#this child gets it better than anyone at warner bros

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I will be delusional as I want BUT I'll pretend that tom cruise going back to Warner Bros means we'll finally get the deleted scenes from the iwtv please please manifesting

🙏🙏🙏 Anon, embrace being delusional! I wish! If anyone's connected with Warner Bros please please tell them we want the deleted scenes!

Anyway since we're on the topic... over the years I've talked about wanting the cut scenes, and I wanted to reflect for a moment on why we want them. I think we want them because, like a delicious cake, once it's all consumed, we still look at the serving plate, hoping we can still lick the icing off the knife, or maybe the baker has some leftover cake back in the kitchen?? Or maybe they can tell us that the secret ingredient to intensifying the chocolate is ESPRESSO... We just want another taste so badly! We want to know the secret ingredients that set it apart from other cakes. And some filmmakers know that, and sometimes they're happy to share the cut scenes on a DVD release, maybe with commentary as to why the scenes were cut, like:

"Here's a scene were Louis kills a priest and ultimately we had an overall run time limit of 2 hours, but it was otherwise a perfectly good scene."

"Here's part of a set of scenes we shot early on where Lestat shows mortal Louis what killing entails, and although we loved it, we ended up improving the Lestat makeup & hair a few weeks later, and for the sake of continuity we had to cut it bc we couldn't go back to that location to reshoot, or it would have taken too much time to fix in post, etc."

Giving over the cut scenes is a little like an artist showing the scrapped versions of a painting composition, and that's fine when the creator wants to invite the viewers into their artistic process, but I think the IWTV filmmakers at the time (and for years after) really wanted the '94 movie to be serious* to the point that releasing cut scenes could have undermined their overall vision... maybe they simply didn't want to invite the audience into their creative process.

(*Serious, BUT there was certainly plenty of beauty, charm, dark humor, intimacy, desire, so much more! Maybe the filmmakers cut scenes that THEY felt didn't mesh well with the overall story they wanted to tell, like putting together an outfit and choosing accessories that go better rather than others... you know?)

WITH THAT SAID... What cut scenes would you have liked to see? That's what fanfic and fanart are for, so tell us and maybe someone will be inspired to create it for all of us 💝

IF Tom was still part of VC at all... one of my personal fantasy casting ideas was to have Tom play the Marquis in TVL, and now he's really old enough to do it! 😅 Can you imagine?? Tom playing his own horrible father! Cast younger actors to play kid!Lestat, teen!Lestat, etc.?? Tom!Marquis showing obvious preference for his two older brothers and being horrible to Gabrielle... it could be amazing.

Obviously it wouldn't be adorable like this but... I've always loved Tom Cruise characters when he interacts with kids and teens, he's always seemed very in touch with his inner child, even when that inner child is more of a 12 yo brat. Whole novels could be written on his layered performances with child and teen actors, but for now, just a few thoughts...

^From Jerry Maguire. I can't quite articulate why this was so compelling... iirc, maybe because his character is really frustrated/demoralized in this scene, and there's something comforting about a kid naively telling you that "the human head weighs 8 pounds," as if to say, "Your problems are not really as big a deal as you think they are; live in the present moment." And Tom in this character seems to absorb that deeper meaning and it gives him some relief, it's a step towards his character's growth.

When Tom played Ray in War of the Worlds, he had a teenage son, and there was a heartbreaking scene where Ray had to choose between protecting his son or his daughter. From That Moment In:

Desperate to keep his family together, Ray is forced to leave the terrified Rachel alone for a moment as he puts his weight on Robbie and forces him to the ground as the air around them lights up with smoke and tracer fire. Meanwhile, another couple, fleeing the madness, sees Rachel standing by herself and attempt to rescue her, not knowing that her father is nearby. Looking back, Ray sees this and becomes torn between his children, not wanting to lose either but forced to choose. Robbie assures his father that this is what he wants, “I want to see this,” and to please let him go, which Ray finally, achingly, submits to, seeing that Rachel is being whisked away. Father and son say goodbye as Robbie runs over the crest and Ray rushes down to get his daughter as a hellfire of explosion overtake the hills, giving us the impression Robbie has met his end.

I just love the idea of Tom playing the very character that had caused so much pain for Lestat, that Lestat was always on defense from that man, looooong after he died. Despite all the torment the Marquis inflicted on Lestat, Lestat still gave him a comfortable place to live out his last few years, the roles pretty much reversed as happens with aging parents, Lestat actually nurturing this man (not always in the kindest way but still!) in his feeble old age... and couldn't bring himself to even kill him out of mercy.

Nature & Nurture, Lestat was damaged by his father genetically and emotionally in his formative years, and so much of Lestat's bravado and verbal attacks seem to be a shield for the awful feelings of growing up unloved, unwanted, and beaten for expressing his own desires. So much so that even in canon he often expresses the intensity of his desires far more eloquently and frequently in the narration than he's able to do verbally, even with the characters he cherishes the most. Because to express his love exposed himself to losing it.

Tom could for sure pull off a performance that would capture the Marquis, because he essentially played Lestat with the qualities of a victim perpetuating some of the abuse he suffered from the man who was supposed to be (and was!) his role model for becoming the man he became. 😭

#vampire chronicles #marquis de lioncourt #anon #cut scenes #vc casting #tom cruise #i love him your honor #war of the worlds #ray ferrier #robbie ferrier #That Moment In #iwantmyiwtv has opinions #meta analysis #not really but kinda sorta #Jerry Maguire #on ACTING #ask #aw that was fun to answer an ask again maybe I'll do some more #lestat #lestat de lioncourt #the vampire lestat #smtg smtg the act of Lestat restoring and updating the castle years later smtg smtg about how he didn't turn into his father smtg smtg

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

My lovely wife made me a mocha to go with composing this weeks post. That combined with oxycodone, ice, and elevation are doing their job. I can focus well enough to get this done. 🤞🏼

Shelly Rosen: ”The way Google’s two-factor authentication system is designed, sets up poor and elderly people to be locked out of their accounts again and again, and without access to their email, they lose their welfare benefits, their housing, and struggle to find work.”

I’m not sure what Google can do to fix this extremely important problem. Take some time to read Ms. Rosen’s letter it lays everything out for Google. As a developer this is the kind of feedback you hope to get from folks using your software.

TechCrunch: ”Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire Roomba maker iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion.”

Alexa, don’t vacuum the cat. This seems like a really sweet deal for Amazon. I can’t believe iRobot couldn’t fetch a higher price.

Los Angeles Times: “The California Department of Motor Vehicles has accused Tesla of false advertising in its promotion of the company’s signature Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technologies.”

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Tesla has been touring Full Self Drive for years and they’re no where near the desired functionality. Is it novel? Yes. Do I trust it? No way.

I can’t wrap my brain around the challenges the developers must be facing. And the icing on the cake would be Musk breathing down your neck to get it done. No thanks.

My idea of a better challenge would be tackling mass transit with electric motors and making it easier to travel long distances on electric trains and busses.

Heck, the eBikes business is really taking off.

Cartoon Brew: ”Dreamworks Animation has unveiled plans to release its proprietary production renderer Moonray as open-source software later this year.”

I’ve had a fascination with rendering pipelines for years and years. As far as I know Pixar’s RenderMan is still the Cadillac of rendering software but having an open source choice from a heavy hitter like Dreamworks is worthy of consideration, and it’ll be open so folks can contribute to it. Amazing!

When the git repo is made public you know I’ll be there poking around. 😃

Makes you wonder if Pixar will follow with RenderMan?

TechCrunch: ”Infowars founder Alex Jones took the stand today in a trial that will determine what he owes to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Last year, Jones was found liable in a series of defamation cases brought by the parents of Sandy Hook victims.”

Alex Jones is a grifter. He has an unwitting audience of people willing to believe anything because they hate everything and everyone. Jones feeds their animosity with wild stories of the deep state and blood drinking Democrats to drain them of their hard earned cash. Who’s the vampire?

Vulture: ”It’s pretty well known and even darkly joked about across all the visual-effects houses that working on Marvel shows is really hard. When I worked on one movie, it was almost six months of overtime every day. I was working seven days a week, averaging 64 hours a week on a good week. Marvel genuinely works you really hard. I’ve had co-workers sit next to me, break down, and start crying. I’ve had people having anxiety attacks on the phone.”

I don’t think this is a new reality of the VFX business. Rather, a horrible expectation set by major studios.

Deadline: ”Even though Batgirl is in the final stages of post-production, Deadline has confirmed that Warner Bros. and DC Films will not be releasing the movie on any platform, including theatrically.”

This is a real bummer. I was totally ready for it.

As far as release platforms go, I was fully expecting it to appear on HBO Max. It’s the streaming platform I use more than any other. More than Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Apple TV. Each of those services has a place in my streaming lineup, but HBO’s ability to release new movies to streaming early is it’s real superpower.

The Washington Post: ”SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk’s countersuit to Twitter contains aggressive new claims about the social media site’s methods for tallying bot and spam accounts — as well as which accounts generate ad revenue — cementing the strategy the billionaire is using to attempt to back out of the deal.”

I suspect Musk will be forced to show up and pay $54.20 per share.

The big question is, once he owns it can he make it something better or will he lose an uphill battle?

How do you deal with bot problems and nihilistic American politicians hell bent on turning our democracy into a self serving dictatorship.

I’m sure Mr. Musk has some really great ideas. It’s the bad ideas I’m worried about.

That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed your coffee or tea with your read. ☕️

[pascalsky]

Pedro Pascal is flying high on The Mandalorian, but defining success by his earthly bonds

The Wonder Woman 1984 and The Mandalorian star is one of EW's Entertainers of the Year.

Human connection. It’s vital. Especially in a year like 2020. Especially for Pedro Pascal. So it’s ironic that the 45-year-old’s highest-profile success to date is working with an adorable animatronic puppet, inside a chrome helmet he famously can’t take off. "It is why I wanted to do this show. Selfishly, I knew [the Child, a.k.a. Baby Yoda] was likely to make people fall in love with the show," says Pascal of tackling the title role on The Mandalorian, the Emmy-nominated hit Star Wars series, which returned for its second season on Disney+ in October.

The Chilean-American actor has an eye for choosing projects where he’ll stand out, from popular network procedurals including The Good Wife, The Mentalist, and Law & Order to his breakout roles as the charming — and horny — Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones and, soon after, DEA agent Javier Peña on Net­flix’s Narcos. But it’s the stoic bounty hunter safeguarding a frog-egg-eating 50-year-old toddler that’s made him a house­hold name. The new season of The Mandalorian followed Pascal’s galaxy-traveling warrior as he searched for the home of the Child, generating countless memes in the process.

Playing the Mandalorian has been one of the hardest and most unique experiences of Pascal's career to date. At this point, it's no secret that he wasn't physically under the helmet as much as he would've liked in season 1 and recorded his dialogue in post-production to match what his doubles, stunt actors Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder, did on set in the armor. Giving a largely vocal performance was a challenge for a physical actor like Pascal, who is almost unrecognizable when you compare his turns on The Good Wife and Game of Thrones, for example, because of how he carries himself. Yet, being on set way more in The Mandalorian season 2 didn't make his job any easier because he still had to figure how to make Mando compelling while also being as economical as possible in his physical movements and vocal performance.

"I'm not even sure if I would be able to do it if it weren't for the amount of direct experience that I've had with being on stage to understand how to posture yourself, how to physically frame yourself into something and to tell a story with a gesture, with a stance, or with very, very specific vocal intonation," says Pascal, who believes his collaborative relationship with creator Jon Favreau and executive producer Dave Filoni, a.k.a. his "Mandalorian papas," also helped him inhabit the role in season 2.

Speaking of collaboration: Working with comedian Amy Sedaris, who plays gruff Tatooine mechanic Peli Motto, was one of the highlights of The Mandalorian’s sophomore season. “I followed Amy Sedaris around like a puppy. [I was] like, ‘Hey again. I’m not leaving your side until you wrap,’ and she’s like, ‘Cool,’” Pascal says. “I love the Child — it really is adorable — and it is so fascinating to see it work, but somebody who makes you spit-laugh right into your helmet will always be my favorite thing."

Pascal longed for those kinds of interactions during quarantine, which proved difficult for the actor who was living alone in Los Angeles. But he lights up, is even giddy at times, when the conversation turns to bonding with the Community cast right before a charity table read back in May (he filled in for Walton Goggins), or FaceTiming his friends to celebrate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' election victory on Nov. 7. "Ahhhh! Ahhhh!" Pascal exclaims, reenacting the joyous calls with buddies like Oscar Isaac that Saturday morning. "It was screaming and jumping and dancing and crying…. I very arrogantly took screenshots of everything and [shared them], like, 'I am a part of this!'”

"I'd be less nervous playing tennis in front of the Obamas than I was seeing a reunion of these people that I think are brilliant and have this incredible chemistry with each other and stepping in and having really, really, bad technology in this new space that I had moved into. I really resented having to actually participate acting-wise because there were instances where it was way too much fun to watch."

- PEDRO PASCAL ON SHOOTING THE COMMUNITY TABLE READ.

His appreciation for those around him has only grown during the pandemic. Before flying to Budapest to film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with Nicholas Cage, Pascal leaned on his bubble for support. Community's Gillian Jacobs, for example, hosted him for an outdoor socially distanced pizza night every Saturday in the early weeks of lockdown. (He suspects that's why he was recruited for the sitcom's table read when Goggins couldn't participate.) "The friends that got me through it are absolutely everything to me and very beautifully marked in my head. I've got old friends and new friends that literally did nothing short of parent me through the experience," says Pascal, who has "survivor's remorse" for being in Europe right now. "I feel guilty not being [in the States] with my friends through [this tumultuous time] but also grateful that, individually, I was able to gain a little bit of separation from the stress of it."

Those tight bonds helped redefine, or at least clarify, what success means to him. "I want to make sure that my relationships are right, and I want to make sure I'm nurturing meaning in a sustaining way, and that won't necessarily be related to getting good jobs and making lots of money," he says. But he'll take them — as he did for both of his 2020 projects, about which he's thrilled. And how could he not be, starring in two of the year's most feverishly anticipated properties?

Besides The Mandalorian, Pascal appears in Patty Jenkins' superhero epic Wonder Woman 1984, which has endured a Homeric journey to its release (read: several pandemic-related delays). Thankfully, the odyssey is almost over because Warner Bros. recently confirmed that it will open in both theaters and on HBO Max on Dec. 25. Pascal is stoked audiences will finally see his turn as the villainous Maxwell Lord because playing the greedy dream-seller pushed him out of his post-Game of Thrones action role comfort zone.

"With Wonder Woman, [Gal Gadot and Kristen Wiig] are doing the action, baby, and I'm doing the schm-acting!" he says, hilariously elongating that final syllable. "I am hamming it up!" (Indeed, Pascal reveals Cage inspired his performance in one particular scene.)

But Pascal felt he was up to the challenge because everything he needed was right there in the screenplay, which Jenkins co-wrote with Geoff Johns and David Callaham. "I didn't have to take something and figure out how to put more flesh onto it. I had to achieve getting into the skin of what was being presented to me," he says, contrasting the experience with playing a DEA agent for three seasons on Narcos. "For me, Colombia was almost the central character, and then I was allowed to make him depressive and to tonally interpret what the character was. And in this case [on Wonder Woman 1984], there was just so much for me to meet rather than to invent."

He continues: "That was an incredible delight and challenge because Patty Jenkins is a director who loves actors and when she sees she can ask for more, she does. And there isn't anyone better, in my experience, to give more to."

In 2021, he rejoins the good guys as an aging superhero and father in Robert Rodriguez's kid-friendly Netflix drama We Can Be Heroes. The inherent optimism of the Netflix film's title also complements Pascal's hope for the new year. Says Pascal, ”If [fear] can take a little bit of a backseat and not be the main character in everybody’s life, that would be great.”

SOURCE

#omg he looks so damn good #entertainment weekly #pedro pascal #the mandalorian #din djarin #max lord #maxwell lord #wonder women 1984 #ww1984 #oberyn martell #prince oberyn #the unbearable weight of massive talent #javier pena #narcos #javi gutierrez #we can be heroes #marcus moreno

[enderbird]

Anniversary Special

Summary:  The 65th Anniversary Special for the Warner Siblings happens. Yakko learns some things that, in the end, don't matter.

Words: 1808

Warnings: talk of the canonical neglect of the warners : i am staring at the water tower :, mention of attempted murder? that is. kinda it. 

Notes: I watched the 65th Anniversary Special of the original Animaniacs yesterday. I had some feelings and shoved them on through Yakko tgyhu  They’re probably OOC as I have never written the Warners before. I threw in the beginning of the story from Wakko’s Wish in here because I thought it’d be cute. and I also have no idea when they actually started working on the movie. we out here.

AO3

This wasn’t beta-ed... or like. yeah. It’s probably got a few mistakes in it because I did start this at 1am today. but yeah.

He shouldn't have been surprised as he was, not that it was clear he was surprised about anything. Yakko was drawn an actor and, even though he can't die, he likes to say he'll die one too. It's just... everyone knew they were in the water tower. Everybody. Other toons, the staff, the big man upstairs too.. probably. Everyone except the public seemed to know they were locked up in a water tower for sixty years of their toony lives. 

 He can't express his anger, of course, it's their 65th Anniversary Special! He should be celebrating sixty-five years of wonderful time with everyone, not wishing he hadn't spent most of them locked away with his siblings. 

 Yet here he is. About to explode he's so upset. 

 Yakko always thought maybe the other toons were working on trying to free them and such other things. They were fellow toons! Trapping children in a space with nothing but their half-formed hammerspaces and imaginations in a fucking water tower isn't how toons should be treated. He'd hoped someone, maybe Bugs, the very face of the company, had tried to get them free or something, you know? But no.

 In the end, it seemed  everyone  at Warner Bros was happy to have been rid of them for sixty glorious, glorious years. Not a full sixty, though, they still got to be free one day every few years so the tower could be checked for termites and whatever. He never bothered to listen to what they were let out for because it honestly never mattered. For one day, even if it be only every few years, he got to be somewhere else. 

 That was something they all had always looked forward to. Running around in search of new things. Everything was always changing and it was so hard to keep track of it all when you only get to see snippets of it every few years. But it was okay! Even if they always got caught at the end of the day after the company was done doing god knows what, they still at least got to see something new. Something exciting.

 Yakko grabbed his siblings' hands in an attempt to pull himself away from his thoughts as if they wouldn't just return later in the night when they got back home. Back to the tower.. back in his ball pit. For now, though? He might as well enjoy what was left of the show, as much as his revelation hurt him. He really did hold onto the hope the other toons would try and free them. 

 Honestly, when they were first locked away, he'd thought it was a joke. He sat there for almost two months just waiting for the punchline to kick off. He'd only actually thought that because everyone just seemed so excited and happy when they were put in the tower.. he wanted to hold onto that, not that he was able to for long.

  When he'd looked back up at the screen he saw Daffy, talking about their original nonsensical cartoon. The one about the flypaper or whatever it was. Complaining about how it went on for eight hours. This was kinda rude to show at an event that was supposed to celebrate them, right? It felt rude at least. Whatever. 

 He just squeezed his siblings' hands and ignored the show, seeing as nothing good had come from actually watching it so far.

 --------------------

 Hours later, he couldn't sleep. The night had gotten better after they got back home. After Buddy tried to kill them out of jealousy for his old, ruined reputation, and after he'd found that no one cares about them stuck in the tower. You'd think Yakko would be a little more shaken up about the dying thing, but no. 

 It seems he was the only one not able to sleep so far, as he could hear Dot moving around in her sleep above him, and Wakko making noises in their sleep on the top bunk. He'd probably wake them up so they could all sleep together if that didn't just make him feel a little iffier. He was the oldest, right? The oldest doesn't need to ask his younger siblings if they could all sleep together because he couldn't just sleep alone. That's stupid.

 He just gave up and got up. Wakko would probably be up soon, as the middle child always got up for something at some point in the night. Dot would follow after Wakko accidentally wakes her up, etc etc. Yakko probably knew his siblings better than anything, more than any song he's had to memorize the lyrics for or the very backs of his paws. 

 He placed any balls that had fallen out when he got up back in his ball pit bed, rubbing his eyes and wandering off in the dark towards their little kitchen. He might as well wait there... it's where everyone ended up at some point in the night. 

 --------------------

 A few hours later, give or take, Yakko heard the unmistakable sound of Wakko climbing down the bunk bed ladder and making their way around the water tower. They sometimes sleep-ate or talked.. or walked.. so if that ended up being the case tonight then he'd wake up Wakko, but only then. 

 He'd pulled a light out of hammerspace to read with, but ended up messing around with and breaking it. How he broke the light didn't exactly matter as he saw, heard more than anything, his sibling finally stumble into the kitchen. 

 What really sucked about the dark was, even if they were supposed to be animals and such, they had terrible night vision. It didn't help with gags, and they weren't any specific animal, so they didn't have the luxury of most other toons when it came to the dark. That was what really got him about being stuck in the dark for so long. 

 He squinted at the other toon from his spot at the kitchen table, only to find he was being squinted at back. 

 "What're you doin' up?" Was the only thing he found Wakko saying, who now standing in the doorway and waiting for an answer.

 Now obviously he can't just answer with "Oh I was thinking about all our time stuck in here with no clear way of being able to ever leave" because that's upsetting. This was one of the last people he could ever find himself trying to upset, not that'd he'd want to go and just do that anyway. It's against his very purpose as a toon, isn't it? 

 "Just couldn't sleep. Thought I'd come in here and run into you sooner or later, you know? Did you wake up Dottie?"

 Both brothers knew never to call their sister Dottie, it was Dot or Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca the Third, and she made sure it stayed that way.. but it didn't seem she'd wake up yet tonight. Maybe later. It should, at least, be safe to joke about until then. 

 Wakko seemed to accept that answer as they continued their journey to the fridge, blinding a very tired Yakko when they opened it. They pulled out a giant cake from god knows where before going over to sitting across from their brother.

 "I didn't hear her getting up this time. Just her normal movin' around. Did you wanna talk to her or somethin'?" Is what Yakko finally got in response, but only after Wakko had taken a huge bite out of the cake.. as well at their plate. 

He just shook his head, laying it down on his arms. "Thought maybe we could spend the day after our 65th Anniversary Special doing something together. Only if you guys want to, of course."

 It took longer to get a response, as Wakko had just swallowed the cake and plate whole, which wasn't anything new. "Maybe you could tell Dot the story from that script we got a few days ago. She'd like getting to practice.." 

 "I'd like to get to tell you both the story, even if it's mostly about Dot. You're not there for it in the movie, are you?"

 Wakko just shook their head, laying it on their arms as their brother had done a bit before.

 "Well, that just can't do. How about.. we all sleep in my ball pit tonight. You could go grab Dot after you're finished snacking, and I'll see about finding those scripts to look back over, yeah?" 

 Wakko nodding along, seeming pretty happy with the idea before running off to get their sister. 

 While Wakko did that and about got their fingers bitten off for it, Yakko just continued to sit there, looking happier than he had earlier. Not that anyone could see his face. Wakko probably knew he didn't have to look over his lines but agreed so he could be alone a little longer, or maybe they were just that tired. He didn't care which.

 Yakko probably needed Wakko and Dot more than they needed him. He was okay with that, but it's not something he'd tell them. All that mattered right now was getting to his siblings before Dot or Wakko got impatient and came looking for him, which he was completely fine with doing. 

 He stepped into the little spot they'd sectioned off from the rest of the water tower and called a room before clearing his throat, which he mostly did just to let them know he'd finally gotten back. 

 "Dot, if you didn't murder Wakko over your 'cutie sleep', I'm gonna go ahead and say sorry for waking you up. If Wakko did perish by your hand I'm taking it back." 

 That was mostly a joke. They'd never kill over sleep, not usually at least. Dot did just get annoyed if woken up for almost any reason. 

 He slid into the ball pit he, for some reason unknown to him, called a bed. The last time they were out he found some kind of time-traveling dohickey Brain had made for one of his failed schemes and decided to go and mess around for a bit. See what the future was like. Just found some ball pit laying in the middle of some convention hall.

 He can't remember what it was called now (Mashcon? Stashcon? Dashcon??) and it didn't matter. What mattered now is he could feel both of his siblings with him that he needed to start on a story for. 

 "Alright, you two. Here we go," he cleared his throat again, with no real need to... again. "Once upon a time, a brave knight married a beautiful princess-" 

 Yeah. This would turn out okay, even if he wasn't too happy with the other toons right now. He'd always be just fine with these two. That's all that was important.

#ozzy writes #thats a shitty writing tag #but whatever #Animaniacs #Yakko Warner #Wakko Warner #Dot Warner #Bugs Bunny mentioned #Daffy Duck mentioned #I know the ball pit bed is from the reboot but like... #it seemed like it'd be fun to add. #Brain mentioned #the only comment so far is about dashcon ball pit and it's like... my favorite thing #yakko warner is very tired and trying his best #Nonbinary Wakko

[pokepony]

Changeling: Find

Did I write a whole oneshot for this AU? Yes, yes I did. :3

Word count: 2,298 (aka longer than my usual shjksjks)

“Mama, can I go play?”

She smiled. “Yes you can.” 

“Wanna play with me, Yak?”

“Nah, I’m still hungry.” Wakko shrugged to say ‘suit yourself’.

“Sweetie, remember not to wander off too far.”

“I won’t!”

With that, the younger Warner brother rushed off to burn his excess energy. This was Wakko’s favorite activity when his family went on picnics (well, other than eating). The garden they visited was an absolute marvel to look at. Not to mention that it was massive; it was practically a maze every time he went in. He still didn’t memorize the path despite how many times he’d been on it, but hey, that was the fun part!

He skipped along the stone path with his arms outstretched to his sides, tongue flopping out of his mouth happily. As he felt the wind breeze past his fur, he flapped his arms about. Ah, it was such a nice day.

But Wakko’s state of bliss was interrupted when he felt one of his ears twitch. Stopping in his tracks, he raised it up curiously; he heard something. Straining his ear, he noticed the sound was high and prolonged. Almost like.. crying. 

He slightly frowned. Who was crying? Why? He hoped that person was okay. He prepared to think nothing more of it and continue running about, but then the sound got louder. It definitely sounded like crying now.

He considered looking for the person but he wasn’t sure. His parents (and Yakko) always told him about “stranger danger”. But surely, no mean person could be crying like that. 

Right..? 

Well, if things went south, he had enough grasp on his toon powers to summon a mallet for a period of time. If not, he could always scream for his family.

His plan set in stone, Wakko followed the sound and heard it get louder as he neared a group of hedges that were arranged in a circle. He noticed that each hedge had a very small gap in between them, but not impossible for him to navigate through. 

As he reached the gap, he peeked through it and could see something sitting in a very small flower bed. The wailing was at its apex; he must’ve found the crying person! Slowly but surely, he squeezed himself through the gap to see what was up.

However, what he did see was.. questionable, at the very least.

The thing in the flower bed was a creature. It was facing away from him, but it looked small and it seemed like it wore something like a magenta onesie. A black tail like his poked out of the onesie and, most interestingly, light pink insectile wings poked out on its back.

Cautiously, he inched toward the creature as quietly as he could, but the soft crunch of the plants under his paw alerted it of his presence. As it turned around to face him, he got a little freaked out.

Its eyes were black like his, but there were no pupils. Wait, there was some gray in the middle of its eyes—were those its pupils? It also had noticeable eyelashes (and a yellow flower tied around its ears), so maybe it was a girl? But perhaps the freakiest thing was the two giant fangs jutting right out her mouth.

Upon seeing them, the young boy gasped softly, to which the creature let out a scared-sounding chirp and began backing away until she reached a corner. She continued to look at him with fearful eyes, whimpering.

Wakko wasn’t sure what to think. He was creeped out, but at the same time, intrigued.

She looked like the same kind of toon that he and his family were. Black fur, white face, red nose. Her fingers were really pointy though, almost like they were claws. In fact, she did have claws poking out of her paws.

What was she? Her features seemed kinda familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Besides, he needed to calm her down first.

The boy raised his hands up appeasingly. “‘Ey,” he called out, slowly walking over to her. “Don’ worry. I’m not gonna hurt you.” As long as you don’ hurt me.

The insect-like being seemed to understand him, her whimpers subsiding into sniffles. He stood right in front of her, taking in her appearance. She was indeed much smaller than him; she was most likely only a baby. As he gazed at her, she gazed at him in a similarly curious manner, her wings twitching likewise.

“Are you okay?” Wakko asked softly. She only tilted her head. “Can’ talk, huh?”

The baby tilted her head again and voiced a quizzical chitter. Her compound-like eyes surveyed over the boy once more before she closed them, concentrating, the flower on her head beginning to glow green. Bracing himself just in case, he backed away from her a bit. 

A green aura washed over the creature and as it reached the bottom of her feet, her normal form was not in place. Instead, Wakko found himself staring at a mirror; she copied his exact appearance.

“Whoa,” he gaped at her in awe, eyes sparkling likewise. She looked exactly like him. Well, almost; she was still the same size as what she was normally.

Then a light wind breezed by, carrying the pollen of the nearby flowers. His counterpart sneezed, causing the green aura to wash over his body again. When the aura dissipated, the baby was back in her place.

Wakko smiled, tongue sticking out. “Cool, you can turn inta’ people!” he cheered, clapping his hands. “Do me again! Do me again!”

“Wakko!”

His ears perked up again; that was Yakko. Upon hearing the new voice, the creature squeaked frightfully and scurried back into a darker corner, causing him to reach his hand out to her as he hissed, “No, come back!”. Much more to his dismay, he saw a flash of green before she disappeared before his very eyes.

“Where are ya, baby bro?”

“I’m ova’ here!” he quickly alerted, waving his hand.

He could the form of his brother pause before he saw him slide through the hedge gap. “Hey,” Yakko greeted with a smile. “Whatcha doin’ here?”

“I-I ‘eard someone cryin’ an’ I wen’ t’ go see, an’ I-I found this baby!” Wakko said frantically. “But you scared ‘er off!” He gave his brother a little shove.

The elder uttered a surprised ‘ow!’. “Sorry, I didn’t know.” 

Wakko scanned his eyes back to the corner where the creature ran for any sign of her. Luckily, when he squinted, he saw the end of her tail stick out in the sunlight.

His face erupted into a big grin and he turned back to Yakko. “Neva’ mind, she’s still here!” He turned back to the corner and urged the child forward. “You can come out, is’ okay. Is’ jus’ my big brotha.”

An uncertain pause of silence followed before both brothers saw another flash of green and the baby reappear. Warily, she crawled out into the light.

As he got a better glimpse of this baby, Yakko’s eyes widened. “Get behind me, Wak!” he shouted, summoning a mallet and holding it threateningly with a hardened expression to match.

“Huh?!” Wakko cried out, alarmed. Seeing the girl screech in fear once more, he stood in front of her protectively. “Hey, what’re ya doin’—?!”

“That’s a changeling, Wak!”

“A- huh?”

“A changeling!” he repeated. “Mom and Dad told us about them, ‘member? They’re bad!”

Changeling.. changeling.. Wakko tried to rack his mind on what his parents had told him. Changeling—Oh, that’s right! 

Changelings. Bug-like creatures that used magic and could disguise themselves as your loved ones while they drained you of your love; they were like energy vampires. The fangs, the wings, the shapeshifting.. She fit the bill.

He frowned. “But.. she didn’ do anythin’ bad.”

“Mom says it’s ‘cuz they try to trick ya,” Yakko countered. “They act nice so that they can attack ya when you don’ expect it.” He raised his weapon. “Now, c’mon, get away from it!”

His younger sibling shook his head firmly. “No!” His eyes turned pleading. “C’mon, big brotha. She’s jus’ a baby.”

Yakko repeatedly switched his gaze between him and the girl. When he looked at the girl’s petrified expression, he couldn’t help but soften, guilty for scaring her so much. He sighed. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted, putting away his mallet. “What do ya think she’s doin’ out here?” he asked, taking a seat on the grass.

“I dunno,” Wakko replied, also taking a seat. He invited the baby to sit in his lap, to which she obliged. “There wasn’ anyone else around.” He then summoned a small pair of keys from his hammerspace and held them above her, shaking them. She cooed and clawed at the keys happily.

The seven-year-old let a small smile reach his face. “Hey, let me play with her,” he said, opening his arms up.

Wakko smiled and nodded, preparing to hand her over when the child let out a whimper, clearly still intimidated by the older brother. “He’s not gonna hurt ya, I pwomise,” he quickly assured before giving her to Yakko. 

As she (reluctantly) settled in his lap, she still tensed up and shied away from his watch. However, when Wakko handed his brother the keys and he began to jingle them, she couldn’t stay away. A smile spread wide on her face, her fangs on full show, and she erupted into giggles as she clawed at the keys again.

Yakko’s own smile grew. “She’s pretty cute for a bug,” he chuckled. But his grin turned downward. “Where’re her parents?”

Wakko made an ‘I dunno’ sound. “Did they leave ‘er ‘ere?”

He shook his head. “No way. No parents would do that. Not good ones..”

The younger looked over to the baby concernedly. “She was cryin’ really loud.. Maybe she’s been out ‘ere for a long time.”

Yakko thought about it. It wouldn’t exactly be surprising given the reputation that changelings have. And, oh, man, was it him or was her stomach smaller?

He really didn’t want to consider it.. but it was likely that she was abandoned.

No matter what she was, a child didn’t deserve that at all. His big brother instincts were kicking in. She needed help.

The older Warner brother narrowed his eyes with conviction. “We should take her back to Mom and Dad.”

--------

“Mom! Dad!”

Angelina and William felt a wave of relief when they heard their eldest son’s voice and saw both of their sons running towards them.

“There you boys are,” she said. “We were getting worried.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Yakko quickly apologized. “But Wakko found something.”

She quirked an eyebrow as her four-year-old approached them, seemingly trying to steady himself as he carried something in his arms. “Look!” he cried. He gently gestured to his parents, the thing turning its head to reveal the baby changeling. Angelina gasped and William tensed up just a little.

“Mama, Dadoo, can we keep ‘er?” Wakko asked.

“Boys,” William started, voice laced with apprehension. “you do know that is a changeling, yes?”

“Yeah, but.. But she was all alone back there!” 

“She could still be dangerous.”

His wife held up a hand. “Now, hold on, William. She is just a little one.” She kneeled over to Wakko. “Let me see her, honey.”

He did so, handing the baby once more. Being mindful of her claws, Angelina held her in a cradle-like fashion and began to rock her gently. The child nuzzled into her chest, gripping her almost like a koala. At that, Angelina became the third person to smile at the baby’s antics. She looked to her husband. “She can’t be dangerous, love. She just can’t.”

William couldn’t help but soften at both Angie and the baby. He sighed, “I will admit it looks unlikely.”

She turned back to her children. “Are you sure you didn’t see her parents? No notes for her or anything?” Her younger son nodded wildly.

Yakko clasped his hands in a pleading fashion. “Can we please keep her? She might be a changeling, but we can teach her not to be evil!”

“She even looks like us!” Wakko added.

Their parents shared a glance to each other, unsure. How were they going to take care of a changeling? It was definitely going to be questionable when it came to feeding it, for starters..

But they couldn’t leave her alone out here. She was such a darling to boot.

With no more words, Angelina and William looked at each other and nodded with finality. She looked at Yakko and Wakko with a soft smile. “Alright, boys. We can take her in.”

The brothers grinned ear to ear at the announcement, rushing to their mother in a hug. They looked down at the baby who gazed interestedly at everyone around her, softly cooing. “What are we gonna call her?” Yakko asked.

“Well, you boys were the ones who found her,” Angie said. “Have any suggestions?”

Yakko put a finger to his chin with a ‘mmm’, pondering. “Daisy?”

His parents ‘hmm’ed. “Fits with the flower, but not sure about her..” William commented.

“Dot.”

Everyone looked to Wakko. “I like Dot.”

“Dot,” Yakko repeated, testing it on his tongue. He beamed. “Yeah, I like that, Wak.”

“Dot is very nice,” their father said. 

“It can be short for Dorothy,” Angie added. She looked at the child. “Do you like that, little one?” She was met with what sounded like a happy chitter. “Dorothy it is,” she smiled.

The newly-named Dot continued to giggle, cheerfully reaching out for her new parents. The brothers looked at their new sister affectionately, a new feeling of unconditional love rising from within them. 

Welcome to the family, Dot.

If you made it this far, thanks a lot for reading!! :D

#animaniacs #animaniatag #animaniacs au #yakko wakko and dot #yakko warner #wakko warner #dot warner #changeling au #mlp changeling

[lilaccatholic]

Ugh, this article from Vanity Fair (copied below the cut for those of you who have run out of free articles for the month) about how many old Hollywood stars were forced into abortions to keep up their “images”—with some of them being absolutely destroyed by the procedure—is absolutely horrifying. How anyone can look at this and not see how these poor women were abused and manipulated is beyond me.

Abortions were our birth control,” an anonymous actress once said about the common procedure’s place in Hollywood from the 1920s through the 1950s. While patriarchal political powers connive to block women’s legal access to abortion in 21st century America, in Old Hollywood, abortions were far more standard and far more accessible than they often are today—more like aspirin, or appendectomies. How and why did a procedure that was taboo and illegal at the time become so ordinary—at least, among a certain set? 

Much like today, in Old Hollywood, the decisions being made about women’s bodies were made in the interests of men—the powerful heads of motion pictures studios MGM, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and RKO. As Aubrey Malone writes in Hollywood's Second Sex: The Treatment of Women in the Film Industry, 1900-1999, “If you want to play in this business, you play like a man or you’re out. And if you happen to be a woman, better not mention it to anybody.”

From the very infancy of America’s film industry, abortions were necessary body maintenance for women in the spotlight. Birth control, including prophylactics, were about as new as “stars” themselves—movie performers who went overnight from being “Little Mary” or “The Vitagraph Girl” to “America’s Sweetheart” or “Sex Goddess.”

“These newly wealthy men and women didn’t know how to control their money, their bodies, or their lives, spending, cavorting, and reveling in excess,” writes Anne Helen Petersen in Scandals of Classic Hollywood. In the working environment of the Hollywood studio system, society’s 19th-century sexual segregation had fallen away. Women—flappers, It girls, sirens and seductresses—were spared their destiny in the kitchen, and for the first time, they earned large incomes they could spend on whatever and whomever they wished. Many believed the publicity they read about their own erotic powers, and they went toe-to-toe professionally with men. Sparks were bound to fly.

And so it became necessary for the studios to implement reformatory measures to prevent stars from destroying their value through scandal. In 1922, Will H. Hays Hays collaborated with studios to introduce mandatory “morality clauses” into stars’ contracts. Consequently an unintended pregnancy would not only bring shame to these top box-office earners—it would violate studio policy. “[I]t was a common assumption that glamorous stars would not be popular if they had children,” writes Cari Beauchamp in her book on powerful women in Old Hollywood, Without Lying Down.

These clauses may have extended to an actress’s right to marry. According to Petersen, rumor had it that “Blonde Bombshell” Jean Harlow couldn’t wed William Powell because “MGM had written a clause into her contract forbidding her to marry”—a wife couldn’t be a “bombshell,” after all. When Harlow became pregnant from the affair, she called MGM head of publicity Howard Strickling in a panic. Shortly thereafter, according to E.J. Fleming in The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine, “Mrs. Jean Carpenter” entered Good Shepherd Hospital “to get some rest.” She was seen only by her private doctors and nurses in room 826, the same room she had occupied the year before for an “appendectomy.”

In the 1930s, vamp and man-eating thespian Tallulah Bankhead got “abortions like other women got permanent waves,” biographer Lee Israel quips in Miss Tallulah Bankhead. When virtuous singing sensation Jeanette McDonald found herself pregnant in 1935, MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer told Strickling to “get rid of the problem.” McDonald soon checked into a hospital with an “ear infection,” according to Fleming’s The Fixers.

Many of these Silent Sex Goddesses either fell victim to their own hedonism, fell out of favor, or burned out, such as Theda Bara and Clara Bow. Others, like Joan Crawford, kept going. Kenneth Anger writes that Crawford was a “gutsy jazz baby” who marched through the “twin holocaust of the Talkies/Crash unscathed” to escape her dirt-poor origins. “Joan knew where she came from,” he continues, “and did not want to go back there.”

Get 1 year for $15.Join Now In 1931 Joan Crawford, estranged from her husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr., became pregnant with what she believed was Clark Gable’s child and Strickling arranged for an abortion. Rather than reveal the truth, Crawford told Fairbanks that during the filming of Rain on Catalina Island, she slipped on the deck of a ship and lost the baby.

Crawford’s rival Bette Davis also willingly chose to have abortions for the sake of her career. Davis was the breadwinner for her entire family—her mother and sister, and her husband, Harmon Nelson, whom she married in 1932. If she’d had a child in 1934, she told her biographer Charlotte Chandler in The Girl Who Walked Home Alone, she would’ve “missed the biggest role in her life thus far”—that of Mildred in Of Human Bondage, which earned Davis her first Oscar nomination. Other great parts—“Jezebel, Judith, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Margo Channing”—may not have followed, either. “But I didn’t miss any of these roles, and I didn’t miss having a family,” she said. Later in life, Davis had three children.

Her first child, Barbara Davis Sherry—known as B.D.—was born when Davis was 39. As biographer Whitney Stine notes in I’d Love to Kiss You: Conversations with Bette Davis, “she was proud of the fact that, after her abortions, she could have a baby at last and a career, because her mother had always insisted that she couldn’t have both. She never tired of reminding [her mother] that she could be a mother and an actress.”

“A child could wait; her career could not.” That’s the reasoning Jean Harlow’s mother gave about her daughter’s own abortion at age 18. Ava Gardner, too, expressed a similar sentiment when discussing her abortion, which she had when married to Frank Sinatra—unbeknownst to him. “‘MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies,’” Jane Ellen Wayne quotes Gardner saying in The Golden Girls of MGM. “‘If I had one, my salary would be cut off. So how could I make a living? Frank was broke and my future movies were going to take me all over the world. I couldn’t have a baby with that sort of thing going on. MGM made all the arrangements for me to fly to London. Someone from the studio was with me all the time. The abortion was hush hush . . . very discreet.’”

But things didn’t work out quite so well for Judy Garland. Famous primarily for playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and struggling to maintain both her weight and her image as an ingenue, Garland was never free to make her own choices.

“Married or not, the MGM girls maintained their virginal image,” Wayne observes, and this was especially true of Garland. In 1941, at age 19, she married the bandleader David Rose without the approval of MGM, and within 24 hours was ordered back by to work. When she became pregnant by Rose, her mother, Ethel, in cahoots with the studio, arranged for Garland to have an abortion. Audiences loved her as a child—not as a mother. In 1943, Garland became pregnant from her affair with Tyrone Power, according to Petersen. Strickling arranged for her to have an abortion. Arguably, these incidents affected Garland psychologically; eventually she became the first public victim of stardom.

Tyrone Power also got Lana Turner pregnant. Again, Strickling arranged for an abortion. Power was one of a constellation of male stars—such as Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, and Charlie Chaplin—whose unbridled dalliances left women paying the price, according to The Fixers. (The phrase “In like Flynn” alludes to Errol’s ease at bedding women—and his good fortune at being acquitted of statutory rape of two teenage girls.)

Strickling, who was by now referred to as a “fixer,” had his hands full with Turner. The “Sweater Girl” allegedly found herself pregnant by bandleader Artie Shaw in 1941, and Strickling arranged an abortion during her publicity tour of Hawaii. The procedure took place without anesthesia, on her hotel bed. Turner’s mother covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her daughter’s cries. A studio doctor, paid $500 that was then deducted from Turner’s paycheck, performed the procedure. A week later, she was back on set filming Ziegfeld Girl, according to The Fixers.

Some actresses struggled with whether or not to keep their child. Mexican screen siren Lupe Velez committed suicide in 1944 because she was pregnant by her lover Harald Ramond, who wouldn’t marry her. A devout Catholic, she declined to call “Doctor Killkare” (“the joke name for Tinseltown’s leading abortionist,” according to Kenneth Anger in Hollywood Babylon), and downed 75 Seconal instead, according to Hollywood Babylon.

The decision was equally tragic for Dorothy Dandridge. Otto Preminger had directed her in Carmen Jones and made her a star. When she became pregnant by him in 1955, he refused to divorce his wife and marry her. Dandridge was forced to have an abortion; the studio demanded it, according to Scandals of Classic Hollywood, not only because a child would compromise her image as the sexy Carmen Jones, but also because Preminger was a white man. And, while miscegenation laws were repealed in California in 1948, nationwide they were still very much in place.

Ironically, the rebel of her day was Loretta Young—not because she had an abortion, but because she refused to have one. A devout Catholic, Young journeyed abroad in 1935 to recuperate from a ‘mystery illness,’ after she found herself with child by Clark Gable under shady circumstances—and avoided the press. She gave birth to her daughter at home in Los Angeles. Young initially gave the child up for adoption—and then, a few months later, officially adopted her, according to The Fixers.

In the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, women were at their most desirable and their most powerful—but it still didn’t afford them the right to choose when it came to governing their bodies. Hollywood’s production codes extended to women’s reproduction. In the hundred years or so that have passed since the birth of American cinema, everything has changed—though, then again, perhaps nothing has.

#tw abortion

[popculturebuffet]

Animaniacs: King Yakko Review (Comission by BlahDiddy)

Hello my beautiful technicolor rainbow! It’s time for Animaniacs, and while there is no balonga in my slacks there is one last christmas review for my friend to finish up, and after two visits to Acme Lab for the spinoff we’re finishing up with a look at Animaniacs proper.  Suprisingly for a show that stands so easily on it’s own it’s existance is entirely thanks to another show: Tiny Toon Adventures, which had largely the same staff, including ep and co-creator stephen speilberg and Todd Ruegger, who was brought aboard from A Pup Named Scooby Doo. Since TIny Toon was a colossal hit with tons of awards and merch, including some very good video games I wish Warner would find a way to re-release, I mean.. come on if disney can rerelease the disney afternoon games (If...not..for..switch), and LIon King and Aladdin games (If somehow FOR switch), then Warner, which has it’s own game stuido no less, can put together a collection of the good Tiny Toons games when the new show comes out soon. 

Point is it was a mass sucess and Warner Bros likes money, so they had Speilberg try to get Rutger to come up with another show for the two of them to do, something with name value. Rutger found his inpsiration when seeing the iconic warner water tower and taking some platypus characters, came up with our heroes and the rest is history.. well okay he retooled them from plataups’ to early looney tunes and other toons style characters minus the racisim of say bosko the tall ink kid but still, the rest after that is history. And the rest of this review is after the cut

The show was, and KINDA still is, a variety show: taking a page from looney tunes, as well as tex avery’s other work, the crew decided rather than just focus on the warners, to instead create a whole cast with various ensembles to work with so we got Pinky and the Brain, The Goodfeathers, Rita and Runt,  the Hip HIppos, Katie Kaboom, Chicken Boo, and my personal faviorite Slappy Squirrel.. and the bane of my existance, Buttons and Mindy.. or rather Mindy’s Mom. The kid did nothing wrong.  So naturally the first thing Animaniacs related I cover.. is an episode entirely breaking from format for one 20 something minute Warners cartoon. I do intend to do more animanics stuff in the future, so i’ll hopefully get a chance to talk about everyone, I just feel unlike with say house of mouse most people reading this probably know who they all are, and I can save any deep dives for if I cover the characters specifically. Spoilers: there’s probably never going to be a buttons and mindy deep dive unless someone tourtues me by paying for it. 

So with that out of the way, we can dive into the episode.. which I won’t be covering in my usual recap it point by point because the writers have freely admitted that’s not what Animaniacs is about. While some of i’ts SEGMENTS are more story based like Pinky and the Brain, Goodfeathers and Rita and Runt, most are just based on simple set ups to reams and reams of gags. And I love it. I grew up with this stuff not just Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs but the classic Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Droopy shorts. 

Their well timed, well executed feats of comedy and most have aged pretty well.. emphasis on MOST. I’m keenly aware why there are several gaps in the shorts for both Tom and Jerry and The Looney Tunes on HBO Max, including all of the Pepe LePew and Speedy Gonzalez shorts. Also all of Droopy is missing. 

My grumblin aside though, it is VERY NICE to have all the classic Warner and Tom and Jerry shorts at my fingertips and it was one of the biggest selling points of Max for me. Last year I gained an intrest in the old disney theatrical shorts, hence my various birthday specials, so I BADLY wanted to revisit the theatrical shorts I grew up with. And honestly.. Max is the best way to do that: their in crisp hd, in neat season collections (Though the Looney Tunes one is better sorted, tom and jerry’s seasons are just.. random smatterings of shorts across various eras), and most importantly EVERY SHORT they felt comfortable with putting up there is on there. Every. Single. One.  I make a big deal about this because Disney.. has only maybe 30-40 of their hundreds of shorts on there. Now lucky for me the vast majority are still on youtube and I get why some really arne’t suitable.. we probably don’t need the donald duck short where he prepares to shoot a penguin in the face or the Goofy short where his own reflection, the goofy equilvent of tyler durden I guess?, keeps saying “Hey Fat” to him. And yes BOTH of these actually happened. But.. there’s MANY shorts with no clear excuse why their absent like the triplets first apperance, gus’ only apperance, and one a friend told me about.. that time mickey built a robot to box a gorillia. Again not making this up, just wondering why you can’t restore the rest of these for plus. They’ve ADDED shorts ocasionally, but it still dosen’t make a whole lot of sense to just.. not have them all up there. and to not put them in some sorta collection for easier consumption but hey it’s Disney. They either full ass things or half ass it. There is no middle ground.  Point is Warner.. actually cares about their heritage in shorts and honors it and thus has everything avaliable in the best quality, so tha’ts nice.

My point after that detour is I really love this kind of humor, and now as an adult I can see the effort the timing, pacing and character chemistry these shorts had takes. And Rugger and co.. they got it. They got it down perfect. And this episode is a great show of that and just how they barely updated this format for the 90′s. But as I said it’s more about the jokes and basic setup, our heroes are slotted into x scenario and just left to run wild. It’s been the basic seutp for looney tunes, tom and jerry and all the gag based greats, and it works perfectly here. Sure there’s some setting and continuity with the warner lot, scratch n sniff, ralph, plotz and in the reboot Rita, but it’s mostly just our heroes go up against “X asshole” and it just works. 

And that’s.. entirley what this episode is. The short is an homage to the graucho marx film Duck Soup, which given the warners were based on the marx brothers that isn’t a huge suprise, a film like brian’s song I have not seen, but genuinely want to. The basic setup is the same: An underqualified womanizer, though since htis is Yakko it dosen’t get past hitting on his chancelor, played by hello nurse, constantly, which is still.. ewwwww... but clearly not the same thing, becomes king of a small nation and ends up at war with another country. There were spies and other stuff in the original short but that was left out to streamline things.  But this homage stands on it’s own fine: The basic plot is this: Yakko, due to being a distant relative and the last one alive, becomes king of the small happy and very musical, as the wonderful opening number shows, country of Anvilania, which makes anvils and why yes there is one MASSIVE anvil gag as a result at the end. Yakko says he’ll try his best and geninely tries to with the shenanigans you’d expect, including Dot not gettnig Polka Dot’s are a thing and instead taknig any mention of it as a sign to polka, Yakko again hitting on his colleague and wanting ot get a new anthem because the current one by “Perry Coma’ puts people to sleep. Honeslty that gag didn’t do it for me: Partly because I genuinely know next to nothing about Como and he’s far past my generation.. and because despite this, SCTV did a MUCH better Perry Como gag over a decade before this episode that while still left me baffled as to why anyone cared about mocking him, was 80 times funnier and felt far less like you needed to know who he was to be funny. 

That being said it’s one of only three running gags, and jokes period that didn’t land for me. The other ones being the hello nurse bits, because it’s aged really badly to have Yakko harass one of his employees and his age is hte only thing that keeps it from scuttling the episode as he’s just 13 or 14. Maybe 15. 

So SO glad I now have that on hand whenever i need it. The other being the “Your highness” joke as it just.. dosen’t make much sense and isn’t very funny. But that’s it: a refrence i specfically don’t get and I doubt most of you will, and if you do fine we all have our frames of refrences, a joke that’s dated very poorly, and one that just.. didn’t land. And even then the Perry Coma thing’s third use to knock out the opposing army DID work for me as did the VERY clever joke of “Sire” “Maybe later”, so even the weaker bits still had some legs.  But getting back to what little plot there is the king of the rival country, upon hearing this, assumes he can easily intimidate a child into giving him the throne and goes to a royal reception. Instead, as you’d expect, the Warners mistake him for a party clown, show him no respect and fail to take his delcration of war seriously, and while in a REALLY great gag, and the reason i’m not doing a strict summary is 90% of the review would be me saying something to that effect, Yakkos’ call to action for his troops ends up having them all run off in fear, the Warners take out the army as noted above and then in one of the most GLORIOUS climaxes in the series history...

 In which the Warners give the bad guy “all the anvils” as he requested. I sadly coulnd’t find a clip of it but seek it out if you got hulu, my words can’t do it justice as they hit him with anvil after anvil in increasingly clever and insane ways till the guy finally gives up and it .. is glorious.  Other highlights not already mentioned include: The opening song, the bad guy dictator from the other nation not being able to hear because of his helmet and his attendee having to lift it, leading to Yakko taking off his helmet just to end the “what’ running gag, Yakko’s bit explaning his distant relation and more.  So yeah not a ton to say on this one. It’s a very good, very funny episode but also very typical of a warner cartoon in structure, just stretched over 22 or so minutes. As I said with few exceptions the jokes work, the anmation is crisp as always, and the climax is one of the series best. A crisp, quick watch and a nice quick review after a week of with some really tough ones behind me and ahead of me and a month of rather large ones a few weeks out. So yeah if you like animaniacs, even ifyou’ve seen this one worth a watch, if you have any more animaniacs you’d like me to take a look at feel free to comment or comission and until the next rainbow..

#animaniacs #yakko warner #dot warner #wakko warner #anvilania #hello nurse #king yakko #duck soup #goodnight everybody #hulu #warner bros #kids wb

[foyetsbackuphitlist]

TW: ABUSE / ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP / DEATH !!!

this Johnny Depp situation is SICKENING. it makes my stomach turn. the fact that he almost DIED and the courts still went against him? Warner Bros? the INDUSTRY? are you KIDDING me? that is SO not fair in any way shape or form.

@mb3r h3@rd (i refuse to say her name) does NOT deserve a platform. her gender means NOTHING in this situation. she is an @bu$iv3 person. all she did was HURT Johnny. she even ADMITTED to almost k1ll1ng him. she even LAUGHED about it. SMILED about it. ughhh.

she is clearly ill in some way. but that does NOT give her ANY reason to treat Johnny the way that she does. Johnny is not perfect by any means, no one is, but nobody deserves ANY of this. @mb3r h3@rd needs to seek serious help and needs to do so NOW.

but let’s talk about this:

why are men NOT taken seriously when it comes to being @bu$3d?

what happened to the VICTIM is ALWAYS RIGHT? huh? where’d that go?

here’s your answer:

sexism!!! blatant sexism. “the woman is always right” mentality.

OUT THE WINDOW APPARENTLY. gone. doesn’t exist anymore.

men are @bus3rs but they ALSO get @bus3d. the SAME thing goes for women. when a man is @bus3d no one believes them. no one trusts them. no matter how much evidence the man has no one cares!!! but as soon as a woman is the victim everyone is ready to help her fight. we NEED to give the same energy to men that are victims. we NEED to help Johnny anyway we can. this is not okay.

Johnny Depp has proven time and time again that he is the victim. he has voice recordings. he has pictures. he has everything he NEEDS. better yet @mb3r h3@rd’s SISTER said @mb3r used to @bus3 her as a child and that she was scared for Johnny’s life one time and stepped in during one of their fights. @mb3rs sister thought @mb3r was going to K1LL Johnny.

how are the judges ruling in her favor? how is she getting away with this? why is the system so flawed? why is it so corrupt? WHY!!!!

this infuriates me. it makes my blood boil. i have NEVER been so passionate about anything celebrity related. EVER. this is big. he deserves justice. he deserves to win. he deserves better. Johnny Depp deservers better.

this is NOT a conspiracy people. this is REALITY.

SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!

Johnny needs us now more than ever.

this is coming from a girl so don’t attack me. i’m not a pick me or a misogynist. i believe in the victim is always right. i believe justice needs to be served. i believe men can and ARE victims just like we are. anyone can be a victim. it is NOT gender based. it can happen to anyone. it DOES happen to all kinds of people. it exists. and we need to help eradicate it. we as a society need to get rid of that negative stereotype surrounding male victims. we need to do this NOW. if women want to be believed when they come out about any form of @bus3 we need to STAND with men. we need to STAND with Johnny right now. please. i beg.

male privilege DOES exist. but in cases like these it does NOT exist. male privilege exists when it comes to the pay gap and getting away with (most) things. please don’t think i’m saying they don’t have privilege because i am an ADVOCATE about that and that women deserve equal rights (go ahead and make fun of me for being a feminist i don’t care) but men do NOT have privilege when it comes to being victims. they speak out far less than women do. could you blame them though? just look at what is happening to Johnny even though he has all the proof he should need. Johnny is in dire need of our help. boost this post. do your part.

this is NOT about privilege. this is NOT about gender. this is NOT about anything other than MEN CAN BE VICTIMS. this is NOT proof that men don’t have privilege. this is to EDUCATE. to SPREAD THE WORD. to HELP Johnny. please please pleaseeeeee i beg of you all.

#justice for johnny depp #help johnny

[aion-rsa]

Streaming on Plex: Best Movies and TV Shows You Can Watch for FREE in September

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This article is sponsored by Plex. You can download the Free Plex App now by clicking here!

There’s an overwhelming amount of new movies and TV shows hitting streaming services this fall. If you’re starving for new content, it’s set to be a fantastic time, but if your wallet is starving for funds, it can be pretty stressful. With studios and content providers spreading their libraries out across so many different streaming services, keeping up with all of your favorites can get expensive. Thankfully, Plex TV is here to keep you entertained without breaking the bank.

Plex is a globally available one-stop-shop streaming media service offering thousands of free movies and TV shows and hundreds of free-to-stream live TV channels, from the biggest names in entertainment, including Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, Lionsgate, Legendary, AMC, A+E, Crackle, and Reuters. Plex is the only streaming service that lets users manage their personal media alongside a continuously growing library of free third-party entertainment spanning all genres, interests, and mediums including podcasts, music, and more. With a highly customizable interface and smart recommendations based on the media you enjoy, Plex brings its users the best media experience on the planet from any device, anywhere.

Plex releases brand new and beloved titles to its platform monthly and we’ll be here to help you identify the cream of the crop. View Plex TV now for the best free entertainment streaming and check back each month for Den of Geek Critics’ picks!

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DEN OF GEEK CRITICS’ PICKS

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

They’re the world’s most fearsome fightin’ team. They’re heroes in a half-shell and they’re green. I mean, what more do we need to say? 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is no Citizen Kane, but comic book movie fans flock to it like the four titular turtles to pizza. The film knows exactly what it is, providing cheesy one-liners, silly action, and unpretentious fun. Throwing in Will Arnett as a sidekick for April O’Neil was an inspired choice that paid dividends in laughs and whoever tapped Tony Shaloub to voice Splinter should get a pay raise. Produced by Nickelodeon Pictures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t only the highest grossing film in the series, but also the highest grossing Nickelodeon film of all-time. This reboot of the classic ninja team helped spawn further films, new TV series, and a renewed interest in one of the most beloved comic book properties ever. Cowabunga, dude!

Noah

This isn’t your Sunday School’s Noah. Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of the story of the biblical figure Noah is an awe-inspiring epic that takes the bones of the famous story and infuses themes about environmentalism, self-doubt, and yes, faith. Pulling liberally from texts like the Book of Enoch, the film has far more action than just leading animals onto a boat and a storm. Shot by Matthew Libatique, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous and at times can be genuinely breath-taking, but it’s not just about the visuals. Russell Crowe stuns in the title role, but the entire ensemble is great, including a post-Potter Emma Watson and a ferocious Ray Winstone. No one expected Noah to be more akin to a thought-provoking art house film than a straight-forward epic, but that’s the sort of genius you get from Aronofsky, one of the most exciting and inventive filmmakers working today. 

Shine a Light

Even if we hadn’t just lost the immortal, suave Charlie Watts, the heartbeat of rock and roll’s longest institution, The Rolling Stones, we’d still be recommending Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light. Capturing the legendary band during their A Bigger Bang Tour in 2006, Scorsese spends a lot of the time rightfully focusing on Watts. With the camera fixated on Watts, you witness his unflappability; the way that he can make such raucous playing look so effortless. You also catch the man’s unique, jazz-influenced technique, like how he rarely hits the center of his snare, or how he changes his grip whenever he hits a cymbal. Even in their old age, the Stones are still one of the tightest, most electrifying live acts, and Shine a Light puts you right on stage with them as they barrel through one of the deepest catalogs in recorded music. It’s simply a masterful concert film.

The Virgin Suicides

Sofia Coppola likely has to deal with accusations about nepotism to this day, but anyone who saw her directorial debut The Virgin Suicides knows that Francis’ daughter would have made it as a filmmaker even without her famous last name. This haunting adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel of the same name taps into the melancholy of childhood, the dreamlike haze of memory, and the mystery that lurks inside suburban homes. Coppola expertly captures the pull that an ethereal group of sisters have on the imaginative group of boys that pine for them in a way that is relatable for anyone that had an unrequited crush in high school. As a coming-of-age movie, it is one of a kind. As an exploration of trauma and grief, it is crushingly effective. The original score by the band Air only adds to its hypnagogic vibe. 

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School

Punk rock music and Roger Corman pictures are some of the core tenants that Den of Geek was founded on, so of course we’re going to recommend 1979’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, which features possibly the coolest band of all-time, The Ramones. Let our resident punk rock movie expert Jim Knipfel break it down for you:

“After producing so many dozens of teen rebellion films over the years, Corman finally hit the pinnacle, the ultimate teen rebellion picture, with the cartoon antics ratcheted up more than a few notches. There are so many bad jokes flying around, so many visual gags and film references packed into every scene, so many overwrought teen film clichés pushed way past absurd, it’s a film that demands multiple viewings. Even if “Riff Randall, rock ’n’ roller” (P.J. Soles) doesn’t look much like any punk chick I ever knew, I’m perfectly willing to accept it. And in historical terms, it really was this film more than the 4 albums they had out at the time that spread the word about The Ramones to mainstream America, and that’s worth something. Old as I am I still get a thrill every time the students and the Ramones blow up Vince Lombardi High, and anyone who doesn’t must be wrong in the head somehow.”

New on Plex in September:  

1000 Times Good Night 

13 

13 Assassins 

The Accidental Husband 

All Good Things 

Assassination of a High School President 

Awake 

Bent 

Bordertown 

Brain Dead 

Cold Mountain  

The Descent 

The Descent Part 2  

Even Money 

Fear City 

First Snow 

Freedom Writers  

Gray Matters  

The Jesus Rolls 

Johnny Was  

Keys to Tulsa  

The Legend of Bagger Vance  

Mad Money 

Marrowbone 

Murder on the Orient Express 

The Ninth Gate 

Nothing but the Truth  

Ordinary People 

Rememory  

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School  

Sanctuary  

Shine a Light  

Soul Survivors  

Taboo  

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  

The TV Set  

The Virgin Suicides  

What Doesn’t Kill You  

Winter Passing  

World Trade Center  

Catch before it leaves in September: 

31 

Absolution  

Accident Man  

Aeon Flux 

After.Life 

Angel of Death 

Answer Man 

The Bang Bang Club 

Battle Royale 

Blood and Bone 

The Broken 

Cashmere Mafia  

Child 44 

Cleaner 

Cold Comes the Night 

Coming Soon 

The Connection 

Conspiracy  

The Cookout  

Critical Condition  

Dark Crimes  

The Death and Life of Bobby Z 

Death Proof 

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star 

Downhill Racer 

Dragged Across Concrete  

The Dresser  

The Duel 

Dummy 

Flight of Fury 

Flirting with Disaster  

The Foreigner  

Goat  

Gutshot Straight  

Halloween III: Season of the Witch  

The Hard Corps  

Hesher  

High Right 

Honeymoon  

The Hunt 

I Saw the Devil 

In the Mix 

Jason and the Argonauts 

Jeff, Who Lives at Home 

Jiri Dreams of Sushi  

Joe 

Journey to the West  

Kill ‘Em All 

A Kind of Murder 

The Kite Runner 

Lake Placid 2 

Lake Placid 3 

Last Resort 

The Lazarus Project 

Misconduct 

Mr. Church 

Mutant Chronicles 

Mythica: The Godslayer 

Mythica: The Iron Clown  

Never Back Down: No Surrender 

News Radio  

Noah 

Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior  

Ong Bak: The Beginning  

The Order 

Out for a Kill 

The Outcasts  

Phantoms 

Pistol Whipped 

The Protector 

Pulse (2001) 

Reprisal  

Return to the Blue Lagoon 

The River Murders  

The Romantics 

Second in Command 

Shadow Man 

Shattered  

The Shepherd 

Southside with You 

Space Station 76 

Square Pegs 

Standoff 

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation  

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder 

Steel Dawn 

Substitute  

The Super  

SWAT: Under Siege 

The Terminal  

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada  

Touchy Feely  

Trollhunter 

UFO 

Universal Solider: Day of Reckoning  

Vamps  

Vicky Cristina Barcelona  

Walking Tall: Lone Justice 

Warlock 

What Planet are You From?  

World’s Fastest Indian 

World’s Greatest Dad  

The Yellow Handkerchief  

Still streaming on Plex: 

2:22 

2 Days in New York 

21 Jump Street  

22 Bullets  

24 Hours to Live  

3rd Rock from the Sun 

6 Bullets  

99 Homes 

A Little Bit of Heaven 

A Walk in the Woods 

The Air I Breathe  

Alan Partridge 

ALF  

Alone in the Dark 

Amelie 

American Pastoral  

And Soon the Darkness 

Andromeda  

Are You Here 

Arthur and the Invisibles  

Awake 

Battle in Seattle 

Bernie 

Better Watch Out 

Black Death  

Blade of the Immortal 

Blitz 

The Brass Teapot 

Bronson 

The Brothers Bloom 

The Burning Plain 

But I’m a Cheerleader 

Cake  

Candy  

Catch .44 

Cell  

The Choice 

Clerks II 

Coherence  

The Collector  

Colonia  

Congo  

Cooties 

The Core 

The Cotton Club 

Crossing Lines  

Croupier  

Cube  

Cube 2 

Cube Zero 

Cyrano de Bergerac  

Death and the Maiden 

The Deep Blue Sea 

Deep Red 

Derailed 

Detachment 

The Devil’s Rejects  

Diary of the Dead 

District B13 

DOA: Dead or Alive 

Dr. T and the Women  

Eden Lake 

The Edge of Love  

The post Streaming on Plex: Best Movies and TV Shows You Can Watch for FREE in September appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

No Stones Unturned: Keith Richards

Keith Richards’ interest in the guitar began at a very early age due to his grandfather. Gus Dupree had been a jazz musician during the big band era, who actually toured with a group called Gus Dupree and the Boys in Britain. His interest in the guitar began when his grandfather placed the guitar on a shelf out of reach of the young Richards. He made a deal with the young child that if he could reach the guitar, then he could play it. In interviews, Richards talks about using all kinds of boxes, cushions, chairs in order to get that guitar, His grandfather began to teach him very basic guitar lessons. The first song that he ever learned was “Malagueña,” a Spanish song. He was able to keep the guitar, but his father a war veteran who have been injured at Normandy did not share his son’s musical enthusiasm. Speaking of his father, upon his death Richards was given his ashes, which led to another humorous story about the guitarist. He said in an interview that he actually smoked his father‘s ashes.

Keith Richards attended Wentworth Primary School until 1954 with fellow classmate Mick Jagger. He also lived as his neighbor until family moves separated the two. The pair met again by chance years later on a train when Richards admired an album Jagger was holding. At the time, the latter attended the London School of Economics. He had sent away for Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry albums by mail to Chess Records in Chicago. They immediately bonded over their love of music. Soon after, they formed a band with mutual acquaintance Dick Taylor called Little Boy Blue. A few years ago, a recording for that very short-lived group was discovered and eventually put up for auction. An anonymous person purchased the recording, who turned out to be none other than Mick Jagger. The band folded when Brian Jones approached Mick Jagger about joining his blues group. This led Jagger to bring Richards along to the Bricklayer’s Pub to meet anyone else interested. Here they met Ian Stuart. The Rolling Stones were officially formed.

As previously discussed, a couple of key observations can be made about Richards and the band. First of all, unlike other bands that revolve around the rhythm of the drummer, the Rolling Stones has their tempo always set by Richards. They look to him in order to determine how fast or how slow they should be playing. On stage, this makes him more of the unquestioned leader as far as the music goes. Off stage, that role has alternated between him and Jagger, but now the singer runs everything. The other thing to be noted is that just like Ron Wood and Brian Jones each guitarist like Richards plays both rhythm and lead sometimes within the same song. This guitar weaving was developed by him and Brian Jones, but it is the talent of Richards that allows this to work so seamlessly. Actually, if you were describe his guitar playing overall you would notice that it stands out as in no way flamboyant or showing off. His solos get right to the heart of the matter, but you never see him venture off like his contemporaries Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton. Another quality of his guitar playing emerges in the acoustic guitar. He believe that playing acoustic was the key to maintaining his excellence as a guitar player. Certain songs like “Street Fighting Man” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” were actually originally recorded with acoustic guitar, then placed in a tape recorder and overdubbed using a louder speaker. In 1967-1968, he began to experiment with what are called open tunings. I will try not to get too technical here, but his inspiration for it was how a banjo is tuned. This became a trademark of the guitar sound in later years most notably the 1970’s like “Honky Tonk Women.” Vocally, Richards has sung on almost every Rolling Stones studio album with background vocals. He is also occasionally sung tracks on his own with the most notable one being “Happy” on Exile on Main Street in 1972. The song entered the regular concert set list, which led the band to have Richards sing one or two songs at every concert from then on. Another notable track was on Voodoo Lounge entitled “The Worst.” At a young age, As a student he stood out as an excellent singer in the choir, but when adolescence hit his voice changed, which led him to concentrate more on guitar from then on.

Jagger and Richards began their songwriting collaboration beginning with Andrew Oldham Loog coming on board as their manager. Coincidently, it was Oldham that told Richards to drop the S from his name for a time. A few years later he would add it back. Their first top ten hit was actually not for the band, but Gene Pitney. Another hit was “As Tears Go By” featuring Marianne Faithfull. Their first hit featuring the band emerged with “The Last Time” in 1965. Their major breakthrough came with the song “Satisfaction,” which included a famous riff Richards would later say came to him in his sleep. One of the qualities of their songwriting comes in the sheer variety including r and b, folk, reggae, disco, psychedelic, country, funk, and punk. Unlike other bands of the era, as popular music changed, so did The Rolling Stones. The basic process of the pair actually writing a song usually started with Keith producing the first chords and harmony. Mick would then complete the song with lyrics and a bridge. For the longest time, Mick would have to wait for Keith to create the music before he could start in on the track. This became the case with the recording of Exile on Main Street as he alternated between music and shooting up heroin.

Keith Richards has been active as a producer for the better part of his career, as well. Since 1974, he and Jagger have been credited as the producers of every studio album the band has made. The duo also has contributed as a producer for other artists working alongside other producers. For those albums, the pair are usually listed as the Glimmer Twins, which writers will sometimes refer to them in general. Some of the notable artists that Richards has produced for include Aretha Franklin, Ronnie Spector, Johnny Johnson, and a band signed to their record label, Kracker. In 1987, Richards formed the band the X-Pensive Winos as a solo project, which led to the release of the album, Talk Is Cheap. The album would go on to attain a gold status, and it still sells consistently to this day. The reason for the solo project came about because at the time of Jagger was increasingly interested in pursuing a solo album. This stood out as a time referred to in the band as World War III as Jager and Richards had a monumental fight in endangering the very existence of the band. An interesting sidenote to all of this was the band first originated for the Chuck Berry tribute film, Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll. They would release a second album in 1992 entitled, Main Offender, while Richard‘s most recent release as a solo artist came in 2015, Crosseyed Heart.

As popular culture can attest, Richards has a reputation well deserved for his drug use. The interesting thing about it is that he fundamentally embraces that reputation. He has been arrested on drug busts at least five times throughout his career. The most famous one being at his Redlands estate in England in 1967 along with Mick Jagger. The bust cemented the reputation as the bad boys of rock and roll as well. Surprisingly or perhaps not, he has only served time in jail for the first bust. He was subsequently arrested twice in 1973, 1977, and 1978. Yet, one must know that for the Redlands arrest, which in retrospect was completely overblown by the authorities and the media; he only served one day in jail. As previously noted, he was arrested in Toronto in 1977 for heroin possession. At the time, they were planned to charge him with trafficking, which represented a fairly serious charge. His visa was confiscated, so Richards had to remain in Toronto for at least two months until the case came to trial. Thankfully for the guitarist the charge was reduced to possession. He was finally allowed to leave Canada to travel to United States on a medical visa in order to be treated for heroin addiction. For the most part, his use of heroin has always been the number one contributing factor to his legal problems. This final bust was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to his heroin use. The legal troubles from this caused such an inconvenience in his life along with court ordered heroin addiction treatment led him to being able to stay clean since 1978. Since that time, he has only used cannabis and alcohol, but never in moderation at times because that would just not be his style.

As previously stated, his decision to get clean in 1978 led to the end of his relationship with Anita Pallenberg. As that relationship was going downhill, he met model Patti Hansen in 1978, who the guitarist would marry in 1983. They have two daughters together born in 1985 and 1986. He wrote a children’s book about his grandfather introducing him to the guitar co-written by one of his daughters, Theodora in 2014. Her participation in the project made it all the more meaningful because she was actually named for the grandfather.

Actor Johnny Depp, who played Captain Jack Sparrow in the popular Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise previously stated that Richards was partially the inspiration for the character. He utilized a few of his mannerisms for the films. As life will sometimes meet art, the Rolling Stones guitarist actually appeared in the third and fourth films of the franchise. The name of his character was Captain Edward Teague. Coincidently, the other influence Depp used for the character was the Warner Bros. cartoon, Pepe Le Pew. These influences that were mentioned by Depp did raise concerns among Disney executives at first because they did not represent the wholesome image of their brand.

Growing up, Keith Richards was hugely influenced by a few notable artists. One of the first emerged in Elvis Presley in the mid-1950’s. The interesting thing about his admiration for Elvis came in the fact that Presley‘s guitarist Scotty Moore was probably much more influential than the king himself. Richards has stated previously that he listened to Elvis records more for the band, not just the singer. The second influence was Chuck Berry, who he later performed on the same bill with early in his career. This led to a funny story looking back, but maybe not so funny at the time. The Rolling Stones guitarist had picked up Berry’s guitar while he was out of the room. Berry came back seeing Richards holding his guitar, then promptly punched him in the face. He told him that nobody ever touches his guitar. Years later Richards would participate in the Chuck Berry tribute film Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll, so time had healed those wounds apparently. The final influence emerged in many of the blues artists of the day, but if you had to name one it would have been Muddy Waters. The famed blues musician emerged as a giant influence on the band from creating their name to the music that they played. Richards played live with him a few times leading to a lifelong friendship. In 1982, in a BBC interview he was asked if the Rolling Stones could keep going for another 20 years. He answered that it is entirely possible using the example of Muddy Waters still performing and looking vibrant on stage at 80.

Keith Richards currently has three residences including ones in England, Connecticut, and Jamaica. The residence in England is actually the same house, the Redlands estate, where he and Mick Jagger were arrested for drugs in 1967. At home, his favorite dish to eat is shepherd’s pie. In his 2010 autobiography, he actually devoted a paragraph on the best way to cook this very British dish. The drummer from the band, the Stereophonics, once told a story that he had accidentally eaten some shepherd’s pie meant for Richards. He was immediately confronted by him, but no punches were thrown. If the guitarist is not working on any music, one thing that may surprise some people comes in the fact that he likes to read books. Although he never attended college, Richards reads quite a bit with a preference for history. He would say in an interview that if he had not become a musician, then he probably would have been a librarian. During his days of using heroin, he once said that he really regretted the fact that it prevented him from doing things like going to a movie or reading a book. Funny guy.

[recentanimenews]

Licensing of the Monsters: How Pokémon Ignited An Anime Arms Race

  "Hey, what do ya' got there? A rabbit?" Batman asks his mentor, staring at a video of Pikachu on a massive underground computer screen.

  "It's a Pokémon," Bruce Wayne replies.

  Five seconds later, Batman is shocked so hard by the tiny yellow creature that he ends up flying headfirst through another computer monitor (Using a clip from the "Blackout" episode of Batman Beyond, an episode that would've aired for the first time just days earlier.) It doesn't make much physical sense, but this bizarre 1999 crossover promo did establish two things: 1) Pokémon was coming to Kids' WB, and 2) Pokémon was important. So important that Batman actually took time away from obsessing over crime and vengeance to care about it.

  Echoing a 1997 promo where the comedic Bugs Bunny let us in on the "secret" that the serious, dark Batman was coming to Kids' WB, it almost seems like a passing of the torch. Kids' WB, up until then, was a programming service chock full of classic Warner Bros. cartoon properties like Bugs, Daffy, Pinky, Brain, and various members of the Justice League — all animated Americana. 

Pokémon wasn't a huge risk as the 4Kids Entertainment dub of the show had done well in broadcast syndication, they had plenty of episodes to work with (sometimes airing three in a row), and it was based on a game series that was already a worldwide smash hit.

  But the show was ... different.

  And it would end up changing cartoons as we knew them.

  Part 1: Batman Jumps Ship

  It's hard to think of a better scenario when it comes to appealing to kids than the one Fox Kids had with Batman: The Animated Series. Debuting in September 1992 and airing on weekdays just after school let out, it received immediate acclaim due to its moody, beautiful animation and storytelling that didn't talk down to anyone. Little kids could get into Batman throwing crooks around and adults could marvel at plots like the one where a former child actress with a medical condition that keeps her from aging takes her former co-stars hostage and ends up holding a gun, hallucinating, and sobbing into Batman's arms.

  It did so well that Fox tried to air it on prime-time Sundays and though this was short-lived — turns out, Batman was no match for Ed Bradley on CBS's 60 Minutes — it solidified the show as "cool." This was a show that could hang with the big boys. You couldn't say the same of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

  And then, in 1997, it was gone. A five-year contract ran out and Batman leapt completely to Kids' WB, where a continuation of the show (the often even grimmer The New Batman Adventures) aired later that year. There, it joined Superman: The Animated Series in a one-two punch of programming called The New Batman/Superman Adventures. When it came to Kids' WB, competitors not only had to deal with the Merry Melodies crowd, they now had to face the World's Finest Heroes.

  This, along with a departing Animaniacs, left Fox Kids with a gap in flagship programming. Sure it had various incarnations of the Power Rangers (which was still holding strong) and Spider-Man, but if you look back on 1998 programming, little of it would survive the year. Silver Surfer? Gone by May. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation? Out by December. Casper? Dead in October. By May of 1999, Warner Media would announce record ratings thanks to Pokémon, while its competitors, including the Disney-led ABC, Fox, and even Nickelodeon, would suffer losses in the Saturday morning area. Pokemon would have the best ever series premiere numbers for Kids' WB at the time.

    A chunk of that has to do with 4Kids Entertainment's (or to be more specific, 4Kids Productions) handling of the show. Again, Pokémon was a proven concept. If you love monsters, adventure, and collecting things, you'll probably find something to enjoy in the franchise. But the dub was particularly strong. For years, dubbing was seen as an inherently laughable thing in America, full of exasperated voice actors trying desperately to convince you that they weren't portraying three different characters, and lips that didn't match the dialogue. Entire Japanese series were reduced to laughing stocks in the U.S. because why focus on the lovingly created miniatures and top-notch tokusatsu action in Godzilla if one of the actors sounds weird?

  But while Pokémon wasn't the first great dub, it was a remarkably underrated one. Veronica Taylor's work as Ash Ketchum was relatable, funny, and consistent. And Racheal Lillis, Eric Stuart, and Maddie Blaustein's turns as Team Rocket's Jessie, James, and Meowth gave us villains that could've easily been the most repetitive parts of the show  — you can only try to capture Pikachu so many times before you should logically find a second hobby — but instead were one of the most entertaining aspects.

  Aside from some easily meme-able bits — Brock's drying pan and jelly donuts, for example — Pokemon became a seamless addition to the Kids' WB lineup and would end up giving many fans a lifelong love of anime. And it was great for 4Kids, too, as in 2000, they would be number one on Fortune's 100 Fastest-Growing Companies.

  Fox Kids wanted an answer to this. And it would soon find one.

  Well, two.

  Part 2: Monsters Rule

  Saban Entertainment was no stranger to Fox Kids. They'd been the one to adapt Toei's Super Sentai into The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for American and international audiences, creating an unexpected sensation that combined monsters and martial arts. And in 1999, they nabbed Digimon Adventure, a series about kids that gain "digital" monster partners when transported to a "digital world," which had begun airing earlier that year in Japan. Based on a fighting virtual pet that had already been around for a few years, Digimon was a natural fit for an anime series and also a natural fit for a climate that was desperately trying to find the next Pokémon.

  Renamed Digimon: Digital Monsters, it premiered in August of 1999. Of course, accusations followed that it was a Pokémon rip-off, considering that they were both about befriending terrifying laser critters, but they offered fairly different things. While Pokémon was more episodic, Digimon gave viewers a more Dragon Ball Z-esque experience (they were both Toei productions, too) with the titular monsters evolving and gaining "power-ups" due to fighting increasingly powerful villains.

  Almost two months later, Monster Rancher would join the Fox Kids lineup, airing on Saturdays at 8:30 AM after Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (a Fox Kids lost relic if there ever was one). Together, Monster Rancher and Digimon would cover the programming block with monster action, sometimes airing twice each. Meanwhile, Pokémon would do the same for Kids' WB, and if you look at their Saturday morning schedules from 1999 and 2000, it appears they just shoved Pikachu in whenever possible.

  Looking back on Monster Rancher is always odd, though, because it's so specifically trapped in the time period where it originated. The video games used metadata from readable discs to create new monsters for the player, meaning that as soon as people gained the ability to download or stream media online without having to travel to their local Circuit City, the game would look absolutely archaic in comparison to its peers.

  Monster Rancher is a very fun show based on some very fun games, and the dynamic array of personalities and their particular squabbles in the core group actually reminds me a lot of One Piece. But even the show itself deals with reviving monsters on giant stone discs — a prehistoric-looking adaptation of a video game gimmick that would, a decade later, appear prehistoric itself.

  The Monster War was waged across 2000 and 2001. And though it appears Pokémon was the clear winner — in 2020, it's the most popular franchise with the widest reach, even if Digimon does produce some stellar shows and movies — the ratings tell a different story. In the May sweeps of 2000, Pokémon (and Kids' WB) took the prize among kids 6-11, but in the end, Fox Kids would score a victory of a 3.1 rating to Kids' WB's 3.0 (the first sweeps win since 1997, the year that Batman left.)

    Early the following year, Fox Kids would score again, narrowly beating Pokémon on Saturday morning in the same timeslot and even coming ahead of properties like X-Men. And what would propel this February 10th victory? The first appearance of BlackWarGreymon, the Shadow the Hedgehog to WarGreymon's Sonic.

  However, Pokémon would still help create ratings records for Kids' WB, even though late 2000/early 2001 saw a slide that would often cede dominance to Nickelodeon. Jed Patrick, who was president of The WB at the time said: "I didn't think Pokémon would fall off as much as it did ... every fire cools down a little, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stay hot."

  Even though, in retrospect, claims that "Pokemania" had died seem a little ridiculous — the latest games, Pokémon Sword and Shield, just became the highest-selling entries in seventeen years — big changes were ahead.

  Part 3: It's Time To Duel ... Or Not

  In early 2001, Joel Andryc, executive VP of kids' programming and development for Fox Kids, was looking for a "Digimon companion series to create an hour-long anime block." He felt they were too reliant on Digimon, as they were airing it three times in a single morning. Likely not coincidentally, that summer Fox Kids Fridays were dubbed "anime invasion," advertising Flint The Time Detective, Dinozaurs, Escaflowne, and Digimon. In one commercial, a single quote zips across the bottom of the screen: "Anime Rocks!" Nicole, TX

  That it does, Nicole from Texas.

  Meanwhile, 4Kids Entertainment would provide Kids' WB with another monster show: Yu-Gi-Oh! Known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters in Japan, this anime adaptation absconded from retelling the stories found in the early chapters of the manga — which were mostly devoted to Yugi running into jerks, only to have his Egyptian spirit "alter ego" deal karmic retribution on them — and instead focused on the parts that involved the cool monster fights. So basically the parts that were the most like Pokémon.

  But how would this be received? In 2000, Canadian studio Nelvana had licensed the anime Cardcaptor Sakura and turned it simply into Cardcaptors — an extremely edited version that removed many important relationships and plotlines and tried to streamline the show into a pseudo-Pokémon story. It's gone down in history as one of the most questionable dubs ever, and never really made a splash on Kids' WB. So they wouldn't want a repeat of that.

  But would kids be into a card game? The cards did summon monsters, but in Pokémon and Digimon, the monsters are just there, moving around and not relegated to a glorified checkers board arena. It turned out, yes, kids would be REALLY into that. Yu-Gi-Oh! debuted at number one in multiple demographics in September 2001, and would remain a steady part of its lineup for years to come.

    And how did Fox Kids respond? Did the "anime invasion" work out? Well, sort of, but not in the way they were hoping.

  In 2001, due to diminishing ratings and audiences, Fox Kids Worldwide (along with Fox Family Worldwide) were sold to The Walt Disney Company. By November 7th, they'd canceled their weekly afternoon blocks, and the next year, they'd end up selling their entire Saturday morning block to a company that had provided their rivals with the very same TV shows that aided in sinking them: 4Kids Entertainment. The final show to premiere on the original Fox Kids was Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, a live action series that stood beside Alienators: Evolution Continues (a cartoon sequel to the mediocre 2001 comedy Evolution) and the underrated Medabots as the block's last gasp. 

  Renamed FoxBox in late 2002 (and later 4KidsTV in 2005), the 4Kids run schedule would, over the years, include anime like Kirby! Right Back At Ya!, Ultimate Muscle, Fighting Foodons, Sonic X, Shaman King, and eventually, in 2004, the infamous One Piece dub. The first Saturday of the new FoxBox lineup would also outdo the previous Saturday's Fox Kids lineup. Disney would acquire the rights to Digimon and it showed up on ABC Family in late 2001 (eighteen years later, a reboot of the original series would air, which can be watched on Crunchyroll).

  Eventually, in 2007, the Monster War would come full circle. 4Kids Entertainment announced they would be taking over the Kids' WB Saturday morning block entirely, renaming it the "CW4KIDS," as The CW had been born after UPN and The WB had ceased to be. Pokémon was long gone by this point, having been dropped by Kids' WB in 2006, and was now overseen by The Pokémon Company International on Cartoon Network.

  "We wish Pokémon USA much success going forward," the CEO of 4Kids Entertainment said. Later sued over "illegal agreements" regarding the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, the company would eventually file for bankruptcy in 2016. Pokémon Journeys, the latest installment in the franchise, launches on Netflix on June 12th. 

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[queerbookscoolmugs]

Frodo Baggins Saved my Life

I remember seeing Lord of the Rings the Saturday after it opened in the theater. It was me and my dad, sitting in the dead center row. It was the 22nd, dangerously close to christmas for my dad to be splurging to take us to the movies, but I had turned 12 the previous weekend, and I’d been looking forward to this for months. My walls were plastered with posters of Orlando Bloom, with his bow and his flowing blonde hair. I had an evenstar necklace my best friend had bought me hanging around my neck. I remember the exact moment I heard Cate Blanchett’s voice, echoing in a dark theater, squeezing my dad’s hand as it took my breath away...

But let me back up.

I have a long standing love affair with fantasy. My father used to read me fairytales from this storybook with a puffy blue cover and gold gilt pages when I was still recovering from my heart surgery, little more than a toddler. The book was perfectly square and too heavy for me to hold on my own. Ever story had been illustrated by a different artist. 

When i got older, it was my parents taking turns reading me Bunnnicula and James and the Giant Peach. But as much as I loved to be read to, I didn’t like to read. I didn’t struggle to read, quite the opposite. I was good at it, which was nice because I wasn’t good at much else as a kid. I was terrible at math, I sucked at sports, I couldn’t ride a bike until I was nearly eleven, i spent my time with girls who were horrible to me because making new, better friends was difficult and scary. But because reading came easy to me, I got bored quickly, and I was picky. I loved fantasy and fairy tales but I wouldn't touch anything the least little bit scary. I wouldn’t read a book if I didn’t like the cover or how the pages felt of how it smelled( and yet it didn’t occur to me until I was an adult that I might be on the spectrum?!?) I tore through Bailey school kids, the Magic Attic Club, American Girl, the royal diaries, dear america. My parents couldn’t keep me in books I would actually read, and if I wasn’t reading I was talking, which was exhausting for everyone. 

Then in fourth grade, my teacher read us a series that, up to that point, none of us had ever heard of. Harry Potter. I at them up. I wasn’t content to read along with the class, patience wasn’t my strong suit. I was gifted the newly released Prisoner of Azkaban from my grandmother  before my class even started reading it and I can still remember plunking it down on my dad’s desk with a grin, exactly a week after I gotten it and proclaimed “I’m finished.” There is a sort of sadistic pride you get as a kid when you realize the look of surprise and almost fear you see on your parents face when they realize your have outsmarted them. Because my father saw the writing on the wall. Once fourth grade me realized I could read a 400 page book in a week, I suddenly had no time for “kid books”. My parents struggle to find me books that were large enough(ie if i didn’t have enough pages I decided it was for babies and wouldn’t read it. I was a pretentious child. I own that.) that still had appropriate language and subject matter for a nine year old girl who still slept with the lights on. 

Gandalf found me again the summer before my six grade year, news came out about Warner Bros new, big budget Lord of the Rings films. Like every other girl at puberty age, I latched onto a long haired Orlando Bloom with the passion that can only be mustered by a sexually confused 11 year old girl can. My dad came home from work with the whole lord of the rings set for me one day( the movie covers of course) and I remember practically launching myself into my bed to start reading them. 

To be honest, the books were above my head at eleven. I only understood about a third of the story but to my surprise, the character that stood out to me the most, was Frodo. Now if you had asked me at 11 who my favorite was, I’d have said Legolas. If you’d have asked me at 16, I would have said Aragorn. If you’d have asked me at 20, i would have Eowyn. But now, as I creep up on 30, I can say that my favorite character, the one I identify with the most, is and has always been Frodo. 

I identified with Frodo in a way I didn’t with Harry and Ron and Hermione, with Tom Sawyer or Jim Hawkins or Pollyanna. As a kid, I was scared of everything. When i was really little, I had a heart problem, and I was treated like glass by everyone around me. But after my heart surgery, after I not only survived but thrived far better than anyone had expected, everyone expected me to just jump into life head long while at the same time being told that I couldn’t preform to the same level as other kids. It’s a confusing juxtapostion to put a child in. I was scared of my own shadow, of the dark, of water, of riding a bike, of climbing to the top of the monkey bars, but I at the same time I was told not to run, kept out of games like kickball and tag. I was chubby and teased about how much i ate but not allowed to participate in many of the activities that would help me keep my weight down.  My sister tormented me for it, my mom admonished me for it, the girls at school used it as a weapon against me. I felt helpless in my own life, from a young age and it was a feeling that would only get worse as I got older.

I didn’t know it at 11, but Frodo Baggins would save my life.

Frodo was a comfort to me because there was nothing special or extraordinary about him. Frodo was a bystander, who loved listening to his uncle’s stories about dragons and trolls, but he was content to be where he was. Adventure found him but not in the fun, swashbuckling sort of adventure i’d read in treasure island or swiss family robinson. Frodo’s adventure was, at times, hard, tragic, and frightening. But in the end it was worth it. The pain and the suffering and the terror were worth it. Frodo was hurt, changed, wounded by what happened. He came back missing parts of himself but everything he did was worth it. And most of all, it was Frodo’s choice. No one ever expected Frodo to do anything but go home to the shire after the council of Elrond. But instead, Frodo volunteered to take the ring. He raised his voice over a shouting match of people far older and wiser and more powerful than himself because he knew that none of them would listen to the other, and if they couldn’t cooperate, then the world was already lost. Frodo showed me the kind of bravery I most needed time and time again, when I was struggling with my body image, my sexuality, my faith, with my family, with an abusive relationship, with stress, with anxiety, with depression, with poverty,  with grief, with suicide. I found the courage to stand up and carry the weight I was never meant to carry, because if Frodo could do it, then so could I. 

I found the courage to stand up to people who hurt me, because Frodo stood up to the council. I gave me the courage to pack up and leave home, to see the world because something in my soul was dying where I was. I found the courage to rely on my friends, to ask for forgiveness and to forgive myself at times, because depression, like the ring, crawls into your brain and it changes you. Like the ring, it makes you doubt, it make you fear, it makes you mistrust and at times, at your worst, it make you mean. Frodo gave me the courage to stop hiding the parts of me that were broken and missing. Because ever hard thing I went through, as horrible as it was, I survived. Often times, not for myself, but i wasn’t particularly interested in surviving, but so someone who needed to see you could survive might look at me and know it’s possible. That the darkness doesn’t last forever. 

The last time I read Lord of the Rings was shortly after the last presidential election. I was, frankly, heartsick. I’m a queer woman, dating a queer woman. We both have preexisting conditions, with both have degrees in fields where being fired for being openly gay isn’t unusual. I felt the darkness closing in again.

“I wish the ring had never come to me.” Frodo tells Gandalf, in Moria. Even now, when i read the book for what feels like the hundredth time, I can’t help but imagine Frodo’s voice as anything other that Elijah Wood’s. How small, and powerless and frightened he sounded in that moment. How hopeless. 

“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.”

 Even if you feel small, you can carry a potential that is far greater than you imagine. You’re not alone. There is still good in the world, if we’re willing to fight for it. The darkness doesn’t last. Even if you’re broken, shattered, that doesn’t mean you always will be. And even the smallest of creatures, can change the course of history. 

#lord of the rings #frodo baggins #personal #depression #body image #wlw #long post

[projectalbum]

Radio songs. 189. “Green,” 190. “Out of Time,” 191. “Automatic for the People,” 192. “Monster,” 193. “New Adventures in Hi-Fi" by R.E.M.

For R.E.M., signing to Warner Bros Records meant reaching more people, in the U.S. and abroad. It meant a bigger promotional push behind their albums.

It meant an exponential increase in their touring schedule, to the point where all four were pretty burned out by the idea after being on the road for most of ’88-’89. But for me, it was a move that meant my favorite music in existence was allowed to sprout from the fertile loam of commercialism.

If you’ll remember from my previous post, it was a compilation of songs from the WB era that first made me a fan. And it was the first few albums under that banner that made R.E.M. superstars, i.e. a band established enough that I would be aware of them growing up. It’s hard for me to grasp the amount of R.E.M. saturation that existed from roughly ’88 - ’94. By the time I was humming “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Orange Crush” in high school, it was 2005 and the band’s incandescence had faded to the soft, respectable glow of “Dad Rock.” They were hipper than the Billy Joel & Electric Light Orchestra discs that they had replaced in my repertoire, but as far as my peers were concerned, barely. 

The first Christmas after I had announced myself as a fan brought, in shiny happy gift wrapping, Green (#189) and Out Of Time (#190). A veritable Mandolin-apalooza: in the campfire folk trance of “You Are The Everything,” mournful character study “The Wrong Child,” and midnight hippie spiritual “Hairshirt” that are scattered through the mix of Green, and powering the über-hit that secured their legacy, “Losing My Religion,” on Out Of Time. My relationship to those tracks has dipped and risen through the years— I was much less open to strange acoustic explorations back then (or in the case of “LMR,” its overfamiliarity), so I tended to skip them. I grooved on the electric menace of “Turn You Inside-Out” and the poptimism of “Untitled.”

“World Leader Pretend,” in which all the band’s instruments, including Stipe’s voice, seemed tuned to a lower register than ever before (now THAT’S some counter-programming to the bubblegum of “Stand”), has become a God-level composition in my mind. It’s gained some resurgence recently, seen as a pointed critique of the venal and power-hungry who are obsessed with controlling geopolitical barriers. "I raised the wall / And I will be the one to knock it down,” the protagonist intones, and yeah, “the Wall” has a connotation for current events in 2018, as it did 30 years ago (roughly a year after the album’s release, Berlin’s concrete schism was demolished). But I hear the divided self in “World Leader Pretend”: the man erecting the walls of his own isolation chamber, shoring up his fragile ego against outer pain, denying the possibility for connection. "I decree a stalemate, I divine my deeper motives / I recognize the weapons / I've practiced them well, I fitted them myself.” In other words, I hear myself.

Fortunately, he concludes that it’s within his power to level these barriers he's constructed, and I feel I can learn the same lesson. There’s a triumphant slide guitar in the bridge, an iconically Country-Western flavor that the band returns to on one of the most indelible tracks on Out of Time— the descriptively-titled “Country Feedback.” Heartache on an epic scale, deliberate, hypnotic tempo but bubbling like a volcano, the words a stream-of-consciousness chant over Peter Buck’s searching electric guitar and Mike Mills funereal organ. “It’s crazy what you could have had,” Stipe laments, his voice rising, and then, “I need this. I need this.” Is it the confession that he needs, or the connection slipping away from his grasping fingers? He’s called it his favorite song in the band’s canon; they’ve performed it with Neil Young providing the wailing guitar counterpart, like a Dead Man end credits song that never happened, and there’s a clever mashup on the Unplugged set that bowled me over (I’ll mention it when I get there).

The acoustic arrangements and sonic experimentation continued on Automatic for the People (#191), with a purge of the bubblegum (“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” is a notable exception, but for a goof, it’s gorgeous.) Much has been made of the album’s apparent preoccupation with mortality and loss. For sure, there's the straight-forward teen suicide deterrent “Everybody Hurts,” predating It Gets Better by a couple decades; “Sweetness Follows,” about the steady, plodding journey through mourning, and the peaceful plateau you can reach; “Monty Got A Raw Deal,” a steely Western ballad inspired in part by the tortured, bisexual film actor Montgomery Clift. But it’s a hopeful album, not a dour slog.

To me, the common thread is The Past: that personal history that’s less about the agreed-upon facts and more about the feelings tied to events, coloring your reminiscence. “Drive,” the darkly insinuating opening track, takes inspiration for its rhythmic Beat poetry vocal from David Essex's “Rock On,” a song that Stipe might have heard as a teenager, one that itself looks back a further 20 years to the birth of rock n’roll. Add the string arrangement by rock royalty, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, and it’s nostalgia brined in nostalgia.

We’re looking at the reflection of the old photograph as caught by the passing streetlights: several layers of removal from the events. But in looking back, our feelings strike us clearer than whatever life we’ve built for ourselves in the interim; we’re still dwelling on whatever innocence we think we’ve lost. "I have seen things that you will never see / Leave it to memory me,” are the parting words of a person at the end of their life in “Try Not To Breathe” (often in the running for my favorite R.E.M. recording). "I will try not to burden you,” they promise, holding in secrets of a time gone by in hopes that the listener will forge a new path.

“Find The River,” which draws the book to a close with accordion and harmonizing voices, is another in a line of R.E.M. songs drawing on the river as a symbol of lost harmony. In youthful exuberance, there was “Nightswimming,” but "The ocean is the river's goal / A need to leave the water knows,” and time moves inexorably forward. The past feeds into the unfathomable depths of the future. Automatic for the People draws its title from the slogan at a soul food joint in the band’s hometown. It’s that sense of their own history, 8 records in and on top of the world, that merges with their innate creative restlessness, compelling them to shoot off in a new direction.  “I have got to leave to find my way."

This fuels their mission statement with each album since the WB era began: “Let’s write songs that don’t sound like ‘R.E.M. songs.’” If Automatic is self-reflective, Monster (#192) is about adopted personas. The sound of a middle-aged Art Rock band pretending to be a 20-something Glam Rock band, adding more neon and guitar distortion and posturing than you can shake a Mott The Hoople at. “What can I make myself be? (Faker!)” 

The video for “Crush With Eyeliner” furthers that sense of playful irony: the band members pushed off to the corner of the bar as a new generation, from a different cultural background, expresses the song for them. The entire radioactive orange LP kind of encapsulates every messy teenage feeling I've had since high school. I'm still a "faker," pretending to sing this song. And looking good doing it. (Though, full disclosure, the first time I did karaoke I went with “Bang and Blame.” I don’t mind telling you I nailed it.)

Monster is marked by the most prevalent sexual overtones in R.E.M. canon, as if they were embracing that self-aware Rock Star trope. It’s hard to get more on the nose than the title “Star 69,” but “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” wins the prize with “Are you coming to ease my headache? / Do you give good head? / Am I good in bed?” As the public debated Michael Stipe’s sexuality, he parried the question in the press and played with his image in the lyrics. The topic of his “Crush” is gendered “she,” giving hetereos like myself plenty to appropriate for our own impossible Cool Girl daydreams— never mind that it’s an ode to his friend Courtney Love. “King of Comedy” addresses a legion of Rupert Pupkins getting their big shot by whatever means necessary, but it also contains the lyric "I'm straight, I'm queer, I'm bi,” a few years before he revealed publicly where the needle pointed on that dial for him. “Tongue” is a lilting, falsetto performance: piano-driven cabaret written for a female protagonist lamenting her inconsiderate lovers. More masks for a closely-scrutinized celebrity to find freedom behind.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi (#193) felt as appropriate a title as any for my first year at a university— trading my hometown for a cinderblock dorm-room, starting down my career path with all the film courses they’d allow me to sign up for. The road-grit guitars, open road expansive sound, Stipe’s tour-shredded front man vocals: the album is alternately weary and electrified. Choruses and riffs fit to fill a stadium (as many basic tracks were recorded at live soundcheck) beside intimate 3AM tour bus confessionals. I scored this huge chapter of my young life with the strutting, T. Rex glam of “The Wake-Up Bomb,” arena-ready choruses of “Bittersweet Me” and “So Fast, So Numb,” felt inspired by the dreamlike inscrutability of “How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us” and darkly-reflective poetry of “E-Bow The Letter.”

I’m not overly surprised to hear that this LP didn’t hit with the same impact as the previous ones— it’s always felt like an acquired taste that I couldn’t impart to anyone else. “You haven’t heard 'Leave?’ Ah man, it’s over 7 minutes long, and there’s a constant siren loop in the background! But trust me, when you hear the acoustic riff from the opening interlude reprised by double-tracked electric guitar, the goose pimples will be visible from space.”

Where Monster boasted the straight-arrow torch song “Strange Currencies,” the hushed, surrealistic “Be Mine” seemed as if it emanated from my own bruised heart. "I'll be the sky above the Ganges / I'll be the vast and stormy sea / I'll be the lights that guide you inward / I'll be the visions you will see”— it’s a cross-spiritual devotional that funnels the tenets of world religions into a promise for total intimacy. I would pay top dollar for the raw footage of Thom Yorke’s guest interpretation. 

Despite the public’s anemic response, the band’s estimation of Hi-Fi’s strengths is justifiably high. It’s an accomplished, energetic record that shows every member playing at his peak. It’s now frozen in history as the last document of the band as a foursome. In the next entry, I’ll delve into the CDs released after drummer Bill Berry retired and R.E.M. dramatically changed gears, rocketing into the 21st century.

#R.E.M. #michael stipe #peter buck #mike mills #bill berry #monster #new adventures in hi-fi #automatic for the people #green #out of time #losing my religion #what's the frequency #cdcollection #cd #cdcollector #album art #music blog #Rock Music #patti smith

[comingupforblair]

I feel I should preface this by saying that I personally liked Justice League. The entire cast all fit into Their roles perfectly, there are undeniable moments of greatness in there such as the opening credits sequence and the scene with Victor and his dad and the film makes me excited to see more from these characters. 

But I also understand the feeling of betrayal and disappointment among other fans. There’s an unavoidable sense that this isn’t the film we were promised. We imagined we were going to see Zack Snyder’s conclusion to his work on these films and instead the film was cut up and reshaped by executives who lost faith in him at the last minute. I have a more sympathetic view of Warner Bros in this situation as the blame isn’t entirely on Their shoulders but it’s impossible to escape the feeling that we’re seeing a potentially ambitious film reduced to the same formulaic products that we have come to expect from the MCU.

DCEU fans have had to put with a lot for these films. A lot. We’ve had to fight against negative reviews and insults that have long since devolved into vitriolic personal attacks towards Zack Snyder, fight against negative and unproven rumors that were treated as concrete facts, deal with personal attacks and criticism from people who don’t like the films and seem unable to deal with other people not sharing that belief, purists who seemed intent on making Zack Snyder out to be history’s greatest monster, work from other franchises whose own flaws were downplayed or ignored and Their successes blown up to make the DCEU look worse and a general feeling of negativity that had been attached to the films and didn’t seem like it was ever going to go away, no matter how much work Warner Bros put in. The films seemed doomed to either be the target of endless insults and jokes made by people seemingly committed to being as tired, unfunny and unoriginal as possible or of personal vitriolic hatred that was massively disproportionate to any flaws in the films.

And we’ve been largely forced to fight this battle alone, as almost no one else has spoken out against the way the films are treated not even writers and actors from the Marvel who repeatedly proclaim to respect DC/WB and yet showed zero support when it would have mattered and have even added to the hatred in some cases, in a way that has gotten us marked with our own false negative image as fans who are either delusional and lying to Themselves or borderline sociopathic and unable to handle any criticism. It’s gotten so bad that some people have tried to cite being a fan of the DCEU as being evidence of a poor moral character on par with being a neo-nazi or harassing and groping women and we only like the films because They say we don’t need to be good to be heroic (In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating or strawmanning, I’ve seen all those things said about DCEU fans on Twitter).

Through it all, we’ve largely been sustained by our faith in the universe, by our unshakable belief not only in the capacity if the films to be exceptional but that Warner Bros was trying to create a new and ambitious kind of franchise that would inject new life into the characters, introduce audiences to new ones, and tell a daring story about heroism and examine what it means, that our favorite characters would be broken down and rebuilt on screen.

The overall message was one that’s been apparent since Man Of Steel and it was that the world can be a truly cold, lonely and brutal place, a message that was examined further in Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. We saw the heroes and villains not as broad stereotypes but as human beings like ourselves with pain, loss and regrets in Their past. We saw a version of Batman struggling with the belief that he has devoted his life to an idea that he could bring order to chaos, the beautiful lie he spoke about in his first scenes. We saw a character who is so easily made to be an over the top Mary Sue turned into a man tortured by his past, his trauma and his regrets and asking himself, as so many people have in Their lives, if anything he’s done has actually made the world a better place.

We saw a version of Superman who struggled with finding his place in the world and who was tortured by uncertainty, anxiety and self-doubt. We saw him be unsure of his identity as a child of two worlds and saw him reaffirm his status as a human when he chose Earth, a place in which he always felt like an outcast and which he had always imagined would reject him if They knew of his identity, over Krypton. We saw him face moments of despair and reflection where he questioned his place in the world, if he had made things worse by revealing himself and deal with hatred and loneliness and yet still remain heroic. People have frequently complained about this portrayal of Superman being ‘’hopeless’’ but optimism doesn’t mean smiling all the time and hope doesn’t mean being bright and chipper. Sometimes hope is being battered, bruised and exhausted and getting up the next day anyway because you believe it can be better.

We saw Wonder Woman finally brought to life on the big screen and struggle with having her belief in mankind broken, with being reminded in no uncertain terms just how terrible human beings can be and to encounter the best and worst of mankind. She saw people at Their worst in one of the darkest times in history and still act as a hero. She believed that we are still fundamentally good despite our flaws and worst actions, a message of undeniable power in a time that feels for so many to be one of humanity at it’s worst. Diana’s story is our own, of being broken by the world and the people in it but still fighting for a better one. 

In many ways, this made the struggle worth it. We were willing to put with endless complaints about the films being ‘’grimdark’’ and ‘’edgy’’ and whatever other buzzword people were trying to make sound like a legitimate criticism. We had the hope, however absurd it seemed, that one day people would see the same qualities in the films that we did. 

Justice League was always going to be a big moment. I never saw it as a culmination in the same way that The Avengers was but as a launching point, a statement of intent for things to come. It was to be the final part of Zack Snyder’s vision, the one we supported from the start and the one which he stuck to despite the negativity, seemingly endless amounts of criticism and personal hatred and his own family tragedy.

Then the film came out and there was an unavoidable feeling that Warner Bros had lost Their courage. They had given into the people who have been the bane of Their existence from the start and turned a potentially iconic film into a generic and forgettable one, destined to be enjoyed and forgotten like so many MCU films before it. We had stuck by Them for so long and it felt as though They had betrayed us by reducing and cutting up the vision Zack Snyder had for the sake of pleasing purists whose behavior has become unspeakably vile in the last year, to the point of being the reason he had to reveal the aforementioned tragedy to begin with and then acting in a repulsive manner when he did.

What should have been a great moment for the fandom ended up being our first outright disappointment, a film we had been so excited for that ended up letting us down, and it’s looking like it will be the first outright failure of the franchise. Warner Bros cut up the film to appeal to people who it’s now clear were never going to like it to begin with and isolated Their most loyal fans in the process.

Justice League remains a crucial turning point for the DCEU, albeit in a different manner than we had once imagined. It’s exactly the kind of films so many people who have been negative about the DCEU have insisted They should be making for years, a film in the vein of the MCU that puts an emphasis on ‘’fun’’ above all else and which has Superman acting more like the image purists have insisted he should be at all times. 

And yet it didn’t work. Fans mostly didn’t like it, critics still didn’t like it and it’s getting the lowest box office returns yet. They followed the formula people have been angrily demanding for years, the ones They insisted were the ticket to critical and commercial glory, and it didn’t work. 

Ideally this would be a time of reflection among the anti-DCEU crowd. A time for Them to ask what it is They really want from these films as They have given Warner Bros endless shit for not conforming to an idea for these films that They don’t seem entirely aware of Themselves beyond words like ‘’hopeful’’ and ‘’optimistic’’ that have increasingly become so subjective as to become meaningless. But I know that won’t happen.

Many are now trying to backtrack by praising previous films for having a strong vision and sense of ambition noticeably missing from Justice League and now trying to paint Themselves retroactively as having been far more reasonable than They were, insisting that They like the idea behind the films but have merely been unhappy with the execution in an attempt to downplay Their vitriol and responsibility for this situation that would be blatant if not for the sad fact that They will probably not get called out on it.

The simple fact is that the anti crowd are somewhat responsible for this dilemma. They have been endlessly and viciously critical and snide towards the films and now They want to act surprised that Warner Bros lack confidence in the vision and execution that They had been insulting since day one.

The upside is that the films can’t be criticized for being ‘’too dark’’ this time around which had been, by far, the most vocally expressed criticism of MOS and BvS, a criticism that seemed to feed into every other one and which blinded people to any other merits the films had. Nor can They complain about Superman not being enough like the classical version which had been the other big complaint since MOS. I know this won’t stop many from performing a U-Turn so big it can be seen from space and that the anti-crowd have never been blessed with a particularly high level of reflection or self-awareness but Warner Bros can honestly say going forward that They tried the approach everyone demanded and it didn’t work.

As for the future, I’m quite optimistic. I have been vocal about my excitement for Aquaman which I hope will, if not repeat the extraordinary success of Wonder Woman, at least come close and make itself just as unique and I have good reason to believe that based on what I’ve heard from James Wan. Shazam is coming too and all signs point to it being a better fusion of the direction Justice League was to steer the universe in and the studio’s use of directors with unique visions. Wonder Woman 2 is the biggest resource They have and I have absolute faith in Patty Jenkins. 

We also have Matt Reeves’ The Batman which looks to be an exciting new film with Ben Affleck who even detractors were forced to admit is outstanding in the role, Joss Whedon’s Batgirl film which, regardless of our feelings on Whedon, shows a willingness to take a chance on other female-led properties in light of WW’s success and which has the potential to recapture some of the same success as does Gotham City Sirens and Chris McKay’s Nightwing film which he has announced he plans to take his time with and seems genuinely enthusiastic about getting right and finding the right actor for Dick.

That isn’t even getting into projects like Flashpoint, which looks to be exactly the kind of experimental film the DCEU has promised to make, Justice League: Dark, the sequel to Suicide Squad by Gavin O’Connor which has the potential to do what Fox with the Wolverine solo films and a potential Deathstroke film that was pitched by Gareth Evans. The mere fact that a director like him wants to be a part of thus universe is a very good sign and there are many other projects and potential films on the horizon with a lot of talented people who want to be involved.

My hope going forward is that Warner Bros learn to trust Their directors more and stick to Their vision. This is admittedly easier said than done as it’s extraordinarily hard to have confidence when seemingly everyone is telling you in the most negative way possible that every thing you do is shit. That’s why I am glad for directors like Matt Reeves and James Wan being involved as They have greater autonomy and that is something Patty Jenkins and David Sandberg have likely earned as well. I hope that other directors with similar power follow. Warner Bros have a reputation for being good to Their talent and I’m positive They will remember that in the upcoming year.

Being a fan of these films isn’t easy and this was an undeniable stumble. But we’ll get up and continue on just as the heroes we love so much have done before us. I know a lot of people in the fandom aren’t big on the Nolan films but They were absolutely right that the reason we fall so that we learn to pick ourselves up again. I honestly think this is going to be that moment for the franchise and we will see Them accomplish wonders once more.

I still believe in the DCEU.

#DCEU #zack snyder #justice league #dceu positivity #dceu fandom #zack snyder positivity #man of steel #batman v superman #Wonder Woman #suicide squad

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Mortal Kombat (2021) vs. Mortal Kombat (1995): Which is Better?

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This article contains Mortal Kombat (2021) spoilers.

“Test your might.” These are the words of a minigame in the original Mortal Kombat arcade fighter from 1992. They were meant to signal an interlude between the simple pleasures of digitized sprites spilling buckets of blood. Yet they’ve also become synonymous with a franchise that’s arguably the most popular video game fighter of all-time. The phrase is also a pretty apt description for the various filmmakers who’ve attempted the challenge of taming this crazy dragon on screen.

More than any other video game series, Mortal Kombat has seen a plethora of live-action adaptations, from Hollywood movies to syndicated television. This weekend marks another milestone in that history, too, with Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s hotly anticipated Mortal Kombat reboot opening in theaters and premiering on HBO Max. It’s the third Mortal Kombat movie released under the New Line banner, but let’s just call it the second serious attempt at putting this universe on screen after the 1995 cult classic directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.

That ’95 movie holds the dubious honor of being generally considered the best video game movie adaptation of all-time, thanks to a tongue-in-cheek tone perfect for its mid-‘90s moment and maybe the greatest use of techno music in film. Genuinely, how many other pictures have the soundtrack scream the title of the movie over and over again, and it seems like a good idea?

The new movie took a different approach to the material, and certainly a bloodier one. While both adaptations share the same basic premise of chosen “Earthrealm” guardians protecting our dimension from an invading force via martial arts fights, the executions diverge radically. Here’s how.

The Story

The starkly different approach to storytelling in director Simon McQuoid’s 2021 Mortal Kombat is evident during the film’s opening scene. Beginning in 1600s Japan with a gnarly, brutal fight sequence between Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) and Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), this version of Mortal Kombat relies heavily on lore and world-building. If you know the video game backstory of Sub-Zero/Bi-Han, and how he was kidnapped as a child by the Lin Kuei cult so they could brainwash him into the magical ninja we now see slaughtering Scorpion’s family, the scene has a sense of fateful tragedy.

If you don’t, well Taslim and Sanada are such gifted martial artists that it still looks really cool. By contrast, Mortal Kombat of the ’95 vintage is pretty straightforward and to the point. This is basically an interdimensional version of the Bruce Lee classic, Enter the Dragon (1973), only with magical powers and the fate of the world at stake.

We’re introduced to three fighters in ‘95, Liu Kang (Robin Shou), Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), and Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), who all get on a boat to the tournament for different reasons. And while Liu Kang was raised by his Shaolin monk upbringing to know what this tournament is, the other two act as our eyes and ears into this strange world of mysticism and Outworld menace. By the time they reach the island, they understand they need to compete with superpowered foes to save Earth in a structured tournament.

Conversely, Mortal Kombat (2021) is curiously both more secretive and open about its bizarre universe. For a much larger chunk of its running time, the new movie’s point-of-view character Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is completely mystified by the superpowered horrors happening around him while the viewer is keyed in early by scenes set in the evil dimension of Outworld. There we see the dastardly sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) scheme from a throne about killing Cole in order to prevent a prophecy vaguely connected with the movie’s prologue scene in the 1600s. So he sends Sub-Zero to kill Cole in his day-to-day life as an MMA fighter, slaughtering him before he understands he’s been chosen to participate in the sacred Mortal Kombat tournament, which is held in secret every generation.

In fact, there is no actual tournament in the new film. Rather the plot eventually becomes Shang Tsung’s chosen band of evil warriors attempting to cheat ahead of the conflict by attacking Earthrealm’s depleted champions before they even discover they have superpowers (or “arcanas”) and know what Mortal Kombat is. The film thus becomes a quest movie with Cole joining forces with other “chosen ones” (or chosen one-aspirants) to find the Temple of Raiden, a lightning god (played by Tadanobu Asano) who represents the interests of Earthrealm in the tournaments. From there the heroes must learn their powers and evade preemptive, cheating attacks from Outworld’s thuggish baddies.

Side by side, the approaches appear to be the differences between a traditional (if derivative) martial arts flick and a modern studio blockbuster that is trying to cram as much fan service and world-building lore into a two-hour movie as possible in the hopes of making fanboys happy. I hesitate to say the 2021 film is fully following the Marvel Studios template given its copious amounts of blood and (seeming) lack of interest in building a shared universe of interconnected franchises. However, the 2021 film was certainly released in a post-Marvel world where the focus in studio committee rooms is less on telling a single story and more on building a whole convoluted mythology filled with fan favorite characters who are begging to be explored endlessly by future movies. It’s less story-driven than it is content-driven.

As a result, it leaves the narrative lacking. Viewers know long before Cole or 2021’s Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) what’s going on, and all the anticipation for a tournament that never materializes feels anti-climactic. With its simple structure, the Anderson-directed movie in the ‘90s plays out much more satisfyingly with three heroes (plus poor dead meat like “Art Lean”) entering a tournament by choice or trickery and then trying to survive it while learning vanilla, if tangible, life lessons. Liu Kang needs to accept his destiny; Johnny Cage must look before he leaps; and Sonya has to accept she’ll be the film’s damsel in distress even though she kicks ass. It’s an Enter the Dragon knockoff but it still has more kick than fan service.

Round One goes to 1995.

The Tone

The tone and aesthetics are also jarringly different between the two movies. Released in 1995, the same year Pierce Brosnan became James Bond, and two years before Arnold Schwarzenegger chilled out as Mr. Freeze, Mortal Kombat (1995) is an unmistakably campy movie and it leans into that fact.

Working with a low budget for a Hollywood spectacle even before New Line Cinema cut his funds by another $2 million right before cameras rolled, Anderson directed a B-movie that accepted its limitations and had fun with it. Apparently stars Ashby and Christopher Lambert, who played Lord Raiden in the ’95 movie, improvised dialogue throughout the shoot and rewrote entire scenes. As a consequence, Lambert’s lightning god was more of a jovial trickster in temperament, reminiscent of Loki instead of Odin. Johnny Cage, meanwhile, was essentially the film’s Han Solo: a cocksure wiseacre next to the stoic hero (Liu Kang) and a no-nonsense woman who doesn’t like to be called princess (Sonya).

As again signaled by the almost funereal opening sequence of Mortal Kombat (2021), where Sub-Zero murders Scorpion’s young family, the 2021 film is going for a differing sensibility. There is actually quite a bit of humor still present, with the real reason the Johnny Cage character got cut becoming apparent the moment we meet Kano (Josh Lawson), a loudmouth smartass who takes on the comic relief role but with an added slice of thuggery. Hence his dialogue has a lot more F-bombs than it does cracks about $500 sunglasses.

Other than moments where Kano is allowed to steal scenes, however, Mortal Kombat (2021) plays it pretty straight. Asano’s Raiden is imperious and his fighters stoic. However, it’s also worth noting Raiden is played by a Japanese actor, as opposed to a white American-born Frenchman who was raised in Switzerland (Lambert has quite the international background). Indeed, one of the more admirable qualities of the 2021 film is the focus on a diverse cast that includes more roles for Asian actors and people of color, whereas the 1995 film whitewashed Raiden and left out the Black American character Jax for little more than a cameo.

The 2021 film also upped the gore quotient considerably. While the martial arts of the 1995 film were decidedly PG-13, the tone of the movie was only a few steps removed from Power Rangers in some respects, including its introduction of a horrible CGI creation known as Reptile. The Reptile in the 2021 film appears more convincingly, like the latest monstrosity out of a Jurassic World lab, and the violence he commits is visually gruesome (more on that later).

Honestly, preferences over the aesthetic differences between the two films comes down to a matter of taste. I prefer the tongue-in-cheek eye rolls of the 1995 film given how nonsensical this universe is, and how at the end of the day its target audience remains children. Yet I imagine many adult fans of the video games will prefer the blood-soaked earnestness found in 2021.

Round Two is a draw.

Chosen Players

Anyone who’s picked up a fighting game will tell you it’s all about finding a character or two you like and then training up with them. In 1995, Anderson had the advantage of primarily adapting the original 1992 arcade game with its limited collection of playable characters. Ergo, his film’s lineup easily focused on the three aforementioned heroes of Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blade, plus the ambiguous Princess Kitana (Talisa Soto), and Lord Raiden. Meanwhile he divided his villain screen time between the sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and Shang Tsung’s minions, who were essentially glorified Bond henchmen with individual gimmicks.

Fan favorites Sub-Zero and Scorpion are present in the ’95 movie—with much more colorful, game-accurate costumes—yet they’re relatively low-hanging fruit in the tournament’s brackets. Their rivalry is given lip-service but they are dispatched by heroes Liu Kang and Johnny Cage relatively easily. Meanwhile Trevor Goddard’s Kano is more a hapless comic relief baddie who Wilson-Sampras’ Sonya kills with a great laugh line. “Give me a break,” Kano pleads with his head pinned between her thighs. “Okay,” she shoots back before snapping his neck.

Still, the movie largely belongs to Tagawa who makes a meal out of the scenery as the big bad. The guttural pleasure he has in so naturally turning all the over-the-top commands in the video game into his dialogue—“Finish Him!;” “Fatality;” “Test Your Might”—is infectious.

The 2021 film relies on a much larger cast of characters and, unlike the 1995 movie, attempts to give them each a moment to shine in the way Kitana and the original Kano could only dream. This surprisingly begins with the introduction of a totally new character in Cole Young as our point-of-view protagonist. While fan favorite Liu Kang was the hero in ’95, the character is now a supporting player played by Ludi Lin in 2021. And he’s not alone. The new Liu Kang’s cousin, Kung Lao (Max Huang), also gets enough screen time to show off his character’s beloved razor-rimmed hat, which he dispatches one of the movie’s villains with.

There is also the new Sonya, who may have the most complete arc as she strives to be accepted as a champion for Earthrealm, and Jax (Mechad Brooks), who is Sonya’s partner with the chosen one birthmark and who gets a new nasty origin story for his metal arms. And then the new Kano spends as much time working with the good guys as he does becoming a villain in an entirely rushed and unconvincing third act plot twist.

Read more

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There are even more villains, most of whom amount to glorified cameos, including Mileena (Sisi Stringer), Nitara (Mel Jarnson), and Kabal (Daniel Nelson). However, they’re all even more perfunctory than Sub-Zero and Scorpion were in 1995. At least the ‘90s ninjas each got a few minutes to show off before being dispatched. Even the ostensible main villain of 2021, the new Shang Tsung, is fairly underserved, left to state banal dialogue from a throne without a throne room, and he’s never allowed to dominate scenes the way Tagawa did so gleefully back in the day.

Unfortunately, this is because the 2021 film has so many characters that it lacks any sense of narrative focus or cohesion. Tan’s arc of wanting to learn his power/arcana to defend his family is as broad and serviceable a hook as Shou’s 1995 Liu Kang wanting to avenge the murder of his brother. But Tan’s Cole Young gets lost in the shuffle after the first act and until the movie’s ending. Character turns like Kano betraying the other heroes similarly feels hackneyed because there is too much noise on screen to really care about who’s making it. Even Kang Lao’s death falls flat. It’s admirable that it’s a good guy fans theoretically should care about (unlike 1995’s token Black character created by the filmmakers to die), but the 2021 movie fails to make the uninitiated be concerned.

Of course there are exceptions. Namely Sub-Zero and Scorpion. Even though Scorpion ill-advisedly disappears for nearly all of the movie’s running time after the film’s terrific opening 10 minutes, Sanada has such presence, and such strong chemistry with Taslim’s Sub-Zero, that their opening salvo leaves you waiting the rest of the movie for Scorpion’s revenge. Taslim is also able to give Sub-Zero some surprisingly tangible, if only hinted at, pathos even after he kills a kid in his first scene and is then forced to act behind a mask thereafter. He’s the real villain of the piece you want to see go down, and his death scene is incredibly satisfying as a result.

It’s probably enough for fans of the games to favor this kitchen sink approach. But overall, less is more.

Round Three goes to 1995.

Fight Scenes

If there is one realm where the 2021 movie truly excels in over the previous film, this is it. And yes, a big part of that is the gore quotient. Whereas the 1995 flick was produced with a PG-13 rating in mind (my elementary school thanks New Line for that), the 2021 movie was able to embrace the gross out charm that made the original game stand out at the arcade all those decades ago. Street Fighter might’ve been first, but only Mortal Kombat let you pull the other player’s spine out.

While that effect doesn’t quite happen in the 2021 movie, almost everything else does. Nitara goes face first into a Kung Lao’s buzzsaw hat, which cuts her cleanly in half; Sub-Zero freezing Jax’s arms and then shattering them in a stomach-churning effect; and instead of going off a cliff, Prince Goro is disemboweled by Cole Young—which almost makes up for the fact that Goro is reduced to a mindless mute this time.

It’s like a highlight reel of fatalities from the video game. But the reason why this film’s fight scenes really stand above the 1995 film isn’t the bloodletting; it’s the action leading up to it. With brutal fight choreography, the new Mortal Kombat shines whenever it lets actors who can actually do the stunts take the arena. That includes Lewis Tan, whose Cole Young mostly fights other MMA types or CG monsters. But it’s especially true for Joe Taslim of The Raid fame. As the villainous Sub-Zero, his moves are lightning quick, even if his powers leave opponents frozen stiff. So when he shares the screen with Tan or Sanada, the action reveals an auhentic flair.

In comparison, the 1995 film suffers a bit from the sin Johnny Cage is trying to dodge within the story: it relies on stunt doubles and tight editing to make the fights exciting. It’s a shame too since Shou is an excellent martial artist, and the one scene he got to choreograph—Liu Kang versus Reptile—has an edge. But much of the time, Shou’s constrained by the direction and editing. Ashby and Wilson-Sampras, conversely, are not actual martial artists, though credit must be given to Wilson-Sampras for doing all her own stunts when getting the role of Sonya at the last minute.

Still, the fights stand taller in 2021. It’s a bit of a shame though that the movie is so heavily edited that it too often hides this fact. Unlike the 1995 ensemble, most of the cast has the moves in 2021, but the editing still feels stuck in the past with its reliance on confounding quick cuts and coverage. During our current era of John Wick and Atomic Blonde this is both a bizarre and disappointing choice. Nevertheless, this is an easy call.

Round Four goes to 2021.

Ending

The final fight was relatively satisfying in 1995. Tagawa is a preening villain, and when the Immortals’ techno “Mortal Kombat” theme plays, it’s a pleasure to watch Liu Kang wipe that smug smile off Shang Tsung’s face. However, the ending keeps going with a Star Wars-esque sendoff to Liu Kang’s force ghost brother, and then the movie undermines its catharsis by immediately setting up a sequel.

In the picture’s final moments, our three heroes, plus Kitana, return to the real-life Thai temple that’s supposed to be Liu Kang’s home. Lord Raiden waits for them there, getting some final sideways cracks in before Outworld’s evil emperor Shao Khan appears like a giant specter in the clouds. He immediately threatens an Earthrealm invasion, despite losing the tournament.

I can attest that in 1995, this was a stunning cliffhanger for eight-year-olds everywhere. But then… Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), one of the worst films of the late ‘90s, happened.

Meanwhile in the 2021 film, we have a much more satisfying death for its villain when Scorpion returns from hell to send Sub-Zero to the hot place. Their fight is much more technically satisfying, and the cliffhanger setup is a lot more subtle. After defeating Shang Tsung’s warriors, if not Shang Tsung himself, the heroes of Earthrealm saved us all without an actual tournament ever occurring. And instead of Outworld cheating in this moment by invading anyway, they retreat. It’s an odd choice since they’ve been cheating the whole film, so why start playing by the rules now?

Even so, it leaves a destination for a second movie to actually head toward. And to tease that fact further, it’s implied Cole Young will now travel to Hollywood to recruit movie star Johnny Cage for a sequel. It’s pure fan service, but the kind that leaves the possibility open for better things to come. Considering we know where the 1995 movie’s cliffhanger leads—to pits of cinematic hell worse than any faced by Scorpion in the last 400 years—this is a victory for 2021 by default.

Round Five goes to 2021.

Final Victor

Ultimately, neither of these films are high art nor do they aspire to be. In some ways, it’s a case of picking your poison between schlock or schlock. Each has advantages over the other, as laid out above, and each is a long way from a flawless victory. Nonetheless, due simply to narrative and tonal cohesiveness, and just more memorable lead characters, I’ll go with the one that actually gets to the tournament this whole damn thing’s designed around.

Game over.

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