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precuredaily · 3 years

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Precure Day 202

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 Go Go! 04 - “Deliver Urara’s Script!” Date watched: 19 December 2020 Original air date: 24 February 2008 Screenshots Transformation Gallery Project info and master list of posts

Sometimes you get an episode that shouldn’t work, but it just does because of the sincerity of the delivery. You may correctly assume this is that episode. It’s a mundane episode about returning a lost item, but the emotions on display are heartfelt and passionate. Let’s dig in.

The Plot

Syrup arrives at Natts House to deliver more letters from Milk and is startled by Urara tearfully proclaiming she has to leave. It turns out she’s practicing for an important audition and the other girls, especially Komachi, are giving her feedback. Syrup is still a bit confused since he’s not familiar with the concepts of acting or performance, but he watches anyway. After the intro, we go over to Eternal for a few minutes, where Anacondy praises Bunbee’s report writing after the last episode and tasks him with gathering more information, passing him a huge stack of papers. He wanders down the hallway and runs into Scorp, asking him for help in a gag that involves him calling him a different name every single time: Scorn, Stamp, Slipper, Skunk, and even Slump. Scorp is not amused and leaves to retrieve the Rose Pact. Back at Natts House, Coco and Nuts detect the presence of a Palmin, and they go outside with everyone to try to find it, while Urara prepares to leave for the audition. A glance at her script reveals it is absolutely filled with notes, and she gives it a hug. However, she looks up and sees the Palmin, so she sets the script down and tries to snapshot the Palmin when her manager Washio interrupts her.

She hastily grabs her bag and rushes him out the door, accidentally leaving her script on the table. They arrive at the site of the audition, where a dozen other girls are already practicing, making Urara neverous. This is when she realizes she forgot her script, and at the same time, Nozomi and the other girls discover her script. Without hesitation they agree they need to deliver it to her, and they ask Syrup to do so, but he says he only delivers stuff for work. SIDE NOTE: as far as we know, he isn’t paid, so them asking him to deliver something is as much a job as delivering letters to and from the Palmier Kingdom. But whatever. Since Syrup won’t deliver it, the girls drag him along with them as they travel by foot to the audition. They take a “shortcut” that involves them climbing a hill with a ton of switchbacks, and Syrup really doesn’t like that. (BITCH, YOU CAN FLY) Nozomi and the girls explain that Urara will be worried without her script, and that her feelings are very important to them. They press on, despite Syrup’s complaints. They finally make it to the top exhausted, when suddenly Scorp shows up to rain on their parade. They protest that they’re on an important mission but he counters that obtaining the Rose Pact is equally important to him and he’s not moving, so the girls implore Syrup to take the script while they fight Eternal, and be begrudgingly agrees.

He dodges past Scorp and runs off while Nozomi, Rin, Komachi, and Karen transform and fight Scorp’s Hoshiina, which he has made out of the cobbled road itself. They throw it around but it manages to sneak in some hits on them and they lay on the ground, weakened, engaging in a battle of words with Scorp about the importance of Urara’s dream. Syrup reaches Urara and gives her the script, only for her to explain that she already has it memorized, but having everyone’s notes in it lets her feel like they’re right there with her. She picks up that something is amiss and demands that Syrup explain what’s happening to her friends, and he spills the beans but tells her to focus on the audition. It’s her turn to go up, so she enters the audition room and faces the panel of judges, and then.... she says she’s worried about her friends, tears up, apologizes, and runs out of the room.

Syrup delivers her to the battlefield, where the Hoshiina is just about to deliver the final blow. She tells Scorp she won’t let him hurt anyone anymore, then transforms, and the full team of five leaps into battle together, in a wonderfully animated sequence as they lay into Scorp and declare again that their strength comes from their bonds. Lemonade unleashes her new special attack, Prism Chain, where she creates two chains made of butterflies and swings them from behind her to directly in front of her in a pincer move, causing the chains to wrap around the enemy and dissolve them. Scorp dodges the attack but it manages to destroy the Hoshiina.

now watch me whip

Later, back at Natts House, Nozomi laments that Urara had to leave, though she assures her it wasn’t her fault. Washio shows up, telling Urara he heard about the audition, and he understands, he’s not mad, there will be plenty more opportunities for her. As he says that, his phone starts ringing and he takes the call. Syrup is still confused that she only needed the script for encouragement rather than the contents, so Coco and Nuts explain that the girls’ feelings are very important and powerful, they’ve left an influence on each other as well as the fairies of Palmier Kingdom, and they show him pictures that Milk has sent of life in Palmier to demonstrate. Just then, Nozomi notices a Palmin, and Urara captures it to make up for missing it earlier. Everyone gathers around to see what it turns out to be and..... it turns into the King of the Donuts Kingdom, one of the four monarchs!

The Analysis

As I said in the cold open, this episode doesn’t seem like it should work. It’s another cheesy filler plot with no stakes, not really any room for character growth, no impact on the plot (until the end). However, the writer for this episode has a knack for turning mundane premises into strong scripts, and a good director and animation director were tasked with bringing it to life, so it all comes together to be a strong episode.

Although it’s not as much about him as the previous one, this episode is framed mostly from Syrup’s perspective. This means we come into Natts House at the same time as him, in the middle of Urara practicing, and we see his confusion. This is actually clever, because while most of the audience already knows that Urara is an actress from watching the previous series, there’s always new fans who may not have seen the last season, so explaining Urara’s profession from the perspective of another outsider is an unobtrusive way to acquaint, or reacquaint, viewers with her. Furthermore, we stay with Syrup throughout, even when the focus shifts to other characters it’s still largely seen through him. He objects to delivering the script but they drag him along anyway up the cliff. When Urara asks him what happened to her friends, the cut to their fight is also framed such that it could be his vision of what’s happening, while simultaneously being what’s literally happening. And then, once again, the episode ends with Syrup ruminating on Urara’s acting process and the symbolic importance of her friends, as represented by her script. He’s starting to learn what makes the girls special and why their friendship is powerful. It’s a multifaceted framing device.

The real star of this show is Urara. She’s really pouring her heart into this part, but it’s the unquestioning support of her friends that keeps her motivated. This is most directly manifested by her script, but of course her concern for their well-being is incredibly powerful. She is absolutely terrified that Nozomi and co are going to be defeated by Eternal and that supersedes everything else. There’s obviously a tinge of irony that delivering her script to help her out is the catalyst to her leaving the audition. If they hadn’t, or if only Syrup had gone, then they wouldn’t have run into Scorp and Urara probably would have gotten the part. However, all four girls decide without a moment’s hesitation that they have to deliver Urara’s script and so they encounter Scorp, and this leads to her saving them at the last minute. This, as I say sometimes, is peak Precure. Her little speech to the panel of judges where she says she has to leave to save her friends is so emotional. Ise Mariya puts forth a strong performance but it’s the animation that really sells this sequence. She’s teary-eyed, and then the run down the hallway is well-drawn, and it culminates when she steps outside the building. There’s a gorgeous 360 degree turnaround as she scans the horizon for signs of her friends. This sort of shot is hard to do in 2D animation.

vimeo

Also the music swell helps to sell the intensity. Urara’s desperation is tangible. She wants nothing more than to rescue her friends in this moment, and nothing can stand in her way. When she arrives at the battle, her friends are on the verge of defeat, but as soon as she joins the fight the battle turns around. It’s a fast-paced fight with the girls swooping in, beating up Scorp, and then unleashing the finisher. It’s another well-animated sequence and the contrast between how the team of 4 and the team of 5 fights is night and day.

vimeo

Once again you’ve got the continuous spinning camera that helps sell the scene. The distortion of the characters, especially Scorp, actually works in favor of the speed and excitement of the scene. This is what Urara brings, this is what they can do when they’re all assembled. That’s what I mean when I say this episode is better than it ought to be on paper. It’s a threadbare plot but the emotions and the artwork come together beautifully.

The major theme of the episode is support. Nozomi, Rin, Komachi, and Karen support Urara’s goal whole-heartedly. They help her rehearse, giving her tips and people to play off of. They run to her aid when she needs it without a second thought. Even fighting Scorp is a way of showing their support, they’re keeping him from attacking Urara during her important audition while sending Syrup to give her the script. And at the end, Washio is also being very supportive, and I appreciate that. He doesn’t act sad or disappointed or upset at her for bailing on her big audition, he understands that she had her reasons and just says there will be another chance. The support network of friends who have each other’s backs, who care about each other, who are stronger together, that’s what makes this larger team dynamic work well and stand apart from the duo series. There’s obviously something powerful about the two girls who can only transform together, and I love the Futari wa shows for it, but the larger team of heroines who can operate independently if necessary but are exponentially stronger together is also wonderful, and this episode really exemplifies that.

Also a quick note, I wanted to briefly discuss the geography of this town. In the middle of the episode, there’s a gag where the girls are climbing a huge cliffside because it’s the shortest way to their destination.

If you recall, all the sweeping shots of this pseudo-French town have shown it to be fairly flat. For there to be a cliff face somewhere in the middle of it with a bunch of switchbacks is incredibly unusual, and I don’t think this setting has been seen before or since. It’s just there for the gag of them running up this huge thing.

All told, this was a phenomenal episode and I’m glad for it. After a disappointing first couple of episodes, this one really hit the mark.

Next time, on Precure Daily, Karen is taking suggestions for the school! Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0 kettei!

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Yes! Precure 5 Go Go!#YPC5GG04 #PCD202

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differenceenginegirl · 4 years

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Everything seems a little dark and scary at the moment, so I have complied a list of links to cultural and/or educational things (and some just streams of cute animals, or just plain fun) that are available to watch or listen to or do for free (mostly) online. Some of these will only work for the duration of the current situation (marked with a *), but most are permanent (so far as I know) so can be kept around for a little bit of sunshine on a rainy day.

Feel free to add to this with your own links or ideas, and remember, we’ll get through this together (with the appropriate social distancing). Follow the advice that’s been given, wash your hands, and be kind to one another.

The majority of links were brought to my attention by @theyahwehdance, @elleflies, and @buckysleftarm (plus a bit of a deep dive through my drafts). Under a cut because hoo boy it got long...

(Some links in the linked lists may be broken, some may be region-locked, and some may be duplicated, I haven’t checked them all.)

Culture and Education!

The Metropolitan Opera, free nightly (19:30 EDT, 23:00 GMT) broadcasts of operas, available for 20 hours following the broadcast too. (Schedule for the first week)*

Berlin Philharmonic: 30 days free access to their virtual concert hall (redeem before 31st March 2020)*

Playbill have compiled a list of 15 professionally recorded musicals you can watch at home (Not all free) and are inviting people to join them in watching Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella Starring Lesley Ann Warren on 20th March at 20:00 ET! (video may be region locked)

12 highlighted virtual museum tours and a whole load of others from around the world!

Science Twitter, a series of Skype with a Scientist virtual lectures! (A sign up with an email is required through the link in the tweet, running from 12:00-14:00 EST, (16:00-18:00 GMT)

30 virtual field trips! Links to virtual tours and live cameras of many different places! (Aimed at kids)

Animals!

Cincinnati Zoo Facebook Live virtual safaris, every weekday at 15:00 EDT (19:00 GMT)* Completed safaris will be posted to their website shortly after the Live finishes, and also kept on their Facebook.

Live Monterey Bay Aquarium Cams: 10 different cams showing various tanks and enclosures, and the bay itself!

Live San Diego Zoo Cams: 9 different cams showing various creatures in their habitats!

Atlanta Zoo Panda Cam

Danish Sea Eagles Cam (this site in Danish, and may go dark, as the equipment is solar powered): A live feed of a Danish Sea Eagle nest!

Peregrines in Norwich and Bath!

Live Animal Cam, Ohio: A cam focused on a feeding station, with night vision so the feed continues even after the sun goes down! (This shows wild animals, so there is no guarantee that you’ll see creatures)

Shedd Aquarium let their penguins out to explore! (Under supervision) More exploration here!

Two Oceans Aquarium did too, and look at these little cuties on the stairs!

A livestream of adoptable kitties!

And here’s a thread with some of these cams, and more!

Music!

Various people (started by cellist Yo-Yo Ma) playing/sharing music that comforts them on Twitter.

Virtual High School Musicals! (Original Thread) (Wider Hashtag) Many High School kids are now finding themselves unable to perform the musicals they’ve been working so hard on, so Laura Benanti invited them to video themselves performing and share it with her, so they still get to perform for an appreciative audience! (Some of these are absolutely stunning!)

Never before heard Hamilton track demo!

A playlist of Quarantunes on Spotify, compiled by Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks’ wife)

A playlist of 101 Feel-Good songs on Spotify, compiled by @lanamlouise

This guy made a really cool instrument out of PVC pipes!

A group of engineers in Stockholm turned a set of stairs into a piano to encourage people to use them rather than the escalator!

Stories!

Josh Gad reads a bedtime story (Olivia goes to Venice) with voices!

Various celebrities reading kids stories, as part of a charity initiative to keep kids fed during school shutdowns.

A bunch of free short stories, essays, audio and video by the wonderful author @neil-gaiman (Plus two photos of him in an ancient hat!)

Find your local indie bookstore and support them while also getting a new book! (US only)

And of course, you can’t leave out the marvelous Archive Of Our Own for fanfiction and fanworks for almost every fandom you can think of! (Remember to make use of the tags and filters to narrow your search or avoid things you don’t want to see/read!)

Food!

A recipe for Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares! (Apparently like sugar cookies, but in bar form and better)

A fudgy brownie-in-a-mug recipe!

A really nice chocolate pudding (in the British sense, so like a cake) with spiced chocolate sauce! (I love the whole cookbook that this is from, and it’s especially good for Discworld fans. Available from various sellers, I have linked my favourite money-sink, the Discworld Emporium: Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook)

My favourite biscuits (cookies) to make! Honey and cinnamon, with a picture book (Honey Biscuits by Meredith Hooper) that you can read alongside to explain to kids where all the ingredients came from!

Creativity and learning new things!

LUNCH DOODLES with Mo Willems! (13:00 ET weekdays, videos remain post-stream) Aimed mostly at kids, but don’t let that stop you doodling with the Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence!

A little list of doll makers/dress-up sites!

How to take really good photos of the night sky with a phone! (Please continue to observe social distancing rules while taking your pretty pictures)

Fancy making a language? Here’s a site with resources to help you get going with that!

A long list of sources of inspiration, arty websites, and some that are just fun!

Make your very own Peaches the Mouse by @my-darling-boy!

Want to learn 3D modelling? Fusion360 is free (for hobbyists and students) and professionally used, with a good network of tutorials and an, imo, fairly intuitive interface! (I use this a lot)

Want to play with Photoshop but don’t have the money? Here’s a free, in browser version! (Has ads, but they’re unobtrusive)

Want to try your hand at creating a sim? The Sims 4 Character Creator Demo is free! (Limited options, but still fun to play with)

Whether you play D&D or not, this is a really cool custom miniature creator, with loads of options that are being constantly added to updated! (And if you have the money, you can get it in a printable format, or printed for you in a variety of materials!)

Fancy learning something new? Memrise has a load of free courses, ranging from real languages like French or Spanish for beginners to fictional languages like Quenya (one of the Elven languages from LotR) or Klingon, or trivia bits like Harry Potter Spells or Noble Houses in Game of Thrones, and many more! (Available in multiple languages, although not all courses may be available in all languages)

Ever fancied trying to build armour or cosplay props from foam? R31 Studios has you covered with free PDF templates for all sorts of bits!

Meditation and Calm!

60 second meditation tool! Put a worry into a star, and watch it float away with a calming soundtrack and

Meditation with Lizzo!

Customisable Rain Sounds!

Customisable Train Sounds!

And many more customisable noise generators!

Play with liquid/particles! (Warning: this one made me feel a bit motion-sick, but pretty!)

Interactive generative art!

Random bits I couldn’t catagorise!

Don’t want to dine alone? Have dinner with the Gaffigans!

A series of Mildly Interesting images from @catchymemes!

A group of stuntmen doing Super Mario!

Another list of Good Links (Really well organised!) by @secretladyspider!

@thelatestkate draws wonderfully reassuring cartoons! (On Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook too!)

World Record Egg Instagram! Lots of nice little positive cartoons.

Happy news from The Happy Broadcast on Instagram, The Happy News, and HuffPost Good News!

Here’s an ongoing list of good stuff by @pftones3482! (Check the notes for more good stuff, and the latest addition)

Some feel-good browser games!

And finally, a little frog here to give you some reassurance!

#positivity #feel good #happy things #reassurance #link list

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warpedglass · 4 years

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A Lesson in Fear

What it is and how to cause it

At least, that’s what it said on the screen behind Ammutseba on the stage she stood on. There are many seats facing this stage, but only one of them is occupied.

“So, darling, after some of our talks I got thinking and I wanted to put something together. Fear is something I find quite fascinating, and I do take my measure of joy from causing it. I thought about how to advise someone on the best and most effective way to be scary, though with such a broad subject perhaps its best to take a step back. To understand what fear is so one could best cause it.”

“I would like to give a quick preface and say that everything I know, I know from my own world. In the context of Pokémon, animals and humans. Though if this city has taught me anything, it’s that unknowable entities or aliens really aren’t that alien at all, all things considered. Going forward I will use humans as a typical example, as they are wonderfully fearful creatures and they are the greatest population in this city.

Then to actually begin, what is fear? Fear is an emotional response, one of many that emotional beings can experience.”

“Apprehension would be the shallow side of fear and terror fear at its deepest. As indicated above, emotions can and are often experienced in tandem.

So if your goal is to cause fear then we need to know what prompts this emotion. Is there something that would work on anything? A single, scariest thing? Or is it best to build up a repertoire?

Almost all living beings- and many that aren’t living actually- are subject to things known as innate aversions. These are instinctual, typically built into a species and not something they have to learn to be afraid of. Fear, in many cases, is an anticipation of something acting on or playing off these innate aversions.

But fears are not simply innate, fears can be learned. An interesting thing about the mind is that there’s really no end to the number of things one could learn to become afraid of. But no matter how many learned fears one accumulates, they will always key into those innate aversions.

So let’s talk about those, and for visualisations sake, let’s picture a web. At the centre of our web of fear is death. Ultimately, this is what everything comes back to. Living things, typically, want to stay living. It’s natural for most forms of life to avoid death in general. Now, not everyone does fear death. There are a number of circumstances where death is certainly not something’s worst outcome. This city in particular puts a strange spin on this as well. As true death doesn’t seem possible for those brought here its impact has been lessened. Of course, most beings come from places where death is very real, so fear of it will still lurk in most of their minds.

Surrounding death on our web of fear are the innate aversions. Living beings have these aversions for the simple reason that they can all result in death.

To start with, we have pain. Pain is a very immediate response, an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential damage to one’s body. Most things don’t like pain because pain is a response to damage and damage can lead to death. Of course, some things do like pain, at least in small doses. So a learned fear to the innate aversion that is pain could be any number of dangerous animals or beasts. One might be afraid of crocodiles, snakes or spiders because they have seen them inflict pain on others or experienced it themselves. Even the threat of pain is often an excellent motivator for most. If something becomes associated with the threat of pain, then even mundane or innocent things can be feared.

Isolation is another innate aversion. In-... Ah... Hm. Well, in less civilised times, being separated from other members of your own species would very likely result in death. There is safety in numbers, many believe. This has carried over, a situation can be made several categories scarier simply because you are experiencing it alone. Though… As we both know, isolation can... Affect different beings in different ways. A curious development of this aversion in modern times in my own world has created a fear of one being without their cell phone, or being in a situation where it is disconnected from others due to a lack of coverage or service.

Moving on…

Another innate version is the unknown, or the abnormal. Now, this is a personal favourite of mine. In the more threatening primeval histories of the world, it was safer to assume things were dangerous unless you already knew otherwise. Something being strange or unrecognisable is often enough for it to cause anxiety. Darkness is a common fear, but it is not necessarily the dark they are afraid of, but rather how the dark obscures things. If you can’t see something, you can’t prepare yourself against it. The darkness hides things, the darkness contains unknowns.

Fear of the unknown can extend to many things, it is why a great number of people fear the idea of ghosts for example. The idea of something existing in a manner that doesn’t make sense to them is abnormal. This can extend to distorted forms; seeing something normally familiar changed in subtle or strange ways. It’s unusual. It’s not normal. Now, despite it being a personal favourite, this can be a difficult one to play up to in a city populated by fantastical creatures and people from countless different realities.

Personally I like to play upon this by manipulating and distorting reflections, mirrors are a tool of choice for me. People expect to see themselves in a mirror, they expect to see their surroundings. If what they see in a mirror is different from what they expect in can cause them to question those very surroundings. If someone is looking at a mirror with their friend and their friend walks away but the reflection of their friend continues to stare at them from the mirror, well, that’s an abnormal situation for them.

Our next innate aversion is much less nebulous. While it might seem perfectly mundane, sudden movement is quite the aversion for many living beings. Simply because, something moving very quickly could be threatening. It activates something instinctual in the mind. This is why jump scares are typically universally effective at provoking a reaction, even if it’s a rather… Cheap way of evoking fear. Now, I may have said movement but this also applies to sound too; a sudden loud noise will startle most creatures quite effectively. SIght and sound are our two greatest tools for inciting fear and they do both work differently. Sight is what we’ll use most, but sight allows one to see danger and prepare for it accordingly, think back to what I said about darkness. Sound though, can be marvelously effective with much less work. Sound is processed very quickly and doesn’t allow one to prepare for danger as effectively as it’s often much less accurate at pinpointing an exact source. Dissonance is an important thing to remember, as even something simple as two dissonant notes repeating can cause anxiety.

There are four other innate aversions. We have disease, something avoided instinctively by living creatures because it has so often throughout history led to death or an unpleasant fate. This comes with learned fears like radiation, germs, or vermin famous for carrying them. This is why hospitals- or dark reflections of them- can feature prominently in horror media; they are often centres of disease.

We have incapacitation, another simple innate aversion in essence. If something is trapped or can’t move then it cannot defend itself. Being stuck or frozen in place can leave you at the mercy of whatever that finds you.

Falling is another and is very similar. Falling even a modest distance can result in death for living things and typically once they start falling it’s too late for most of them to do anything about it. It’s a removal of control. This is why a fear of heights can be common, as well as a fear of flying. Being heigh up could result in falling. Of course… This is not a fear shared by things that can fly inherently.

To round off on our innate aversions we have suffocation. For beings that breathe, a lack of oxygen will result in their death, usually quite quickly too. Claustrophobia is a common phobia, confined spaces typically have a limited supply of oxygen. Suffocation is also why a fear of water is not uncommon, as drowning is not a desirable fate of many.

So what have we learned? Fear is an emotional response, an anticipation of innate aversions, the aversion most living beings have to the concept of death. Now this has not been a comprehensive, guaranteed collection of examples that will cause fear in all individuals without fail, no. I’m hoping it has been an introduction, a way to better understand what fear is and why things experience it.

I… Do have some other, more focused ideas for future slideshows, if you are interested. Do you have any questions?”

#drabble #forsakenpumpkin #this wasn't written with the expectation of a response #so please don't feel obligated #death #suffocation #drowning #disease

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pluviophile-bookworm · 5 years

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Thoughts/ reaction to AWAE 3x6

That opening scene of the preparations for the county fair makes me nostalgic for some reason. Also, I need this background music in my life. I love AWAE's cold opens.

And... we're off to a bad start. I have a terrible cold and so does Anne. I know exactly how that feels. And to have something important coming up as well... Poor Anne.

Matthew and his radish are the expected golden content of this episode and I'm all in for it.

If this episode consisted of nothing but the colourful everyday life at the Cuthbert household, I would still love it as much as any other episode. Maybe even more than some.

Gilbert is making me laugh. How is a white shirt key in making a good impression to anyone? If anything, I wouldn't seek the approval of people whose opinion of me depends on a white shirt. And what does he need Winifred's parents' approval for? Is he marrying her now? As far as I can remember, he wanted to marry Anne last week. Seriously, Blythe, make up your mind!

"Not thinking that far ahead", my butt! Last week, as far as I remember, you were thinking that far ahead. With Anne in mind.

And there goes our dashing young hero... Who can't figure out whom he likes. Seriously, I want to like Gilbert because I love Gilbert, but he's not making it very easy for me.

Anne is the classical Smitten Teenage Girl™ in this scene.

"Special occasion? - No, not really." Yeah, right, that's why you tried on every single one of your virtually identical white shirts a scene ago. But we wouldn't want Anne's family to think you're dressing up for another girl, would we now?

What is Anne sneaking out for? Since when does she need to sneak out to visit Diana? She's not Jerry.

Diana knows things about Gilbert's subconscious that he's hidden away so carefully that he doesn't even remember they're there: "Maybe it was an excuse... To see you."

Minnie May makes such a good Diana impression... Am I a bad person for thinking that maybe she could be the kind of daughter her mother wants, while Diana embraces her happiness with Jerry?

Look at Anne almost quoting the source material... and I think the comparison with Elizabeth and Darcy is quite accurate, at least on account of my reactions to both couples. I mean, you have two individuals who are very obviously made for each other but will go out of their way to convince everyone, including and especially themselves, that they’re not. Also, Anne reminds me so much of Elizabeth Bennet, AWAE Anne in particular. And of course, this line means that all the visual parallels were on purpose! Poetic cinema is coming full circle by acknowledging itself.

Ok, but Minnie May is such a typical little sister. I love her so much. But why won’t Diana tell Anne about Jerry?

Gilbert is dressing up for Winifred. Meanwhile, Matthew is dressing up for his radish. Spirit animal material much?

And all of a sudden Anne is the typical Smitten Teenage Girl with all the associated behaviours: awkwardness, embarrassment, noticing weird details about the object of her affections (the chin comment, anyone?), and now “he loves me, he loves me not”. Come on, girl, you’re different. You’re better than that. But, of course, the ways of love are mysterious.

The baby horse is still the cutest thing in the world. Along with baby Delly, of course.

And now Anne even has her hair done in the very same style as all the other girls. At least that was different before. I mean, I love the look on her, she’s as beautiful as ever, but I’m getting the rather unpleasant idea that she’s losing her uniqueness and it’s all because of Gilbert; and based on what we saw of him in this episode so far, he’s not worth it.

On the other hand, the books had her become more... conventional, or at least conventional-presenting, by the time she turned 16, so that might count as source material accuracy.

The fortune teller cracks me up. Cigarette smoke in an orb? Really? Also, Anne totally said what I was thinking: “I think I learned more from the daisy”...

“Does my hair look more auburn?” That’s Book Anne right there.

The background music... you can tell by it that the Baynards just entered the scene... also, Derry. Derry! Oh my goodness gracious, DERRY!!!

I love the subtlety of their exchange about the book and the handkerchief. They’re doing this secret romance thing very well.

Ok, a second ago everything was so beautiful and hopeful, and then... first, Diana notices Gilbert before Anne does - and in quite an unpleasant position. And then Diana’s mother goes on about “extricating” themselves from the Baynards... poor Derry. Especially poor Diana. I just wish all this classist behaviour would go to... Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire (bonus points to all those of you who get the reference, and to me for referencing a work about classism in relation to classist behaviours).

Miss Stacy is the epitome of feminism in this scene - wearing trousers and giving all the men a run for their money at shooting. Go, Muriel!

As much as I dislike Rachel Lynde’s general behaviour, the relationship she has with her husband just has to be admired. Maybe she just wants Muriel to have what she has, and she’s failing to see that maybe not everybody needs or wants the same things.

And... Billy’s back. I remember saying back when I was watching 3x1 that if i never saw him again, it would still be too soon. I don’t mean to spread hate, but I’m sick and tired of his sexism and racism and homophobia and toxic masculinity. But well. To each their own.

I love that Prissy is back as well. She made the right decision about herself when we last saw her, and she doesn’t seem to have taken a single step back. In fact, she appears to have moved forward since we last saw her. Good on you, Prissy! But now Josie seems to be headed down a similar rather toxic road to the one that Prissy barely escaped - and with Prissy’s own brother, too. I hope it all works out well.

This is the moment I realise how unfortunate it is that Prissy and Josie aren’t very close. If they were Prissy might have warned her against some signs of toxic behaviour that she herself didn’t recognise back then...

Of course, Billy. Of course the game is “rigged”. But not for Jerry, it seems. In your face, Andrews!

I. Am. Dying! I just want to shout “Derry!” from the rooftops.

The little dog matches her gloves, you guys! Also, every time Diana says “Merci, Jerry!”, I just melt into a big puddle of fangirl.

The county fair is treating my boy Jerry really well, I must say.

Can we talk about Diana’s boldness, though? She’s really living life to the fullest, if only in secret. I hope my daring girl is free to pursue her happiness one day. And that day better be soon.

This conversation must be so uncomfortable for Gilbert. And he’s putting himself through it for a girl that isn’t even meant for him. He knows it, no matter what he tells himself or everyone else.

I just pictured Matthew saying to Gilbert “What are your intentions towards my Anne?”, and now my heart is breaking at the thought that he might never get to say it.

I am totally with Anne on this one, but you have to admit that the fortune teller was right about one thing at least - “The universe works in mysterious ways.” As frustrating as this episode is Shirbert-wise, I stand by my ship and I hope they will both come to their senses soon enough. We wanted angst, didn’t we? We wanted pining and obstacles and a realistic development - well, there it is. Why are we frustrated about it? This stage is not final.

“That boy is not your fish.” No, but he is her lobster. Gosh, I’m full of references today.

“Classmate and family friend.” Oh please. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I like Winifred better than Gilbert in this scene: “Do you spell it with or without an E?” I really wish Gilbert wasn’t in the picture right now because if it weren’t for his role in each of their lives, Anne and Winifred might just be friends.

This was awkward. Really awkward. Gilbert didn’t hesitate for a second when he introduced Anne as his classmate, but now he’s stumbling over what label he should put on his relationship with Winifred. If I were to put it for him, it would be “friend”, maybe even “mentor”, but who knows what he or Anne are thinking during that long pause.

The tension, the suspense... is this MasterChef? Last I checked it was not.

Ok, but Anne in this episode is so much like Book Anne, at least as far as I can remember. It’s been a while since I last read the books. Gilbert is as far removed from his book counterpart as can be, though, and I don’t like it.

Most unusual? What is that supposed to mean? Also, I agree with Anne about entering herself, but maybe not with the connotations of “unusual” she’s thinking about now. She’s all kinds of wonderfully extraordinary, I mean. I hope she never forgets that.

Oh, look, she came to that realisation. I love that; and Marilla is such a mood on the balloon. But seriously, I'm delighted to see Anne coming back to her old self.

Is that Gilbert dancing between Anne and Winifred? Poetic cinema.

Ruby and Moody? I ship it! They are both absolute cinnamon rolls and deserve each other so much!

“Pretty face”? Is that all she is to you? Whoa, things took a turn for the darker pretty quickly.

“I want your pretty face”... and I want you locked up. At the very least. He had no right to do that to her!

Ok, I know we’re in the middle of one of the darkest moments this series has shown us so far, but we need to talk about Ruby being oh so excited about Moody writing a song for her and the prospect of becoming Ruby Spurgeon. Wow, she moves fast! She deserves all the happiness in the world and I’m so happy she’s finally being noticed by someone... someone who is really right for her and will make her happy. #Rudy #Mooby #Spurgillis ?? Somebody please come up with a good ship name for them.

Now Anne is considering Charlie? “Sloane? Sounds like “moan”, “tone”... I guess Gilbert deserved that with today’s behaviour, though.

Miss Stacy asking Matthew to dance just to “drive Rachel mad”... I love it.

Could that be Diana and Jerry holding hands in plain sight in the dance? Could it be? Am I dreaming? Pinch me. Or better don’t. I never want this to end.

Good thing news travels fast so Anne could hear about Josie. Otherwise no one might have ever found out. Victims rarely ever tell and that’s a big mistake.

I so wished Anne would punch Billy in the face Hermione-style, though. The vibes she was giving off suggested she might do it, and yet she didn’t.

The next day at school, Anne is just... completely savage in the best way of saying it. “Need to catch a train to Charlottetown?” She has no time to waste worrying about Gilbert now, she has an important cause. I love it. Too bad nobody is listening to her, though. This is too much like reality. When the activist talks about the real issues and tries to find a solution, people just change the subject and talk about insignificant petty problems instead. And the worst part is that this isn’t just in that time and place - it happens today, it happens everywhere. People still haven’t learned not to cover their eyes when a real problem arises. This has to change.

To sum up today’s episode: the county fair pulls people back into their everyday work while also sparking the fire of youthful courtship among them; Gilbert is not Gilbert; Anne is Book Anne; Shirbert takes a giant step backwards; Jerry takes a cautious little step forward, Diana leaps into the unknown with open arms; Matthew’s radish and Anne’s person are most unusual in the best way possible; the Andrews family has some achievements and some issues; Miss Stacy is a feminist icon; Ruby and Moody are very much a thing; Anne is now an ignored activist.

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tb5-heavenward · 4 years

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You just know I'm going to ask about Covenant now, right?

well since you two are two of the only people who know about covenant (and i’m sorry bud, your editorial sensibilities are going to have to put up with my stylistic lower caps) and since I’ve finally watched that shitshow of a most recent episode, I am totally down to talk about covenant.

but first let’s talk a little bit about TAG

TAG is terrible.

Visually the show is gorgeous. It has improved by leaps and bounds and it was charming when it started and it is awesome now. WETA are absolutely the bedrock of what makes this show worth watching, and I love the visuals more and more as they continue to push those boundaries. The cinnamontography, etc.

The Thunderbirds are amazing. They are beautiful, intricate, wonderfully clever machines. Their pilots ain’t half bad either. If you know and truly love the show and think about them all as well and deeply as they deserve, I think it’s impossible to honestly pick a favourite. International Rescue is a fantastic premise. The Tracys and their associates are all strong, compelling characters who have been iterated into an updated retro-future and made universally deeper and more interesting.

The bread and butter conceit of the show is awesome, the tension and conflict and creativity around solving complex problems that they manage to demonstrate in the course of a twenty-two minute episode sometimes just boggles the mind. When IR gets put up against the forces of nature and straight bad luck and pure, audacious dumbassery, we have gotten some of the best moments this show has to offer.

And those first season episodes were ugly as shit and everybody sounded the same and there were maybe three spare models between the entire NPC cast, but my GOD did S1 ever have heart. The soul of the show belongs to S1 and no one will change my mind about that. Try it. EOS was incredible. Skyhook was the definition of a balanced ensemble episode. Fireflash. Tunnels of Time. Relic. Recharge. Extraction. S2 came back swinging out of the gate with Ghost Ship. Up from the Depths was an absolute masterclass and actually changed the stakes in the show for the first time. Bolt from the Blue. Power Play. Hyperspeed. We all know which episodes were fucking good as hell. S3 comes out and the visuals have improved yet further. They have firmly found their feet as animators and as actors and as characters. We are finally actually starting to learn about these boys and their father, the most glaringly obvious hole in the show at large. Night and Day. Life Signs. And then SOS 1/2 and a complete and total paradigm shift. There is a sense of mortality to TAG now and it is an edge of realism that SHOULD be able to elevate it beyond what it’s been so far.

And yet.

TAG is fucking terrible.

Five years on, I am entitled to say, TAG is absolutely the goddamn worst sometimes, holy fucking shit. And what makes that terribleness terrible in and of itself—is that it’s because this show fails to recognize its most fundamental strengths. It fails to know what its audience will really connect to. And it’s because the writers’ room must be the goddamn wild west at this point, with the sort of nonsense these fucks are throwing at the wall and hoping to see it stick. It’s because whoever is in charge of the overall narrative arc of these seventy-odd episodes has not done what’s necessary to ensure TAG’s cohesion as a unified work.

(y’all hang onto your butts, i’m gonna do another brick wall metaphor.)

So what we have, five years on and seventy-odd episodes later, is a heap of bricks that WANT to be a wall, and we’re led to the impression that they’re SUPPOSED to be a wall, but they haven’t been put together by any single person. They have been put together by a rotating cast of a few dozen people who orient the bricks they’re given in slightly different ways sometimes, or who lay them at odd angles or who brought their own bricks from home for some reason. David Tennant is there. He must have cost at least half the budget for all of S2. All in all, he’s just another brick in the wall.

We know by this point that there is some asshole vaguely in charge of the idea of the wall. You can kind of tell that he’s at least heard of walls and he would definitely like to build one, but he isn’t exactly making it happen. There is an edifice here. It is wall-like, in some regions. At the end of the day though, most people who come across it also step over it, no problem. Or they chisel out the bricks that look to be worth saving and kick the rest of the wall over. That’s just fandom. That’s what fandom does.

Now, it is necessary at any point when talking about children’s media to talk about another series that ran three seasons over sixty-one episodes, and covered a level of geopolitical conflict over the course of a single year from the perspective of five incredibly gifted young people, all of whom were complex and flawed and sympathetic, and who knew they were responsible with putting the world to right with their own hands and set about doing that in the face of incredible odds, against villains who were no less than ruthlessly sociopathic.

ATLA sets a high bar. TAG was never going to be ATLA.

But fuck, I wish it had tried.

I wish the people who had set out to remake this story had sat down together and said, “Over the course of the next three seasons, we will tell the story of what International Rescue is. We will explain how it came to be. We will have strong themes that persist through the show and repeat themselves for emphasis: One Problem At A Time, You Can’t Save Everyone, Someone Has To Try. We will explain who these boys are and how they came to be this way. We will make it deeply and obviously clear what they do, how they do it, and why. We will give them limits. We will let them fail. We will give them flaws, we will let them clash with each other. We will let them grow and change. We will give them one deep, powerful loss that is the bedrock of what they became. We will put a powerful force in the world that loathes and opposes them at all costs. We will give them a tiny fragment of hope to chase and chase and chase and let them catch it only at the moment when they’v’e finally learned that they can let it go.”

I wish there had been rules. I wish there hadn’t been a new villain crammed into every season, in a show where the villains are objectively the weakest part. To add four villains to a show that barely has room for one and then to expect to make them ALL have a sympathetic edge somehow—it’s absolute fucking idiocy. I don’t care that The Hood is Kayo’s Uncle and Smiled In a Picture One Time. I don’t care that The Mechanic Is Apparently Being Mind Controlled Though No Indication Of That Was Given At Any Point in His History Until We Were Told So Explicitly. I don’t fucking CARE that Havoc Gets Yelled At By Her Boss Who Is Mean. I don’t give a shit that Fuse Is Apparently Too Stupid To Have Recognized The Moral Component Of Any Of His Criminal Acts Up Until He Inflicts Them On The Tracys.

You know which villains are objectively incredible in this show? Langstrom Fischler. Professor Harold. Francois Lemaire. Ned Fucking Tedford, who is a villain on the grounds that he is an obstacle, a problem to be solved, a concept of a person so hapless that they have multiple times strayed in the most incredible kind of peril. The strongest villains in this show are the ones who are just PEOPLE. People who are being careless. Or who are being greedy. Or who are being self-aggrandizing. People who exhibit traits equal and opposite to what our boys in blue exemplify.

I don’t know. We’re coming to the end of S3, we’re nearing their grand, incredible climax, this promised moment of potential reunion—and I wish I cared. I really wish I could. But there’s so much clutter. There’s so much their pulling DIRECTLY out of their asses in the home stretch. There are so many loose threads, there are so many concepts that were introduced and then never explored, or which were introduced in the end game and then never reinforced. There is so much information that we should have had from the start, so many mysteries that went unsolved and uncared about because they were unmentioned. There is not enough room for them to resolve anything in a meanignful way. There it so much that it seems like THEY didn’t know, and they SHOULD HAVE. They had time. Five fucking years, they had so much time to figure this out. And yet.

anyway.

So, covenant. Covenant basically a codeword for what I would’ve done differently, the last time I got mad about this whole endemic problem with the writing in this show, round about two years ago now.

Covenant is just a good word, really, and while it means something as a title, that relevance has kind of degraded a bit. It was going to be a rewrite of the end of Season 2, and sort of a retrofitting of Season 2 as a whole. It was going to explore the ideas that they put down and then never picked up, it was going to seriously address a lot of the core conflicts in the show and set things in motion to resolve those problems. I have it started. I have a good couple thousand words of the beginning, but it’s a good enough beginning that it could potentially begin something else, and so I won’t publish it here, in case I end up using it somewhere else. As is, it’s a priveleged-eyes-only sort of work, it’s only really been passed around my inner circle. If anyone is interested in hearing more about that, hit me up and I’ll elabourate. But for now, it is quarter past eleven, and I have ranted for long enough.

#TAG meta #negative #i mean if it's not apparent from the way I lead above the cut #admittedly I am being a clickbaity little shit #haters to the left tho please #to view media uncritically is to be a dumbass #don't @ me #scribeofred

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ducktracy · 4 years

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148. the coo-coo nut grove (1936)

release date: november 28th, 1936

series: merrie melodies

director: friz freleng

starring: peter lind hayes (ben birdie), bernice hansell (dionne quintuplets), tedd pierce (w.c. squeals), danny webb (walter windpipe), the rhythmettes, verna dean (additional voices)

the cartoon that caused katherine hepburn to watch it 4 times and clark gable twice. an amalgamation of celebrity caricatures, designs courtesy of the great t. hee. see laurel and hardy share a drink, clark gable flap his ears to the beat of edna may oliver’s dancing, w.c. fields (squeals) flirt with katherine heartburn hepburn, and so on.

a parody of the famed hollywood nightclub the cocoanut grove, we open to a beautiful overlayed pan of the coo-coo nut grove, a nightclub literally nestled in a cluster of coconut trees. the backgrounds are wonderfully stylistic and sharp—not quite art deco, but the same “newness” that page miss glory exuded so well. a zoom in reveals that the red blinking neon light advertising the nightclub is lit up by fireflies, an oldie but goodie.

arriving to the nightclub itself, we iris in on ben birdie, a caricature of radio personality ben bernie. while he’s giving his trademark catchphrases such as “yowza!”, a mouse caricature of journalist walter winchell pops out of a tuba, holding out a scallion for birdie. “flash! an orchid for you, old mousetrap, from your old pal walter windpipe!” birdie takes care of the pest by blowing into the mouthpiece of the tuba, propelling windpipe across the nightclub. bernie and winchell had a good relationship off the set, but assumed the rules of enemies on bernie’s show. side note, danny webb voices the winchell mouse—he’d go on to provide some background voices for a few 30s shorts, as well as voicing egghead (actually egghead, not elmer!) in daffy duck and egghead.

while birdie comments that it’s an ill wind, an ill wind, yowza, we get a good look of the patrons in the crowd. comedian hugh hubert is the first celebrity, who giggles and claps, bashfully averting his gaze. as a daffy duck aficionado, i owe a lot to hubert—he’s the one they voiced daffy’s trademark laugh after. thanks, hugh! the table next to him features w.c. squeals and katherine “heartburn” (an obvious play on hepburn.) squeals admires what a beautiful hand she has, promoting her to repeat the boulevardier from the bronx cackle bashfully before glaring at him in disgust. the laugh is more fitting as a horse, for sure! hepburn would be subject to MANY, MANY references in looney tunes shorts, primarily by tex avery. every time you hear a woman say something like “really it is,” that’s a hepburn impression.

next table over features a crotchety ned sparks, groveling “i go everywhere, i do everything, and i never have any fun.” sparks’ shtick was always playing a miserable, deadpan character. pan up to the coconut treetops (these backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous), where johnny weissmuller is pouring his wife and vedette lupe vélez a glass of wine. i love the bow tie tacked on to his tarzan garb, wonderfully tacky. instead of offering the glass, weissmuller downs it all in one go, beating his chest and doing the tarzan yell that buddy did in buddy of the apes. how i don’t miss you! i’m sure it’s implied, but weissmuller was the original tarzan. even more interesting, he was a gold medal olympic swimmer back in the 20s.

ben birdie introduces “the profile of profiling”, and thus sparks this lovely gag of john barrymore walking through the nightclub, his head at profile. no matter which way his body turns, his head is always at profile. eventually, his head is turned 180 degrees backwards as he sits down at a table. if you look him up, you’ll find that many of his headshots are profiles.

elsewhere, we spot a panicked woman running from some unknown threat. her face is concealed, so we’re unaware as to what caricature she is, but we DO know her pursuer: a bird caricature of harpo marx, galloping behind her and honking a horn. his hat opens to reveal an extending stop sign, and harpo pretends to pull the brakes. the sign switches to go, and harpo shifts back into gear, resuming his galloping routine. the animation is flighty, loose, hilarious, and ridiculous.

back to ben birdie, who moves things along. “and now, let us indulge to a bit of the light fantastic, etcetera, etcetera.” almost immediately, a crowd of couples get up to dance. it seems to me that the animation was reused from another freleng cartoon, i’m a big shot now. cut to another couple in particular, a turtle george arliss and bird mae west. a great pair, seeing as mae west was essentially a sex symbol, and george arliss was much older, being 68 as of 1936. very smooth and fun animation, topped off with west affirming “keep up the good work.”

another warner bros favorite to caricature—laurel and hardy. if my memory serves me correctly, this is the first time we see hardy caricatured as a pig. in many a cartoon, he’d be portrayed as such, often mimicked by porky. these include (but are not limited to) the case of the stuttering pig, you ought to be in pictures (a freleng classic), and the timid toreador. hardy grabs a coconut and signals for laurel to share. they both put their straws in the coconut and drink, and essentially swap themselves. hardy substantially loses weight and turns into laurel, whereas laurel gains substantial weight and turns into hardy. very clever.

the next act features edna may oliver, who does an elaborate dance routine to “the lady in red”. clark gable in the audience is particularly entranced, flapping his ears to the music (another gable caricature staple.) leon schlesinger himself said after the cartoon’s release, “gable [came to see the film] at least twice, mesmerized by the rhythmic waving of his own ears. that ought to answer any questions about can hollywood stars take it.” schlesinger kept close tabs on who came to see his films, which only makes sense: he worked at chicago’s colonial theater in 1908, keeping an autograph book of all the stars who would happen to visit. during oliver’s dance number, a lanky, rubber hose limbed gary cooper struts through the nightclub, doing his walk that he would feature in many of his cartoons. a trio of monkeys observe from the treetops, one of them declaring “he’s pixilated!”

next dance number is none other than the dionne quintuplets, voiced by (who else?) berneice hansell, singing a medley of “our old man” and “what’s the matter with father”. hansell’s voice talents are lovely and hilarious as always, and there’s a great little dance interlude as the quints turn around and tap their feet with their butts in the air. just in case you forgot they were babies! by this time, the quintuplets, only 2 years old, already had a movie made about them in early 1936 called “the country doctor”.

back to johnny weissmuller and lupe vélez, who are applauding the act from the treetops. a great scene as weissmuller spots a mouse skittering right by their table and shrieks. the great, mighty tarzan faints at the sight, and vélez instead does her own tarzan cry, grabbing her cowardly husband and swinging across a vine as the mouse skitters under the table.

back to the mysterious running woman pursued by harpo marx. harpo tackles her, and the woman finally reveals herself to be none other than groucho marx! this gag would be much more notably reused in tex avery’s *hollywood steps out, with clark gable pursuing groucho instead of harpo. i like the inclusion of harpo, it makes the reveal all the more disturbing. harpo, appalled, dashes out of the nightclub while groucho grins.

the next scene is a more somber mood. teardrops rain on the grass, and a slow pan reveals a tearful helen morgan singing “the little things you used to do”, perched on a piano and wringing a handkerchief. the animation is quite good, with lots subtle head tilts. wallace beery is particularly moved by the music. so moved, in fact, that he grabs a nearby banana hanging from a bunch, squirts out a line on a butter knife like a line of toothpaste, and shoves the knife in his mouth to cope with his heart strings being pulled. harpo marx is also moved, using a windshield wiper from his multipurpose hat to wipe away his tears. edward g. robinson and george raft aren’t particularly moved, chuffing on a cigar and flipping a coin respectively. that is, until, they both break down in sobs and embrace each other—a great mood change and great way to totally shatter the “tough guy” act. i believe raft was also caricatured in ali-baba bound as flipping a coin with his foot (eugh).

now, the nightclub is totally afloat, caricatures sitting on their tables as the ground is submerged in tears. slowly, the tables begin to drift away in the current, with the george arliss turtle rowing along, using his shell as a boat. and with that, ben birdie signs off.

while this cartoon is dated, sure, i think it’s a cartoon you can enjoy, regardless if you understand the references or not. i certainly didn’t know a good 35% of the caricatures, and had to look them up. but i truly believe that’s part of the fun of it though, and that’s why i love these caricature-centric shorts. you get to explore and really get hands on, you get to research, you get to learn something new. i sure didn’t know that george arliss was born in 1868, and i find that fascinating! i didn’t know that ben bernie and walter winchell played enemies on bernie’s show, but now i do. it’s fascinating! and that’s in part why i love doing these reviews. no matter what, there is always something new to learn. and besides, if anything, you can laugh and admire how the caricatures are drawn, and the backgrounds are just superb. this is definitely a visual centric cartoon, and it constitutes a watch for that alone. i prefer hollywood steps out myself, but this is a good entry, especially for 1936. i say go for it!

link!

#lt #the coo-coo nut grove #reviews #looney tunes #long post #freleng

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two-are-the-trees · 5 years

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31 Days of Poe Day 9: “Ligeia”

“Ligeia” is such a classic Poe story, even though I feel that it isn’t talked about as often as some of his other works. It’s absolutely haunting and it has so much of the deep melancholy, tragic beauty, slow building terror and vivid descriptions that distinguish Poe’s writing. It’s a mysterious tale that relies much more on emotion and mood than plot, giving us a look into the troubled psyche of grief and the strange passion which stems from idolization.

The story begins as the narrator describes his first wife, Ligeia, and his intense adoration for her. He notes her exquisite beauty and his fascination with her appearance, which stems from her face being “imperfect” and unique compared to other, milder beauties. He is drawn in by the strangeness about Ligeia, both physically and mentally as she is also an accomplished scholar in antiquities and language. She dazzles her husband in ways he cannot fully explain… that is, until she begins to rapidly decline in health. It’s made clear that she is going to die, devastating the narrator. Both he and Ligeia fight for her life, as they want to remain together, however after a bitter struggle with her illness, Ligeia succumbs. Destroyed by grief, the narrator seeks a change of scenery and a new wife, hoping to alleviate his woes. It seems that perhaps he can move on from his terrible loss, but strange occurrences and the sudden illness of his new bride signal that all is not well.

One of the most striking parts about “Ligeia” is Ligeia herself. Poe provides lengthy and specific descriptions about each part of her face, from her strong, straight nose to her high forehead to her luscious raven hair. The picture he paints is one of lofty and elite beauty, but also always mixed with something a little off or intimidating. Her forehead is “faultless,” implying some kind of unattainable perfection. Her smile is not just white but startlingly so, glaring as she smiles. Her eyes are brilliantly black and carry an expression that the narrator cannot place; “How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it!” Ligeia is an absolute enigma, and yet this is all part of her appeal. Poe emphasizes the sublime and the uncanny throughout this entire story and it begins with Ligeia; there is something unnerving about her and yet this unique aspect and the thrill that it gives the narrator only adds to her beauty.

Later in the story, Poe again sets the mood with the sublime and the uncanny when describing the narrator’s new home in the refurbished abbey. Though the narrator attempts to give some cheer to the abbey with elaborate décor of gold and bright colors, the true nature of the abbey manages to show itself. The ceilings are high and cold and the severe gothic architecture gives everything a gloomy atmosphere. The tinted glass windows throw strange, pale light into the chambers and in each corner, elaborately carved, grotesque figures lurk from the shadows. Even one of the large tapestries in the bridal chamber seems to take on a different form in the abbey, as from far away, the exotic figures woven onto it look monstrous and the constant drafts that sweep through the abbey move the tapestry in a way to make the figures look disturbingly animated. This setting is fantastical in its strangeness and dark beauty and seems to serve as a further reminder of Ligeia rather than an escape from her.

Would I recommend “Ligeia?” Yes, yes, yes! This is the kind of thing we all know and love from Poe; its brooding and dark and strange and yet always with an underlying hint of beauty and fascination that pulls us in to the very end. There are also a ton of potential interpretations regarding the end of the story and many wonderfully rich passages to dig into for analysis. Please read this one if you haven’t and I think you’ll find another tale akin in mood to “Anabelle Lee” or “The Raven.”

For more analysis (which contains spoilers!!!) please read below the cut!

The ending of Ligeia is certainly one of the more baffling conclusions in Poe’s line up, however, I feel that there are probably dozens of ways to read Ligeia’s resurrection and all of them would be equally fascinating. I’m going to focus on the two that I personally find the most interesting, one being very metaphorical and one being sort of literal.

The first of these two readings is obviously about the haunting aspect of grief. Throughout the story, Ligeia’s captivating appearance and personality enthralls the narrator to the point of obsession. He reveres her like a goddess and the thought of her death sends him into incomprehensible depths of sorrow. Even with his attempts to move on from his loss and find a new life away from his memories of Ligeia, there was no way he was ever going to be successful in such an endeavor. It’s exactly as he described, her beauty and her mind were unlike any others, and even finding a new wife could not come close to matching his memory of Ligeia. The narrator even admits to acting cruelly and coldly towards his new wife, Rowena, simply for the fact that she is not his true love. The abbey itself reflects his inability to let go of Ligeia. His new decorations of vivid color and splendor, perhaps a representation of his new wife, cannot hide the severe beauty of the abbey’s architecture. The wind that cuts through his new home and distorts his tapestry to make it appear monstrous and uncanny serves as an unsettling reminder that he cannot escape the uncanny beauty of Ligeia. This is why, when Rowena seemingly comes back to life in the end and lets her burial wrappings fall, it is Ligeia who appears resurrected rather than his second wife. In the narrator’s obsessed psyche, Ligeia will never truly be able to die; her memory will haunt him forever.

The second reading, which I have seen appear more often in recent years, is that Ligeia represents the traditional idea of a vampire. Her appearance speaks for itself; she has an aristocratic look about her (vampires were often written as analogies for the aristocracy) and she is strikingly pale with a severe contrast between her skin and her deep black hair. She also has mesmerizing eyes with an unknowable expression, perhaps a link to the idea that vampires had the power to hypnotize their victims. Most glaringly of all, however, her teeth are emphasized as being excessively white and noticeable (shining fangs anyone?). Ligeia also has extensive knowledge of language, especially ancient languages, implying that this is perhaps not her first lifetime and that she may be a more ancient being than she lets on. This would also explain her ability to resurrect herself, as vampires cannot ever truly die of natural causes and are considered the “living dead.” So, why does it matter if Ligeia is a vampire? Well she may not be sucking the blood from the narrator, but she is still sapping something from him; his devotion and passion. Much in the same way that vampires draw in their victims in order to drain them of life, so too does Ligeia capture the narrator with her unique beauty, causing him to idolize her to the point of unparalleled affection and devotion. In this way, we can see the narrator’s inability to escape from the haunting memory of Ligeia as more clearly unhealthy and ultimately terrifying to him in a way that he cannot understand.

So, what do y’all think? Is there any credence to the similarities between Ligeia and vampires? Is this a tragic love story or a cautionary tale about the strength of passion? What interpretation do you have for Ligeia’s return? If you have something to add, please comment on this post or send me an ask! You can also use the tag #31daysofpoe to write your own response post!

#31daysofpoe #edgar allan poe #gothic literature #gothic #halloween

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thesublemon · 4 years

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Favorite movies/tv shows of 2019, and why? (Also, I really like your posts and hope you post more stuff!

Thanks so much! More posts are incoming. And sorry for taking so very long to answer this.

To be honest, I don’t watch a ton of contemporary stuff. I tend to think it’s healthier to take advantage of the great wealth of great art (or weird-but-interesting art) made in all time periods than to focus on keeping up with the present. Not that I don’t watch any contemporary things, I just don’t prioritize it in any way. So this list isn’t based on me watching everything and then picking out the best. It’s based on me watching a few things and liking some of them. But I hope that even if this list isn’t any more interesting than a list of awards ceremony nominations, I might at least have something worthwhile to say about the things in question.

Recent TV:

(I’m cheating and including TV from 2017-2019 that I watched in the last year or two, or else the list would be pretty boring and short.)

Succession (2018-present) - Maybe my favorite of the shows on this list, which is surprising to me because it’s not the kind of show I normally like. I don’t tend to care about rich people being mean to each other, or art that is glossily timely. I don’t get off on seeing the private dramas of powerful, immoral people. What I like about Succession is the sense of fragility and desperation that infuses it. It’s about the human desire for these stable institutions—families, kings, corporations—and whether or not they’re actually stable, and whether or not they should be destabilized. The whole thing is just a wonderfully rich text that has been made with a lot of craft. It’s nice to know that there are people making art that is very much about the present, and has something interesting to say about it.

Fleabag (2016-present) - The second season has gotten a lot of deserved praise, so I’m not going to dwell on its merits. It’s a complex and often moving exploration of the nature of love, whether romantic, familial, physical or divine. What makes it a truly “mature” artistic work is the way that it knows what it’s about from the very beginning (“this is a love story”) and complicates that aboutness in every single episode. It’s actually interesting to compare to the first season, which lacks the same maturity. The first season is still worth watching, but it doesn’t really become clear what it’s about until the last second, when Fleabag gives her monologue in the cafe. You keep waiting for it to get to the point, instead of having a repeated sense of anticipation about the point and accompanying satisfaction every time the point-shoe drops.

Killing Eve (2018-present) - Solid entertainment. Had a bit too much of the “contemporary TV aesthetic” for me to really love. But I’d missed genuine originality and clever writing in thriller-type stories. So it’s got that going for it. (Trying to actually define the “contemporary TV aesthetic” is a problem for another post).

unREAL (2015-2018) - I only watched the first season, and don’t feel a need to watch the rest. People tell me the subsequent seasons aren’t very good anyhow. But it was doing some interesting things. Things to do with femininity, authenticity, performance and love, and the degree to which they interfere with each other. I’m planning on talking about it a bit more in a subsequent post, along with Fleabag and the movie Weekend.

Sharp Objects (2018) - Mainly watched this and unREAL because I wrote so much about Buffy season six in the last year, and I was curious about Marti Noxon’s other shows (She was the main showrunner for that season, and you can definitely tell. Unhealthy relationships, mental illness in women, rough sex, and ideas of performance seem to show up in a lot of her stuff.). She has an interesting tendency to choose “trashy” subjects, but with a refreshingly non-cute approach to the (mostly-heterosexual) female id that I respond to. I keep trying to figure out what quality Sharp Objects had that other recent art about “women being and feeling fucked up in an artistically exaggerated way” didn’t have. Things like Midsommar, The Favourite, or Gone Girl. None of which I liked. And I think it comes down to that lack of cuteness. Watching a female protagonist furtively masturbate over the memory of a murder-shack in a way that’s not about fetishizing her? Either for a male or female or political audience? It’s weirdly satisfying.

Euphoria (2019-present) - Only watched the first four episodes or so, and probably won’t watch the rest. But it was interesting to me as a pretty successful attempt to be blatantly zeitgeisty. I like its vision of contemporary life as something full of hyperstimulus (“euphoria,” get it?). Whether that’s the hyperstimulus of porn, love, attention, validation, or actual drugs. It didn’t seem to be a reactionary condemnation of all of the above, more just a depiction of it, but since I didn’t watch the whole thing I can’t comment on its attitude with certainty.

The Vietnam War (2017) - Excellent Ken Burns as usual. I appreciated the variety of perspectives he interviewed, and I appreciated the episode dedicated to Vietnam’s history before the war started. If there’s one thing that American schools suck at teaching about the Vietnam War, it’s the Vietnamese side of things. I’m not a historian so I can’t comment on how good the history in the series is. I’m sure there are important criticisms to make of it, and like all Ken Burns documentaries he uses emotional tactics to tell the story that can at times feel manipulative in a bad way. But as someone who always wanted a more in-depth, multi-sided understanding of the Vietnam War, but didn’t know where to start, I was very glad to have watched it.

Black Sails (2014-2017) - Still haven’t seen the last season. But after watching I was honestly surprised I hadn’t heard more people talking about it. Or maybe that’s just my fault for not keeping up with mainstream writing about culture. It had some fascinating themes about the nature and fragility of civilization, and I think it would be interesting to compare to Succession on that front. Black Sails features characters on the outskirts of society. Whereas Succession features characters at the center of society. But both are about the desperation for stability that leads people to make societies—and disrupt societies—in the first place.

Recent movies:

(Sticking just to 2019 this time)

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood - What I liked about this movie is that it felt like a movie. I left it feeling like I’d had a big old cineplex experience. Which was fitting, because the movie itself was about the big artificiality of film. Throughout, there is this contrast between real violence, and movie violence, and who has an understanding of them. Cliff Booth, as a stuntperson, has a “real” relationship to violence, while Rick Dalton, as an actor, does not. Cliff can cut through a cult’s fakeness, and knows to turn aside an offer of underage sex. But although Dalton does not understand authenticity, he does understand fakeness. The point of the teenage terrorists in the final act is that none of them understand either authenticity or fakeness. They don’t get that violence is real, and they don’t get that movies are fake, which leads them to being destroyed by their own movie-inspired violence. In typical Tarantino form, the movie does have a smug-feeling nyah-nyah attitude about this theme, a feeling of “you idiot loser generation, you don’t get the seriousness of violence and you also don’t get that movies are fucking fun.” But it was a theme I found interesting nonetheless.

Apollo 11 - Unequivocally loved the cinematography. Just completely aesthetically compelling to me on every level. I would have have watched an entire Koyannisqatsi devoted to it. But I feel sort of weird saying that I liked Apollo 11 as an example of contemporary movie-making, since all of that footage I loved was shot in 1969. Still, the contemporary aspect—ie, the editing—did a good job as well. Mostly because it gave the impression of staying out of the way, even though it must have been a significant effort to select and organize the footage. As well as doing animations, titling, etc. I liked that the patriotism and mythology of it was mostly just conveyed via actual soundbites from the time. And that the competent chatter of scientists was given much greater weight. I watched Free Solo the other day, a climbing documentary from 2018, and I liked it for similar reasons—the fact that the presentation gave the impression of staying out of the way of the content, despite being obviously edited.

Parasite - Pretty understandable to me that it just won Best Picture, since it’s one of the few movies from the last year that knew exactly what it was about and how to do it, and did it with unpretentious panache. I appreciated its highly cinematic use of imagery. Say, the contrast between the concrete architecture on the upper and lower levels of society— how in the upper level it’s high art, and on the lower level it’s an inhumane prison. Or the way that characters keep visually crossing lines. I was actually pretty relieved to see that Joon-ho made this movie, because I hated Snowpiercer, and kept thinking it would have been a thousand times better if it was a thousand times less metaphorical and just depicted a real-world instance of inequality in a heightened, artistic way. Which is exactly what Parasite is. In fact, I think it would be interestingly instructive to explore why Parasite succeeded in creating iconic-feeling metaphors for social inequality where Snowpiercer failed. I also appreciated its basic vision of inequality as something symbiotic, and therefore systemic, rather than a matter of mere oppression. You find yourself asking more interesting questions about how to deal with systems when you acknowledge that systems are systems, even absurd and mutable systems, in the first place. Where I think Parasite was weakest was in the pace of the storytelling. I felt myself repeatedly getting ahead of it—eg, once you realize the brother is going to get the sister a job, you’re just waiting for the movie to finish up situating the mother and father as well. Whereas I think the strongest storytelling is perfectly aware of when the audience will start anticipating something, and uses that anticipation to create complications and surprise.

An incomplete list of some other things I watched in 2019 below the cut…

Movies that I watched for the first time and liked a lot:

Brink of Life (1958), Abigail’s Party (1977), Vigil (1984), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Resolution (2012) / The Endless (2017), Jungle Fever (1991), Festen (1998)

Movies I saw for the first time that did things I found interesting:

The Devil’s Playground (1976), Skin Game (1971), The Reflecting Skin (1990), Straight Time (1978), Late Spring (1949), Iceman (1984), Hideous Kinky (1998), Bad Company (1972), Gozu (2003), Spring (2014), Jamón Jamón (1992), eXistenZ (1999), Bull Durham (1988), Carrie (1976), Swiss Army Man (2016), Tully (2018)

Movies I saw for the first time that I’d have to write specific pros and cons for:

Cape Fear (1991), Fury (2014), Cruel Intentions (1999), White Men Can’t Jump (1992), Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse (2018), The Deer Hunter (1978), Jennifer’s Body (2009), It (2017), The Favourite (2018)

Movies I rewatched and still loved:

Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Ring (2002), Do The Right Thing (1989), F for Fake (1973), Tampopo (1985), Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), Broadcast News (1987), Tangerine (2015), Weekend (2011), Conspiracy (2001), Bicycle Thieves (1948), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Thing (1982), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), The Hunger Games series (2012-2015)

Movies I rewatched and didn’t like as much:

Clue (1985), Before Midnight (2013), Vertigo (1958), Anchorman (2004)

#posts: art #asks

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tarithenurse · 5 years

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Stranded - 2 of 2 (or 3)

Pairing: Loki Odinson x fem!reader Content: A bit of drama, but mostly fluff. Some errors due to lack of proof reading. A/N: So people liked the original (see Masterlist) and asked for more though I’d meant for it to be a one-shot…and then I thought: why not? There will be one more part after this if you guys are interested, other wise I’ll let this be the last.

Pacing back and forth, Loki only listens half-heartedly to the nonsensical babble of his friends. Lady Sif is entertaining Thor and the Warriors Three with her latest news from the training of the newest guard – she had assisted Tyr in a mock battle which he and his team had lost.

“Loki?” the victorious warrior call out.

The long strides carries the prince in question to the door where he has to turn around. “Yes, marvellous. Well done, lady Sif.”

Raucous laughter finally causes Loki to pause.

“Oh, brother mine,” the deepest voice hollers, “your thoughts are so far astray a skirmish may break out and you would not notice.”

Fandral, at least, finds a smidgen of compassion. “Is it the fate of the Midgardian that troubles you?”

There is understanding to be found despite the mirthful twinkle in his eyes and Loki admits to the worries. The Midgardian has been called before the All-Father, interrupting the stroll through the gardens that she and the raven-haired prince were enjoying after lunch. The two of them spend nigh all their waking hours in the company of each other as though each day is the last, they have together – it may as well be because lady [Y/N] is bound to return to her homeworld sooner rather than later.

Always. A word spoken so easily, taking their willing hearts captive. But always and forever will end eventually, Loki knows, as his father is ill-inclined to allow the use of Bifrost for the youngest son to travel to and from Midgard once [Y/N] has returned to a home she has no longing for.

“But this is simple!” Despite Volstag’s enthusiasm, the rest of the chamber’s occupants wait silently for him to elaborate. “If you cannot go to her then she must stay here.”

Loki frowns. “As much as I would love this, we all know how Odin’s attitu–“

“Yes, yes!” Fandral picks up on his friend’s idea. “A young maiden can easily be disguised among the people of Asgard or Vanaheim for a while until the All-Father’s attention has shifted and he has forgotten about the foreigner –”

“– at which point the young prince conveniently forgets the cause of his broken heart when he finds a new love,” Volstag completes, the two friends beaming.

… Reader …

You had decided with yourself on the very first night in Asgard that you like Frigga. The queen is kind, smart, and wonderfully wise to the point where you’re beginning to suspect that she’s got a lot more to say in terms of the affair of the kingdom than she officially is supposed to. Right now that’s a good thing. Sitting face to face with king Odin all on your own would have been nerve wrecking (the guard in full armour and with a fabulous but rather lethal looking spear might not help either) so you’re thankful for Frigga’s presence.

I wish Loki was here. It’s not the first time the thought presents itself during the audience, but you try your best to keep calm. This is about him too, though. Odin is ignoring that detail quite brilliantly, however, as he talks about your future without pausing for you to get a word in.

The thing is: as a so-called Midgardian, you’re not supposed to have come to Asgard at all. Now that you happen to be there, the quasi-mythological ruler is worried if other people might suddenly pop up from either Earth or anywhere else, really, and as you haven’t been able to explain how you managed the trip…well, it’s hard to put that concern to rest. The next point that Odin wants to discuss (or rather, monologue) is how you were to handle the knowledge you now have of Valhalla and the “realm” once you do return home. At this point, you take a risk by interrupting the old god to promise that of course you wouldn’t say anything to anyone, and at least Frigga supports you (and further adds that no one would believe you anyways which hurts but is true). Odin? Not convinced.

A song you can’t quite remember enough of keeps bouncing around in your brain: Should I stay or should I go now…unfortunately, you can’t recall more of it so it only adds to your frustration. Seeking Frigga’s gaze, you’re seconds away from losing your temper.

“Perhaps, then, we must consider the simpler of two options?” Frigga winks quickly at you, making sure her husband doesn’t see. “It appears to me the best solution would be to have [Y/N] stay. I am certain that she can make herself useful, and although it will be hard to leave everything behind…it time, she might find happiness here?”

You don’t dare to say anything or even breathe as you wait for Odin to make up his mind.

Tugging softly at the beard, the king mumbles to himself. “It would eliminate the risk of the wrong people obtaining any information, exploiting it…”

“Indeed, dear husband.” Frigga has clearly counselled like this before. “Of course…accommodating lady [Y/N] need not be your concern. Such trivial matters could be dealt with by, say, Loki?”

The beard gets an extra tug before the god lights up with a smile, his eye nearly disappearing between the wrinkles. “He has taken quite an interest in you, has he not?” For a second, you recognize Thor in that face.

“Y-yes, your highness, prince Loki-i is very uhmm kind to me.” Nooo, why do I have to stammer?!

“So it shall be,” Odin declares with a grand gesture, “you must remain here...or on Vanaheim if that is more agreeable. Loki will be informed of this and he shall be in charge of your settlement.”

To his right, Frigga winks again, a mischievous smile at the corner of her mouth. “Do not worry, dear girl, I will be delighted to ensure everything is fine.”

It’s clear the audience is over and you get up, making sure to bow (which makes the king guffaw quietly) and thank them both before you rush out.

Every cell of you is aching for Loki with the exception of your braincells that are working overtime to make sense of what just happened. I’m staying? Odin never asked what you wanted and maybe he knew already from the queen whom you’ve talked a lot with about your home and the situation there, but it still feels odd to have someone else make a decision on your behalf as though it isn’t actually your life at all. But…I wanna stay. Pausing briefly next to a statue of a stern-looking Viking, you feel the warmth of the golden metal reflected in your chest and stomach. Yeah, staying feels right. For a moment, you bask in the soothing serenity that everything only can get better from now on.

But…what if…? A new wave of disastrous possibilities rise to engulf you, drown out the joy. Fighting the tide is useless as you own mocking voice pokes fun at you and questions everything you might just have gained. What if Loki doesn’t really want you around? Or if he does, for how long then? A simple “Midgardian” really can’t hold his interest for very long, the sing-song voice in your skull jeers.

A strong arm wraps around your shoulder, bulging muscles squeezing a bit too tight for comfort as they pull you into the shadows behind the golden statue. Too surprised to say anything, you automatically follow the order to remain quiet whispered by a deep voice.

Thor peers at you with gleaming eyes. “Lady [Y/N],” the whisper sounds like a distant rumble of thunder, “do not be alarmed.”

Easy for you to say! The heart is stuck in your throat, hammering frantically. “Oo-kay?”

… Loki …

Urging the stead out of the stables, the young prince resigns to the fact that he will not have a chance to double-check the hastily packed supplies - at the very least the trip to Vanaheim should not last more than a few days, though, now that any official passages are out of the picture.

Loki lingers for a few seconds, looking wistfully at the golden-capped towers of Valhalla before he spurs the horse into a gallop out of the city.

Leaving has never been this hard before. He knows he will return, forced to keep up the charade until the All-Father has forgotten the incident of the Midgardian intruder, but in this very moment, he has left the fate of his true love in the hands of his friends.

The plan is simple. Loki will wait until the cover of darkness at which point Fandral will smuggle [Y/N] out of the castle. Thor will stay behind to distract their father and mother, however in case that is not enough then Lady Sif, Hogun, and Volstag will remain as well to give credibility to any scenario established to throw the king (and potentially Heimdal) off the tracks.

The raven-haired prince prefers to leave with his sweetheart (and argued vehemently for this until Sif commented that he would be the first to be kept under observation as soon as Odin’s mind was made up). No, it will be better that he already is out of sight, and as he is needed to navigate the hidden paths between realms, then this is the only other option.

…

No rest for the wicked. Anxiously pacing around and around the same tree, Loki’s mind is a mess and his guts are filled with alternatingly lead and butterflies. There has been no comfort in the company of his steed as the animal has found a patch of sorrel collecting the evening dew. Now the last bird sings goodnight, ending its tune on a soft twirdle that echoes through the dusk before stilling.

The shadows grow deep. Loki’s horse decides it is time to settle in for the night, rubbing the saddle that lies on the ground into position before lying down with its head upon the embossed leather. The man walking in circles find no rest.

When a light finally can be seen, moving between the trees as a glowing orb entrenched by sharp teeth of darkness, Loki’s heart stops. One horse. He supposes it shouldn’t surprise him. Do Midgardians ride horses nowadays? A tentative breath makes room for normal breathing until he realizes that the single horse only has no rider while merely a single shape walks beside it. Fandral…where is [Y/N]? It is as though a bottomless crevasse open before Loki’s feet, invisible currents trying to pull him in, making him stagger as he steps forward to wards the blond man.

“Where is she?” Loki is aware how his voice shakes, but it does not matter. “Has Odin sent her away already?”

The mischievousness beneath the gentle smile is similar to Loki’s own, yet he cannot abide the sight of it and nearly looses his temper before Fandral finally answers. “As surprising as it may be, our carefully laid plan turns out to be unnecessary for a different reason. Come, my friend.”

… Reader …

You’re steaming with indignation, but thankfully for your surroundings a sense of appreciation for the (misplaced) helpfulness is creeping in…or maaaybe it’s the abashed apologies on repeat from Thor.

He’d scared the life half out of you when he grabbed you, and pretty spot on compared to the myths the guy had carried on with the “plan” without listening to any of the objections launched at him with an increasing amount of violence. Admittedly, your fists probably weren’t the worst pain he’s imagined through his life. It wasn’t until you’d been brought to the rest of the gang that you get a word in, stopping the outrageous escapade.

“We truly were just trying to –“

“I know!” You interrupt Thor a bit harsher than intended. Oops. “I know and I…I’m thankful…it’s just…” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose for a moment, “perhaps it’s best to ask next time if the help is needed?”

The blond warrior slash god has the decency to agree before making himself scarce to see if someone elsewhere needs any help.

Left alone, you finally have a chance to look around the room. It’s not your own but Loki’s and although you’ve been in there before, it’s the first time you really have the time to look around – or more correctly, it’s the first time you’re not being distracted by Loki in all his kind and brainy splendor.

…

Mesmerized by one of the few books you can actually read (honestly, you’d just wanted a peek to see what sort of literature the god likes) the sound of running footsteps barely manage to register with you before the door is slammed open to reveal a dishevelled Loki in front with a Fandral and Thor behind (both looking appropriately apologetic, still).

“[Y/N]…”

The silver tongued prince is rarely in lack of the right thing to say and you would have felt smug about it if it wasn’t for the desperation in his eyes. Large, roaming your face and shape in sign of any sign of distress before they light up with the intensity of a winter’s sun, stealing your breath away and making your knees go soft. An impractical change as you’ve just stood up. But of course, within a split second he’s there, practically sweeping you off your feet and into a lover’s embrace, lips meeting soft and hungry.

When next you become aware of your surroundings, it’s nice to see that the door has been closed to provide the two of you with some privacy.

“I thought…” Loki’s breath fans your cheek and neck. “If only I had dared to imagine father would let you stay…”

Pulling back slightly to kiss his nose, you share the anxious shiver of what could have been. “Your mom probably had something to do with it, to be fair.”

“I shall be sure to thank her.” He is somehow able to lift you and carry you to the bed without getting tangled in the dress you’d been told to wear today by a maid, and for a second it’s like you’re a real princess. “My love.” The plush mattress rises to hold you instead as the gentleman of a god kneels before you. “I could not stand the risk of losing you, not now and not ever…”

Waaaaait a second…

“I have no token to offer you in this moment as a symbol of my undying love, yet I must ask…” At this point you’re certain you feel your brain implode. “Will you take me as your husband?”

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grigori77 · 4 years

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2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD – while I love Disney and Pixar as much as the next movie nut, since the Millennium my loyalty has been slowly but effectively usurped by the consistently impressive (but sometimes frustratingly underappreciated) output of Dreamworks Animation Studios, and in recent years in particular they really have come to rival the House of Mouse in both the astounding quality of their work and their increasing box office reliability. But none of their own franchises (not even Shrek or Kung Fu Panda) have come CLOSE to equalling the sheer, unbridled AWESOMENESS of How to Train Your Dragon, which started off as a fairly loose adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s popular series of children’s stories but quickly developed a very sharp mind of its own – the first two films were undisputable MASTERPIECES, and this third and definitively FINAL chapter in the trilogy matches them to perfection, as well as capping the story off with all the style, flair and raw emotional power we’ve come to expect. The time has come to say goodbye to diminutive Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, as effortlessly endearing as ever) and his adorable Night Fury mount/best friend Toothless, fiancée Astrid (America Ferrera, still tough, sassy and WAY too good for him), mother Valka (Cate Blanchett, classy, wise and still sporting a pretty flawless Scottish accent) and all the other Dragon Riders of the tiny, inhospitable island kingdom of Berk – their home has become overpopulated with scaly, fire-breathing denizens, while a trapper fleet led by the fiendish Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham delivering a wonderfully soft-spoken, subtly chilling master villain) is beginning to draw close, prompting Hiccup to take up his late father Stoick (Gerard Butler returning with a gentle turn that EASILY prompts tears and throat-lumps) the Vast’s dream of finding the fabled “Hidden World”, a mysterious safe haven for dragon-kind where they can be safe from those who seek to do them harm. But there’s a wrinkle – Grimmel has a new piece of bait, a female Night Fury (or rather, a “Light Fury”), a major distraction that gets Toothless all hot and bothered … returning writer-director Dean DeBlois has rounded things off beautifully with this closer, giving loyal fans everything they could ever want while also introducing fresh elements such as intriguing new environments, characters and species of dragons to further enrich what is already a powerful, intoxicating world for viewers young and old (I particularly love Craig Ferguson’s ever-reliable comic relief veteran Viking Gobber’s brilliant overreactions to a certain adorably grotesque little new arrival), and like its predecessors this film is just as full of wry, broad and sometimes slightly (or not so slightly) absurd humour and deep down gut-twisting FEELS as it is of stirring, pulse-quickening action sequences and sheer, jaw-dropping WONDER, so it’s as nourishing to our soul as it is to our senses. From the perfectly-pitched, cheekily irreverent opening to the truly devastating, heartbreaking close, this is EXACTLY the final chapter we’ve always dreamed of, even if it does hurt to see this most beloved of screen franchises go. It’s been a wild ride, and one that I think really does CEMENT Dreamworks’ status as one of the true giants of the genre …

9. TERMINATOR: DARK FATE – back in 1984, James Cameron burst onto the scene with a stone-cold PHENOMENON, a pitch-perfect adrenaline-fuelled science fiction survival horror that spawned a million imitators but has never truly been equalled. Less than a decade later, he revisited that universe with a much bigger and far bolder vision, creating an epic action adventure that truly changed blockbuster cinema for the better (or perhaps worse, depending on how you want to look at it), but, with its decidedly final, full-stop climax, also effectively rendered itself sequel-proof. Except that Hollywood had other ideas, the unstoppable money machine smelling potential profit and deciding to milk this particular cash cow for all it was worth – on the small screen, it was the impressive but ultimately intrinsically limited Sarah Connor Chronicles, while on the big screen they cranked out THREE MORE sequels, Sony Pictures starting with straightforward retread Rise of the Machines and following with post-apocalyptic marmite movie Salvation, while Twentieth Century Fox then tried a sort-of soft reboot follow-up to T2 in Genisys. These were all interesting in their own way (personally, I like them all, particularly Salvation), but ultimately suffered from diminishing returns and whiffed strongly of trying too hard without quite getting the point. Cameron himself had long since washed his hands of the whole affair, and it looked like that might well be it … but then Skydance Productions founder David Ellison thought up a new take to breathe much needed new life into the franchise, and enlisted Cameron’s help to usher it in properly, with Deadpool director Tim Miller the intriguing but ultimately inspired choice to helm the project. The end result wisely chooses to paint right over all the pretenders, kicking off right where Judgement Day left off, and as well as Cameron being heavily involved in the story itself, draws another ace with the long-awaited ON-SCREEN return of Linda Hamilton in the role that’s pretty much defined her career, hardboiled survivor Sarah Connor. I’ll leave the details of her return for newcomers to discover, suffice to say she gets caught up in the chase when a new, MUCH more advanced terminator is sent back in time to kill unassuming young Mexican factory worker Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). Of course, the future resistance has once again sent a protector back to watch her back, Grace (Blade Runner 2049’s Mackenzie Davis), a cybernetically-enhanced super-soldier specifically outfitted to combat terminators, who reluctantly agrees to team up with the highly experienced Sarah in order to keep Dani alive. Arnold Schwarzenegger once again returns to the role that truly made him a star (of course, how could he not?), and he for one has clearly not lost ANY of his old love or enthusiasm for playing the old T-800, but revealing exactly HOW he comes into the story this time would give away too much; the new terminator, meanwhile, is brilliantly portrayed by Gabriel Luna (probably best known for playing Ghost Rider in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD), who brings predatory menace and an interesting edge of subtle, entitled arrogance to the role of Rev-9. Ultimately though, this is very much the ladies’ film, the three leads dominating the action and drama both as they kick-ass and verbally spar in equal measure, their chemistry palpably strong throughout – Hamilton is as badass as ever, making Sarah even more of a take-no-shit survivalist burnout than she ever was in T2, and she’s utterly mesmerising in what’s EASILY her best turn in YEARS, while Reyes goes through an incredible transformative character arc as she’s forced to evolve from terrified salary-girl to proto she-warrior through several pleasingly organic steps … my greatest pleasure, however, definitely comes from watching Mackenzie Davis OWN the role of Grace, investing her with an irresistible mixture of icy military precision, downright feral mother lion ferocity and a surprisingly sweet innocence buried underneath all the bravado, thus creating one of my favourite ass-kicking heroines not just for the year but this past decade entirely. Unsurprisingly, in the hands of old hand Tim Miller (working from a screenplay headlined by Blade and Batman Begins scribe David Goyer) this is a pulse-pounding thrill ride that rarely lets its foot up off the pedal, but thankfully the action is ALWAYS in service to the story, each precision-crafted set piece engineered to perfection as we power through high speed chases, explosive shootouts and a succession of bruising heavy metal smackdowns, but thankfully there’s just as much attention paid to the characters and the story – given the familiarity of the tale there’s inevitably a certain predictability to events, but Miller and co. still pull off a few deftly handled surprise twists, while character development always feels organic. Best of all, this genuinely feels like a legitimate part of the original Terminator franchise, Cameron and Hamilton’s returns having finally brought back the old magic that’s been missing for so long. I’d definitely be willing to sign up for more of this – such a shame then that, thanks to the film’s frustrating underperformance at the box office, it looks like this is gonna be it after all. Damn it …

8. DOCTOR SLEEP – first up, before I say anything else about this latest Stephen King screen adaptation, I HAVE NOT yet got round to reading the original novel yet, so I can’t speak to how it compares. That said, I HAVE read The Shining, to which the book is a direct sequel, so I DO know about at least one of the major, KEY changes, and besides, this is actually a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s MOVIE of The Shining, which differed significantly from its own source material anyway, so there’s that … yeah, this is a complicated kettle of fish even BEFORE we get down to the details. Suffice to say, you don’t have to have read the book to get this movie, but a working knowledge of Kubrick’s horror classic may at least help you get some context before watching this … anyways, enough with the confusion, on to the meat of the matter – this is a CRACKING horror movie by any stretch, and, for me, one of the strongest King horrors to make it to the big screen in quite some time. Of course it helps no end to have a filmmaker of MAJOR calibre at the helm, and there are few working in horror at the moment with whom I am quite so impressed as Mike Flanagan, writer-director of two of this past decade’s definitive horrors (at least for me), Oculus and Hush, as well as a BLINDING TV series adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House for Netflix – the man is an absolute master of the craft, incredibly skilled with all the tricks of this particular genre’s trade, and, as it turns out, a perfect fit with King’s material. Following on from The Shining, then, we learn what happened to the kid, Danny Torrance, after he and his mother left the Overlook Hotel in the wake of his father’s psychotic break driven by monstrous apparitions “living” in the cursed halls, following him from childhood as he initially shuns the psychic gifts (or “shine”) he was taught to use by the hotel’s late caretaker, Dick Halloran. It’s only in later years, as he fights to overcome his alcoholism and self-destructive lifestyle, that he reconnects with that power, just in time to discover psychic “pen-pal” Abra Stone, an immensely powerful young psychic. Which leads us to the present day, when Abra, now a teenager, becomes the target of the True Knot, a group of psychic vampires who travel America hunting and killing young people with psychic abilities in order to consume their “smoke” (basically the stuff of their “shines”), thus expanding their already unnatural lifespans – they’re tracking Abra, and they’re getting close, and only her “Uncle Dan” can save her from them. Ewan McGregor is PERFECT as the grown-up Dan, delivering one of his career-best turns as he captures the world-weary seriousness of someone who’s seen, felt and had to do things no-one should, especially when he was so very young, the kinds of things that colour a soul for their entire life, and he’s clearly DESPERATE not to become his father; newcomer Kyleigh Curran, meanwhile, is an absolute revelation as Abra, bringing depth and weight far beyond her years to the role, but never losing sight of the fact that, under all the power, she’s ultimately still just a child; there are also excellent supporting turns from the likes of Cliff Curtis as Dan’s best friend and AA sponsor Billy Freeman, Zahn McClarnon (Longmire, Fargo season 2) and Emily Lind (Revenge, Code Black) as True Knot members Crow Daddy and Snakebite Annie, and Carl Lumbly (Cagney & Lacey, TV’s Supergirl), who beautifully replaces deceased original actor Scatman Crothers in the role of Dick. The film’s tour-de-force performance, however, comes from Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat, leader of the True Knot – they’re an intriguing bunch of villains, very well written and fleshed out, and it’s clear they have genuine love for one another, like a real family, which makes it hard not to sympathise with them a little bit, and this is none more true than in Rose, whom Ferguson invests with so much light and warmth and intriguing, complex character, as well as a fantastic streak of playful mischief that makes her all the more riveting in those times when they then turn around and do some truly heinous, unforgivable things … as horror movies go this is the cream of the crop, but Flanagan has purposefully kept away from jump scares and the more flashy stuff, preferring, like Kubrick in The Shining, to let the insidious darkness bubble up underneath good and slow, drawing out the creepiness and those most unsettling, twisted little touches the author himself is always so very good at. Intent can be such a scary thing, and Flanagan gets it, so that’s just what he uses here. As a result this is a fantastic slow-burn creep-fest that constantly works its way deeper under your skin, building to a phenomenal climax that, (perversely) thanks in no small part to the differences between both novels and films, pays as much loving tribute to Kubrick’s visionary landmark as the original novel of The Shining. For me, this is Flanagan’s best film to date, and as far as Stephen King adaptations go I consider this to be right up there with the likes of The Mist and The Green Mile. Best of all, I think he’d be proud of it too …

7. SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME – summer 20019 was something of a decompression period for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with many of us recovering from the sheer emotional DEVASTATION of the grand finale of Phase 3, Avengers: Endgame, so the main Blockbuster Season’s entry really needed to be light and breezy, a blessed relief after all that angst and loss, much like Ant-Man & the Wasp was last year as it followed Infinity War. And it is, by and large – this is as light-hearted and irreverent as its predecessor, following much the same goofy teen comedy template as Homecoming, but there’s no denying that there’s a definite emotional through-line from Endgame that looms large here, a sense of loss the film fearlessly addresses right from the start, sometimes with a bittersweet sense of humour, sometimes straight. But whichever path the narrative chooses, the film stays true to this underlying truth – there have been great and painful changes in this world, and we can’t go back to how it was before, no matter how hard we try, but then perhaps we shouldn’t. This is certainly central to our young hero’s central arc – Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is in mourning, and not even the prospect of a trip around Europe with his newly returned classmates, together with the chance to finally get close to M.J. (Zendaya), maybe even start a relationship, can entirely distract him from the gaping hole in his life. Still, he’s gonna give it his best shot, but it looks like fate has other plans for our erstwhile Spider-Man as superspy extraordinaire Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) comes calling, basically hijacking his vacation with an Avengers-level threat to deal with, aided by enigmatic inter-dimensional superhero Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has a personal stake in the mission, but as he’s drawn deeper into the fray Peter discovers that things may not be quite as they seem. Of course, giving anything more away would of course dumps HEINOUS spoilers on the precious few who haven’t yet seen the film – suffice to say that the narrative drops a MAJOR sea-change twist at the midpoint that’s EVERY BIT as fiendish as the one Shane Black gave us in Iron Man 3 (although the more knowledgeable fans of the comics will likely see it coming), and also provides Peter with JUST the push he needs to get his priorities straight and just GET OVER IT once and for all. Tom Holland again proves his character is the most endearing teenage geek in cinematic history, his spectacular super-powered abilities and winning underdog perseverance in the face of impossible odds still paradoxically tempered by the fact he’s as loveably hopeless as ever outside his suit; Mysterio himself, meanwhile, frequently steals the film out from under him, the strong bromance they develop certainly mirroring what Peter had with Tony Stark, and it’s a major credit to Gyllenhaal that he so perfectly captures the essential dualities of the character, investing Beck with a roguish but subtly self-deprecating charm that makes him EXTREMELY easy to like, but ultimately belying something much more complex hidden beneath it; it’s also nice to see so many beloved familiar faces returning, particularly the fantastically snarky and self-assured Zendaya, Jacob Batalon (once again pure comedy gold as Peter’s adorably nerdy best friend Ned), Tony Revolori (as his self-important class rival Flash Thompson) and, of course, Marisa Tomei as the ever-pivotal Aunt May, as well as Jackson and Cobie Smoulders as dynamite SHIELD duo Fury and his faithful lieutenant Maria Hill, and best of all Jon Favreau gets a MUCH bigger role this time round as Happy Hogan. Altogether this is very much business as usual for the MCU, the well-oiled machine unsurprisingly turning out another near-perfect gem of a superhero flick that ticks all the required boxes, but a big part of the film’s success should be attributed to returning director Jon Watts, effectively building on the granite-strong foundations of Homecoming with the help of fellow alumni Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers on screenplay duty, for a picture that feels both comfortingly familiar and rewardingly fresh, delivering on all the required counts with thrilling action and eye candy spectacle, endearingly quirky character-based charm and a typically winning sense of humour, and plenty of understandably powerful emotional heft. And, like always, there are plenty of fan-pleasing winks and nods and revelations, and the pre-requisite mid- and post-credit teasers too, both proving to be some proper game-changing corkers. Another winner from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then, but was there really ever any doubt?

6. US – back in 2017, Jordan Peele made the transition from racially-charged TV and stand-up comedy to astounding cinemagoers with stunning ease through his writer-director feature debut Get Out, a sharply observed jet black comedy horror with SERIOUS themes that was INSANELY well-received by audiences and horror fans alike. Peele instantly became ONE TO WATCH in the genre, so his follow-up feature had A LOT riding on it, but this equally biting, deeply satirical existential mind-bender is EASILY the equal of its predecessor, possibly even its better … giving away too much plot detail would do great disservice to the many intriguing, shocking twists on offer as middle class parents Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Black Panther alumni Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) take their children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), to Santa Cruz on vacation, only to step into a nightmare as a night-time visitation by a family of murderous doppelgangers signals the start of a terrifying supernatural revolution with potential nationwide consequences. The idea at the heart of this film is ASTOUNDINGLY original, quite an achievement in a genre where just about everything has been tried at least once, but it’s also DEEPLY subversive, as challenging and thought-provoking as the themes visited in Get Out, but also potentially even more wide-reaching. It’s also THOROUGHLY fascinating and absolutely TERRIFYING, a peerless exercise in slow-burn tension and acid-drip discomfort, liberally soaked in an oppressive atmosphere so thick you could choke on it if you’re not careful, such a perfect horror master-class it’s amazing that this is only Peele’s second FEATURE, never mind his sophomore offering IN THE GENRE. The incredibly game cast really help, too – the four leads are all EXCEPTIONAL, each delivering fascinatingly nuanced performances in startlingly oppositional dual roles as both the besieged family AND their monstrous doubles, a feat brilliantly mimicked by Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale-star Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker and teen twins Cali and Noelle Sheldon as the Wilsons’ friends, the Tylers, and their similarly psychotic mimics. The film is DOMINATED, however, by Oscar-troubler Nyong’o, effortlessly holding our attention throughout the film with yet another raw, intense, masterful turn that keeps up glued to the screen from start to finish, even as the twists get weirder and more full-on brain-mashy. Of course, while this really is scary as hell, it’s also often HILARIOUSLY funny, Peele again poking HUGE fun at both his intended audience AND his allegorical targets, proving that scares often work best when twinned with humour. BY FAR the best thing in horror in 2019, Us shows just what a master of the genre Jordan Peele is, and it looks like he’s here to stay …

5. KNIVES OUT – with The Last Jedi, writer-director Rian Johnson divided audiences so completely that he seemed to have come perilously close to ruining his career. Thankfully, he’s a thick-skinned auteur with an almost ridiculous amount of talent, and he’s come bouncing back as strong as ever, doing what he does best. His big break feature debut was with Brick, a cult classic murder mystery that was, surprisingly, set in and around a high school, and his latest has some of that same DNA as Johnson crafts a fantastic sleuthy whodunit cast in the classic mould of Agatha Christie, albeit shot through with his own wonderfully eclectic verve, wit and slyly subversive streak. Daniel Craig holds court magnificently as quirky and flamboyant Deep South private detective Benoit Blanc, summoned to the home of newly-deceased star crime author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) to investigate his possible murder and faced with a veritable web of lies, deceit and twisting knives as he meets the maybe-victim’s extensive and INCREDIBLY dysfunctional family, all of whom are potential suspects. Craig is thoroughly mesmerising throughout, clearly having the time of his life in one of his career-best roles, while the narrative focus is actually, interestingly, given largely to Ana de Armas (Blade Runner 2049 and soon to be seen with Craig again in the latest Bond-flick No Time To Die), who proves equally adept at driving the film as Harlan’s sweet but steely and impressively resourceful nurse Marta Cabrera, whose own involvement in the case it would do the film a massive disservice to reveal. The rest of the Thrombey clan are an equally intriguing bunch, all played to the hilt by an amazing selection of heavyweight talent that includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette and It’s Jaeden Martell, but the film is, undeniably, DOMINATED by Chris Evans as Harlan’s black sheep grandson Ransom, the now former Captain America clearly enjoying his first major post-MCU role as he roundly steals every scene he’s in, effortlessly bringing back the kind of snarky, sarcastic underhanded arrogance we haven’t seen him play since his early career and entertaining us thoroughly. Johnson has very nearly outdone himself this time, weaving a gleefully twisty web of intrigue that viewers will take great pleasure in watching Blanc untangle, even if we’re actually already privy to (most of) the truth of the deed, and he pulls off some diabolical twists and turns as we rattle towards an inspired final reveal which genuinely surprises. He’s also generously smothered the film with oodles of his characteristically dry, acerbic wit, wonderfully tweaking many of the classic tropes of this familiar little sub-genre so this is at once a loving homage to the classics but also a sly, skilful deconstruction. Intriguing, compelling, enrapturing and often thoroughly hilarious, this is VERY NEARLY the best film he’s ever made. Only the mighty Looper remains unbeaten …

4. CAPTAIN MARVEL – before the first real main event of not only the year’s blockbusters but also, more importantly, 2019’s big screen MCU roster, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and co dropped a powerful opening salvo with what, it turns out, was the TRUE inception point of the Avengers Initiative and all its accompanying baggage (not Captain America: the First Avenger, as we were originally led to believe). For me, this is simply the MCU film I have MOST been looking forward to essentially since the beginning – the onscreen introduction of my favourite Avenger, former US Air Force Captain Carol Danvers, the TRUE Captain Marvel (no matter what the DC purists might say), who was hinted at in the post credits sting of Avengers: Infinity War but never actually seen. Not only is she the most powerful Avenger (sorry Thor, but it’s true), but for me she’s also the most badass – she’s an unstoppable force of (cosmically enhanced) nature, with near GODLIKE powers (she can even fly through space without needing a suit!), but the thing that REALLY makes her so full-on EPIC is her sheer, unbreakable WILL, the fact that no matter what’s thrown at her, no matter how often or how hard she gets knocked down, she KEEPS GETTING BACK UP. She is, without a doubt, the MOST AWESOME woman in the entire Marvel Universe, both on the comic page AND up on the big screen. Needless to say, such a special character needs an equally special actor to portray her, and we’re thoroughly blessed in the inspired casting choice of Brie Larson, who might as well have been purpose-engineered exclusively for this very role – she’s Carol Danvers stepped right out of the primary-coloured panels, as steely cool, unswervingly determined and strikingly statuesque as she’s always been drawn and scripted, with just the right amount of twinkle-eyed, knowing smirk and sassy humour to complete the package. Needless to say she’s the heart and soul of the film, a pure joy to watch throughout, but there’s so much more to enjoy here that this is VERY NEARLY the most enjoyable cinematic experience I had all year … writer-director double-act Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck may only be known for smart, humble indies like Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind, but they’ve taken to the big budget, all-action blockbuster game like ducks to water, co-scripting with Geneva Robertson-Dworet (writer of the Tomb Raider reboot movie and the long-gestating third Sherlock Holmes movie) to craft yet another pitch-perfect MCU origin story, playing a sneakily multilayered, misleading game of perception-versus-truth as we’re told how Carol got her powers and became the unstoppable badass supposedly destined to turn the tide in a certain Endgame … slyly rolling the clock back to the mid-90s, we’re presented with a skilfully realised mid-90s period culture clash adventure as Carol, a super-powered warrior fighting for the Kree Empire against the encroaching threat of the shape-shifting Skrulls, crash-lands in California and winds up uncovering the hidden truth behind her origins, with the help of a particular SHIELD agent, before he wound up with an eye-patch and a more cynical point-of-view – yup, it’s a younger, fresher Nick Fury (the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson, digitally de-aged with such skill it’s really just a pure, flesh-and-blood performance). There’s action, thrills, spectacle and (as always with the MCU) pure, skilfully observed, wry humour by the bucket-load, but one of the biggest strengths of the film is the perfectly natural chemistry between the two leads, Larson and Jackson playing off each other BEAUTIFULLY, no hint of romantic tension, just a playfully prickly, banter-rich odd couple vibe that belies a deep, honest respect building between both the characters and, clearly, the actors themselves. There’s also sterling support from Jude Law as Kree warrior Yon-Rogg, Carol’s commander and mentor, Ben Mendelsohn, slick, sly and surprisingly seductive (despite a whole lot of make-up) as Skrull leader Talos, returning MCU-faces Clark Gregg and Lee Pace as rookie SHIELD agent Phil Coulson (another wildly successful de-aging job) and Kree Accuser Ronan, Annette Bening as a mysterious face from Carol’s past and, in particular, Lashana Lynch (Still Star-Crossed, soon to be seen in No Time To Die) as Carol’s one-time best friend and fellow Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau, along with the impossibly adorable Akira Akbar as her precocious daughter Monica … that said, the film is frequently stolen by a quartet of ginger tabbies who perfectly capture fan-favourite Goose the “cat” (better known to comics fans as Chewie). This is about as great as the MCU standalone films get – for me it’s up there with the Russo’s Captain America films and Black Panther, perfectly pitched and SO MUCH FUN, but with a multilayered, monofilament-sharp intelligence that makes it a more cerebrally satisfying ride than most blockbusters, throwing us a slew of skilfully choreographed twists and narrative curveballs we almost never see coming, and finishing it off with a bucket-load of swaggering style and pure, raw emotional power (the film kicks right off with an incredibly touching, heartfelt tear-jerking tribute to Marvel master Stan Lee). Forget Steve Rogers – THIS is the Captain MCU fans need AND deserve, and I am SO CHUFFED they got my favourite Avenger so totally, perfectly RIGHT. I can die happy now, I guess …

3. JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3 – needless to say, those who know me should be in no doubt why THIS was at the top of my list for summer 2019 – this has EVERYTHING I love in movies and more. Keanu Reeves is back in the very best role he’s ever played, unstoppable, unbeatable, un-killable hitman John Wick, who, when we rejoin him mere moments after the end of 2017’s phenomenal Chapter 2, is in some SERIOUSLY deep shit, having been declared Incommunicado by the High Table (the all-powerful ruling elite who run this dark and deadly shadowy underworld) after circumstances forced him to gun down an enemy on the grounds of the New York Continental Hotel (the inviolable sanctuary safe-house for all denizens of the underworld), as his last remaining moments of peace tick away and he desperately tries to find somewhere safe to weather the initial storm. Needless to say the opening act of the film is ONE LONG ACTION SEQUENCE as John careers through the rain-slick streets of New York, fighting off attackers left and right with his signature brutal efficiency and unerring skill, perfectly setting up what’s to come – namely a head-spinning, exhausting parade of spectacular set pieces that each put EVERY OTHER offering in every other film this past year to shame. Returning director Chad Stahelski again proves that he’s one of the very best helmsmen around for this kind of stuff, delivering FAR beyond the call on every count as he creates a third entry to a series that continues to go from strength to strength, while Keanu once again demonstrates what a phenomenal screen action GOD he is, gliding through each scenario with poise, precision and just the right balance of brooding charm and so-very-done-with-this-shit intensity and a thoroughly enviable athletic physicality that really does put him on the same genre footing as Tom Cruise. As with the first two chapters, what plot there is is largely an afterthought, a facility to fuel the endless wave of stylish, wince-inducing, thoroughly exhilarating violent bloodshed, as John cuts another bloody swathe through the underworld searching for a way to remove the lethal bounty from his head while an Adjudicator from the High Table (Orange Is the New Black’s Asia Kate Dillon) arrives in New York to settle affairs with Winston (Ian McShane), the manager of the New York Continental, and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) for helping John create this mess in the first place. McShane and Fishburne are both HUGE entertainment in their fantastically nuanced large-than-life roles, effortlessly stealing each of their scenes, while the ever-brilliant Lance Reddick also makes a welcome return as Winston’s faithful right-hand Charon, the concierge of the Continental, who finally gets to show off his own hardcore action chops when trouble arrives at their doorstep, and there are plenty of franchise newcomers who make strong impressions here – Dillon is the epitome of icy imperiousness, perfectly capturing the haughty superiority you’d expect from a direct representative of the High Table, Halle Berry gets a frustratingly rare opportunity to show just how seriously badass she can be as former assassin Sofia, the manager of the Casablanca branch of the Continental and one of John’s only remaining allies, Game of Thrones’ Jerome Flynn is smarmy and entitled as her boss Berrada, and Anjelica Houston is typically classy as the Director, the ruthless head of New York’s Ruska Roma (John’s former “alma mater”, basically). The one that REALLY sticks in the memory, though, is Mark Dacascos, finally returning to the big time after frustrating years languishing in lurid straight-to-video action dreck and lowbrow TV hosting duties thanks to a BLISTERING turn as Zero, a truly brilliant semi-comic creation who routinely runs away with the film – he’s the Japanese master ninja the Adjudicator tasks with dispensing her will, a thoroughly lethal killer who may well be as skilled as our hero, but his deadliness is amusingly tempered by the fact that he’s also a total nerd who HERO WORSHIPS John Wick, adorably geeking out whenever their paths cross. Their long-gestating showdown provides a suitably magnificent climax to the action, but there’s plenty to enjoy in the meantime, as former stuntman Stahelski and co keep things interestingly fluid as they constantly change up the dynamics and add new elements, from John using kicking horses in a stable and knives torn out of display cases in a weaponry museum to dispatch foes on the fly, through Sofia’s use of attack dogs to make the Moroccan portion particularly nasty and a SPECTACULAR high octane sequence in which John fights katana-wielding assailants on speeding motorcycles, to the film’s UNDISPUTABLE highlight, an astounding fight in which John takes on Zero’s disciples (including two of the most impressive guys from The Raid movies, Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian) in (and through) an expansive chamber made up entirely of glass walls and floors. Altogether then, this is business as usual for a franchise that’s consistently set the bar for the genre as a whole, an intensely bruising, blissfully blood-drenched epic that cranks its action up to eleven, shot with delicious neon-drenched flair and glossy graphic novel visual excess, a consistently inspired exercise in fascinating world-building that genuinely makes you want to live among its deadly denizens (even though you probably wouldn’t live very long). The denouement sets things up for an inevitable sequel, and I’m not at all surprised – right from the first film I knew the concept had legs, and it’s just too good to quit yet. Which is just how I like it …

2. AVENGERS: ENDGAME – the stars have aligned and everything is right with the world – the second half of the ridiculously vast, epic, nerve-shredding and gut-punching MCU saga that began with 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War has FINALLY arrived and it’s JUST AS GOOD as its predecessor … maybe even a little bit better, simply by virtue of the fact that (just about) all the soul-crushing loss and upheaval of the first film is resolved here. Opening shortly after the universally cataclysmic repercussions of “the Snap”, the world at large and the surviving Avengers in particular are VERY MUCH on the back foot as they desperately search for a means to reverse the damage wrought by brutally single-minded cosmic megalomaniac Thanos and his Infinity Stone-powered gauntlet – revealing much more dumps so many spoilers it’s criminal to continue, so I’ll simply say that their immediate plan really DOESN’T work out, leaving them worse off than ever. Fast-forward five years and the universe is a very different place, mourning what it’s lost and torn apart by grief-fuelled outbursts, while our heroes in particular are in various, sometimes better, but often much worse places – Bruce Banner/the Hulk (Mark Ruffallo) has found a kind of peace that’s always eluded him before, but Thor (Chris Hemsworth) really is a MESS, while Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has gone to a VERY dark place indeed. Then Ant-Man Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) finds a way back from his forced sojourn in the Quantum Realm, and brings with him a potential solution of a very temporal nature … star directors the Russo Brothers, along with returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, have once again crafted a stunning cinematic masterpiece, taking what could have been a bloated, overloaded and simply RIDICULOUS narrative mess and weaving it into a compelling, rich and thoroughly rewarding ride that, despite its THREE HOURS PLUS RUNNING TIME, stays fresh and interesting from start to finish, building on the solid foundations of Infinity War while also forging new ground (narratively speaking, at least) incorporating a wonderfully fresh take on time-travel that pokes gleeful fun at the decidedly clichéd tropes inherent in this particular little sub-genre. In fact this is frequently a simply HILARIOUS film in its own right, largely pulling away from the darker tone of its predecessor by injecting a very strong vein of chaotic humour into proceedings, perfectly tempering the more dramatic turns and epic feels that inevitably crop up, particularly as the stakes continue to rise. Needless to say the entire cast get to shine throughout, particularly those veterans whose own tours of duty in the franchise are coming to a close, and as with Infinity War even the minor characters get at least a few choice moments in the spotlight, especially in the vast, operatic climax where pretty much the ENTIRE MCU cast return for the inevitable final showdown. It’s a masterful affair, handled with skill and deep, earnest respect but also enough irreverence to keep it fun, although in the end it really comes down to those big, fat, heart-crushing emotional FEELS, as we say goodbye to some favourites and see others reach crossroads in their own arcs that send them off in new, interesting directions. Seriously guys, keep a lot of tissues handy, you really will need them. If this were the very last MCU film ever, I’d say it’s a PERFECT piece to go out on – thankfully it’s not, and while it is the end of an era the franchise looks set to go on as strong as ever, safe in the knowledge that there’s plenty more cracking movies on the way so long as Kevin Feige and co continue to employ top-notch talent like this to make their films. Eleven years and twenty-two films down, then – here’s to eleven and twenty-two more, I say …

1. THE IRISHMAN (aka I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES) – beating smash-hit superhero movies and unstoppable assassin action-fests to the top spot is no mean feat, but so completely blowing me away that I had NO OTHER CHOICE than to put this at NUMBER ONE is something else entirely. Not only is this the best thing I saw at the cinema this past year, but I’d be happy to say it’s guaranteed to go down as one of my all-time greats of the entire decade. I’ve been an ardent fan of the filmmaking of Martin Scorsese ever since I first properly got into cinema in my early adolescence, when I was first shown Taxi Driver and was completely and irrevocably changed forever as a movie junkie. He’s a director who impresses me like a select few others, one of the true, undisputable masters of the craft, and I find it incredibly pleasing that I’m not alone in this assertion. Goodfellas and The Departed are both numbered among my all-time favourite crime movies, while I regard the latter as one of the greatest films of the current cinematic century. I’ve learned more about the art and craft of filmmaking and big-screen storytelling from watching Scorsese’s work than from any other director out there (with the notable exception of my OTHER filmmaking hero, Ridley Scott), and I continue to discover more about his films every time I watch them, so I never stop. Anyways … enough with the gushing, time to get on with talking about his latest offering, a Netflix Original true-life gangster thriller of truly epic proportions chronicling the career and times of Frank Sheeran, a Philadelphia truck driver who became the most trusted assassin of the Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family and, in particular, its boss (and Sheeran’s best friend) Russell Bufalino, particularly focusing on his rise to power within the Philly Mob and his significant association with controversial and ultimately ill-fated Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. It’s a sprawling epic in the tradition of Scorsese’s previously most expansive film, Casino, but in terms of scope this easily eclipses the 1995 classic, taking in SIX DECADES of genuinely world-changing events largely seen through Sheeran’s eyes, but as always the director is in total control throughout, never losing sight of the true focus – one man’s fall from grace as he loses his soul to the terrible events he takes part in. Then again, the screenplay is by Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Moneyball, Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), one of the true masters of the art form, with whom Scorsese previously worked with on Gangs of New York, so it’s pure gold – tight as a drum, razor sharp and impossibly rich and rewarding, the perfect vehicle for the director to just prep his cast and run with it. And WHAT A CAST we have here – this is a three-way lead master-class of titanic proportions, as Scorsese-regular Robert De Niro and his Goodfellas co-star Joe Pesci are finally reteamed as, respectively, Sheeran and Bufalino, while Al Pacino gets to work with the master for the first time as Hoffa; all three are INCREDIBLE, EXTRAORDINARY, on absolute tip-top form as they bring everything they have to their roles, De Niro and Pesci underplaying magnificently while Pacino just lets rip with his full, thunderous fury in a seemingly larger-than-life turn which simply does one of history’s biggest crooks perfect justice; the supporting cast, meanwhile, is one of the strongest seen in cinema all year, with Ray Romano, Bobby Canavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, Stephanie Kurtzuba (The Wolf of Wall Street), Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) and Jesse Plemmons among MANY others all making MAJOR impressions throughout, all holding their own even when up against the combined star power of the headlining trio. This is filmmaking as high art, Scorsese bringing every trick at his considerable, monumentally experienced disposal to bear to craft a crime thriller that strongly compares not only to the director’s own best but many of the genre’s own other masterpieces such as The Godfather and Chinatown. It may clock in at a potentially insane THREE HOURS AND TWENTY-NINE MINUTES but it NEVER feels overlong, every moment crafted for maximum impact with a story that unfolds so busily and with such mesmerising power it’s impossible to get bored with it. The film may have received a limited theatrical release, obviously reaching MOST of its audience when unleashed on Netflix nearly a month later, but I was one of the lucky few who got to see it on the big screen, and BELIEVE ME, it was totally worth it. Best thing I saw in 2019, ONE OF the best things I saw this past decade, and DEFINITELY one of Scorsese’s best films EVER. See it, any way you can. You won’t be disappointed.

#how to train your dragon the hidden world #terminator dark fate #doctor sleep #spider-man far from home #us #us movie #knives out #Captain Marvel #john wick chapter 3 #avengers endgame #the irishman #2019 in movies

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dansnaturepictures · 4 years

Photo

My eighth of my ten highlights of my wildlife and photography year blogs: Diary of my autumn including Arne and Brownsea Island trips

It was at a hot and sunny part of the year I had an intense culmination of starting to see the signs of autumn, after a period where it felt autumnal. On the Friday night of the August bank holiday I saw and photographed the usual red leaves I do over Lakeside starting to appear, the next day at Arne it was berries and red leaves, then a mushroom, Michaelmas Daisies, Starling murmurations at Stanpit Marsh as shown by the first picture of mine in this photoset on the bank holiday Sunday and red berries and a lot of Starlings at Farlington Marshes on the Monday. I had noticed all these signs in the weeks before too, but all together I felt autumn in the air during a heat wave. When back from Cornwall which I post about in my next of these blogs on Christmas Eve it was by Lakeside again on the way home from work on a wet Monday when I noticed a nice variety of coloured autumn leaves now appearing, the day after seeing some fungi at the New Forest’s Eyeworth Pond. I photographed some red and green leaves here that Thursday the second of my photos in this set. Seeing the coloured leaves appear always gives me a pleasant feeling of ripe and beautiful sights to come. I had a pleasant short evening walk over Lakeside on 19th September photographing some autumn leaves. The 27th September brought a quick pop out to some trees in front of the house to photograph the leaves in autumnal colour. Later in the season I was thrilled to see and photograph the shaggy ink cap mushrooms that appear on the green at the front of the house and some others on a wet day. That became a bit of rollercoaster photography project for me that week taking pictures of them at different stages despite some of them being knocked over early on one of the pitfalls of an urban area I suppose.

On a September Sunday we headed to Puttles Bridge in the New Forest seeing some mushrooms and autumn leaves on the turn. On the way back driving through the New Forest that day we had the always amazing moment each autumn when we saw our first pigs of the season, four in total. They are released as commoners exercise their right of pannage, they are let loose on the forest to eat the acorns which cause health defects if eaten by the free roaming ponies. It’s always a unique and comforting sight to see these animals around in the forest at this time of year and always brings a smile to the face. My third picture in this photoset is of one of the pigs seen that day.

A gusty afternoon that I spent enjoying the salt marsh and other habitat at Pennington in the Lymington-Keyhaven reserve felt very autumnal in late September, with it mostly cloudy making it feel autumnal but the sun poking though gave some great almost eerie autumnal light scenes too. I took the fourth picture in this photoset of that on that day. With the tide out that day I enjoyed seeing a huge amount of and variety of wading birds which stood out, highlights included Greenshank, Bar-tailed Godwit, Grey Plover with some nicely coloured and many Ringed Plover, Turnstone and Curlew. The next day in similar weather conditions as shown by the fifth picture in this photoset of a wave coming over the sea wall at Hill Head I was thrilled at Titchfield Haven the reserve at this location to see a Fox parading right in front of the Meon Shore hide! It sat in grass there for a good few minutes, appearing to be looking at something as if it was looking right at us. This allowed for stunning views and fantastic photo opportunities with a bit of sun lighting up its face nicely at the right moment. As it walked along I took the sixth picture in this photoset of it. This put a huge smile on my face for the rest of the day I was so happy to see it. It felt like one of my most precious moments of watching nature in 2019. What’s more I had struggled to see a Fox so far not even seeing one this year up until that point, so what a way to see my first of this mammal this year. I was in the right place at the right time and some things really are worth waiting for. As my 15th mammal species of the year it gave me some real hope then of levelling or beating my joint highest ever mammal year list total of last year and 2015 which I actually did beat outright in the end this year. It was also nice to see an unusual leucistic Oystercatcher there that day.

When taking the seventh picture this photoset at Abbey Gardens in Winchester in October I reflected at how this was one of my best ever years for seeing and photographing autumn leaves. At home, work in Winchester or going out at weekends I just found I saw so many wonderful colourful autumn leaves scenes and found myself feeling more engaged in this natural artistic spectacle this year than most others despite this being something I look for every year. A big part of that was a red ivy like plant I was thrilled to notice loads especially along the railway line on my commutes. That weekend I had the Monday off too and it was a wonderful weekend of deers, visiting Richmond and Bushy Parks in London on the Saturday to watch red and fallow in their ruts which I post about exclusively in my tenth highlights blog going out on Boxing Day and seeing more Fallow at Ashley Walk/Leaden Hall in the New Forest on the Sunday a day I was also thrilled to see Ring Ouzels too a top bird. I also saw some little pigs out for pannage as we drove back through the forest to get home once again as well. On the Monday itself I saw another species of deer two Roe at Hook with Warsash, a day I also saw my first Brent Geese of the season there always a big autumnal moment in my year and many Wigeons seen that day as well symbolised a shift in the time of year for me too.

Like last year my annual October visit to Pig Bush in the New Forest proved a place I would get a great experience with my favourite mushrooms the red fly agaric, the true enchanted forest toadstool this day the first I saw this year. I was happy to take the eighth picture in this photoset of one that afternoon, I saw these among a fantastic variety of mushrooms seen that wet afternoon.

Two weeks after the Richmond and Bushy Parks visit I ensured I’d seen four deer species in October and five this year for my first time ever by seeing three Sika Deers in another visit to Arne. This was stunning to see with some very close views of two I took the ninth picture in this photoset of one and also meant as my 17th wild mammal species of the year seen 2019 was confirmed as my highest ever mammal year list something I was very happy to achieve. Three of my year lists (butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies and mammals) have beaten my previous personal records this year. (COULD CHANGE) Seeing up to 12 at once fly agaric mushrooms in the woods and mass flocks of autumnal birds like around 35 Spoonbills, Shelducks, Avocet and Black-tailed Godwit also stuck in the mind from that day.

The week after Arne we visited nearby Brownsea Island and saw a lot more Sika Deers across the island which was a joy to see again. We also enjoyed some really stunning views of Red Squirrels the mammal we went mostly to see that day across the island too like the one in the tenth picture I took in this photoset as I well and truly cemented 2019 as my highest mammal year list total. At some logs at the back of the church the best area to see them on the island it seems we saw them running around and eating here. It was an exceptional wildlife experience and I was honoured to get close to these incredible animals. I really made the most of it that day. It was really nice to see so many of them and them fighting with the peahens that come there a lot for food for the nuts and food that was being put out. It was a brilliant little woodland area with a great log complex and it was like you saw them running along one minute and then you didn’t, and then you just saw one pop up in front of you from behind a piece of the logs and a lot of jumping between too. It really did give me a special feeling again that day and I enjoyed it so much I never tire of seeing these creatures. A big moment that day was in the woods on the nature reserve seeing a Sika Deer in my binoculars with a Red Squirrel in view behind it my two stars that day.

Other highlights that day were; six of my favourite birds the Brent Goose, Shelduck, Green Woodpecker, Jay like some seen in the car on the way in at Sandbanks and Bournemouth, Buzzard and a Peregrine on the lagoon, as well as close Avocet and Cetti’s Warbler views. I also enjoyed seeing the impact of pollution on cities in the world in the pollution pods art installation they had there which was interesting. As we got the boat back to Sandbanks and saw the sun starting to set over the stunning Poole Harbour the night after the clocks went back I was very pleased with the experiences I had had on a really very nice day weather wise and one that was every inch the big day out. I was so thrilled with the day I had one of my greatest this year what a wonderfully wild and welcoming treasure Brownsea Island is. The next day I had another highlight of my autumn photographing with my bridge camera more colourful autumn leaves dominated subjects on a sunny and frosty Eastleigh morning and wonderfully colourful Winchester work lunch break the latter a place I always find so strong for autumn leaves. I embraced this a lot again on the second full week of November having more visits with my bridge camera to photograph the beautiful autumn leaves and varied colours of Winchester on my lunch breaks and in the mornings with some scenes in Eastleigh too in my best year ever for these type of photos I felt. This was at the same time the Winchester and indeed Eastleigh that weekend Christmas lights got switched on with a Christmas tree at the former and many trees I must say were bare by this point so it felt like a nice transition between the seasons and like the end of another glorious autumn.

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dayseternal-blog · 5 years

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A NaruHina Sports AU

Summary: She knows that if he were to ever ask her out, she would accept in a heartbeat. After all, he's the star quarterback and basketball player. Plus, she's liked him since...forever. But when her home phone rings, and he's on the other line, she hangs up.

Chapter 1: Hard to Get

Shrieks of laughter sound over the roar and creak of carnival machinery. The sun beats down on the park, and she wipes a bead of perspiration from her forehead as they make their way across the grass, avoiding the bare patches of dust and dirt.

“Oooh! Let’s go on the Zipper next!” Sakura points to the tall, imposing machine.

Her eyes widen at the ride where passengers teeter precariously, rocking back and forth, upside down, clinging to the bars. It looks like she’ll come off it dizzy and sick. “Okay!”

Her childhood friend smiles excitedly, and the two rush to the line.

The bluenette ties her long hair up into a ponytail as they wait. When she’s not at practice, she likes to wear her hair down, but it’s just too hot today.

The Zipper whirs to life again, spinning its screaming occupants in circles.

She shares a nervous smile with Sakura before letting her attention drift over to watch the rest of the school carnival.

Just across the way, a large tent houses games, like the dime toss, darts, and Pepsi ring toss. Stuffed animals that aren’t exactly cute hang enticingly from the signs as crowds of teens try their luck. Girls affectionately hug the prizes their boyfriends won for them.

A boy with golden hair and just the most wonderfully lean build emerges from the tent, heading toward their line. With a girl, a lanky brunette, hanging on his arm.

The smile she didn’t realize she was wearing until just now falters a bit.

“Hey, Naruto!! NARUTO! HEYY! NARUTO!!” Sakura yells.

She winces at her friend’s amazing lung capacity. She glances at Sakura, a part of her wishing that she wouldn’t call him over (with that girl).

She looks back to see if he’s coming over. Even with the noise, there’s absolutely no way he didn’t hear her.

But suddenly he’s toting that girl in the opposite direction.

“What the hell?! I know he saw us!” Sakura huffs.

A part of her is relieved. A part of her that clings onto this impossible crush is disappointed. The last time she saw him was briefly at the football game three weeks ago. They didn’t talk, except for an exchange of greetings. The usual, nothing more, nothing less. But with her best friend dating his best friend since intermediate school, they see each other often enough, despite attending rival high schools, for her to carry on with this infatuation.

She hardly even knows him. Well, correction, he hardly even knows her. She’s noticed him since elementary school. She’s loved him just as long.

Along with all the other girls.

She was 9 when she first saw him. The bus was taking her basketball team to the neighboring school’s gym for a tournament. They made a pit stop to pick up another team that was stranded due to engine problems. She remembers it clearly. Peering out the window and seeing him. A shining smile, tan skin, a confident gait as he ribbed with his teammates. He was cute. Her eyes followed him as they got on their bus.

And she couldn’t stop watching him. He was amazing. The way he ran across the court with smooth strides, the way he sharply juked his opponents, the way he handled the ball.

She and her teammates were swooning.

He never once looked their way.

His obliviousness didn’t deter her. When she learned he had club football practice in the park next to her school, she watched him everyday from the basketball court as she shot hoops. Standing from a distance, she noted the car he got into, its color, brand, the side of the car he sits in. On the road, she looked for his family’s car, wondering if maybe he was in the lane beside her.

She adored him.

It could be argued that she stalked him.

Her crush was so obvious throughout elementary and intermediate school, there isn’t a person who knows her who doesn’t know about her feelings.

But she’s been doing her very best to get over him. Especially now. When he obviously has a girlfriend. After all, she doesn’t stand a chance. He’s the star quarterback and basketball player of Konoha High School. And she’s just some distant girl attending the neighboring Hi no Tera High School.

So she knows it’s a really sick prank when she answers the house phone the next afternoon.

“Hello, can I speak to Hinata?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Naruto.”

“...” Well, that’s just not possible. “Okay, really funny,” she says, deadpan. She hangs up. She’s not falling for that. All of her friends and cousins know that it’s her life dream for him to call her and ask her out.

But it gets worse. Twenty minutes later, the phone rings again.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Hinata? This is Naruto.”

So she hangs up.

Ten minutes later, the phone rings again.

“Hello?”

“Hinata, this is Naruto.”

She hangs up. But somehow this prank caller is really not getting the picture. Because he calls again. And again. And again.

“Hello?” She tries to keep the annoyance out of her voice in case it’s actually someone else.

“Hinata-”

The voice is different, but the caller knows she’s on the other end. “Okay, please stop-”

“No, wait, don’t hang up!”

“Just stop-”

“Hinata! This is Sasuke.”

She’s upset. He should know better than to do this to her. “Sasuke-kun, what are you doing? It's not funny.”

“That really was Naruto.”

She doesn’t believe him. At all. “Okay, alright.” Her tone conveys her disbelief.

“...Can you bring Sakura over to Konoha High School?”

She hesitates in doing him this favor. She purses her lips and rolls her eyes. But she’s too nice to say no. Like her, Sakura attends Hi no Tera High School and hardly ever gets to see her boyfriend. And she’s the only one with a car. She’s basically responsible for how long their relationship has lasted. She keeps herself from sighing her aggravation. “Okay.”

“Thank you, Hinata.”

When she and Sakura pull up to Konoha High School, Sasuke and Naruto are sitting on the school field’s wall. They look a little tired. Football practice apparently just ended.

Her brow furrows at seeing the golden boy here. He is actually here with Sasuke. So did he actually call her all of those times? Doubt and hope shut her up, and she can’t hardly say a word as Sakura prances up to Sasuke.

The two lovebirds start talking about everything, somehow excluding her and Naruto.

She stands awkwardly next to her longtime crush, waiting for him to say something. Maybe a “hi” or “hello.” She gathers her courage to look at him, which in itself, feels like a huge feat. He’s gorgeous--blue eyes, tousled hair, broad shoulders, defined muscles.

But he says nothing. He’s looking at her unblinkingly and then averts his gaze toward Sakura.

Not that she should have expected anything. She grabs her basketball from her car and heads to the court. Sakura and Sasuke don’t notice or care.

She starts shooting hoops.

She’s on her fifth basket when he comes onto the court. Her stomach knots in nerves, and still, he says nothing. Just shifts his weight near the fence and watches her shoot a 2-pointer.

She dribbles the ball a couple of times and shoots again. She obviously glances over at him.

He’s watching her, and his head tilts a bit, seeing that she’s giving him some attention.

Not knowing what else to do, she passes him the ball.

He dribbles it a couple of times and then shoots. The ball makes that satisfying swish sound in the net. And of course, his form is perfect. He looks her in the eye and passes the ball back to her.

They switch off, bouncing the ball between them, taking shots at the basket until Sakura and Sasuke are ready to leave.

It’s not until later that night, the house phone rings again.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Hinata?”

“Yes?”

“This is Naruto.”

It really is his voice. Slightly husky and warm. Incredibly attractive.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

She realizes he’s referring to that afternoon. And today just keeps getting stranger and stranger. “Well um...why didn’t you say anything?” She’s honestly wondering.

“I...didn't say anything because you didn't say anything...”

She was supposed to talk first? Oh. "Well...I didn't say anything because you didn't say anything..."

"..."

She meets his silence with silence.

“Why did you keep hanging up on me?”

Can she tell him that she didn’t think it could possibly be him? After all, he has a girlfriend. “Well...you have a girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Yesterday, you were walking around with a girl.” She doesn’t know why she has to remind him.

“Oh...her?...She’s not my girlfriend.”

She doesn’t know why she has to explain this to him. “You were holding hands.”

“Ah, naah, she’s not my girlfriend.”

This is all too good to be true because how can this possibly be true. Her fingers tangle with the phone’s spiral cord in anticipation.

“...You wanna go out to the movies with me?”

“Okay.” Her response is a little too automatic. But she doesn’t have it in her to care because the hope is building up inside her, and it’s not until after the call is over that she freaks out in happiness.

“He was nice. It was really fun,” she recaps, remembering how he smiled at her when they met the night before at the theater. How he opened the door for her. How they sat next to each other in the dark room. How they talked about the movie afterwards. How he asked her out to the beach for next time.

They’re sitting around at Sakura’s house because her best friend just had to know how their first date went.

Sakura’s shaking her head, silently giggling. “Sasuke-kun, tell her what you told me.” Sakura’s expression is one of barely-contained mirth.

The raven-haired boy smirks. “You know the day he kept calling you and you kept on hanging up?”

“Um, yes?”

“We were at football practice.”

She nods, remembering how they met up with them afterwards.

Sasuke waits for a second to see if she catches on to whatever he’s trying to imply.

She looks at him blankly.

Sasuke nods and repeats, “We were at football practice.”

She still doesn’t get it.

“Every time our coach gave us a water break, he ran to the payphone to call you.”

Realization crosses her mind. The closest payphone to the Konoha football field is across the baseball field and basketball courts, then on the other side of the administration building, next to the street.

Sakura is shaking with silent laughter.

“I asked him how it went when he came running back, but he said that you hung up on him. So the next break comes, he runs to his bag, gets out his coins, runs to the payphone, comes running back, he’s shaking his head, and practice is starting again. And the next break comes, he does it again--runs to his bag, runs to the payphone, runs back, said you hung up on him. And I’m wondering what the idiot’s doing wrong. So eventually he was asking me for quarters, and that’s when I went with him.”

The pinkette finally lets out her cackles of amusement.

He ran back and forth during their water breaks to the payphone just to call her. And she hung up on him. The star quarterback and basketball player. Her longtime crush. Every single time.

#naruhina #fanfic #romance #sports au #ao3 #fluff #naruhina fanfiction

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hbwbyniall · 6 years

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“I didn’t think you could get any less romantic…”

Niall rollshis eyes but Harry can see it. It’s not like he’s hiding his displeasure forthis situation, Harry or anything related to this wedding. And Harry ispatient, he has to be, it’s his job after all. He has dealt with these kind ofpeople enough times before to know how to make them participate, but Niall’scynicism is really getting on his nerves.

Harry hasworked with frat-boys as the best mans that seem to find everything to be ajoke, but after some chats alone, they would break in tears telling him howmuch they love their friend and how proud they are of them. He has deal withbridesmaid’s in love with the groom and has stopped disasters more times thathe can count, he’s had alcoholic fathers, long-lost relatives, wedding crashersand even animals in the equations, but conversations are not working with Niall.He barely listens to him but nods at the right times to pretend to be payingattention. It’s exasperating, almost like he’s trying to sabotage this wedding.

He playsaround, never listens to Harry and eats the testing food but gives zero reviewsabout it. He even finished all the glasses of wine before Eleanor could evenget to the venue the first couple of weeks of the wedding planning. But then,there are other times when Harry finds him sitting alone, looking at the wall,absorbed in his own mind until he would heard Harry walk in and proceed to makefun of his shoes or shirts even if he has the exact items according to thephotos Louis gave to him for the wedding album.

And it’sfrustrating because the first time Harry saw him, he took his breath away withthat strong chin and those beautiful blue eyes, especially with that wide smilewhen he kissed Eleanor’s cheek and hugged Louis longer than necessary. Hewasn’t gonna do anything about it. Harry is a professional and the onlyconnection he has with these people is the fact that he’s the wedding planner –even if they have actually become friends in the last six months –, he wasn’t goingto act based on attraction, but that wasn’t necessary the moment the two ofthem were left alone and Niall wouldn’t even let Harry finish with his ideasfor the reception when he sarcastically laughed at him and looked at his phonefor the rest of the hours they had scheduled.

“What areyou talking about, mate?” Niall laughs, holding Lottie’s hand and making her spina couple of times. “I’m not gonna be romantic with Tommo’s little sister.”

Charlottefrowns and slaps him on the arm, Harry wishes he could do that too.

“The onlything you have to do is walk her by the arm to the altar and split in differentdirections, Niall.” Harry says, holding onto the last bit of self-control hehas, otherwise, he would explode. “We’ve been trying to do this for the lastforty minutes, everyone would appreciate it if you stop fooling around andstart to cooperate.”

Niall turnshis head to see the rest of the best men and bridesmaid looking at their phonesand chatting with each other, obviously trying to prove Harry wrong. He sighsand Niall smirks, like he enjoys making Harry suffer. This is the leastfavorite part of his job, when Harry and his mom decided to open awedding-planning business they thought everything would be a daily display oflove and happiness, but the things he had seen, the things he had heard, thepeople he has met. Not everything is flowers and rainbows and most people justwant a beautiful wedding instead of a meaningful marriage.

Harry isabout to pull his own hair out when Louis and Eleanor walk in, holding hands,smiling like they’re just three months in of his relationship and Harry thinksthey may be his favorite couple so far. Niall is looking at them as well, witha big smile on his face and holding Lottie by the arm, walking her down thealtar just like Harry indicated an hour ago. The rest of the bridesmaids andbest men follow their steps.

“How’severything going?” Louis asks, letting Eleanor on the other side of the room ashe walks and stands next to Niall.

“Wonderfully.”Niall says, pretentious tone in his voice as he looks at Harry. “Our friendHarold here is doing an amazing job.”

Louissmiles at him and Harry nods in return, because even if Niall is not sincere,Louis is, and that’s enough for him, he’s the one that truly matters, not thestupid prick that the best man is, at least only with him because he seems totransform when any other person is around, especially Anne, Harry’s mom, whoseems to love him and laughs at him every time Harry complains about the Irishman.

Eleanorwalks down the aisle, making faces at Louis as he looks at the floor to keephimself from laughing but Niall is right there, sending kisses and she pretendsto catch them. How is that someone this sweet can behave like an asshole mostof the time? Harry will never know the answer.

Therehearsal ends forty minutes later than Harry anticipated, giving them only twohours to change for the dinner rehearsal at the other salon in the hotel.Lottie and Sophia drag Harry to the hallway out of the room and they give him ahard drive with the presentation they made for Eleanor to be played at thedinner later, Harry nods and puts it in his pocket to check it when he gets inhis room.

He reminds eachperson that dinner is at 8 o’clock asthey leave the room, and of course, Niall is still inside, maybe he knows Harryhas to close the room and give the key to the Hotel’s manager and he just wantshim to wait longer.

Harry opensthe door and finds him facing the window wall, looking somewhere down the city.He clears his throat to make him notice his presence but he’s doing that thingagain when he zones out and everything else disappears around him. Harry findshim annoying, but for some reason, this time it feels sad.

“I have toclose the room,” he tries again, and Niall seems to wake up, blinkingrepeatedly as he turns to face Harry.

“Yeah,sorry.”

He takeshis jacket from the back of one of the chairs piled at the end of the room andleaves. And that’s the nicest thing he has said to Harry yet.

Harry isstanding in a corner of the salon, laughing as he looks at the pics of Eleanorand Louis’ sisters in the projector. It’s a good thing after the tears everyoneshared after the twins played the video their mom left for Louis and Eleanorbecause she knew they were gonna end up together, eventually. Harry thought itwas better to play it the day after tomorrow, the actual day of the wedding.But they begged saying they could play it at the wedding too and he couldn’tsay no.

It wasworth it, the way everyone held their breath when her face showed up in theprojector and she started speaking.

Louis, my beautiful boy…

And hecried but Niall was there to hold him and Eleanor kissed him. The things hismother said, the love in her eyes and his voice, made Harry cry too, feelingincredibly grateful to have his mom with him. The room was silent until thechildhood photos popped up and everyone started laughing.

Louis waskissing his sisters, with the little ones on each leg as they wiped up thetears on his face and laughed about memories they don’t have, Eleanor holdinghis hand. It’s a beautiful picture and Harry is so happy he can witness it.

“You shouldhave warned me about Jay’s video.”

Harryjumps, spilling some of the champagne on the floor and curses, hoping it won’tlighten up the wood of the floor. He turns to his right finding Niall in ablack suit, looking gorgeous with his red nose and red eyes.

“Phoebecame to me asking for permission. I didn’t see it until now.” He answers andNiall nods, rubbing his eyes and Harry wants to take his hands off it so hewon’t hurt himself.

“It wasperfect. Louis’ biggest regret is his mom missing his wedding. They weren’ttogether when his mom…” Niall clears his throat and now it’s Harry’s turn tonod, letting him know that he is listening, “with that video, somehow, it’slike…”

“She’shere.” Harry finishes for him because his voice is trembling. Niall nods again.

“The placelooks incredible.” Niall says, looking at the chandelier over their heads andthe decoration of the tables.

“Do I haveyour approval now?” Harry says sarcastically.

“You’re notthat lucky.” Niall winks at him, walking to the bar and Harry wishes he doesn’tlook as red as his face feels.

“It’sfunny.” Eleanor says as she hands Louis a glass of champagne.

He smilesat her, like the moon itself is on her eyes and backs up the chair so she cansit on his lap, and she does so, gracefully. “What is?”

“How Nialllooks like a lost puppy whenever Harry is around.” She laughs and points to theother side of the room where Niall is playing with Ernest while stealingglances of Harry organizing the waitresses.

Louislaughs too, loud and hard and full of joy. It’s a good day, he has his futurewife with him, his son will be arriving any time tomorrow and his best friendseems to be remember how life can be if you let things go.

“Poorthing, it’s been a while since he liked someone.” Eleanor takes a sip of herdrink and Louis snuggles her closer.

“It’sgetting better,” Louis sighs, “He’s been more talkative and he’s actually beencontributing the last couple of weeks with the wedding thing.”

Eleanornods, kissing Louis in the cheek, suddenly remembering a similar situation twoyears ago. Niall looked so happy at this rehearsal dinner, greeting all of hisfamily, laughing with his friends of college, introducing his brother’s son toeveryone. Louis wanted to tell him about the engagement in that moment, butEleanor wanted to wait so they wouldn’t take the spotlight off them. And it wasa good thing they did.

Sometimes,Eleanor thinks that she should have ended things at the rehearsal dinner. Couldhave been simpler. It doesn’t matter what Niall or Louis say, she hates herbecause she stole Niall from a lot of things and then, left him there withoutnothing other than pain. And yeah, she was there when she met Niall but he washer friend, not her.

“I justwant him to be happy.” Eleanor sighs, looking at Niall across the room. He’snot fully looking at Harry with the same expression he had when they first met.Speechless but also annoyed, like he doesn’t want to be attracted to him butHarry is not making it easy for him, being all charming and cute all the time.

“He’sgetting there!” Louis says, confident. Pointing at Niall debating on going Harry’sdirection or coming to talk to the couple. Louis nods in his direction andNiall rolls his eyes, trying to hide his face behind his drink.

“Rememberthe first time he saw Harry?” Eleanor laughs in Louis’ ear, resting her arm onhis shoulder. Louis laughs, nodding again. “He literally had his mouth open.”

“And thentried to ignore him for the rest of the day,” Niall takes some steps at thedistance, stopping to talk to some people on his way but his eyes never leaveHarry.

“We shouldgive Harry a bonus for bringing Niall to the real world,” Eleanor smiles,blowing kisses at Niall every time he turns to them, like looking for approval,“I didn’t even know he was ready for dating again.”

“I don’tthink he was, but Harry didn’t give him a choice, did he?” Louis says, lookingat Eleanor for what seems to be the first time the whole night. They have beenbusy, but not in a stressful way – thanks to Harry – in a lovable tired kind ofway, like a long day after hiking or touring a new city. They’re excited.

“It’s socute when Niall gets frustrated and mad because he doesn’t know how to handlehimself,” She smiles, tenderly, “like when he got drunk with the testing winebecause he couldn’t talk to Harry like a normal person.” Eleanor finishes herglass of champagne and leaves it on the table. “Poor Harry, he has to put upwith a lot.”

“All theflirting he knows goes back to when he was fifteen, remember?” Louis finisheshis glass as well, putting it next to Eleanor’s.

They seeNiall walking to Harry now and maybe he’s a little too drunk by the way hissteps seem to go sideways but when he’s finally behind him, he takes his wristand stars walking out of the salon. Harry struggles a but until he realizeswho’s dragging him and walks with him.

“Oh, damn.”Eleanor whispers.

“If youweren’t so fucking corny I’d have made out with your face long ago.” Niallbreathes right over his lips as he tries to unbutton his pants.

Harrylaughs, slapping his hands out of his hips, making him whimper but he doesn’tgive him time to complain when he leans in for another kiss.

His head isfuzzy and his moves are slow for all the champagne he had as the night movedalong. One minute he was alone at the bar, drinking as everyone started leavingto go to their rooms and the next thing he knows, Niall is dragging him to the washroomwith his hand on his pants.

The kissturns slow and Niall makes these little sounds that are driving Harry crazy.His hands are now in Harry’s hair, pulling, rubbing, pressing. And it feelsgood, too good to think clearly. So he starts walking to the faucet untilNiall’s ass hits the sink and he jumps to sit on it, getting his pants wet andhissing about it.

Harrystarts leaving kisses from his cheek to his neck and a voice in the back of hismind is counting all the reasons why this is a bad idea but Niall’s legs aroundhis waist makes him forget them all.

“You lookso hot in that suit.” Niall moans in his ear and he wants to say the same thingbut his knees hit the floor and Niall doesn’t let him talk anymore.

Harry hasbeen busy enough to keep him from thinking about how Niall seems to be avoidinghim now. His mom came along to help him to check the food and the flowers, theguest list, the security guys and the decoration of both salons in the Hotel.She’s also helping Eleanor and the girls get ready so Harry has enough time totake a shower and get ready for the ceremony.

He haseverything planned by schedule and all is going according to it. What hedoesn’t expect is someone knocking at his door two hours before the wedding.He’s buttoning his shirt when he opens the door and finds Niall in his blue suit,one hand in the pocket and his eyes on the floor.

“Hey.”Harry says, unsure.

“I needyour help.” Niall says, and he sounds so little.

Harry stepsin, letting Niall walk into his room. He wants to reach for him but somewheredeep down he knows Niall doesn’t feel the same way and it’s fine, Harry hasbeen in this situation enough to know what’s coming.

“I can’tfind the rings.” Niall says, and that wasn’t what he was waiting for.

“What?!”

Harry nevershouts, he likes to talk slow and tender, phrasing his words so it would matchhis thoughts and most people find it exasperating but they have grown used toit, so it doesn’t only surprise Niall when he screams, Harry’s own heartbeat isrising at an incredible speed.

“I don’tremember much from last night but it wasn’t on the shelf next to my bed where Ileft them before going to the club and my room is already upside down and Ican’t focus with all the mess…” Niall is talking fast and moving his hands andHarry would be worried if he wasn’t so mad.

“Are youtrying to ruin this wedding?!” He asks, making Niall looks up, “Are you in lovewith Louis or Eleanor or something?!”

Niallfrowns and he’s ready to hit Harry on the face but he stops with his fist inthe air, controlling his breathing as he sits on the bed, holding his head inhis hands.

“Just helpme find the fucking rings and I’ll be out of your sight.”

Harry feelslike he can finally breathe when Louis and Eleanor exchange an I do and kiss. The rings were in thefridge in Niall’s room next to the empty bottles of alcohol. They didn’t sayanything after they found them. Harry just left the room and went to the firstfloor for the final touches.

It’s been acouple of hours and everyone seems to be having fun. Eleanor looks perfect inwhite dancing with Louis’ sister and a beautiful smile on her face. Sophia isdancing with one of the best man, Liam, and maybe they’ll end up together againjust like Lottie planned all along.

An armfalls over his shoulders and he finds Louis at his side holding a pint andlooking at his wife holding his son, spinning around, making Briana laugh asshe waits for her turn to dance with Freddie again. He looks happy and thatsatisfies Harry in an incredible measure.

“Thank youfor all of this.” Louis says and Harry smiles, nodding.

“I hate tosay that’s my job.” Harry mumbles. “I want to say something like you’re myfriend and-”

“Hey!”Louis laugh, slapping the back of his head. “We’re family now, curly.”

Harryblushes and looks at the floor. He didn’t want to say goodbye to these people,maybe he doesn’t have to.

“And I knowNiall has been a pain in the ass, I’m not blind.” Now he’s looking at Niall atthe bar, drinking another whisky a sip at a time. “He hasn’t always been likethis, I promise.”

There’ssomething in his voice, like a flicker of sadness down his throat that he’sbeen trying to let go, but it’s still there.

“Wepostponed the wedding a year, you know?” Louis says, eyes still on Niall.

Harryfrowns, turning half of his body to look at Louis eye to eye. “Why?”

“He wasleft at the altar two years ago by the girl he was in love with since he wasfifteen.” Harry’s mouth opens and his eyes travel to where Niall is sitting,looking at his empty glass. “We were gonna announce the good news at the party,but Niall was so broken, we couldn’t…”

Harry nods,understanding.

“He avoidedevery social event after that, all of his friends know this girl so it wasalmost impossible not to walk into her and her new boyfriend.” Louis sighs, “Wedecided to wait until he was ready to leave his bed and put a smile on his facefor us.”

He wants tosay something, he wants to walk to Niall and apologize and maybe hug him, if heallows it. Maybe it’s written all over his face because Louis laughs and hisarm falls from his shoulders and he pushes him to Niall’s direction.

“The smilehe has when you’re around.” Louis points at Niall, “I haven’t seen that one ina while.”

“Hey,”Harry says, sitting in the empty sit next to Niall.

He doesn’tlook up, he doesn’t acknowledge his presence. He just drinks and lets the glasshit the table loud enough to make Harry shiver.

“I want toapologize,” he says, slowly, “I’m so sorry, Niall…”

But helaughs, strong and rough, turning to Harry, giving him goosebumps.

“Did Tommo spillthe beans?” Harry looks down and that’s all the confirmation Niall needs. “Idon’t need your pity.”

“I don’t pityyou.” Harry puts a hand on his arm and his chest gets warm when Niall doesn’t throwhim off. “Everyone deals with their own shit. I just seem to have forgottenthat.”

Niallshakes his head, looking at Harry’s hand on his arm and he puts his own handover it before Harry could move it.

“There’s noexcuse for the way I’ve been treating you.” He clears his throat, looking upwith his red teary eyes. “I’m just afraid, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.I’m sorry.” He smiles.

Harry nods,smiling as well. “Maybe we can star over after this wedding is over.”

“What aboutnow?” Niall says, squinting.

“That’salso a good idea.”

#narry fic #narry fanfic #narry prompt #my fic #my writing #prompts #niall x harry #narry #harry x niall #flickerbyniall

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mostlymovieswithmax · 6 years

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Chaos Walking (2019) [initial thoughts]

I’ve just discovered that some of my favourite books are going to be made into a movie to be released next year. The Chaos Walking trilogy is a series of novels by author Patrick Ness (author of A Monster Calls) that I read a few years ago and am now starting to read again. In a quick Google search I discovered that these books are being made into one movie to be released next year. With a director (Doug Liman) and cast (such as Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley) already established, I was very taken aback by this news and I’m really not sure how to feel about it.

I won’t give away too much of the plot for these books because this isn’t a review so much as it is a general musing on what I think of the announcement of the movie itself. However if you haven’t read the books and you want to then I would advise not reading any further until you have read at least the first book as I don’t think I can avoid all spoilers (provided you don’t want even the slightest detail spoiled). I also cannot recommend the books enough so if you’re even just a little curious then I suggest buying the first book pictured above (which can cost as little as £2.80 used on Amazon if you’re in the UK) and having a read through. As a fan of the Chaos Walking trilogy, I think it’s only natural to be sceptical about the movie adaptation or even scared as to how it might turn out. Generally speaking I think the consensus for movie adaptations is that more often than not, the books are better. This I think is usually down to the leniency books have in that they’re not limited to the amount of story that they can tell or the pages they can contain, whereas a movie, especially one made for cinema viewing, has rules to the length it can be. Now these books aren’t exactly Lord Of The Rings in terms of popularity and with those movies being 3-4 hours long each as a result of one book, I can’t see Chaos Walking as a singular movie from three books really trying to be pushed to that long. Rather I can see this movie totalling around an hour and half to possibly two and a half hours at a stretch. So we’re bound to get a lot of condensed story telling and I suppose that’s just what happens when you adapt a book into a movie and is the reason a lot of people say “the book was better” to a lot of these adaptations. Maybe if there was one movie dedicated to each book, the story might be told a bit better. However this isn’t the case and a format like that might even hinder the success and enjoyment of the movie. Let’s talk about casting. As star-studded as it is I would particularly like to talk about the two main characters: Todd and Viola played by Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming) and Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Force Awakens). I like these people as actors and in the right circumstances I think they could work well together. Despite this though, I wonder if this is the right circumstance. Their characters in these books are supposed to be, by our own standards, children (or very early teens, to put it another way). Now I understand that casting children/young teens in movies, especially as the main characters, is a tough business because more often than not, they aren’t any good. However the fact that this movie has cast a 21 year old and a 25 year old as characters who are supposed to be around 14 years old is something I can’t imagine I’ll take to and it’s not even as though they could dance around this fact because the age of the characters is so integral to the plot of this series. If this factor was however taken away then I would be incredibly disappointed. There is no way I would be able to suspend disbelief enough to reasonably accept these two actors, who are in their own respects incredibly talented individuals, as young teenagers. There would have to be something major done to the appearance of these actors for me to think they looked the part because just looking at the only picture I can find of the movie, I couldn’t look at it and say they looked like 14 year old’s.

Another factor I believe will be incredibly difficult to replicate and also another very important plot point (as it’s really one of the key aspects of the books) is the communication of the Noise (or the physical and auditory manifestation of the thoughts of men). This is going to be a movie that will not be able to have a quiet moment as long as it’s running. Because for the most part, the atmosphere is filled with Noise. I’m incredibly curious and confused as to how Liman thinks he’ll be able to pull this off. Not only the Noise itself but the spoken words of characters in contrast with the surrounding Noise; how he’ll choose to control the volume and prominence of each sound. It is stated early on in the first book that specific Noise depends on the people or animals it comes from. For example, in the swamp it is said to be “quiet” however this is only in comparison to the volume from the town. In the pub, it is easy to hear the Noise from outside because of the people inside it; so loud in fact it is remarked upon that even the music the pub is playing is overpowered by the Noise of those inside. As well as volume control, I wonder how Liman will tackle the personality of each characters’ Noise. Each character emits Noise that is unique to them and what they’re thinking. Some Noise is loud and messy and some thoughts overpower others from the same person resulting in a scramble of sound that although can be distinguished, is also muddled as if people are talking over one another. Other Noise however can be neat and orderly from the men who’ve learned and trained to control it. My issue with this is that, though this contrast is portrayed well in the books, I’m unsure of how it would work in a movie when portraying perhaps: a character that, though their Noise was quite jarred and on paper was physically wobbly, had it in one track in order to convey a solid and coherent message to another character prominently over the rest of his Noise. In comparison to possibly: a character such as the Mayor, of whom is explicitly in control of his own Noise, so much so that the physical wording on paper is very neat and tidy in order to show this. In terms of how characters are portrayed, I like them in the books very much and I like that the stories are told in first person. However I do acknowledge that the way in which certain things are said aren’t considered proper English as the books are littered with spelling errors and words that are pronounced wrong because it’s told in first person by a character whom cannot read well and was never properly educated. In the movie, I feel this is a factor that can’t be overlooked and as a result of this might result in clunky dialogue and conveyance in a way that might get annoying.

Surely there’s always an internal struggle within readers when they discover their favourite book is being adapted to a movie. As a fan and someone who has invested time and love into reading these works of artistic literature, you want the movie to be good (if you even want it made at all). More than that, you want it to be fantastic. It should be true to the source material and I would expect the people involved in making it to have as much passion for the books as I (as well as other readers) do or that the author had for writing them. I want Chaos Walking to be as good as it can possibly be and I want it to reflect the books. Obviously not word for word and shot for shot but I want this movie helmed by someone who loves the books and has read them all cover to cover and having been almost 10 years since the first book ‘The Knife Of Never Letting Go’ was published, I see no reason as to why that is not ample time to get to know each book intimately. As well as this, I would hope that Patrick Ness himself had a say in what was happening in the movie instead of taking a back seat and letting the director get on with it. Chaos Walking, to me, isn’t a movie I think needs to be made. It works well as a series of books and I don’t know how it will break from them to condense into one movie. However I hope I’m proved wrong and that it goes on to be an amazing piece of cinema like it has the potential to be. I just don’t want to see it done poorly (because I will see this movie) or mismanaged. The story of these books is wonderfully original and I enjoyed reading every page so I’m interested in how the movie will differ from others to set itself apart by use of the cinematography, editing, acting, colour use, etc. Because it deserves to be set apart from everything else purely by story alone. Now I don’t have a lot of experience with Doug Liman as a director. I have seen Edge Of Tomorrow, which I thought was good though not hugely original and I’ve seen Jumper which was... Well that wasn’t too great let’s be honest. Liman is also directing Marvel’s Gambit to be released next year as well which I am also excited for. Hopefully they both turn out great and aren’t hurt by the other in terms of how much dedication Liman shows each of them in order to make them the best they can be.

In summary and in truth, I am scared for Chaos Walking as a movie but I am also intrigued and hopeful. I just want the trilogy to be done justice and I’m excited to see how it’s done. I know I’ve not given a lot away in terms of what the story is about but as I said, this isn’t a review; I just wanted to be able to articulate my thoughts on the matter. If you’ve read this far then I thank you and I ask: what are your thoughts on this upcoming movie as a concept? If you’ve read the books, are you excited for Chaos Walking? Do you hate the idea and just want them to stay as books? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

#Chaos Walking #movie #books #trilogy #thoughts #The Knife Of Never Letting Go #The Ask And The Answer #Monsters Of Men #Patrick Ness #Doug Liman #Tom Holland #Daisy Ridley

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