Brady often sees Guerrero twice daily and receives intensely specific massages in which he tenses the muscles while Guerrero massages them. The goal is to lengthen the muscles and increase their flexibility so that Brady can withstand the weekly car crash that is an NFL football game.

The other main focus is to reduce inflammation in the body by maintaining a strict diet. Brady does not eat white flour, white sugar, MSG, iodized salt, coffee, caffeine, alcohol, fungus, dairy, nightshade vegetables and most types of fruit. This diet may sound strange, but it’s most likely derived from the Ayurvedic tradition which is over 5,000 years old and trusted throughout Asia as much as we trust Western medicine.

The part where Brady and Guerrero lose me is by making sweeping statements like everyone should drink 25 glasses of water a day, or eat this exact diet, or that everyone needs to consume TB12 branded electrolytes or wear TB12 branded muscle recovery pajamas.

I’m not 6’4” and 230lbs; I’m 5’6” and 130lbs, so I don’t need more than 65 ounces of water a day, unless Tom wants me to get hyponatremia and die of brain damage. Don’t just replicate a professional athlete’s diet and fitness regimen. These have been specially tailored to them. If you work for Google and sit at a desk for eight hours a day, you probably shouldn’t eat and drink exactly what Tom Brady does.

It’s okay to be skeptical too. Brees isn’t much more trust-worthy with his shameful peddling of Advocare products. It’s important to rely on evidence-based research conducted by independent bodies without a financial stake in the products they test. Even more important, think for yourself and do your own research before listening to athletes that have a financial stake in the health philosophies they are sharing with the public.

If you aren’t hip to eating according to your Ayurvedic dosha (My dosha is roughly 70% Pitta, 20% Vata, 10% Kapha) like Brady seems to, you can go the Western route and still learn something about how to function at a higher level, no matter what your lifestyle is. Drew and Brittney Brees got food sensitivity blood tests done back in 2004. That’s when Brees found he had significant sensitivities to gluten, dairy, and certain nuts.

“As you can imagine, I was shocked because I was consuming most of these things every day. And just to think how long I’ve had these sensitivities and had continued to feed them. Guys coming in fresh out of college are used to going to the training table and eating and drinking whatever they’re given.”

“In many cases, I see myself as a veteran player – pulling those young guys aside and, as part of teaching young players how to be a pro, talking to them about their diet, their sleep habits and their recovery. They’ll start to ask questions like, ‘Hey Drew, what do you do?’ That’s when I explain to them that I use coconut milk and almond milk products.”

It’s not just Brees’ direct teammates like Reggie Bush, Sean Canfield, Chase Daniel, Brandin Cooks, and Ryan Griffin who have followed his lead when it comes to diet and fitness. “It took the fourth or fifth time hearing, ‘You need to do this,’ and then reading about Drew Brees and Tom Brady and others who are your peers doing it,” Kirk Cousins said. “I realized, ‘If I want to hang with these guys, then it’s time to stop playing around.’”

18 of the 32 quarterbacks starting in the NFL are over 30 years old, and by September that list will grow to 21 with the 30th birthdays of Cam Newton, Tyrod Taylor, and Andrew Luck. Even though five quarterbacks were drafted in the first round last year, there’s a good chance less than a third of the starting quarterbacks in the league will be younger than 30 years old.

40 might be the new 35, and it’s not just because of some changes in the rules. Players are spending highly on optimizing their health and performance through a multitude of practices both new and incredibly old. Cousins is right, it’s time to stop playing around.

#saints #new orleans saints #nfl #nola no call #mission miami #csc.com

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thecollegefootballguy · 6 years

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14 Most Important Big Ten Rivalries in 2018

The Big Ten is home to some of the oldest and most revered rivalry games in all of college football. As with what I did with the ACC, this isn’t really looking at the stakes currently present in the rivalry, but looking at the overall vitality, fan interest, division, conference, and national stakes.

The only way to make the list is for a rivalry to be played in 2018, by the way.

Some honorable mentions before we begin:

Nebraska-Colorado Northwestern-Notre Dame

Two old rivalries that are seeing the spotlight for the first time in a few years. Nebraska and Colorado had a great series in the Big 8 and Big 12, which was unfortunately halted by the current conference realignment situation. It’s refreshing to see them take to the gridiron again, we know the fan interest hasn’t waned. Northwestern and Notre Dame have one of those interesting on and off series. A big deal at one point, the game hasn’t been played regularly since the 1970′s. Usually dominated by the Irish, the Wildcats won the last two meetings in dramatic upset fashion. With ND again expected to be pretty good, another upset bid is on the table.

14. Purdue at Indiana

One of the most played rivalries in college football, Indiana-Purdue is on the list mostly as a nod to their status as archrivals. Fan interest is obviously always high, and bragging rights as well as owning the Old Oaken Bucket are important aspects to Hoosier State fandom. The game is usually irrelevant to the conference and national picture, at least in football. However, there’s a spot for the game on this list. The Boilermakers currently own the Bucket, having beaten IU last season, thereby snapping a four game Hoosier win streak (tied for the longest in history). It’ll be the 121st playing of this old rivalry.

13. Iowa State at Iowa

The Big Ten doesn’t really have any other yearly out-of-conference games anymore now that Notre Dame isn’t regularly playing Michigan State, Purdue, and Michigan anymore. It’s nice to see these two in-state rivals square off every season. Iowa has been consistently good, and last season Iowa State took a big step forward. The Cy-Hawk Trophy is up for grabs in what is usually a closely contested affair. The Hawkeyes currently hold possession, having won three in a row. It’ll be the 66th game in this series.

12. Iowa at Minnesota

The Big Ten West has some good, old rivalries. Iowa-Minnesota usually flies under the radar because in the past decade (or five) neither team has been good at the same time. However, with the Gophers looking like they’re improving under P.J. Fleck, this one has the potential to get stronger. The Hawkeyes are usually solid and if Minnesota can get to the same level this game will be an important factor in the divisional pecking order. Iowa currently holds Floyd of Rosedale, possible the greatest rivalry game trophy in the country, having won three straight against the Golden Gophers. This will be the 112th meeting between these long-term rivals.

11. Illinois at Northwestern

I’m not sure this game will be too interesting this year, or any year until Lovie Smith resigns or gets fired. However, this is one of those archrivalry games that I have to put here as a nod to history. The Land of Lincoln Trophy currently resides with Northwestern, who have won three straight against Illinois. Like Iowa-Minnesota, this game has been played 111 times.

10. Penn State at Pittsburgh

At one time this was the most important rivalry in all the Northeast United States. The brief revival of the Penn State-Pitt rivalry has already seen a big impact on the national stage. The Panthers’ win over PSU in 2016 helped to keep the Nittany Lions out of the Playoff that year. The game will once again have high stakes, as Penn State will undoubtedly enter their visit to Heinz Field undefeated and ranked in the top ten. It’ll be the 99th game played in this storied rivalry. The first two games of this current four game home and home series have been split.

9. Minnesota at Wisconsin

The most played rivalry in all of FBS football. Wisconsin has dominated this game of late, having won a staggering 14 games in a row against Minnesota. The Badgers are again going to be favored, probably by a lot, but really one of these years the Gophers just have to win. This year the game will be Wisconsin’s last hurdle in defending their division title, if there was ever a time for an upset it would be now. This will be the 128th time these oldest of foes will meet on the gridiron.

8. Nebraska at Iowa

I feel a bit weird putting a this game ahead of Minnesota-Wisconsin but it has more potential to actually get interesting. The new Heroes Trophy has already passed many times in exciting and unexpected ways. This year, the game features prodigal son Scott Frost facing off against the longest tenured coach in the Big Ten, Kirk Ferentz. The Hawkeyes have won three straight. This is the 49th meeting between the pair.

7. Nebraska at Wisconsin

The Freedom Trophy is up for grabs in this youngest of all the Big Ten West rivalries. Scott Frost won’t fix Nebraska in a year, and certainly won’t get them up to Wisconsin’s level anytime soon. However, this game likely has the most long-term room for growth if the Huskers regain even a semblance of their former glory. The Badges have won five straight against NU. This will only be the 13th time these two programs have met.

6. Michigan at Notre Dame

The Big Ten’s greatest out-of-conference rivalry is being played after a three year hiatus. Michigan is the only team to have ever played Notre Dame more than a handful of times and gotten the better of the Irish. The Wolverines will have to give it everything they’ve got this year, because ND looks loaded. All eyes will be on this week 1 game, which was just announced to be the first College Gameday location this season. It’s only the 43rd time these legendary rivals have played. Notre Dame won the last time they played, shutting out UM 31-0 in South Bend in 2014.

5. Wisconsin at Iowa

The most vital of the Big Ten West rivalries has to be Iowa-Wisconsin. The Hawkeyes have been a cut above Minnesota and Nebraska in the past few years, as one of the few teams in this division that can really challenge the Badgers. The game one of Wisconsin’s many challenging road dates and will be a critical factor in the Big Ten West race. Since this game was reinstated as a yearly rivalry, the Badgers have won four of five. The rivalry has been played 91 times.

4. Michigan State at Penn State

The Big Ten East is a total meat-grinder. There are four contenders this year and they all have a bone to pick with the other. The least of the major rivalries in the division is between Michigan State and Penn State, who compete for the Land Grant Trophy. Last year the Spartans upset the Nittany Lions, another death blow for a potential Playoff appearance. MSU has beaten Penn State three of four times since the new divisional alignment made them play annually again. They’ve only played 32 games.

3. Ohio State at Penn State

Getting down to brass tacks, these have been the two best teams in the Big Ten the past two seasons and their annual game has decided the conference. Ohio State and Penn State don’t consider each other archrivals, and that’s fine, but they definitely circle this game on the calendar each season as an absolute must-win, the last couple of seasons have added even more urgency to the contest. The Buckeyes have won five of six, though these past two games which decided the East have been split. It’s only the 34th game played between these teams.

2. Michigan at Michigan State

If you want the most bang for your buck in terms of entertainment per minute, this is the best rivalry in the Big Ten. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to name any rivalry game in the nation with this much importance that has had so much excitement, controversy, and intrigue in the past few years than Michigan-Michigan State. The wildest part is that the game is usually kinda boring, until something absolutely incredible (or stupid) happens which redefines the stakes. You have to watch to find out. The Spartans control the Paul Bunyan Trophy, having won 8 of the last 10 against “big brother” UM. This is the 111th time these rivals have faced off.

1. Michigan at Ohio State (The Game)

The alpha and the omega. The first and last word when it comes to rivalry games in the Big Ten. The once and future king (or kingmaker). Like Michigan-Michigan State, this game just demands to be watched. I mean, we know how it’s gonna end. Ohio State is gonna win, but the big plays, tantrums, fights, penalties, and crowd shots just give that extra atmosphere that only rivalry games provide. And it isn’t just any old rivalry. The Game has to be the biggest yearly contest between the highest achieving teams in all of college football. I’d reckon only USC-Notre Dame comes close, and without conference stakes that game just isn’t quite the same. This will always be the biggest rivalry in the Big Ten, even if OSU has won 13 of the last 14 games (lol). This will be the 115th playing of The Game.

#college football #Purdue Boilermakers #Indiana Hoosiers #Iowa State Cyclones #Iowa Hawkeyes #Minnesota Golden Gophers #Illinois Fighting Illini #Northwestern Wildcats #Penn State Nittany Lions #Pittsburgh Panthers #Wisconsin Badgers #Nebraska Cornhuskers #Michigan Wolverines #Notre Dame Fighting Irish #Michigan State Spartans #Ohio State Buckeyes

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junker-town · 2 years

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FOX, ESPN and Amazon are in a three-way fight for NFL broadcasters

Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Networks aren’t just targeting former players, they’re looking at current staffs.

The race to get NFL broadcasters has never been hotter, and it’s led to some unprecedented scenarios being thrown around. With FOX, CBS, NBC, ESPN and now Amazon all trying to secure broadcast teams, all with the promise of huge money, there’s the potential we could see current NFL staff members leaving the league.

Troy Aikman is the first domino in all this. The FOX broadcaster is on the verge of leaving the network, which he’s been with since 2001, to join ESPN and Monday Night Football. It’s a deal reportedly being north of the $17.5M per-year deal that Tony Romo has with CBS. This means Aikman could be making over $100M on this five year deal — an eye-popping number for other prospective announcers.

There are also reports Aikman could try and lure long-time broadcast partner Joe Buck to join him at ESPN, with the duo becoming the new announce team on Monday Night Football. This is a case of a major shake up happening, and there’s no telling who moves where.

With FOX now looking to fill its booth, and Amazon entering the fray, the names being thrown around are mind boggling. First there’s Sean Payton, who was always going to be a part of this conversation after he resigned from the Saints in January, but it’s others who could truly shake up the NFL.

Amazon is reportedly seeing whether they can lure away Super Bowl winning coach Sean McVay. The Rams coach has been resolute that he plans to return to the sidelines next season — but it’s a question of whether there’s a number that can convince him to the leave the NFL. McVay is already one of the NFLs highest paid coaches, making $8.5M a year, but that’s chump change to Amazon if they’re looking to make a splash. In a world where Romo and Aikman are making over double that, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that a marquee contract for McVay could be upwards of $15M a year, without the stress of being an NFL head coach.

There are also reports Amazon could try to sign Al Michaels away from NBC’s Sunday Night Football, trying to up the stakes of their Thursday Night Football broadcast. It could make for one of the premier announce teams in football (assuming they could lure away a name like McVay, or potentially even Tom Brady, who has been rumored).

Meanwhile for FOX, they’re looking to fill Aikman’s spot — and while names like Drew Brees and Payton have been floated there too, there’s also a rumor FOX could be aiming to hire 49ers GM John Lynch. Lynch started a broadcast career with FOX in 2008 after his retirement from the NFL, before leaving to take over the 49ers.

It’s another move that seems ridiculous at first glance, the idea a current NFL GM would leave the league — but once again, the money being discussed is exceeding anything an NFL owner would want to pay.

We’re seeing a move from broadcasters not just to target ex-players in retirement, but now broaching the topic of getting football figures currently involved in the league. It’s a move NFL teams really aren’t prepared for. Famously tight-pursed owners are not equipped to get into bidding wars over their employees with the likes of FOX, and especially not with Amazon. There is no doubt this could be a development that shakes up the NFL as a whole, and it remains to be seen if a huge name like McVay could be lured away to the broadcast booth.

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your-dietician · 3 years

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NBA playoffs: Trae Young is due for a big raise

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/nba/nba-playoffs-trae-young-is-due-for-a-big-raise/

NBA playoffs: Trae Young is due for a big raise

Welcome to the Morning Shootaround, where every weekday you’ll get a fresh, topical column from one of SI.com’s NBA writers: Howard Beck on Mondays, Chris Mannix on Tuesdays, Michael Pina on Wednesdays, Chris Herring on Thursdays and Rohan Nadkarni on Fridays.

The postseason is where reputations are built, defined, crushed and over analyzed. It’s also—in a higher stakes environment that helps rationalize the existence of a multi-billion dollar basketball league—where the real money is made.

For every soon-to-be-free agent sometimes all it takes is one great playoff game for strengths to define who a player is, as any and all debilitating flaws get overlooked at the negotiating table. Impress under the brightest lights and bags of cash will follow. Here are several candidates who’ve positioned themselves to receive a raise this offseason, in some form or another.

Extension Eligible

Kevin Huerter (made $2.76 million this season, Hawks)

Even after his 27-point Game 7 heroics, it feels unlikely the Hawks extend Huerter with John Collins’ contract situation still unresolved and hefty-to-humongous paydays on the horizon for Trae Young, Cam Reddish and De’Andre Hunter. But, at only 22 years old, this dude is ideal in the role Atlanta needs him to fill and grow into. He can shoot (44.2% on spot-up threes and 59.3% on pull-up twos during his first postseason), run a reliable second-side pick-and-roll and compete well enough on defense to dissuade opponents from seeking him out as a target.

Heading into the conference finals his playoff True Shooting percentage is 59.6%, with handles that are tight enough to create shots for himself (that deep, between-the-legs step-back three over Tobias Harris in Game 7 was ravishing) and others.

The Sixers tried to hide Seth Curry on Huerter in Game 7 and the abuse was so bad Doc Rivers decided to start the fourth quarter with Shake Milton, after Milton hadn’t played a second in the game’s opening three quarters. Late in the fourth, with their season on the line after Rivers subbed Curry back in the game, Atlanta gave Huerter the ball and told him to feast.

Players who are 6’ 7”, with a high release, who can run off screens and/or slither around with a live dribble are coveted for a reason. Huerter isn’t quite as good a shooter as Davis Bertans or Joe Harris, but given his own off-the-bounce creativity and versatile defense, the contracts those two signed last offseason ($80 million over five years and $72 million over four years, respectively) are right around what he should ask for.

Quickly, look at how Huerter fights to deny Harris on this post-up. Guarding up a position (without fouling) when forced to do so is increasingly valuable for any guard/wing who wants big minutes in a playoff series.

Pending what the Hawks do with Collins (more on him later), Bertans/Harris money might sound steep for a third or fourth option who, if Hunter and Reddish get healthy and make the leaps they should, may not even start next year. Maybe the Hawks can leverage their inability to offer a larger role in extension talks and lock him into something that’s more like the three-year, $35 million deal Memphis gave Dillon Brooks last February. If no agreement is reached, they could also run into a situation where Huerter signs an even more lucrative offer sheet as a restricted free agent. Losing him for nothing would not be good.

Deandre Ayton ($10.02 million, Suns)

Even before he capped off the most impressive, important game of his entire career with a buzzer-beating dunk on Tuesday night, Deandre Ayton was the most meaningful revelation in these entire playoffs. The Suns would be wise to lock him up with a maximum extension as soon as they can. After a run that includes Ayton’s neutralization of the league MVP in a decisive second round sweep, there’s no avoiding the inevitable. Pay the man. In a couple years it may even look like a bargain.

According to Synergy Sports, 27.5% of Ayton’s possessions were post-ups during the regular season. In the playoffs, that number has dropped to 9.2%. Related: His possessions finished as a cutter and roll man are both up 10%. The shift has made Ayton one of the postseason’s most efficient players, with a 71.9 True Shooting percentage that only ranks behind Rudy Gobert and Curry. There’s nothing hazy about who he is and what he can do with the ball, be it cramming a lob or cradling an entry pass after a rim run.

Ayton has been as fierce as anyone snatching rebounds in traffic, but will be tested by a Clippers team that eventually needs to go small and force him to step out of the paint on defense. (In Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals, he looked more nimble in drop coverage than in Game 1.) But that’s life for any center in today’s NBA. As a complementary, essential force who hasn’t looked the least bit overwhelmed by playoff intensity, Ayton needs that max ASAP. Even in a draft that featured Luka Dončić and Trae Young, the Suns should have zero regrets about taking him number one.

Mikal Bridges ($4.36 million, Suns)

There hasn’t really been any single breakout moment for Bridges in his first postseason. In fact, his effective field goal percentage is actually down quite a bit compared to what it was during the regular season.

He is not vital in the same way Chris Paul, Ayton or Devin Booker are (Bridges has not recorded a single isolation play in the entire playoffs, per Synergy Sports), but there might not be a more ideal plug-and-play piece in the entire league right now. Every cut Bridges makes is done with conviction. He moves the ball and, critically, embraces a relatively limited ask inside Phoenix’s system without trying to do too much (some of which he could if he had to).

Defense is where Bridges shines, and why statistically evaluating his impact is a bit tricky. He can hound a range of player types, from zippy point guards to beefy forwards, and tracks ball-handlers around screens like he’s reading a road map. It’s uncanny. If he continues to improve at the same rate on offense that he did this year, by sprinkling more off-the-dribble punch on top of his reliable outside shot, $90-100 million won’t be out of the question, whether the Suns want to fork it over after this season or have their hand forced in restricted free agency. Every single team in the league would kill to have Bridges on their roster.

Michael Porter Jr. ($3.5 million, Nuggets)

Porter Jr. is eligible for a five-year, $168 million max extension, coming off a postseason in which he spent legitimate stretches as the best offensive/worst defensive player on the court. This particular situation is layered enough for its own column, but for now let’s just say the Nuggets would be wise to observe MPJ for one more season, then let him hit restricted free agency. There’s little downside in doing so. Given his back injury, a long-term commitment before they absolutely have to make one could be disastrous.

Trae Young and Luka Dončić (doesn’t matter)

Max now. Max forever.

Unrestricted Free Agents

Reggie Jackson ($2.3 million, Clippers)

“A lake of battery acid surrounded by a forest fire at the base of an active volcano” is a fairly accurate way to describe Reggie Jackson in the 2020-21 NBA playoffs, a setting where he’s yet to discover the bottom of his bag. After hitting countless big shots in the first round, Jackson saved the Clippers several times in Round 2 before finishing the Jazz off with a few unreachable floaters over Rudy Gobert in Game 6. We’ve reached a point where you expect every single shot to go in, regardless of where, when or how it leaves his fingertips. In Game 2, he tap danced in front of Bridges for a moment before launching an off-balance push shot along the baseline. It dropped, of course.

Compared to last year’s playoffs, Jackson’s minutes have doubled. Unsaddled from any playmaking responsibilities, his scoring average has shot up from 4.9 to 17.3 points per game, while drilling 46.9% of his spot-up threes (good for third-highest among all players who attempted at least four per game). There are 122 players in NBA playoff history who’ve ever launched at least 100 threes. Of them, Jackson ranks second in True Shooting percentage (at 65.6%) behind only what Steph Curry did in 2017.

The Clippers have Jackson’s Early Bird Rights, meaning they can only offer 175% of his current salary on a new deal. It’s hard to believe he’ll be satisfied with that amount, considering he’s only 31 years old and, with Kawhi Leonard out, arguably the second-best player on a title contender. Whoever’s looking for instance offense will want Mr. June (one of the better nicknames ever bestowed by the great Ian Eagle).

Nicolas Batum ($2.5 million, Clippers)

After somewhat of a renaissance season where he went from overpaid disappointment to a critical starter on a contender, Batum might be having the finest postseason of his entire career. His True Shooting percentage, PER, and Win Shares are all personal highs, while his small-ball center act have given the Clippers a rotational trump card. According to FiveThirtyEight, Batum ranks second in Wins Above Replacement. He’s also first in steals.

Thanks to his last contract (a massive five-year, $120 million deal) the 32-year-old is still owed almost $19 million over the next two seasons, so it’ll be interesting to see how Batum treats his upcoming free agency. His fit in Los Angeles has been mutually beneficial, but if he wants a decent raise he should be able to find it elsewhere. (The Clippers can only offer 120% of Batum’s current salary.)

Tim Hardaway Jr. ($18.9 million, Mavericks)

The Mavericks are in an obvious state of disarray, with no head coach or principal decision maker in the front office. To state the obvious, their timing could be better. With Luka Dončić now eligible for a five-year, $201 million supermax extension and Kristaps Porzingis’ max deal currently standing as one of the more burdensome in the league, this offseason offers a slight window for Dallas to upgrade its roster with cap space before likely losing it for the foreseeable future.

Further complicating matters is Tim Hardaway Jr., their second-leading scorer during the first round. At 29, THJ’s strengths and weaknesses are well known. There are moments where he looks like a star (go rewatch the first two games against the Clippers) and times where he completely disappears (go rewatch Games 4 and 7). With that understood, the Mavs can’t afford to lose his shooting. They also should probably diversify their offense with wings who can create for others and defend multiple positions.

Josh Richardson was supposed to fill that role, and it’s always possible that he will after picking up his player option next season. But with Dončić’s patience fraying, that’s a gamble Mark Cuban may not be willing to make. Instead, do they take the money that would go to Hardaway Jr. and give it to (Luka’s friend) Goran Dragic and someone like, say, Otto Porter? What about Danny Green and Will Barton?

There are a lot of moving pieces around Dallas right now, so it’s unclear just how flexible they’ll be once free agency kicks off. But for Hardaway Jr., it’s entirely possible that another team (how about the Grizzlies?) will look at the market and believe his exact skill-set is what they need to take a meaningful step forward. If so, don’t be surprised if the starting price on that next contract is above $20 million.

Jeff Green ($2.56 million, Nets)

Green’s postseason was brief. He only appeared in seven games and took just 33 shots before the Nets were eliminated. But in that snippet he was pretty good! At 34, after a solid season on the best offense in NBA history, Green’s 27-point Game 5 (during which he took eight threes and only missed one) made Kevin Durant’s historic performance that night possible.

Green also held up fairly well (not great, far from atrocious) when switched onto any of the Bucks’ three best players. But age, the Nets’ early playoff exit and his own admitted desire to stay on a team that can only offer 175% of his current salary on the next contract decreases any likelihood of Green receiving a large financial raise—though his tune might change if another team is willing to throw some/all of their mid-level exception at him.

“I go out and just do the work,” Green recently told the New York Times. “And I let my agent handle the logistics of the contract terms, but it is confusing to the point of, ‘What else do I need to do to prove that I’m not a minimum guy?’”

Cam Payne ($1.97 million, Suns)

Even with Ayton’s lob etched forever in history books, Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals should be remembered as “The Cam Payne Game.” He was unstoppable, finishing with 29 points and nine assists, all of which the Suns needed to win. Even though his effectiveness has dropped a bit from the regular season (few pick-and-roll ball-handlers have been less efficient in these playoffs), Payne is the primary reason Phoenix is up 2-0 instead of tied 1-1. Anyone looking for a backup point guard will call his number come July.

Restricted Free Agents

John Collins ($2.76 million, Hawks)

Collins’ contract negotiations have played out in public since he reportedly turned down a four-year, $90 million extension in December. There were stretches of Atlanta’s first-round series against the Knicks where that decision looked regretful. Collins was tentative and borderline confused with the ball, driving into crowds, missing open shooters, forcing bad shots. There were bone-headed fouls committed in Round 2, too, where Collins played like someone in his own head, trying to do too much.

But Collins eventually settled down and began to thrive with bursts of energy and athleticism that were too much for Philadelphia’s frontline, especially on the glass. He yammed on Joel Embiid’s head several times (including in Game 6, inspiring the greatest t-shirt that has ever been designed), hit the biggest corner three of his life (down four with 2:15 left in a critical Game 4) and was massive on defense, stifling Ben Simmons in transition and taking a few important albeit painful charges to the chest.

Even with Onyeka Okongwu waiting in the wings, Clint Capela playing well on both ends and Hunter potentially thriving as a small-ball four someday soon, it’d still be a surprise if the Hawks don’t give Collins what he wants this summer. He has priceless on-court chemistry with Trae Young and might still be Atlanta’s second-best offensive player, despite the slow start. A max would probably be an overpay, but not to the point where it wouldn’t have value in a trade at some point down the line.

Bruce Brown ($1.6 million, Nets)

If the Nets won the title, Brown would have been a folk hero, and keeping him would have been more difficult than it should now be. He’ll make more money than he did this year, but not by the margin we would’ve seen had they gone a little further, with Brown starting, screening, rolling, floatering his way into the heart of a rival GM.

More NBA Coverage: • How It Feels to Watch The Team You Built Thrive Without You • Ben Simmons’s Flaws Laid Bare In Potential End of the Process • Best Trade Packages For Ben Simmons

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benito-cereno · 7 years

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The Haunting of Netflix House 5: The Netflix Dimension

What’s up Octobocops, it’s Halloweason. Let’s get spooked. Here are some movies of the horror and horror-adjacent genres that you might watch by yourself or with a party of friends or with the spirit of a long-deceased duke who lives in inhabits your house. This is part five; you know the goddamn drill by now.

Previously, on The Haunting of Netflix House:

2013: The Haunting of Netflix House

2014: The Haunting of Netflix House 2: Your Sister is a Netflix

2015: The Haunting of Netflix House 3: The Season of the Netflix

2016: The Haunting of Netflix House 4: The Netflix Master

A couple of notes for those who are new to the list:

This is being posted on October 2, 2017. For humans of the future who find this, the links may not all be up to date. Some might even expire by November 2017. Click at your own risk.

I try to offer both breadth and depth of options on this list, but it is by no means exhaustive. I’m sorry if a favorite of yours got left off. There’s a chance I just haven’t seen it yet. Feel free to reblog and add some of your favorites, but please make sure a movie is actually currently available on Netflix before jumping my shit about some nonsense I “forgot,” please and thank you.

This list is based upon movies that are available on Netflix in the US. I have no idea what is streaming on Canadian Netflix or British Netflix or Slovenian Netflix. How would I know this. Why would I know this. Please do not expect me to know this. Feel free to be the Canadian/British/Slovenian Benito and make your own list applicable to your own countryhumans.

Horror movies, by their nature, have horrific things in them. Most of these movies are violent; lots of them deal with torture, abuse, and mental illness. If some element of this jumps out to me while I’m writing these up, I’ll mention them, but if you are sensitive to or have issues with certain types of content, you might look an individual movie up on Common Sense Media first to check for content warnings.

While there are always good horror movies to be found on Netflix, if you really like scary movies, you should just get a Shudder subscription (or even just the free trial!). It has an unbeatable, well-curated selection.

All right let’s get to the goddamn movies what say

Classics (this section seems to get smaller every year):

Jaws (this is about a shark)

The Fly (the Vincent Price version, not the Jeff Goldblum one)

Gremlins (technically a Christmas movie, obviously, but maybe you’re a rebel)

The Sixth Sense (is this a classic? I mean probably your mom has heard of it, so)

Horror Comedies:

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (highly recommended)

Little Evil (new from the maker of Tucker and Dale; great cast; more than the Omen spoof it looks like; recommended)

Troll Hunter (not horror in the traditional sense; not a “Halloween” monster; found footage style; subtitled; awesome)

Young Frankenstein (maybe you’ve heard of this one)

The Host (subtitled; not a “Halloween” monster)

Ravenous (fucking rules)

Housebound (recommended)

Patchwork (in the vein of like Re-Animator and Frankenhooker)

Deathgasm (the best the best the best; watch immediately)

The Bar

Haunted House/Ghost shit:

The Awakening

The Pact (recommended)

The Babadook (highest possible recommendation; how have you not watched this yet)

Under the Shadow (recommended; basically the Iranian Babadook)

The Canal

We Are Still Here (Barbara Crampton is in this; her name will be mentioned a few more times on this list because she is apparently a major selling point for some people)

Last Shift (haunted police station; recommended)

The Legend of Hell House (love this one; love Roddy McDowall)

I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (very slow paced but atmospheric)

Coraline (yeah, the scary stop-motion one)

Vampire shit:

Stake Land (non-traditional vampire rules; not really my jam but some people love it; no idea if the sequel is good)

Byzantium

Night Watch

Werewolf shit:

Late Phases (old blind guy vs werewolves; pretty good)

When Animals Dream (hit some similar thematic notes to Ginger Snaps, but completely different tonally; subtitled)

Zombie shit:

Train to Busan (this rules; subtitled)

Witch/Demon/Pagan shit:

At the Devil’s Door (from the maker of The Pact; not as good, still interesting)

The Void (Lovecraftian cult shit; very cool visuals and practical effects)

Baskin (subtitled; super gory; also, the protags are asshole cops who tell transphobic stories and say homophobic slurs and talk about bestiality at the beginning, so heads up; worth a watch if that doesn’t bother you)

The Devil’s Candy

Hellions (this is not *great,* but it looks good and is heavily Halloweeny)

The Wailing (fucking amazing; subtitled)

Found footage shit:

V/H/S (lots of sex, violence, and sexualized violence

V/H/S/2 (same)

V/H/S Viral (same but in a different way)

The Den (ChatRoulette the horror movie; highly highly highly recommended)

Creep (recommended)

They’re Watching (not super amazing, but it’s wild af and I kind of love it; what if House Hunters International renovated a witch house?)

Man Vs (pretty okay)

Slasher shit (needless to say, these are gory):

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Curse of Chucky (way better than you think it is)

Clown (the haunted clown suit movie so good that Marvel said, “Yo, this guy should be in charge of Spider-Man”)

The Windmill (it’ll do fine if you’re just looking for a new slasher; tbf it is probably the best windmill-themed slasher ever made though)

Other shit:

Monsters (really good; not “Halloween” monsters)

It Follows (hey, what’s up, it’s the best horror movie of the past decade; highest possible rec)

Sleepy Hollow (what section do Headless Horsemen go in? Dunno; the movie not the show)

The House at the End of Time (highly recommended; subtitled)

Honeymoon

Starry Eyes

White God (DOG REVENGE)

They Look Like People (this is a slow burn, but super highly recommended)

Extraordinary Tales (animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe stories narrated by famous people; a mixed bag, but cool)

Darling (okay, so: this is a really beautiful and atmospheric film that I, generally speaking, recommend; however, it is kind of “artsy,” there is not a lot of dialogue, it is in black and white, there are some light strobing effects, rape does not occur on screen but is implied to have happened in a character’s past)

The Hallow (scary fairies)

Tales of Halloween (an anthology, so a mixed bag; okay overall, but it’s definitely Halloween-y)

The Invitation (highest possible recommendation)

Beyond the Gates (I actually did not like this very much, but some people might find it interesting, especially if you like--wait for it--Barbara Crampton)

Turbo Kid (this is not really horror, but if you like horror, especially splatter stuff, you will probably like it; it is good as shit)

Gerald’s Game (new shit from Mike Flanagan and it’s really great. Deals with lots of hard issues like abuse and such so maybe take a look at content issues if you are sensitive to that kind of stuff. Also definitely not for the squeamish, so head’s up. That said, it’s really really good)

80s/90s shit:

Hellraiser (not my style, but maybe you like this stuff, iunno)

Children of the Corn

The Craft

Non-Supernatural Thriller/Violence shit (these are violent):

Hush (Mike Flanagan directs; home invasion with a deaf woman protagonist; fucking rules)

The Silenced (haven’t actually watched this yet, but it looks good; don’t *think* it’s supernatural?; presumably subtitled)

The Eyes of My Mother (black and white; super bleak; beautiful and highly recommended)

Kristy

Dig Two Graves

We Need to Talk About Kevin (very bleak)

The Bad Batch (from the director of A Girl Walks Home Etc; only kind of horror-adjacent; Jason Momoa and Keanu Reeves are in this)

Sun Choke (visually beautiful but super art-housey, also lots of mental illness and abuse stuff in this one; also *Barbara Crampton*)

Zodiac (biography of Ted Cruz)

I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore (so fucking good; very funny also)

Nightcrawler (basically a vampire movie, but with a camera instead of fangs)

Horror and Horror-Adjacent Documentaries (all the good horror docs got moved to Shudder):

The Nightmare (a doc on sleep paralysis and night terrors that is so-so as a documentary, but super effective as a horror film)

Witches: A Century of Murder (history of British witch trials, reenacted; two parts)

“But, Benito!” I hear you cry. “I don’t have Netflix for some reason! What about some other streaming services?” Yeah, all right. Here are some quick hits that are definitely not exhaustive. Just a couple of party jams you might enjoy if you’ve burned through the Netflix list.

What’s on Hulu though

10 Cloverfield Lane

Monster Squad

Fright Night (the original; a must watch if you haven’t seen it)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

From Dusk Til Dawn

An American Werewolf in London

Hatchet

Pumpkinhead (check this one out if you haven’t seen it)

The Blob

I Saw the Devil (amazing)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either version)

Shaun of the Dead

The Loved Ones

Wolfcop

The Thing

Rigor Mortis

Borgman

The Descent

Bloodsucking Bastards

Willow Creek

Berberian Sound Studio

Plus a bunch of shit that’s also on Netflix

What about Amazon Prime you idiot

The Girl with All the Gifts

Them (not Them!)

The Witch

Hell House LLC

Neon Demon

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Nosferatu

Green Room

Little Shop of Horrors (the Corman one, not the musical)

The Blackcoat’s Daughter

The Bay

Society

The Last Man on Earth

The Last Exorcism

What We Do in the Shadows

Amazon Prime is hard to navigate so that’s all. If I left off a favorite, it’s not because I don’t like it. It’s because it didn’t pop up in the first 20 pages of search results.

Tell me some good Shudder ones

The Innkeepers

A Tale of Two Sisters

The Gorgon

Lake Bodom

Prevenge

All the Phantasms (maybe not Ravager)

Shrew’s Nest

Noroi: The Curse

The House of the Devil

Black Sunday

Let the Right One In

Murder Party (highly recommended, esp for Halloween)

WNUF Halloween Special

Ghostwatch (play this at your party if you want to fucking win Halloween)

This list could be a million more entries long. Shudder rules.

What about Crackle/Vudu/YouTube/etc

Please shut up

As usual, please do me a solid and only circulate the current version of the list, so people aren’t clicking on dead links and thinking I’m an idiot. Again, this list is not and could not be completely exhaustive, and if I left off your favorite movie, I swear I was not targeting you personally. And, again, some of these movies are more interesting than they are good AND horror is a highly subjective experience, so your mileage may vary on some of these.

If you enjoyed this list, perhaps consider checking out some of my other Halloween-related posts:

a primer for spooky stories

a primer for Lovecraft specifically

a list of “essential” horror movies

a list of “essential” silent horror movies

a list of “essential” horror comedies

a list of suggested horror double features

a primer for Hammer horror

a list of cool movies starring Christopher Lee and Vincent Price

this list of resources, including short films and even more scary movies

a suggested Halloween playlist

a primer for spooky classical music

the scariest 20 minutes in radio history

free to play spooky games

and my general Halloween tag, which includes short films, movie trailers, comics, stories, and more

Also maybe consider checking out my Letterboxd profile, where I rate and review movies of all types (but primarily horror) all year long and from all sorts of sources, in case you’re wondering what’s good on more than just Netflix. Also also, maybe take a look at some of my comics, several of which are appropriate for Halloween times.

Happy Halloween, nerds!

#halloween #long post #netflix #horror movies #horror #hulu #amazon prime #shudder #the haunting of netflix house

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