#zimmer found dead at the scene

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

imagine being so prudish that a Victorian from 1895 calls you out for being too prudish

(ehepaar is German for married couple)

(from Kuno Meyer's translation of the Voyage of Bran)

#the voyage of bran #zimmer found dead at the scene #medieval irish

[mangoisms]

circle k (back to you)

summary: in which you're just the graveyard shift employee at circle k bombarded by vigilantes.

━ chapter five: i am found on the ground | read chapter four

━ pairing: tim drake x f!reader

━ word count: 4.5k

━ warnings: none

━ masterlist

━ a/n: if you'd like to see my notes (and my thoughts behind a certain inclusion of a character in this chapter), you can find them here <3 (also i'm on fire is playing in the last scene the formatting of the lyrics just killed me so i had to get rid of it thank you all)

“You just can’t beat it.”

“It was okay.”

You turn sharply to look at Tim, who shrugs, a small smile playing on his lips. 

In the kitchen, Steph snorts. “Here we go.”

You ignore her. “Okay? Inception was okay—”

“Uncalled for—”

“But true. This?” You gesture to his flatscreen TV, where the end credits for Interstellar are playing; you’re a little bit red-eyed from the end scenes with Cooper and Murph but no less passionate. “This is more than okay. It’s—”

“Not technically scientifically accurate.”

You grab a pillow and gently whack him with it. He tries to hide a growing smile. You don’t understand what exactly he’s smiling at but you don’t care in this moment.

“It’s not about scientific accuracy, duck boy, it’s about love.”

“Yeah!” Steph yells from the kitchen. “Go love! Woo!”

You gesture in her direction. “He literally said it in the movie, Tim. How can you miss it? And Brand, too!”

“It wasn’t enough to save who she loved, though,” he points out—ever the devil’s advoactate, honestly…

“But it was there and she knew that, too, and she was okay with it. And it was enough for Cooper and Murph, too. I mean, literally to the point that she was able to save humanity. Right? Brand said it—love is the one thing we are capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”

Tim looks… well, far from upset or annoyed. He seems amused, almost… almost fond, the way he looks at you, but it’s too much for you to handle, so you look away, pouting a little.

“And also, okay, I know entering the black hole wasn’t ‘scientifically accurate’ but that’s the point, that some higher being switched them out so he didn’t die. You do have to admit, however, that the depiction of the black hole, which I’ll give Nolan props for, was great.”

“Okay, true,” he concedes. “The score was pretty good, too.”

“It was excellent.”

Steph steps out from the kitchen, looking at her phone. “Give me a sec, you guys, my mom’s calling me.”

You both give her an affirmative and she steps out the front door. You and Tim quickly resume your discussion.

“Inception’s score was good, too,” he points out. 

“Bah. They both had Zimmer. Of course it’s going to be good. But Interstellar has the benefit of being enhanced by it because it’s already a good movie. I mean, it surprises even me that Nolan could manage to pull off something like this.”

“He has the range,” Tim protests. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, you Nolan stan. I’m still a bit hung-up on you saying it’s just ‘okay.’ I mean, sure, it could just be me projecting my own grief about my dead parents onto the story about a dad crossing space and time to get back to his daughter but still!”

That’s the understatement of the century. The scenes between Cooper and an old Murph never fail to make you tear up. Any of the scenes between them, really. 

The prolonged silence from Tim tips you off and it’s only when you look at him do you realize your mistake.

His eyes are wide as he looks at you, surprised, with something else. 

“Oh, it’s fine—”

“Your parents are—”

You both stop. 

You clear your throat, waving a hand. “It’s fine. I… I mean, sorry if it made you uncomfortable, I joke about it sometimes.”

“No,” he says. “It’s okay. It just surprised me. I guess… I don’t want to—I mean—I’m, uh, sorry?”

You shift on the couch, turning more toward him. “It’s okay. It was… well, not that long ago, but—”

You stop, because your instinctive response is ‘I’m over it’ but that’s not totally true, is it? You don’t think you’ll ever be over it. One part of you still feels horribly robbed of them, and some days, their deaths feel so monumental you can barely get through the day, while others, you can function normally for the most part. 

“No, I understand,” he says softly. “My parents, too. My mom when I was younger but my dad died when I was sixteen. It’s… not really something you get over, I think. No matter how much time passes.”

A quiet moment between you. It’s not like he’s tried to make you feel ostracized—if anything he’s gone out of his way to make you feel welcomed here, to make sure he and Steph don’t get too caught up on their own and they include you—but… This is a common thread between you and you know he knows and you know he knows you know. 

“Yeah… Yeah, exactly.” You pause, glancing at the TV, where the credits are rolling now. “It happened when I was fifteen. The, um, earthquake.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again and you know he means it. 

“I’m sorry about yours, too.”

Tim nods, the look on his face still soft, still gentle, then he glances back at the TV. 

“I was kidding, you know,” he says next. “It, uh, really was good. Better than I thought it would be. Scientific inaccuracy aside…”

“It’s good,” you press, ignoring the last comment. “And I don’t think it was trying to fool anyone into scientific accuracy.”

“Also true. I just…”

“Wasn’t expecting it to hit that hard?” you guess, smiling. “Yeah, I get it. Cried like a baby when I first saw it. You’re stronger than me for getting through it dry-eyed.”

“Oh, I’m just waiting for later,” he says. “Saving my sorrows for my pillow. That kind of thing.”

You laugh loudly. He smiles. 

“It does unearth all the dead parent trauma, though,” he says. 

“Oh, tell me about it. Cooper wanting to try to go back home after they find out Dr. Brand never intended to help those on earth…”

“And then having to sacrifice himself to give Brand a chance,” he finishes, shaking his head. “Only for it to turn out well in the end. If only real life was like that.”

A shade too dark for right now but you can’t say you disagree. 

The front door opens. Steph slips back inside, raising an eyebrow at you two. Though she hardly means what you think she means, you find yourself inching away from Tim, turning back forward slightly. You’d hate to give her the wrong impression.

And of course, that is not at all what she is thinking about.

“Why do you two look like someone just died?”

“Well, we were just talking about our dead parents, so,” Tim responds without missing a beat.

You burst out laughing. Steph groans. 

“I was wrong. You two shouldn’t be friends.”

“It’s too late for that, I think,” Tim says, grinning. 

You can’t help but grin, too.

She groans again.

Catwoman is your next vigilante visitor.

All skin-tight latex and a coquettish attitude that makes your face hot.

Luckily, she doesn’t appear to mind. She even pays for her stuff. 

(“I was told,” she purrs. “And I don’t much like being told what to do but… you’re cute enough to convince me to go along with it.”

You don’t think the noise you made was human but it amused her enough.)

Alongside that, you have the others who regularly drop by. Your vigilantes, but then, as you pick up a few weekend afternoon shifts (much to Steph’s disapproval), some normal faces, too.

Barbara, a red-haired woman with sharp green eyes who has a stately and intimidating aura to her but is always pleasant when you two chat. Sometimes she has another woman with her, a pretty blond Barbara calls D. Then, that one man, the stocky blonde with the tortoise-shell glasses and a quiet but kind disposition, who eventually introduces himself as Jean-Paul. 

You spot him during one of your weekend shifts, waiting his turn as you finish ringing up a harried-looking lady. Another man joins him, a little bit younger, you think, with dark hair and an odd white streak at the front; they’re both dressed in scrubs. 

“It’s been a while, Jason.”

“You know how it is, JP. Work doesn’t stop. How’s Leslie?”

“Doing everything at once and somehow managing to pull it off. I’m sure she’d like to see you, if you could find the time.”

“Sure. I’ve got a couple days off from the hospital. I could drop in. Lend a hand.”

A soft chuckle. “If she doesn’t turn you around and tell you to go rest.”

“I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

He coughs. The other man snickers.

Just as the lady leaves, Jean-Paul says, “Let me pay.”

“I won’t say no.”

They both step up to the counter. Jean-Paul gives you a small smile in greeting and seems to decide to forgo your usual small talk—probably because of his new company, which you’re a bit grateful for. The other man—Jason?—nods, eyeing you curiously. Why, you have no idea. But that’s the only thing odd about it. You ring up the coffees without issue and soon, they’re stepping out, Jean-Paul giving you another small smile in goodbye. You return it. 

Having regulars like that reminds you of the ones you had in Keystone City. Kind Mr. Garrick, who stopped by about once a month for lottery tickets, his wife typically in tow; they were always kind to you, always a little bit concerned over your wellbeing, whether you were getting enough sleep or eating well. Painfully reminiscent of grandparents you never had. 

A little more frequently, there was Linda Park-West, a face you easily recognized from WKEY-TV for the Channel 4 News. She didn’t miss much, always so perceptive, but kind to you, sometimes testing your PR skills as a reporter. She usually stopped by for coffee before work but on occasion, she brought along her kids, Jai and Iris, to let them pick out something for themselves, too. Quite literal balls of energy, they were a handful but always good-intentioned. 

You miss them all a lot. More than you thought you would. The Flash, too. Especially these days. What you’d give to talk to him about all this stuff…

But you’ve managed on your own since your parents died. You can keep doing it. 

The following week, Tuesday night, you get another new vigilante visitor.

This one?

Robin. 

He is, admittedly, a figure you are considerably more scared of. It’s a bit… silly on your part, too, because he is a kid, you think, a teen at least, but, well, teens can be scary. This one certainly is. If only because of his close proximity to the one who scares the most. The one who you are happy not to have visited you thus far and Robin’s appearance… well, you don’t entirely know if it’s a good thing. 

But it might be foolish to assume that Batman doesn’t know this is happening. 

But then thinking of him knowing you exist makes you horribly anxious, so, you shelve the thought for now and try to focus on the situation.

Which is…

The three dogs in tow collapse in front of the door, panting, tongues lolled out, appearing to enjoy the air-conditioned bliss of the inside of the store. Robin stares at you, his face a blank mask. 

“Water?”

“At the back. Far left.”

He nods and turns.

You wait there, uncertain, glancing at the dogs. They look worse for wear, fur dirty and matted, old scars healed over; the sight tugs at your heart, so you step around from the counter, heading to the coffee machine. The store doesn’t carry bowls but the extra-large soda cups are wide enough to work for now. 

Robin appears near you, several big bottles of water held in hand. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at you and the cups.

“Don’t have any bowls,” you admit. “So, I thought this might work.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Styrofoam. Wasteful. But it’ll do.”

“Yeah, Circle K isn’t breaking barriers in terms of eco-friendliness.”

He says nothing to that, just turns and heads for the dogs. You follow him, not that turned off. You’ve heard rumors about this particular Robin. He does a good job but can be… rough around the edges. Like Bat, like Robin, you guess.

Glancing at the cups, you get an idea, stopping to duck around the counter and grab a pair of scissors. You cup off the top half of each of them, Robin taking them as you go, until all three cups are cut, allowing for the dogs to have better reach. 

You join him with the last one, filling it with cold water. Most of the dogs are so heat tired, they only lift their heads to drink, seemingly unable to stand.

You and Robin stay kneeled in front of them, filling the cups when necessary. You gently stroke the head of one nearest to you, smiling as his tail thumps against the tiles. 

Robin says nothing else and neither do you. That’s how his time there goes, spent in silence, petting the dogs, letting them cool down and rest. 

Eventually, he starts to leave, and you can’t help but ask, “What’s going to happen to them?”

He regards you for a moment and you get the unnerving feeling of being picked apart and analyzed. Still, you hold steady. It’s good practice, you try to tell yourself. One day, you’ll be faced with bloodhounds for journalists and you have to keep it together. Let yourself practice with Robin because if you can pull it off with him, you can do it with anyone. 

“The shelters are closed for the night,” he eventually responds. “I will take them somewhere safe, off the streets. Then in the morning, they’ll go there.”

“That’s good. Thanks for doing that. It’s kind of you.”

He pauses, looking back at the dogs, who are rejuvenated by this point, stretching and standing up, tails wagging as they look at you two. 

“It’s the right thing to do,” he says at last. “And… thank you, for your help.”

You glance away, picking up the cups. “Sure. No problem.”

A nod and Robin is soon corralling the dogs out of the store, murmuring more gently to them than you would expect, but from this experience, you suspect he has some kind of soft spot for animals. It’s endearing, in a way. 

You hope you made a good impression on him, too. 

(And if your good impression keeps Batman out a little longer, well, that’s just a lucky coincidence.)

The start of July creeps on you. 

There is still achingly little contact between you and Tim. By this point, you haven’t seen him in person for more than a month.

You miss him, in the same way you miss a limb. Scrolling through your social media, whenever you find something funny or that he would like, your knee-jerk reaction is to send it to him. But your conversations on those respective platforms are made up of messages from you and none from him, so you have to stop yourself, because it wouldn’t be worth it. He wouldn’t see it. 

Steph tries to preoccupy your time, though her behavior regarding Tim grows increasingly skittish, to the point where you almost think she might know.

She might know that you’re in love with him, him, her ex-boyfriend and first love. The thought brings on the usual amount of soul-crushing guilt and disgust with yourself. How can you do that to her? She’s your best friend. You love her to the ends of the universe and back and… How can you do that to her?

But… something else about it all niggles at you, too. She switches between reassuring you he’ll come around, and dismissing him the other times, saying you ‘don’t need him to have a good time.’ It makes you think they may be having their own issues, too.

The thought is sobering. 

You’ve always thought of Steph and Tim as—as insane as it sounds—a pair of bonded kittens. Not exactly getting along all the time but…

You couldn’t separate them. You shouldn’t separate them. 

And it feels so wrong for it to be just you two, sometimes. Like you’re missing another piece of the puzzle and it’s noticeable. This empty space between you two that he usually filled. Your group chat, at his insistence, is called the three musketeers. Well, you’re missing your third. Desperately.

“We can rebrand,” Steph says to you one day, the two of you at the mall’s food court. Tim said he was busy. Again.

“No,” you sigh. “That’s not… no. Anyway, Big Belly?”

“I—oh, you have got to be kidding me.” She sounds annoyed, voice sharp.

“What?” you ask, your eyes still on the menu in front of you. 

She grabs your arm. “I think we should eat somewhere else.”

You frown at her. “But you said you wanted to get—”

“We can get Big Belly somewhere else. Maybe a little more quiet, you know, it’s kinda crazy in here,” she laughs, though it sounds strained as she tugs you over to the exit. 

“Crazy? It’s not that busy—Stephanie!” You yelp as she drags you forward before you can take a look around. “What is going on—”

“It’s just—I think I see Jordanna—”

“Where—”

“Let’s not look! Don’t want her to see you or me, you know how she is, so, let’s get out of here…”

“Well, I—okay—you don’t have to—”

She tugs you all the way through the exit, out into the burning mid-afternoon heat. Humidity swallows you whole, turning your skin tacky, sun bearing down on you full-force. Outside, it smells sharply of gasoline and hot blacktop.

“Honestly, Steph,” you say, shaking your head. “You didn’t need to drag me out like that.”

She gives you an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I just… didn’t want to deal with Jordanna. She’s been really annoying me recently.”

“Has she?” You can’t imagine why Jordanna would even be talking to her since it’s the summer, but to be fair, there isn’t much Jordanna wouldn’t do in the name of annoying her. 

“Yup. Just… acting way out of line. So, let’s go somewhere else.”

“Alright, that’s fine. Let’s get out of the heat before you have to scrape me off the pavement.”

“Food’s on me,” she promises, looping her fingers through the belt loops of your jeans, tugging you gently; too hot to hold hands or twine your arms together like usual. 

Though the whole thing bothers you a little bit, you are too used to Steph and Tim’s sometimes strange ways. Leaving abruptly, missing scheduled hangouts, a penchant for tardiness. The occasional bruise or cut that they both wave away. The exhaustion that wears them down sometimes.

It’s odd.

But stranger things happen in Gotham, so, you heed their wishes for that stuff to be ignored. 

Just like you let this one go, too. 

Really. The things you do for them.

Oddities aside, as Tim remains virtually radio silent, you miss him more. Think about him more. 

Dream about him more.

“Steph’s going to be late,” is what Tim says as soon as he steps inside your dorm. 

You snort. “Of course she is. You’re both terrible at being punctual.”

“I… am less bad at it than she is.”

“Right,” you say, smirking, pointing to your clock. “You’re only twenty minutes late, compared to what her forty minutes to an hour will be.”

Tim grimaces as he shuffles off his shoes by the door, then steps in further. “She said she was showering.”

“So, we have even more time. That’s fine. I wanted to paint my nails.”

In the bathroom you share with your ‘roommate,’ the shower turns on. It’s really just the bathroom you two share. Your small dorm is entirely private. The perks of being a junior. 

You go over to your dresser, where your collection of makeup and nail polish is. Above it, your window looks out to the grassy quad, the sky clear of clouds, unusually blue today without the typical smog; the sun shines in, dust motes dancing in the rays.

Tim comes over, too, but he goes for your phone instead, which is connected to your Bluetooth speaker, music playing lowly; he got that for you this past Christmas. 

“Gonna play your old people music?”

“Bruce Springsteen is a treasure to this country and, to quote my dad, one of the few good things to ever come out of the state of New Jersey.”

You laugh. The song changes. The upbeat notes of Hungry Heart start. You’ve heard this one more than a couple times since meeting him. It’s not so bad. 

You fiddle with the bottles of nail polishes. Tim sets your phone down and leans over, dropping his chin to your shoulder as he watches you, humming quietly under his breath. 

The contact makes your heart skip a beat, tendrils of his cologne wrapping around you, the heat of his body palpable through your thin t-shirt. It’s a contradicting sensation, with the AC working hard to beat the May heat that’s settled in. Maybe too hard, as your fingers are a little bit cold. You warm up quickly with Tim so close to you, your heart thudding in your ears. You desperately hope he can’t feel the heat that expands in your face.

That’s a more recent development. One you hate looking too closely at, for fear of what it means.

(You do know what it means. You’re just still in denial. Because admitting it means you have feelings for your best friend’s ex-boyfriend. For your best friend.)

You keep fiddling, not sure which color to pick. Tim huffs softly, reaching past you, picking out a bottle of wine red nail polish.

“Fine. But you have to help,” you say, taking it from him, then grabbing another bottle for the top coat. 

“Don’t I always?”

You just nudge him back, stepping away from the dresser and taking a seat on the floor. The floor is hard, polished concrete; not pleasant to sit on or walk on, so you’ve invested in several cushioned rugs to cover as much as you can. 

Tim grabs a Zesti from your mini fridge, then joins you as you set to painting the nails of your left hand. This one is easier since you’re using your dominant hand and you manage to paint your nails without catching any of the skin around them. 

The shower in your bathroom hums underneath the sound of the song as you finish your left hand. The first coat, anyway. Tim passes his Zesti to you, wipes a hand on his jeans to get rid of the condensation, then takes the bottle of nail polish. 

You sip the soda, extending your right hand to him. He carefully balances the bottle on the rug and sets to painting your nails. 

Like with most things he does, Tim dedicates himself to his task wholeheartedly, cornflower blue eyes trained on your hand, tongue poking out in concentration. The sight makes your heart skip a beat. Warmth unspools in your chest like cotton candy.

Sunlight pours in from the window above the dresser, bathing him in warm, golden rays; it makes the shade of his dark hair warmer, the blue of his t-shirt, too, softening the pale of his skin. 

“So… how was that date?”

The question jars you. You avert your eyes. 

Ah. The date you agreed to go on with a guy in your communications class in an attempt to… you don’t know. Distract yourself from Tim? Try to find someone else to latch onto? All… not so great reasons, you know, but needs must. 

Not like it worked out, anyway…

“Terrible.”

He stiffens, pausing in his work to look at you, eyes narrowing, and you send him a small smile, privately pleased—though you shouldn’t be—at seeing him get all protective. You can take care of yourself and he knows that, too, but… one can appreciate having a cute guy be like that for you. Within reason, anyway. 

“He didn’t do anything, Timmy, relax. He was just… well, seemed nice initially. But when we got to the restaurant, he was horrible to the waitress. I already wasn’t feeling it, but after that, no way. So.”

He glances away, thumb rubbing idly at the back of your hand from where he cradles it in his. “Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. It wasn’t a good idea.”

“To go with him or—” he clears his throat, turning back to his work “—dating in general?”

“I don’t know. He just wasn’t what I was looking for.”

“What are you looking for?”

You, you want to say, but don’t. 

Frightening to realize, really, that the answer to that question is immediate, as sure as the day. 

It’s Tim. 

Always Tim. 

But you’ve never felt this way for someone. This strongly, like you want so much, you could never be satisfied. 

“I don’t know,” you say quietly, watching the brush of the handle glide over your nail in easy, practiced sweeps. “Does anyone?”

“I guess not,” he concedes softly. “But still. I hope you can find it.”

The song changes. Something calmer, with the strum of the guitar. Familiar croons of I'm On Fire.

I have found it, you want to say. It’s you. It’s this. Right here, right now.

But just because you found it doesn’t mean it’s yours.

“Do you?” you find yourself asking because apparently you’re feeling extra masochistic today. “Know what you’re looking for, I mean.”

Steph sometimes teases him. Tries to point out nice boys and girls he might like. You used to play along. You don’t so much these days. 

He would always wave it off, anyway. Just shake his head and change the subject. He has dated before. Obviously. Someone as gorgeous as him… all of Gotham wants a piece of him. You do, too. Well. You want all of him. Which is another thing you are just now realizing. But anyway, since you’ve known him, he hasn’t dated anyone. He used to date a boy—Bernard? Steph said he was a character—from one of his old high schools but that didn’t work out. And now he still has the occasional date, but it never pans out. He says they just aren’t compatible. 

Makes you curious.

You’d never match up to it, you know, but you want to know, anyway. 

Tim looks up, his eyes slowly scanning your face. This close, with the sunlight, you can see the shadows his lashes cast on his cheeks, the flecks of silver in his eyes, like mercury, the odd scars, too, that he excuses behind clumsiness as a child. Everything inside you squeezes.

“I guess you can say that,” he eventually says, voice soft. 

The words hurt, but distantly, like it’s all far away from you. You’re too caught up here, now, close enough to smell his cologne. 

Tension thickens the air between you. It’s unfamiliar, unknown, but not unwelcome with how your stomach swoops like you missed a step, heart pounding in your ears. 

Tim looks… contemplative. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the movement of him biting his lip, teeth sinking into plush pink, and the urge to soothe away the indents with your own lips is fearsome, monumental, like a hurricane. 

His fingers tighten on your hand. You want to get swept away in this moment, no matter the consequences. It’s a dangerous kind of feeling you aren’t used to. 

But the shower abruptly shuts off in the bathroom, plunging the room back into silence with the strum of the guitar and the croon of the song as it ends. The moment is broken. 

Tim clears his throat and returns to his work. 

Neither of you say anything. 

Too much for you to want. 

Too much you cannot have.

Too complicated.

reblogs are appreciated!

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[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/25/22

fairly short bc i have either been sleeping or manually cleaning a database (upside down smiley face emoji)

listening ruby (instrumental) by hovvdy. this is a rare song where i like the instrumental version much more than the full song-- the lead singer has a bad case of early aughts indie frontman voice (get well soon). this sounds like (stay with me okay) the background music to some of the old american girl flash games, specifically the dog walking game. i think it's the combination of the drum machine and the dense, rapid loop under the melody.

it sounds faded but not in the volume sense, in like a mellow sense? it sounds like driving to go apple picking. overall it is laidback but peppy. courtesy of my discover weekly.

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reading mervyn peake's titus groan, the first in a trilogy about the inhabitants of the baroque yet medieval Castle Groan. i am reading this book in a way i do not normally read books, to wit: one or two chapters at a time a week apart. i sit by a river until i get bored, i think "oh right there's a book in my bag" and read until i get bored again. i am falling more and more in love with the prose in this thing-- the lady mother of the castle has a billion white cats, and they all rush into her room until (i am not getting up to quote this precisely) "every shadow in the room was blanched with cats". MWAH. love it. i have just met the teen lady fuchsia groan. DREADFUL child. excited to find out what her whole deal is.

i also need you all to look at the PBS site for the two-season adaptation they did in the year 2000. this is the most 2000s shit ive ever seen this is incredible

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watching if for some reason you want to watch a response to rio bravo (an extremely tiresome movie which is in itself a response to high noon) Assault On Precinct 13 (1976, dir Carpenter) is really your only option i think? fun hour and a half tower defense, fun effects, this movie takes place either in evening or actual night and i can still see everything that's going on bc carpenter shelled out for the best processing money could buy (to the detriment of actually uhhhh paying his talent).

one of the more charged smoking scenes ive seen in some time. god laurie zimmer is hot

i markov chained my way to this film bc i am always interested in responses to westerns (usually this means reinterpreting them as cop dramas, bc most american cowboy movies are propaganda pieces about trusting law enforcement and how imperialism is good, something something civic religion/manifest destiny/reach for the sky pardner) and i want to watch more things that feel like The Taking of Pelham 123 bc by god was that movie fun to watch. maybe i do like hostage movies??? this is a weird development for me.

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playing despondently puttering about in the fourth fallout. really wish i found the companion deacon endearing, but i do not. this game has several too many sad dead wife guys, and if there was anything interesting under the very obvious front he's putting on deacon would be a much more interesting (to me) character. alas.

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making fallow week

#the watching is more of a rehash of a post i made earlier this week #but i simply have not been watching very much #tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #Youtube

[twistedtummies2]

Fifteen Days of Disney Magic - Number 8

Welcome to Fifteen Days of Disney Magic! In honor of the company’s 100th Anniversary, I am counting down my Top 15 Favorite Movies from Walt Disney Animation Studios! We're now halfway through the countdown! Today’s entry proves the quote, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” Number 8 is…The Lion King.

If I had to make a few guesses, I’d say the most unorthodox things about my countdown would be the following: one, putting “Fun & Fancy Free,” of all films, in my Top 15. Two, only including one modern era Disney film in the ranks, and we’ll get to that one eventually, don’t worry. Three, not including “Beauty and the Beast” in my Top 10…and four, making “The Lion King” ONLY 8th place. Yes, I am aware that I am a blasphemous heathen who deserves to be hit with a stick. So sue me. Once again, I must stress, do not take the lower placement of “The Lion King” to mean I dislike the film. Because, obviously, I do not. I think the movie is one of the most epic features Disney has ever put out, and it’s not a surprise that so many people name it as one of their top five favorite Disney movies, or even their absolute favorite. It was one of the most successful features of its time, and for good reason. Combining elements of Shakespeare with earlier animated works, including the anime “Kimba the White Lion” and Disney’s own “Bambi,” and a lot of its own original material, “Lion King” was and still is a unique movie in the Disney canon. In some ways, I would argue it’s a little more adult than many other Disney films, although it still has plenty of elements that can appeal to children, or even to one’s inner child.

There are many things that make this film as “big” as it is. The visuals are sweeping and grand; even the most minor shots always seem to have a lot of punch to them. It takes great advantage of the colors and visual motifs of its natural African setting to create some of the most gorgeous images you’ll find in any animated movie. Practically every frame of this film, if you were to halt it in place, could make a perfectly composed picture; almost something you would want to hang up on your wall. From childhood innocence to the bitterness of adulthood, and everything in-between, it patterns the emotional and physical journeys of Simba beautifully. Hans Zimmer’s score is equally powerful; I feel this actually may be one of his most underrated soundtracks, since when most people think of his name, they probably think of his work with Christopher Nolan, or on franchises like “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and when most people think of music in the Lion King, they tend to think of the songs. And while the songs are great – REALLY great – I think that Zimmer’s score is equally applause-worthy, as it works with the imagery (and the splendid voice cast) to paint every character and scene expertly. However, when I rewatched the film, what struck me most was the overall message of the story. This is where I think it’s most adult elements show: not in the death of Mufasa, or the family struggles, but in its ultimate and most prominent theme. The film is ultimately about one person learning to overcome his own perceived past mistakes, and bring justice and truth to a world filled with lies. We have all made mistakes or wished to correct unjust situations, and I think that theme is just as powerful today as it ever was. For me, it is perhaps especially poignant; I have, more and more frequently, found myself dealing with old wounds and not-so-forgotten errors, and wishing I could find a way to correct all those terrible things I did or said. So I can relate to someone like Simba in a way that’s different from many other characters Disney has created. As far as its competition with “Aladdin,” "Peter Pan," and “Beauty and the Beast” can be concerned, Lion King ranks high on all counts. Using the criteria I named in my previous two entries on the countdown: Lion King certainly has a lot of nostalgic value for me, and I do tend to refer to it more than “Beauty and the Beast” in everyday situations. I’d say it and Aladdin are pretty evenly tied there. I also have a close connection to it in writing, since my commission work has led to me writing A LOT of stories set in the universe of this film and its later spin-offs. And while there aren’t AS many parts I’d like to play in the story, in terms of a stage version, the chance to be in it, or even to just SEE it, onstage would be absolutely fantastic beyond belief – something I’d look forward to more than either of the other two films it was competing with. Therefore, it tops them both…but not the other films yet to come. I'm going to be honest, before I close this out: this film actually rose in the ranks by a grand margin. Just as I fully expected to put Peter Pan at the top of the four-part stretch when I went in, I actually expected to put Lion King at either 9th or 10th place. But upon returning to it, and reflecting on everything it means to me and all its done for me, I realized just how special this film truly was. It's not enough to break it into the Top 7...but I think when you see what those seven films are, you'll understand that being 8th place is far from an insult to this film's colossal credit. The countdown continues tomorrow with my 7th Favorite Disney Movie! HINT: An Underrated Mouse-terpiece.

#disney #disney 100 #disney 100 special #list #countdown #top 15 disney animated movies #fifteen days of disney magic #number 9 #lion king

[mask131]

Fantasy read-list: A-1.5

I thought I had concluded the whole “A” part of my big fantasy read-list last spring... 

... BUT FATE WOULD HAVE IT OTHERWISE! In between then and now I found a collection of articles covering the evolution and chronology of fantasy literature, and they added a lot more of titles and informations that I think I will add to my “Fantasy read-list”. 

My original “A-1″ post dealt with works of fiction and poetry that, beyond being masterpieces of the Greco-Roman literature, were the key basis of Greco-Roman mythology as we know it today, and massive inspirations for the later fantasy genre. Here, I will use an article written by Fabien Clavel asking the question “Is there an Antique fantasy?” to add some names to this list.

Not the names of works written in Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome however. No, when it comes to the great classics from “before Christ”, the same names are dropped - Hesiod’s Theogony, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses... The only antique work Fabien Clavel mentions that I did not mention was Lucan’s Pharsalia. Also called “On the Civil War” it is, as the name says, an epic poem retelling the actual civil war that opposed Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. Why would a historical work fit into the world of fantasy you ask? Because this epic retelling is pretty-fantasy likes, with several omens and oracles of the gods (including trees that start bleeding like humans), and even scenes of necromancy where the ghosts of the dead answer the protagonists’ questions. 

Fabien Clavel’s article, however, focuses much more on the modern fantasy inspired by the Greek and Roman myths, that he classifies into four categories.

1) The retellings. Works of fantasy that retell classic legends or well-known myth of Greco-Roman antiquity. You find in this category the works of the fantasy author David Gemmel, be it his Troy trilogy (retelling of the Trojan war) or his Lion of Macedon trilogy (a more fantastical version of Alexander the Great’s life). You have Gene Wolf’s Soldier of the Mist, about the titular soldier, cursed with both retrograde and anterograde amnesia, and forced to find his way home through mythical Ancient Greece. There is C.S. Lewis’ last novel, Till we have faces, his retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth from The Golden Ass. And in French literature, you have Maurice Druon’s Les Mémoires de Zeus, an autobiography of Zeus himself. 

2) The “feminist” works - which technically are a sub-division of the “retellings”, since they are retellings of ancient legends and tales, but with the twist that the focus is placed on female characters, often side-lined or pushed away from Greco-Roman narratives. In this category you will find Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (the Odyssey through Penelope’s eyes), Maron Zimmer Bradley’s The Firebrand (the Trojan War as told by Cassandra), Ursula LeGuin’s Lavinia (an exploration of the titular character, from the Aeneid). To get out of the  English literature, you will also have the work of the Hungarian writer Magda Szabo, The Moment, or the Creusiad, another Aeneid retelling focusing on the character of Creusa. 

3) The “appropriation” works. No, this is not used in a negative way but a neutral one. In this category, Clavel places all the works that are not a precise retelling of a given myth or legend, but rather a fantasy story reusing the elements, tropes, characters and settings of Greek or Roman mythology. You have Thomas Burnett Swann’s Trilogy of the Minotaur, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic series - and in French literature you have Rachel Tanner’s Le Cycle de Mithra, an uchrony imagining what the world would look like if Mithraism had become the official religion of the Roman Empire instead of Christianity. 

4) The “interaction” tales - aka, fantasy works that take elements of Greek mythology and have them be confronted by elements not belonging to Greek mythology. For example, there is the Merlin Codex series by Robert Holdstock, describing how Merlin the Enchanter resurrects Jason and the Argonauts in the Arthurian world. There is also in France Johan Heliot’s Reconquérants, an uchrony fantasy about a group of lost Roman colonizers who built a second Roman Empire in Northern America, and fifteen centuries later try to return to the “old world” they left behind only to find it overrun with mythical creatures. Finally, Clavel adds the Percy Jackson series, the new best-selling series of teenage fantasy fiction/urban fantasy a la “Harry Potter”, describing the adventures of an American teenage boy discovering the Greek gods moved to America, that he is the son of Poseidon, and that monsters of Greek mythology are trying to kill him. 

Clavel concludes his article by saying how hard it is to pinpoint exactly where the influence of Greek mythology stops in the fantasy world, since elements of Greek legends are omnipresent and overused in the fantasy genre. To illustrate this he mentions the centaurs, that appeared in four of the classic works of fantasy for children that are however VERY different from each other: Harry Potter, the Narnia Chronicles, the Artemis Fowl series, and The Neverending Story. 

As a personal note I will add to this list the recent success of Madeline Miller’s Greek mythology retellings, which I have seen regularly pop up in book shops and that some of my friends fell in love with (I never read them though) - be it her Song of Achilles (the life of Achilles told through the eyes of Patroclus) or her Circe (a novel about the life of the famous Greek witch). 

#fantasy read-list #fantasy reading list #fantasy #book list #greek mythology #roman mythology #greek mythology retellings #greek myth retellings #aeneid #trojan war #ancient roman literature

[mrultra100]

Ultra’s Prehistoric Planet Reviews- Episode 3: Freshwater

Welcome back. For our look into Prehistoric Planet the Third, we’re taking a look at such oddities as clawed, duck-bill giants, a mother reptilian stork on steroids, and essentially a frog from Hell. We’ll also be checking in on a few previous species from the last episode to see how they’re dealing with all of this water. Get your mud boots, bug spray, and canoe, because we’re gonna be diving into Freshwater.

While this episode doesn’t have as many new species introduced in it like the past 2 so far, I feel like this was a solid episode. On one half, we’re dealing with segments that introduces the likes of Quetzalcoatlus, Deinocheirus, and Beelzebufo. While on the other half, we meet back up with T. Rex, Velociraptor, and even a few elasmosaurs that are a bit similar to the Tuarangisaurus from the first episode. This was the shortest episode yet (Clocking in at just 39 minutes), but I still have plenty of fun with it.

We begin by returning to Mongolia and meeting up with a group of Velociraptors. While we’re used to seeing them in the desert, these raptors are hunting a massive flock of pterosaurs near a waterfall. It’s a highly dangerous affair, with the raptors using their feathers to soften and slow their descent. The main female of the trio manages to strike a kill upon an unexpecting pterosaur. Amidst all of the chaos, the female’s kill falls down the cliff, causing her to fall down herself. It’s a leap of faith, but ultimately, the female’s feathers aid her in slowing down her fall safely (Not without a few bumps tho), and get her kill back. As she leaves, the female ditches the other two raptors to fend themselves against the flock. So much for hunting together.

After that, we return to the wetlands of North America, and come across a T. Rex. However, this isn’t Hank, as this one is covered in various scars from decades of hunting heavily-armored prey, with a recent, more serious one being formed from hunting a Triceratops that he managed to bring down and is feeding at the time. After eating his fill, the T. Rex then heads down to a nearby river to clean his wounds, when he meets another member of his species. While it looked like it was gonna lead to a brawl, the newcomer is actually a younger female, and she gets attracted by the older male’s scars. This leads into, ya guess it, Tyrannosaurus Sex (Sorry, couldn’t resist making that joke).

We then return to Asia, this time to meet one of the weirdest dinosaurs of all; Deinocheirus. This absolute oddball has become one of the most beloved creatures from this show, and I can see why; This segment is an absolute farce. Just a simple clip of the beast eating tons and tons of pond weeds, having to deal with biting flies by using an dead tree to scratch his body, and to cap it all off...He craps in the water. The real kicker of all of this is how HAM Han Zimmer is going with the music here. It really brings the lovable nonsense home even more.

The episode then cuts to a segment featuring a female Quetzalcoatlus looking after her eggs. The real weird thing is that instead of being set in North America (The usual range for the animal), the giant azhdarchid flies over to the swamps of...Africa? I found it odd at first, but I then realized that there’s plausible evidence that large azhdarchids are capable of trans-continental flight, so I’ll let it slide. The young female’s story is basically her taking care of her eggs, only to leave for a bit to hunt for prey to regain her strength. While that’s going on, another female Quetzalcoatlus shows up to lays her eggs too, only to find our female’s nest. Not wanting her own young to compete with another clutch, the older female wreaks the nest and devours most of the eggs, with our female returning and fighting off the unwanted guest. The female checks what’s left of her nest, only to find 3 eggs left intact, and continues to guard them. A huge reason why I love this scene (Aside from the fact that I just LOVE pterosaurs, azhdarchids especially) is that we’ve never had anything like this in a show or movie featuring dinosaurs before. It’s really nice to see a massive, airbound predator depicted as a loving mother. This is going into my list of personal favorite scenes easily!

We then cut to the sandy floodplains of Madagascar. Instead of dancing lemurs, we meet a female Masikasaurus and her adorable brood, hunting for crabs. Masikasaurus itself has been labeled as one of the more bizarre dinosaurs, due to its crooked, buck-like teeth. It’s nice to see this species show up...

Unfortunately, for the mother (But very fortunately for us), a Beelzebufo bursts out of the sand and devours one of the chicks. It’s a rather short appearance, but that was a rush of dopamine I’m more than happy to have, considering that Beelzebufo is one of my favorite prehistoric animals. It’s a cat-sized devil frog that ate baby dinosaurs, what’s not to love?

And lastly, we cut to the swamps of South America where we see some elasmosaurs hunting shoals of fish right where the swamp and the ocean meet. I’m not gonna lie, this was one of the weaker scenes, especially for one to end the episode on, but it’s alright.

Join us again here tomorrow as we head into the frigid wilderness of the Ice Worlds! You might wanna bring a jacket.

#prehistoric planet #dinosaurs #mr. ultra's reviews #Ultra Ramblings

[lightsonparkave]

HAPPY TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO LIGHTS ON PARK AVE! 🎂🎉 In celebration of LoPA’s birthday (August 22, to be exact), all of the prompts from the previous year are up for grabs.

Round 24 will end on August 31, 11:59 PM ET (what time is that for me?).

As always, you’re free to jump in whenever you’d like during the round, a wide variety of work types is accepted, and there are no minimum work requirements. Unfinished works and works for other fandom events are allowed. You can find more information about Lights on Park Ave and the participation guidelines here.

Here are all 149 prompts. Go crazy and have fun! 🎈

ROUND 13: TIME

A quote about being infinite in the present moment from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Vellichor,” the the strange wistfulness of used bookstores

“How long is forever?” dialogue from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“Time” - Hans Zimmer (Inception OST)

A quote and gifset from Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) about the nonlinear structure of time

Agnès Varda’s portraits when she was 20, 36, and 80 years old

A John Irving quote about what time does to the people who matter to us

Ten traveling back to see Rose on New Year’s Day in 2005 before he dies and reincarnates in Doctor Who

Future inventions in 2015 as seen in Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future Part II (1989)

A quote about what time does for wounds

ROUND 14: LIMINALITY

A photoset of various liminal spaces

Illustration of a black cat in front of a red-lit house with the caption, “They say no one is living here—but the lights come on, once every year”

A photoset of Victorian-era spirit photography, an art form that attempted to capture the ghost of a deceased loved one

Information on the famous Mojave phone booth, a lone telephone booth in the middle of the desert that received calls from all over the world

Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits Third Edition’s definition of “witching hour”

Illustration of a ghost train on an abandoned trestle bridge in the Pacific Northwest

A quote by Isabel Allende about spirits coming out at night in the library

Gifset of the spirit world in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001)

Illustration of a neon roadside sign of a motel that only appears at night by a long-forgotten highway

“Pacific Coast Highway” - Kavinsky

A gifset quote from The Twilight Zone (1959)

Scenery from Twin Peaks season 1 (1990)

A quote about something shifting into a strange, new place inside of a person from Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

ROUND 15: LOSS

A quote about being lost and found by someone special by Sue Zhao

A photo of the Mildred, wrecked off Gurnard’s Head, Cornwall in 1912

A quote about ephemerality and the beauty of it from Troy (2004)

Two paintings of people visiting ruins by Caspar David Friedrich

A quote about desire and loss by Lara Mimosa Montes

A photo of an overgrown, abandoned conservatory

A passage about what disappears and what remains in ruins from Suicide by Édouard Levé

Dialogue about gratitude for people who aren’t meant to stay in your life but shape who you are from BoJack Horseman

A scene from Fleabag where the Priest chooses God over Fleabag and gently tells Fleabag that her love for him will pass before they part ways

A prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, people, and souls

Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, covered in lipstick kisses from admirers

Photos of a cemetery statue in Austria, wrapped in branches and dead leaves, holding a single flower

ROUND 16: DEVOTION/SERVICE

A gifset of Kevin on the phone, telling Chiron he’ll cook food for him from Barry Jenkin’s Moonlight (2016)

Buttercup’s monologue to Westley about how she would do anything for him from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Gifs of Merlin saying that he was born to serve Arthur from BBC’s Merlin

An excerpt about giving all of oneself to someone despite what it costs from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

A gifset of various times Jaime and Brienne demonstrate their loyalty to and love for each other in Game of Thrones

A gifset of all the different ways Cliff is there for Rick in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

A gifset of Nadia deciding to be by Alan’s side no matter what in Russian Doll

“Devotion” - Ocean Vuong

A gifset of Bond comforting a traumatized Vesper in the shower in Casino Royale (2006)

A gifset of Sookhee refusing to leave Hideko, saying her job is to look after her in Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

ROUND 17: DREAMS

A dreamscape gifset and quote about repressed thoughts in dreams and the Internet from Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006)

A gifset of Mitsuha and Taki finally meeting in their own bodies in a dream from Shinkai Makoto’s Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) (2016)

A quote by Tinker Bell telling Peter Pan where he can find her and where she’ll always love him in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991)

The scene where Keating tells his students that poetry, beauty, romance, and love give life meaning in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An animated illustration of a storefront called “Hauntings” with a flickering “99¢ dreams” neon sign

Various dreamscape scenes and a quote about ideas being the most resilient parasite from Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

A quote about how all living beings must dream to survive reality from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A comic about people we love taking turns to visit us in dreams every night

Lovers and Sleeping Couple, two drawings by Egon Schiele

A quote about belief in a better world by Robert Frobisher to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A quote about the feeling of falling in love lingering when you wake up from a dream in Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds (2009)

A photo of subway graffiti by an unknown author insisting that they’ll never give up making the world a better place to live in

ROUND 18: PHYSICAL TOUCH

A scene about how to return a stolen kiss from Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks (2014)

A line about kissing someone the way a flower opens from “I Know Someone” by Mary Oliver

A gifset focusing on showing affection and care through hands from Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

A passage about two people leaving invisible marks on each other through the accumulation of touches over the years from A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Two conversations about never being touched before and only being touched by one person from Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016)

Going from yearning to touch someone but stopping oneself to being allowed to touch them from Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy

Moving art of two bodies made of stars and the cosmos embracing

A quote about maintaining sanity by touching someone but being separated despite proximity from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A line about proving that one still exists and is real through touch from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Different touches between Villanelle and Eve expressing violence, threat, sexual tension, comfort, and companionship in Killing Eve

A juxtaposition of two scenes from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) of Su Li-zhen rejecting and accepting Chow Mo-wan’s hand

A compilation of marble sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Syd (Chris Evans) trailing kisses down London’s back in London (2005)

ROUND 19: IMMORTALITY

James Baldwin talking about how art helps you discover that people before you have experienced the same thing as you and you are not alone

Dr. Brand saying that love transcends time and space in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014)

Nadia and Alan meeting for the first time as they’re about to die and relive the same day again in Russian Doll

The loneliness of losing everyone by having a long life as expressed by Ten in Doctor Who

The doomed eternal time loop romance of Simon and Alisha from Misfits

A quote by Edvard Munch about becoming eternal through the flowers that grow from his body after death

Nagai Kei recalling the traffic accident that killed him and triggered his immortality, making him one of the rare persecuted humans to possess the power, in Ajin

A collection of moments from Jay Russell’s Tuck Everlasting (2002)

A quote by Mary Wollstonecraft hoping for something that lasts inside the heart

Various scenes with Jack Harkness from Doctor Who

Aya telling Asou-kun to live on and live forever as she nears the end of her life in 1 Litre of Tears

An excerpt about the immortalization of the self through love from “Love of the Wolf” in Hélène Cixous’s Stigmata

A collection of scenes from the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”

Naoko telling Toru to always remember her and remember that she existed in Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Dom explaining to Ariadne that he uses the PASIV to dream as it’s the only way that he can be with his wife and children in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

ROUND 20: POETRY

“I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense” - Danez Smith

A line about wanting to forget how much you loved someone and then actually forgetting from Bluets by Maggie Nelson

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” - Joy Harjo

“In Time” - W. S. Merwin

“By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.” - Jack Gilbert

“Magdalene: The Addict” - Marie Howe

“Wild Geese” - Mary Oliver

“Morphology 2″ - CJ Scruton

“20″ from Moscow in the Plague Year by Marina Tsvetaeva

“To Hold” - Li-Young Lee

ROUND 21: LONGING

“I Loved You Before I Was Born” - Li-Young Lee

A poem about longing for someone through worlds by Izumi Shikibu

A gifset of Marianne and Héloïse falling in love from Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

“Make Me Feel” - Janelle Monáe

A quote about living in longing being better than realizing that longing from 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

“I Want You” - Mitski

Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades - Friedrich Heinrich Füger

Long definition of the word “saudade”

Definition of the word “hiraeth”

“Something About Us” - Daft Punk

Two lines about burning quietly from the poem “The Pillowcase” by Annelyse Gelman

A conversation about wanting each other after decades of separation from Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019)

A Hanahaki disease mood board

“Shrike” - Hozier

Two lines about wanting someone to return from Herakles by Euripides

“Love of My Life” - Queen

“Eyes, Nose, Lips” - Taeyang

A screenshot of Kathy and Tommy holding onto each other desperately from Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) and a quote from Kazuo Ishiguro’s eponymous novel

ROUND 22: YOUTH

“Perfect Places” - Lorde

A piece about realizing you’ll never be this young again, but it’s the first time you’re this old by Kalyn Roseanne Livernois

A conversation between Neil and Mr. Keating about Neil feeling trapped and unable to live the life he wants because of his father from Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An excerpt about being too young to know how to love properly from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” - Arctic Monkeys

Elio’s father telling Elio not to try to rid himself of his sorrow and pain—and with that joy—which he feels so strongly because he’s so young from Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

A quote about how everything feels final to young people because they’re experiencing it for the first time from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Lara Jean telling Peter that she had to make it seem like she liked him to deal with her love letter fiasco in Susan Johnson’s To All the Boys I Loved Before (2018)

Rue and Jules dancing together and partying it up in Euphoria

“Le Plongeoir” by Laurent Roch

A quote about being pushed into adulthood and not being ready from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

A photo of a roller rink illuminated by pink and purple lights

Pastel photo series of Coney Island by Mijoo Kim and Minjin Kang

“Hips Don’t Lie” - Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean

“Young Dumb & Broke” - Khalid

Different moments accompanied by the letter to Mr. Vernon at the end of detention from John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club (1985)

Various scenes and a quote about growing up and realizing life isn’t like a fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Stills of the young lesbian couple in love from the music video of “You Know” - Jaurim

Lines by Effy about her emotional and mental struggles from Skins

Nathan chiding the group for not taking advantage of their superpowers as young offenders from Misfits

ROUND 23: HEDONISM

A passage about giving into passion and losing control from The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Thot Shit” - Megan Thee Stallion

An aesthetic photoset of the Greek god Dionysus

A quote about living for ecstasy rather than balance from From a Journal of Love by Anaïs Nin

A photo of an anonymous person in nothing but a silk robe and lingerie

A photo of Donatella Versace lounging in a chair, surrounded by shirtless, muscular men sunbathing around her in Capri, Italy in 1994

An aesthetic photoset based on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The music video for “Heartless” by The Weeknd

A plea for summer to never end from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

“Plastic Love” - Mariya Takeuchi

A gifset from the music video of “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, a continuation of the “Heartless” music video

“XS” - Rina Sawayama

A gifset from the music video of “Body” by Mino

Photos of people dancing at the legendary Studio 54

Photos and a description of the party scene at Studio 54

Chris Evans and Evan Rachel Wood hooking up in a car in the “Gucci Guilty Black” commercial

#stevetony #steve/tony #superhusbands #stony #stevetony prompts #stony prompts #lightsonparkave #round 24

[letterboxd]

Lonesome Cruiser.

Blockbuster composer Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, talks to Gemma Gracewood about composing for titans, his pride in Dutch cinema, friendship with George Miller and longing for Olivia Newton-John. Plus: his Letterboxd Life in Film and why he’s selling his prized collection of recording gear.

It has been a spectacular spring for Tom Holkenborg, the Dutch musician also known as Junkie XL, who has crafted the scores for multiplex fare such as Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate, Sonic the Hedgehog and the upcoming zombie banger Army of the Dead. Only weeks apart, two blockbusters landed on screens with his sonic stamp all over them: Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong and Zack Snyder’s re-realized Justice League.

Thankfully, the Godzilla vs. Kong score was complete by the time the Justice League telephone rang. Holkenborg—who had lost the Justice League gig along with Snyder the first time around—knew the Snyder cut was coming; he had closely watched the growing calls for it online. “Zack and I already started talking in 2019. He’s like, ‘What if we were to finish this? What would it take?’ Those conversations turned to ‘Well, how many recording days potentially do you need and how much of an orchestra do you potentially need?’ Finally, somewhere in April 2020, that’s when that phone call came: ‘Okay, light’s green, start tomorrow, and start running until it’s done because it’s four and a half hours’.”

Ray Fisher as Cyborg in ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’.

Holkenborg approaches the titanic task of blockbuster film scoring with an engineer’s mindset: “Building a fantastic, huge house with 20 bedrooms and the dance hall and the kitchen… You’re not going to start by building the third bathroom for the third guest room, right?” Once he has identified the scenes that are most important to his directors—for Snyder, they included the introduction of Cyborg, three fight set-pieces, and a scene of The Flash running that comes towards the end of the film—the composer identifies instrumental “colors” in order to build a theme around each character. Then he holds some of those colors back, theorizing that “if you want like an, ‘Oh!’ experience by looking at a painting that has a huge amount of bright yellow in it, it’s way more successful to see fifteen paintings in front of it, where yellow is absent.”

The Godzilla vs. Kong score satisfies Holkenborg’s life-long love of both characters. “I don’t have a preference for either one. I love them both for various different reasons.” Their respective histories fascinate him: Godzilla as a way to make sense of Japan’s nuclear fall-out, and Kong as a gigantic spectacle that ended up attracting the sympathies of the audiences he was supposed to scare. Even when the science makes no sense (“what the fuck are plasma boosters, anyway?!”), Holkenborg is still happy to wax lyrical about the emotional depth of Kong’s stories, the elaborate concepts of the Godzilla-verse, and his musical approach to the pair—dark, moving brass for Godzilla, with synthesized elements “because he is a half-synthesized animal”, and a more organic, complex orchestration for Kong, featuring “one of the world’s bigger bass drums”.

Adam Wingard’s ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’.

All of this seat-shaking bombast is composed on an “insanely massive sound system” in Holkenborg’s small home studio (though he reassures pandemic-stricken film lovers that he has recently seen both Godzilla vs. Kong and Justice League on his laptop—and “really enjoyed watching it like that”). The process, he says, was “pretty intense”, but only in terms of the sheer amount of score needed. Composing in quarantine was not much different from his usual workflow. “I’m a pretty lonesome cruiser anyway. Composing, by nature, is like a solo exercise—obviously with assistance.”

Like many creatives (Bong Joon-ho recently told a film studies class that he is up at 5:00am most days to watch a movie), Holkenborg is an early riser, waking by 4:00am. “I’m super sharp between like 4 or 5:00am and 9:00am, so I like to do a lot of creative work in that slot.” He takes care of business until mid-afternoon, when another creative spurt happens. “And then I have another batch of calls usually to make, and then around 8:30pm, I’m going to retire for the rest of the day and just chill out a little bit and watch stuff that I want to see, read things that I want to read. Right now I’m studying Portuguese.” By 10:30pm, he’s asleep. “And then at three o’clock I get up.” (Needless to say, Holkenborg’s children are no longer small.)

The pandemic simplified a lot of things for a lot of people: for Holkenborg, it has been a moment to tidy up the physical side of his work. In November last year, he opened an online shop to divest the bulk of his gear—synths, pedals, guitars, drum machines and much more—that he has been collecting since the late 1970s. When friends told him he’d regret it, he disagreed. “At some point I’m going to die. I can’t take them to the afterlife. I also found out I don’t need them. I love to have them around, but I don’t need them.”

Tom Holkenborg with the bass drum used in the ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ score.

It certainly solves the question of what he’d take if his house was on fire. “The hard drives with sounds and music over the last 40 years, 45 years, that’s hard to replace. So, that would be it. I’m just thinking about things that are absolutely irreplaceable and there are not that many, really.” Alas, it’s bad news for that bass drum. “I can’t take that with me when the house is on fire. Unfortunately, it’s going to make the house burn longer.”

Anyone who has interviewed or spent time with Holkenborg will agree: he may be a lonesome cruiser, but he is also personable, funny, loves to settle in for a chat. As he lights his second or third cigarette in readiness for his Life in Film questionnaire, I’m curious about his relationships with the esteemed filmmakers he has worked with—who include his mentor, Hans Zimmer, directors Sir Peter Jackson, Tim Miller, Robert Rodriguez and, especially, Fury Road’s George Miller.

The story of how Holkenborg scored Mad Max: Fury Road bears retelling: that George Miller did not want a soundtrack (“he was convinced that the orchestration of sounds of the cars would be enough to carry the whole movie”), that Holkenborg was only brought in to create a little something for the Coma-Doof Warrior’s flame-throwing guitar, that they hit it off, the job grew, and grew, into a score that covers almost the entire film.

The Coma-Doof Warrior in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015).

What is his best memory of Fury Road? “Well, obviously, when I saw the movie for the first time and I was like ‘what the hell am I looking at?’,” he laughs. “What I mostly look back on is the friendship that I developed with George and the film school one-on-one that I got admitted to, while being paid at the same time, to study with somebody like him. We would talk all night about all kinds of things and nothing, because that really defines our relationship so much—a joint interest in so many different things.”

Happily, Holkenborg and Miller are working together again, on Three Thousand Years of Longing. “It’s really great to be in that process with him again. It’s just like about pricking each other with a little needle. It’s like, ‘Oh, why are you saying that?’ We do that with each other to keep each other sharp. ‘Oh, but if you’re doing this, I’m going to be doing that.’ And then, ‘Oh, if you’re doing that, I’m going to be doing this.’ So it’s really interesting.”

What is your favorite Godzilla film?

Tom Holkenborg: 1989’s Godzilla vs. Biollante. It’s a very obscure one where he’s basically fighting a giant rose. Let’s not look for the logic there.

Why has that particular Godzilla captured your heart? It’s so corny. Yeah. Mothra vs. Godzilla is also great. Mothra looks like a very bad Arabian carpet that was imported through customs and it got delivered by FedEx completely ruined and then laid outside for like four weeks in the rain.

‘Godzilla vs. Biollante’ (ゴジラvsビオランテ, 1989).

What is the first film you remember seeing in a cinema? Bambi. I was six years old, yeah.

And is there a film you have fond memories of watching with your family—a movie that became a family favorite? Not, like, a family favorite because our opinions were too diverse for that, but the next movie that became very important to me when I was a little older was Saturday Night Fever. I thought the soundtrack was, like, groundbreaking, mind-blowingly insane. It’s not necessarily those three massive beats of the Bee Gees on there, but all these other really alternative, left-field tracks by bands like Kool & the Gang. And the way that that darker disco music played against that really dark movie about what it’s like to live in New York and become a competitive dancer, it’s incredible. And still, today, it’s one of the movies where film music and the film itself had so much impact on me, even though it’s not a traditional film score in that sense. It’s incredible.

What is the film that made you want to work in movies, given that you also have a whole musical career separate from movies? (Enjoy Junkie XL’s early 2000s remix of Elvis Presley’s ‘A Little Less Conversation’.) For me, the move from a traditional artist into film scoring was a very slow gradual process. There’s not one movie that pushed me over the cliff. It’s just, like, all the great movies that were made. And I still have a list of obscure movies, classic movies that I need to see.

Yesterday I saw the weirdest of all, but I do want to share this: the original, uncut R-rated version of Caligula, [from] 1979. He [director Tinto Brass] was notoriously brutal and he organized orgies and had terrible torturing techniques. But it’s really weird, there’s Shakespearean actors in there, and then it goes to full-on porn sections. It’s really weird. The music is incredible. You can find it online. You will not find it anywhere [else]. I can just imagine what this must have felt like in 1979 when the film came out. Suspiria, that’s another one. It’s just like, how weird was that thing?

What is your favorite blockbuster that you did not compose? Ben-Hur. I’ve seen that one at least 20 times.

What’s your all-time comfort re-watch? The movie I’ve seen the most is Blade Runner. It’s just, like, it’s a nice world you’re stepping into, that fantasy. It’s not necessarily because I have memories [of] that movie that brings me back to a certain time period, it’s not that. It’s just that I just love to dwell in it. It feels a little bit like coming home. You can use it as comfort food, you can use it as, “I’m not feeling anything today”, or the opposite. You feel very great and you feel very inspired and it’s like, “Oh, let’s go home and watch that movie again.”

Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ (1998).

Hans Zimmer has been an important mentor to you. Do you have a favorite of his scores? Yes, The Thin Red Line. It’s also the filmmaking of Terrence Malick—he forces a composer to think a certain way. He would always say, “It’s too much, make it less, make it smaller, make it this, make it that.” So, A, it’s a very good movie and B, he got Hans into the right place and Hans just over-delivered by doing exactly the right things at the right time and then shining just because of that.

Who is a composer that you have your eye on and what is one of their films that we should watch next? It’s so sad to say, but I mean, let’s call it like a retrospective discovery if you will. I’m so sad that we lost Jóhann Jóhannsson. He was a composer I felt really close to. We started roughly in the same time period making our way in today’s world. Also, Jóhann came from an artist background, even though it was a modern classical background. He made really great records, great experimentation with electronic elements, with classical instruments, and the mix between the two of them—very original way of looking at music. With Denis Villeneuve as his partner in crime the movies that they did were just mind-boggling good, whether it was Sicario or Arrival or Prisoners, and his voice will truly be missed among film composers. So people that are not super familiar with his work, I would definitely check it out.

‘Turks Fruit’ (Turkish Delight, 1973).

What is a must-see Dutch film that we should add to our watchlists? Holland has small cinema, but it has a really rich cinema and a very serious cinema culture. Usually because there’s not enough work in film, people are serious stage performers but then they also act in movies so they understand both really well. And we’ve delivered. There’s a string of actors that make their way to Hollywood or star in well-known series, whether it’s like Game of Thrones, or what we just talked about, Blade Runner. Many directors like Paul Verhoeven, Jan de Bont, the cameraman.

And so a movie that I’d like to pick is an old movie, called Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) from the 1970s. Rutger Hauer is a younger guy, like, this completely irresponsible guy that starts this relationship with a really beautiful young girl, and they do all these crazy things, they do a lot of drugs and they have a lot of sex. He’s just like a bad influence on her.

Then he finds out she [has] cancer and it’s terminal. And to see him deal with that, and to see him want a change, but also in that change he does a lot of bad stuff at the same time… It was a sensational movie when it came out. And it actually was directed by Paul Verhoeven, one of his earlier films. When you see it, you’re just like, ‘Why am I watching this?’ for the first 45 minutes and then it starts and it’s like, ‘whoa’. So it’s really good, even in retrospect.

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in ‘Grease’ (1978).

What is the sexiest film you’ve ever seen? When I was super young, it was definitely Grease, with Olivia Newton-John, when she was in her catsuit at the very end of it. I had her picture on my bedroom, above my bed sideways because I was only like ten years old or something. I was so in love with Olivia Newton-John. It wasn’t the film per se, it was her. Yeah, I find, personally, movies from the ’70s to be more sexy, but it has something to do with the super-loose way that people were dressed and people were behaving.

And the other one was later in life: Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone. I’m not talking about like the famous shot, right, where she crosses her legs. I’m not talking about that, but the way that she acts throughout the whole movie. It’s insane. It’s really great.

Are there any films that have scared you? Like, truly terrified you? Yeah, I’m not a big fan because I get sucked up too much in it. The found [footage] horror movies like Paranormal Activity and things like the Japanese version of The Grudge, I cannot watch that stuff. That gets me too much. Because when I watch a film, I cannot watch it with one eye half open, the other one closed, like, ‘Okay, kind of cool, interesting’. I just get sucked into it.

Is there a film that has made you cry like no other? Oh yeah. Multiple. Once Upon a Time in America. The Godfather. Hable con Ella (Talk to Her). Betty Blue.

Thomas Holkenborg, AKA Junkie XL.

These are the films that make you weep? Not like on a regular basis, but I remember those were the ones that I really got hit. I’m talking particularly about the third Godfather. That whole end scene when they get out of the church and then… It’s really well-acted. So many Godfather fans that were dismissive of the film when it came out, in retrospect, ten, fifteen, 20 years later, are like, ‘it’s a really good film’. And I actually think so.

Final question. Is there a film from the past year that you would recommend, that you’ve loved? [Long pause.] The thing is that I watch pretty much a movie a day. So, that’s like three to four hundred movies. It [has] happened so often that I watch a film and then I’m just like an hour and 45 minutes in, it’s like, ‘wait, fuck, I’ve seen this thing before’.

So, we have an app for that… [Laughs.]

Related content

Junkie XL’s Letterboxd Life in Film list

Freddie Baker’s review of Justice League

Dutch Cinema: Danielle’s extensive list of more than 2,000 films

Letterboxd Showdown: The Perfect Score (best film scores)

The official Junkie XL Reverb Shop

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

#godzilla vs kong #justice league #zack snyder #zack snyder's justice league #batman #superman #aquaman #cyborg #the flash #godzilla #gojira #king kong #kong #blockbuster #composer #film composer #tom holkenborg #thomas holkenborg #junkie xl #synth #synth music #synthesizer #bass drum #mad max fury road #george miller #hans zimmer #letterboxd

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This is the second film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Wonder Woman 1984 at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

It took decades for a female superhero movie to make a lasting cultural impact. The honor fell to Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman (2017) – no matter what you think of it, the film dispelled any perceptions that a female-driven superhero movie could never be a cinematic phenomenon. Jenkins returns, as does Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman and Chris Pine, in Wonder Woman 1984. This sequel is at its best when not proclaiming to the audience its self-importance – an aspect commonly found in and that plagues the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – and, unfortunately, its poor screenplay oscillates between a flighty romp and superheroic maximalism. For Patty Jenkins, whose filmography is regrettably small mostly due to the lack of opportunities afforded to women directors, she could not have envisioned Wonder Woman’s success, nor the impossible expectations put upon her to surpass the first film. As it is, WW84 is an entertaining, if troubled sophomore effort.

Seven decades after we saw her in the first film and after a prologue during her childhood on Themyscira, Diana Prince (Gadot; Lilly Aspell as young Diana) is working as a restorationist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. In her off hours, she performs the occasional heroic act as Wonder Woman. One of the newest hires is gemologist Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig). Diana and Barbara, from an FBI request, identify a stolen artifact as the Dreamstone – a gem that, according to legend, has the power to grant a person one wish. On accident, Diana wishes for her long-dead lover Steve Trevor (Pine) to come back to life; envious of Diana’s looks and wallowing in self-pity, Barbara off-handedly wishes to be like Diana. Both wishes come true, but in ways profaning the literal meanings of the respective wishes. For Barbara, this means a transformation into one of Wonder Woman’s archnemeses, Cheetah. Elsewhere in D.C., struggling television infomercial pitchman Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) wishes to procure the stone to revive his flagging business.

Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen are barely in the film as Antiope and Hippolyta, respectively. Lynda Carter, who played Diana on the ABC television series Wonder Woman from 1976-1979, has a self-aware moment which will delight fans.

1980s American culture is the nostalgic fixation at this moment in popular culture (with the march of time, each decade seems to be beholden to its own moment of nostalgic media cycles). Think of television shows like Stranger Things; movies like Adventureland (2009) and It (2017). The generation that came of age during Reagan’s America grew up in a time where the veneer of the Soviet-backed Eastern bloc was crumbling from within, and where Reaganomics spurred prevalent materialism and indulgence. Unadulterated greed and desire are in every corner of WW84 – from the terrible attempts at flirting with Diana and Barbara that easily qualifies as harassment, the difficulty in renouncing wishes on the Dreamstone, Max Lord’s inability to balance his business commitments in order to make time for his son, Alistair (Lucian Perez). WW84 captures this consumerist, entitled attitude throughout, and remarks on how corrosive this mindset is. Admittedly, it is simple messaging from the screenwriting team – Jenkins; Geoff Johns (a DC Comics writer and producer for comics, television, and film since 2000); and Dave Callaham (2014’s Godzilla, 2019’s Zombieland: Double Tap) – but they never contradict that central message.

WW84 progresses to its hackneyed, natural conclusion. But along the way, the screenplay is bogged down in the havoc that ensues from fulfilled wishes via the Dreamstone. The film’s impressive, animated start cannot build on its own momentum when – after the fulfillment of Barbara’s wish – it begins to clearly delineate its time between Diana/Steve, Barbara, and Max Lord. In their respective thirds of WW84, each character learns more about their granted wishes and the Dreamstone’s nature. The set-up for each third follows the same process: a monologue dripping with disappointment with their life directions, confusion in discovering their wish becoming true, and the exultation of their wild imagination defying all sense of reality. WW84 cannot help itself slathering on the foreshadowing and the repetitive narrative structure. The screenplay’s sins are compounded by the screenwriters’ inability to properly and consistently define the limitations of the Dreamstone’s powers – leading to expositional dumps occurring in the movie well past their welcome. As morbidly entertaining as watching humanity run amok with half-baked and ill-considered wishes is (credit to whoever choreographed the third act’s mass chaos), WW84’s unpolished storytelling leaves behind a somewhat befuddling mess.

The movie’s relative lightness in its opening two acts, though entertaining, throws away Diana’s characterization of a solitary, somewhat maternal protective figure in favor of a decades-long yearning for Steve. Are we really to believe that she has spent every waking moment since World War I pining – no pun intended – for someone she knew for probably less than a month? Whatever chemistry Gadot (whose performance as Diana remains at a laudable standard) and Pine had in the first film has evaporated into a labored dynamic in WW84, and she is too quickly is prepared to leave behind her life as museum preservationist by day/superhero-if-not-by-night-then-during-non-working-hours for him. Her behavior concerning Steve – and this is not even mentioning the ethically murky fact that Steve’s soul inhabits the body of a male stranger for the entirety of his resurrection – does not square with any notion of human growth, especially as most of the twentieth century has passed Diana by.

Putting aside the amusing transformation of Barbara from a bookish, clumsy gemologist to an unspectacled femme fatale, the emergence of not one, but two, villains weakens the characterizations, motivations, and portrayals of both. Thus, WW84 spends less time sympathizing with Barbara’s status as a social outcast, so too the relationship between Max Lord and his forgiving – at film’s end, at least – son (the only aspect of Lord’s life that exists outside work). The film’s divided attention between Barbara and Max Lord assures that their concluding actions become too cartoonish, depthless. It’s not that I am demanding that WW84 (or any superhero movie) should provide brooding, soliloquizing philosopher-poets for a villain. Far from it, especially when noting what the likes of Christopher Nolan and, more recently (and exasperatingly), Zack Snyder have offered in their interpretations of D.C. Comics characters’ mythos. Instead, Barbara and Max Lord become caricatures, rather than fully realized, flawed individuals who retain strands of their goodness even as their actions plunge them into villainy.

Though lacking a moment matching the brilliance of Wonder Woman’s entrance into No Man’s Land from the first film, WW84 contains its share of pulsating combat scenes. Cheetah’s debut during a confrontation at the White House is crisply edited by Richard Pearson (2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, 2006’s United 93) and shot by Matthew Jensen (Wonder Woman). The fight, unlike so many littering action movies nowadays, makes geometric sense of who is doing what and where. This collaboration of cinematographer and editor reaches its peak with a vehicular fight in Egypt that resembles something out of an Indiana Jones movie (minus the comedy that usually occurs during an Indiana Jones vehicular fight). It is a wonderfully choreographed scene, but one mired in its poor depiction of the Egyptians involved. WW84 concludes with a dud of a fight. This is not because of terrible CGI, or the revelation that their mothers share the same name. Instead, it is the lack of lighting that destroys this moment. The final fight between Wonder Woman and Cheetah is so poorly lit that the combat becomes an amalgam of flailing limbs and incomprehensible movement. Cheetah, who by this point appears as if she wandered off the set of Tom Hooper’s Cats (2019), appears to be nothing more than a ball of spotted fur. It is a disappointing end to an erratic sequel.

Longtime readers know that I have pilloried composer Hans Zimmer again and again for dispensing with melodies and for relying too heavily on ostinatos, electronics, and musical texture on his recent film scores. I’m a simple person with certain biases: as a classically-trained amateur pianist-violinist, I prefer scores that have musical interest within and outside the context of a film (would I enjoy playing this score in an orchestra and listening to it in a concert setting?). The worst of his imitators and colleagues at Remote Control Productions are on a train to my musical shit list.  His score to Wonder Woman 1984 is a rare bright spot (aside from maybe his work in the Kung Fu Panda series) in a decade marked by excess. The film opens with “Themyscira” – a synth-y prelude quoting Wonder Woman’s motif, but one that blossoms into orchestral triumphalism. This cue crescendos from 0:27 to 1:11 on the back of string ostinatos, regal brass, and chorus chanting pianissimo. The orchestra and chorus explode to life at 1:11 in a majestic, ascending melody celebrating the joys of Amazonian life on Themyscira. A hummable, singable melody in a 2020s Hans Zimmer score? Yes! Alongside Wonder Woman’s now-iconic electric cello motif, Zimmer has composed a secondary motif for her beginning at 1:53 in “Themyscira” (and which eclipses the electric cello motif in terms of appearances in the score). Another throwback occurs during the cue “1984”, a jubilant cycling of rhythmic melodies that could easily been in a 1980s film scored by Alan Silvestri, perhaps even younger Zimmer himself. Even when Zimmer is introducing villainous motifs or the motif for the Dreamstone, his contemporary obsession for droning synth is tempered by ostinatos in the strings and winds, rather than ear-splitting percussion.

Zimmer’s love theme for Diana and Steve is “Wish We Had More Time” – and I cannot recall the last time the composer brought forth such affecting romantic music. A languid melody led by strings speaks to Diana’s longing – however one may disapprove of it – in ways reminiscent, but still inferior to, of Italian movie scores during the 1980s and ‘90s (think: Luis Bacalov, Ennio Morricone, Nicola Piovani). One quibble: beginning at 1:13 until 2:12 in “Wish We Had More Time”, the second violin tremolos are much too loud, and are just as audible as the melodies by lower strings, first violins, and winds. Hans Zimmer’s score to WW84 is the most thematically fascinating he has composed over the last decade, and it – not Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, not Inception (2010), and sure as hell not the sonic assault that is Dunkirk (2017) – represents the best of what he can be as a film score composer.

The temptation to elevate the dramatic stakes for sequels is present among all the major Hollywood studios. WW84 is not immune to this temptation, but it, at times, resists it. Its ungainly conclusion and dreadful narrative structure reflect those expectations, but one could not classify it as grimdark, such as almost everything Zack Snyder has directed. This is not a Wonder Woman limping her way through apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic times.  Patty Jenkins’ sequel, however flawed, unironically celebrates its own corniness and absurdity – one cannot say this about the MCU (which does so only via metatextual humor). Many of us can no longer experience for the first time Wonder Woman emerging from the Allied trenches of WWI, but Wonder Woman 1984 provides a vision of superhero movies particular to creator William Moulton Marston, director Patty Jenkins, and Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Diana Prince. It even allows for faint echoes of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series that would not have been appropriate in the first film. Flawed though this film is, its approach, after a decade or so of building cinematic universes of dramatic escalations, signifies a refreshing change of pace.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

Also in this series: Wonder Woman (2017)

#Wonder Woman 1984 #WW84 #Wonder Woman #Patty Jenkins #Gal Gadot #Chris Pine #Kristen Wiig #Pedro Pascal #Robin Wright #Connie Nielsen #Lynda Carter #Geoff Johns #Dave Callaham #Matthew Jensen #Hans Zimmer #My Movie Odyssey

[midnightsnapdragon]

the bone season [unofficial ost]

Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits.

an instrumental playlist for the bone season series, where each song corresponds to a scene or quotation from the books. cover credit goes to the lovely @mareshmallow​, who kindly allowed me to borrow from the tbs edit she made last summer (x) 

please click below for the full playlist with all the proper annotations!

link to spotify // link to 8tracks // link to youtube

THE BONE SEASON [13]

A Narnia Lullaby (Harry Gregson-Williams) Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits. [Prelude]

No Cheating Death (Nathan Barr) No safer place. More like no safe place. Not for us. [London 2059]

The General (Martin Phipps) “XX-59-40.” His voice was deep and soft. “I lay claim to you.” [The keeper]

Long, Long Time Ago (Javier Navarrete) Every day, I would walk to that field and read for hours, watching the poppies nod their heads around me. [Salvia memories]

Slow Wake (Aaron Martin) Soothsayers always said that about Nick when they saw him, that he was like snow. [Nick's theme]

Pleasured Distractions (Trevor Morris) I found myself in a world of dreams. [Possessing the butterfly]

The Haunting Of Hill House Main Titles (The Newton Brothers) There were lines of plaster faces above the windows, at least fifty of them on each of the longest walls. [Death masks]

The Poem (Martin Phipps) “And now we are sworn to protect each other always.” [The golden cord]

To Speak of Solitude (Brambles) “Perhaps I feel safest when I think of nothing.” [The empty dreamscape]

Slughorn's Confession (Nicholas Hooper) Nick was looking at the sky. "Hey, look,” he said. “What?” “Arcturus. I've never seen it that bright.” [The final memory]

Desolation (Adam Hurst) “This place has afflicted me with a terrible wanderlust.” [Warden's theme]

Eros (Ludovico Einaudi) Don't stop, don’t stop [The prohibition]

London Calling (Michael Giacchino) The train [Interlude]

THE MIME ORDER [12]

Danse Macabre (Camille Saint-Saëns) We unhorse the Reaper. [Song of the underworld]

Oogie Boogie's Song (Vitamin String Quartet) “I’m a mime-lord, O my lovely, not a mime-peasant” [Jaxon's theme]

This Is Halloween (Instrumental) (Danny Elfman) “Roll up, roll up for the sale of the month! Don't forget death - it won't forget you!” [Covent Garden marketplace]

Pathetic Fallacy (Trevor Morris) Puppets on a hangman's string. [The Archon]

The King is Dead (Martin Phipps) On the night of November the first, 2059, the Spiritus Club shall exhibit A SCRIMMAGE for dominance of the central cohort. [A day of change] 

Briony (Dario Marianelli) Words give wings [The penny dreadful]

Liquid Spear Waltz (Michael Andrews) “Have you ever seen this famous Rag and Bone Man?” [Tunnels beneath Camden]

Did You Kill My Wife? (Hans Zimmer) He bowed to me, keeping his eyes on my face. “Let us see if dreamwalkers can dance.” [Overture]

Gilbert's Door (Richard Wells) “I'll still go out.” [Moonlit tryst]

I Hate My Life (Michael Giacchino) “Of course, this is a duel,” Jaxon said, “much like the duels of the monarch days, when honour was settled with blood and steel.” Swing, spin. "Whose honour are we settling today, I wonder?” [Showdown]

Duck Shoot (Harry Gregson-Williams) Voyants, do you hear me? Do you hear me? [The silenced]

See What I've Become (Zack Hemsey) “The theatre of war opens tonight.” [End of act II]

THE SONG RISING [8]

The Bells (Ramin Djawadi) Abyssal black eyes [Hildred Vance]

Lord M (Martin Phipps) “You are what change will cost me.” [Goodbye]

Beginning of the End (Movement III) (The Newton Brothers) Look, seillean. Look. He had sounded lost in a way I hadn't understood. The sky is falling down on us. [Father]

Coward (Hans Zimmer) "They’re here. They’re already here.” [The Vance trap]

Statues (Alexandre Desplat) I would not show fear. [Dark wings]

Arcanine (Ursine Vulpine) I remember watching the glass pyramid shatter. It must have exploded in a split second, but in my mind, it lasted for eternity. [Banishing the poltergeist]

Double Bind (Rudi Arapahoe) All that was left of Senshield was a cavernous hole in the æther. [Kin]

Opening (Craig Armstrong) “One day they'll call this country by its name again.” [Paige's theme]

#i read this series casually three years ago #CASUALLY #eh it's not bad she says #EH MAYBE NOT MY TYPE SHE SAYS #AND NOW LOOK AT ME #FULLY INVESTED #EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED #the latter half of tsr deadass had me in cardiac arrest #anyway come talk to me about my song choices i will gladly shriek about these books with anyone at all #samantha shannon #the bone season #the mime order #the song rising #the bone season playlist

[watching-movies-alone]

Dunkirk (2017)

I would like to start this off with the disclaimer that I am very, very, gay for Christopher Nolan.

Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is a cinematic masterpiece, and here's why.

A common complaint I hear when I proudly proclaim that Dunkirk is my favourite movie is “but there’s no dialogue!” In  a world where people are constantly and consistently in contact with one another, this bleeding into movies where the art of nonverbal communication perhaps isn’t as appreciated as it could be, leaves Dunkirk’s notable deviation from this as a key turn-off for cinemagoers. Instead focusing more on the intense, subdued, emotions of the actors (a very difficult feat to produce) and the riveting visuals and soundtrack, Christopher Nolan brings a new type of storytelling to the big screen.

While many films can fall into either the “intellectually engaging” or the “passively engaging” categories, both finding their way to the theatre with the same amount of dialogue, most cinemagoers have a sense of what they would be walking into. With Dunkirk, this sense of familiarity in the category of “intellectually engaging” films, such as thrillers, is thrown out the proverbial window. With the lack of dialogue, audience members have to pay more close attention to what is going on, so the already demanding film becomes riveting. Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack, an excellent combination of electronic sounds and orchestra, adds to the depth of the film, with beautiful touches such as the insistant ticking of a clock, which does not stop until Tommy, a main character, is safe. In addition, the thriller also bears Nolan’s signature storytelling from a not-exactly-linear timeline, something that sets him apart from other directors in his genre. This movie is many firsts for Nolan, including being his first war film, first film with multiple protagonists carrying the story, and his first movie shot entirely on location.

Dunkirk (2017) follows a three-fold story of the historic events that occurred in 1942 at a beach in Dunkerque, France. At this point in the Second World War, British and French troops have been isolated and surrounded by the Germans, with nearing 400,000 men lined up, waiting, hoping, for a way home twentysomething miles away across the Channel. Nolan expertly intertwines the journeys of three groups of people (his first film to follow a collection of people rather than a single protagonist), under the titles “1. The Mole / One Week”, “2. The Sea / One Day”, and “3. The Air / One Hour”. ‘The Mole’ follows those on the ground during the event, mostly young soldiers drafted for the war effort, our protagonists here being Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), Gibson ( Aneurin Barnard), and Alex (Harry Styles), who find themselves constantly back on the beach from multiple thwarted attempts at fleeing to safety. ‘The Sea’ follows the courageous Mr. Daweson (Mark Rylance), his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney), and their young friend George (Barry Keoghan) as they make their way across the channel to rescue the men stranded at Dunkirk aboard the leisure boat the Moonstone. ‘The Air’, which witnesses the three timelines converging in that hour, follows Spitfire pilots Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) as they provide aerial cover for the civilian boats and the soldiers on the beach by engaging in dogfights with the German Luftwaffe, buying time for those below.

"There are four hundred thousand men on this beach."

Living up to his reputation for nonlinear storytelling, Nolan reasserts his claim to the throne in his synthesising of the unique perspectives. While visually stunning at a first look, it is in the second watch of Dunkirk that the mastery of Nolan’s detailing is noticed: in the background of scenes on the boat with George and Mr. Daweson, the Spitfires of Collins and Farrier can be seen in a dogfight with the Germans. As men are boarding the civilian boats on the beach, Farrier, on an empty tank, glides over thousands, as he fights off remaining German aircraft. Rather than ham-handedly spoon feeding the audience the going-ons of the action, and delivering the plot in a linear fashion, with ‘The Mole’ comprising the majority of the first two-thirds of the film, introducing ‘The Sea’ in the final third and ‘The Air’ in the last few minutes, the audience would missed a lot of the buildup in apprehension that the nonlinear deliverance allows for, dismantling the sense of carefully-constructed ambiguity of the dangers present in favour of producing a traditional, and tired, progression arc with a slower beginning leading to a final battle before a resolution. With the nonlinear deliverance, this arc more closely resembles an intense squiggle, like angered spaghetti, as the action ebbs and swells much like the waves on the beach itself.

The choice to have not the dialogue drive the film, but the visuals and soundtrack, was a bold one. Most movies that enter the Hollywood radar are rich in their dialogue, ranging from playful banter to clever one-liners, to incredibly moving lines with excellent deliverance. Nolan’s Dunkirk deviates here once again, as it’s minimal use of dialogue adds to the sense of urgency, what being said serving to provide clues to the thoughts of the characters that reinforce the atmosphere around them. A line that expertly conveys the sense of dread and hopelessness is an exchange between Commander Bolton, the man overseeing the maintenance of the mole, and Colonel Winnant, the highest-ranking Army official on the beach, the Commander stating, voice of strained exasperation, “Christ, you can almost see it from here,”, and when the Colonel questions to what he is referring to, there is a far-off look in the Colonel’s eyes that grows impossibly more stressed when he gives the one-word response “home.” This is later accentuated when the men discuss how Churchill wants thirty thousand men home, with hope of forty five thousand being returned from the beach, and the dismayed (and overheard) admittance that there are four hundred thousand men on the beach. This brief exchange packs a double emotional punch for the audience, as it shows how even the officials are losing optimism for an even partial recovery, and the cut to Tommy and Gibson, who have snuck underneath the mole, hearing this and knowing they should redouble their efforts to get off that beach.

The deviation from what is considered the ‘norm’ for movies, in the sparse use of dialogue, is an empowering feature of the movie. When characters voice their thoughts, it is more of a reflection of their environment (understandably), but it does not clutter the scene with action-based dialogue (such as repeated curse words or shouts serving as rallying cries), instead allowing the audience to more fully experience what the characters are -- the audience will fill in the space typically reserved for that dialogue with their own thoughts, as if they were the character. It allows for a further degree of not only sympathy, but empathy for these war-beaten soldiers, these naïve schoolboys striving to make their peers proud, these pilots stranded on a reserve of fuel they don’t know the extent of. One of the instances of this that clues in the audience to the extent of the danger, without going into an in-depth backstory of how the characters got to the beach, why the men are stranded, et cetera, is present in the first act of the film, with the sentiment being echoed at the final act, tying the scenes together in a way that causes the audience to empathise more fully with those in the Royal Air Force. After narrowly escaping a demise at the hands of the Luftwaffe’s ME-109 aircraft, a dismayed man shouts up at the sky, “Where’s the bloody air force?”, a key aspect in the audience’s perception of the scene and the stakes at hand. As the audience will learn later, the RAF had been recalled to England, as a preparation for an all-out defense for the English there against the Germans. What this line does in the moment, is intensify the action which had just occurred prior, where we can see men being killed in the explosions raining down on the beach, Tommy nearly being one of them. It also explains the mechanical response afterwards, of the men who can still stand doing so, those who couldn’t, didn’t, and the dead lay where they were. Very little being spoken especially after such an event magnifies the weariness of the soldiers on the beach, everyone knowing what to do, more ‘rolling with the punches’ than fighting back. One man had bravely raised a rifle to fire at the incoming bomber with no success, others had not even attempted, perhaps knowing that their efforts would be futile. The resonance of this sentiment is found at the end of the movie, when the passengers of the Moonstone are unloading from the boat, and one man from another boat catches sight of  the pilot Collins, who had been rescued by the Dawesons prior, in his RAF uniform, shouting after him “Where the hell were you?!”, Collins being very affronted by this, as he was shot down, is reassured by Mr. Daweson. Mr. Daweson looks over to him, reassuring Collins, motions towards the men filing off of the Moonstone, “They know where you were.” Once again, this is an example of the brief exchanges in the movie that allow for more to be understood by the audience than would be the case had this not been included. The audience had seen the effort Collins put in before he was grounded, so their emotions are very caught up in the exchange, wanting Collins to say something to defend himself, and when Mr. Daweson instead consoles him, the viewer has a sense of relief.

To conclude with that thought, it is the sparse dialogue that allows for the audience to more naturally connect with the characters and empathise with them, feeling more as if they are part of the experience, instead of simply being an outsider looking in at the goings-ons of Dunkirk.

Now, what had earned Dunkirk four awards from various programs was the sound mixing and editing. A vital aspect of the film itself is the soundtrack, which ebbs and flows with the course of events in the movie. The soundtrack was composed by Hans Zimmer, who has aided in the composing of the soundtracks for over one hundred films, with a diverse portfolio, ranging from The Lion King (1994), Sherlock Holmes (2009), Castaway (1986), and 12 Years A Slave (2013). Zimmer’s masterpiece of a soundtrack serves to drive the film and the audience’s reaction to it, with seemingly ‘calm’ scenes that would otherwise cause for no sense of alarm bringing an intense feeling of dread to the viewer, the music swelling with anticipation. Once again examining the ticking of the clock, the clock does not stop ticking until Tommy himself is off of the beach and home in England. The ticking adds to the sense of danger present throughout the entirety of the story, deepening the visuals of being on a wide expanse of beach, covered by hundreds of thousands of men, waiting, where there is no shelter from the trickle of Stukas flying overhead, the men like “fish in a barrel”. In building anticipation, a scene where Farrier is in his Spitfire, and there hasn’t been sight of a Stuka in a suspicious amount of time, the prolonged shot of Farrier arm-in-arm with the swelling of the music. Faster-paced numbers such as ‘Supermarine’ and ‘Oil Slick’ increase the sense of dread, almost forcing the audience to pay closer attention to the screen, waiting anxiously for what happens next, even if ‘it’ doesn’t end up happening.

"We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the Hills. We shall never surrender."

The combination of Nolan’s signature non-linear storyline, Zimmer’s breathtaking and adrenaline-heightening soundtrack, the commanding visuals and superb cinematography brings forth a masterful work. Dunkirk is a unique film, there isn’t a movie, war, thriller, or not, that shares these traits on a comparable level. Watching the film again and again, I still feel like I am watching it for the very first time. Not in the sense that it becomes ‘overly predictable’ or ‘bland’, but in that the aspects that make the movie what it is, it is completely riveting, every time seeing it brings forth a new appreciation of  the painstaking attention to detail and the dedication of all those involved with the film. It is a true masterpiece, a commanding cinematic experience that film analysts, cinemagoers, adrenaline junkies, and any who choose to see it, will appreciate for its individuality.  

Cinematography: 95

Screenwriting: 100

Delivery: 95

Average:

97%, A+

#dunkirk #christopher nolan #movies #movie reviews #movie critique #cinematography #screenwriting #movie ratings #cinema #essay

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

“The Lion King” (2019) - Thoughts/Review

So my sister, Ciara, and I went and saw the remake of The Lion King at the cinema where I work since I get free tickets and I didn’t really want to have to pay £20 just to watch a film I could easily watch at home. To add, my sister has been super sick recently and I felt it might be nice to treat her - even though she has been saying for weeks “they’ve ruined it, I can tell”. The original Lion King is Ciara’s favourite movie and we actually rewatched the original on Friday because it’s one we both love.  Ciara and I went in with absolutely zero expectations, thinking “it’ll be absolutely shit” based on what we’ve seen trailer/advert/clip wise.

I’m going to put my thoughts/feelings under a “read more”, just to be safe. Also, reminder that it’s just my opinion and that I can’t tell other people how to feel about the film.

So...it wasn’t as terrible as we expected it to be but it wasn’t a masterpiece like the original either.

They could have just reused the original “Circle of Life” as it was, really, but whatever.

Having said that, they could have frankly just lifted the entire audio of the animated film and animated the film to it instead of bringing in other cast members.

One of the first things my sister said was “where the fuck is Rafiki’s staff?”, and she kept saying it throughout the film, like it REALLY annoyed her that he didn’t have his stick with him the entire time.

Ciara said that the opening was the best part for her personally, I don’t know if that’s because nostalgia or because there was no talking, but that’s her thought on it.

BABY SIMBA IS SO SWEET OH MY GOODNESS

I love James Earl Jones but for some reason he just sounded...rather unbothered here. Like he was bored. Maybe it’s because hes old(er) now and he just doesn’t have the energy for it, maybe I was comparing his vocal performance here too much to his original one in 1994, but for some reason he just didn’t sound at all bothered or like the wise powerful King you can respect and fear.

I didn’t hate Scar’s new voice but I did feel like Jeremy Irons’ performance had more character to it, more sass/sarcasm. Here he just seemed a little..I don’t know. It was a little less sassy, if that makes sense.

It honest to God does feel like watching a nature documentary, like I was half expecting fucking David Attenborough to suddenly start talking over it to be honest. 

Baby Simba reminded me of our cat, Dave, and he was admittedly very cute. I also really loved the things that the lions did that reflected actual cat behaviour, like pouncing and stuff like that. 

Is it just me or did the filmmakers have the same issue as the original did in that they couldn’t decide what colour Nala’s eyes were? Like at one point I was like “oh, they’re actually green, cool”, but then in the next scene I was like “they’re brown?!” etc. 

I liked the hyenas in this, I like that they were allowed to make actual hyena cackles because real hyena cackles are creepy as fuck. I also really loved Shenzi, even if I do wish they’d brought Whoopi Goldberg back.

During “I just can’t wait to be King”, I couldn’t help but feel like it paled in comparison to the original. I know I’m talking about the original a lot, but that’s the issue with these remakes - they will always be compared to their original films. In the original, the cubs were jumping on top of animals, making big gestures, the colours were bright etc. Here it was just two cubs running around a watering hole, the colours just...normal. Muted even. The vocals were fine, but compared to the original it just wasn’t the same. 

My sister wanted to know why they didn’t bring back Rowan Atkinson as Zazu and I kind of have to agree. I found his woodpecker joke funny though.

I stand by what I said about Simba and Nala as cubs looking too similar. In the wild, yeah, that might be the case but this is a movie - the audience should be able to tell who is who. Eventually I think I understood which cub was which but that was only because they were talking and Simba is nearly-always in front. 

Nala’s “Simba, do you speak bird” had my sister giggling though, so there’s that.

There were moments where I could see the animals expressing some emotion but for the most part it was very uncanny. It was like those voices shouldn’t have been coming out of lions - which is kind of the point. That’s why the Lion King on screen works better as an animation instead of realistic CGI.

I’m assuming that they changed Ed a bit to be more politically correct since in the original he was a bit...not quite there. 

Unless they were talking, I could not tell which hyena was supposed to be which. The original three hyenas had very clear differences in their designs, whereas here they all look the same.

I did like the “Kings of the Past” scene under the stars - I think my sister and I both agree that it was very sweet.

Having said that, it went from broad daylight to dark as night in about two seconds and I can’t stand it because it should have been FAR more gradual.

Let’s have a moment of silence for “Be Prepared”. Somehow the best song from the original is the worst one in the remake because they cut 90% of it and turned it into a weird chant. It just makes it even more glaringly obvious that Jeremy Irons was a better Scar, to be honest. The beat is good but goddamit, the song deserved better.

I know Disney changed it because the original “Be Prepared” had sort of Nazi undertones but like...isn’t that the point? Scar is an evil dictator, it’s not like he’s a good guy. It’s like changing Chicken Run so that the farm isn’t operated like a concentration camp - it ruins the whole point.

I could be wrong but did they not use the “Mufasa has something he didn’t have before...a weakness” line? Because that was the line I heard in the adverts and thought was a good addition. 

THE GORGE SCENE JFC

Not gonna lie, I kinda miss Scar knocking Zazu out - though I suppose it makes sense for Zazu to get the lionesses (and where the frick were they then?!)

I audibly gasped when Mufasa was knocked over trying to help Simba off the tree branch like I KNEW what was coming but it genuinely still gets to me.

Mufasa REALLY had to jump carefully down the gorge, huh

Mufasa’s death gave me mixed feelings to be honest; the delivery of “Long Live the King” was disappointing. Like in the original it’s slowly said, so evil it gives you chills, whereas here it’s so...meh. And I had to try not to laugh still because I turned to my sister and just said, “...Did Scar just bitch-slap Mufasa off a cliff?!”

Okay, Simba in the gorge and finding his dad’s body, him calling for help... god fucking damn it. My sister was openly crying and saying “for fuck sake, I’ve seen the original a hundred times and it still gets to me!”. I was crying too...it’s just something about that baby lion calling for help as his dad lies dead on the floor...shit, it gets to you.

It also helps that Hans Zimmer composed the soundtrack again - it’s beautiful, but I think that because we’ve heard it before and associate it with the original, it adds to the feelings. Like I hear the “Stampede” soundtrack and immediately I think of Simba crying for help. 

I wish they had showed more fear on Simba’s face when Scar told him to run away - in the original, his ears are down, his eyes are wide, his posture/stance is clearly showing he’s terrified. Here he just looks a little...surprised.

OKAY BUT HOW DID SIMBA END UP ON THE LOWER PART OF THE CLIFF?! I DON’T...HOW?!

The imagery of Scar walking onto the ledge of Pride Rock as the hyenas surround the other lions is still super powerful, to be honest.

I wish Zazu had been trapped like in the original, like that was comedy gold and they missed it.

Disney really couldn’t have brought back Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella huh -_-

Look, I’m not a huge fan of Seth Rogen anyway - Sausage Party HAUNTS me to this day - but usually in voice over I find him more bearable. Not that I hate him that much but still... I would have felt ten times more generous about his Pumbaa voiceover if he hadn’t done his laugh. We ALL know the Seth Rogen laugh.

I still liked the dynamic between Timon and Pumbaa, even if my sister felt it wasn’t the same. 

Some absolutely GOLDEN lines were cut, and it should be a crime:  “he looks blue” “I’d say goldish-brown”.

THANK GOD they kept in “what’s a-motto with you?” though

“I got downhearted every time that I...farted, are you gonna stop me?!” “NO I AM NOT, YOU DISGUST ME” - wHAT. I mean...what?!

I’m glad there were a few other animals living in the jungle other than Timon and Pumbaa, like it makes more sense that there’s others living there. Having said that, I also liked the idea of them having this utopia to themselves in the original so...yeah.

My sister pointed out that the Timon-Pumbaa-Simba relationship was severely lacking in this film. In the original, you could tell that Timon and Pumbaa loved Simba dearly and that he was seen as a total equal. Here they seemed so much stand-offish even after living with him for so long.

“Yeah, you’ve grown 400 pounds since we started” - LMFAO THIS WAS A GOOD LINE OKAY

“Oh now he’s riffing” - honestly same, was it necessary XD

Ciara felt that the added scene showing Nala/the lionesses in the Pridelands/Nala leaving was unnecessary. In the original, you feel the shock with Simba when he returns because it’s the first time you see what a wasteland it has become. Here you don’t have that. It was clearly just to fill some extra time and get their money’s worth out of Beyonce, milking it for all they have.

The tension in that scene was nice though, and I sort of liked how a) Sarabi rejected Scar and b) how this was then a catalyst for Scar saying “the hyenas eat before the lions...but they don’t leave much behind”. Good addition that was.

Was the additional exposition showing a tuft of Simba’s mane journeying really necessary? Like we didn’t need to see a giraffe fucking eat it or a dung beetle rolling a ball of shit with the mane inside of it. Like come on, Disney, really? They clearly just wanted to show off that they could pull it off.

What’s that quote Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park (I think?)? “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should”. THE SAME GOES FOR THE PEOPLE AT DISNEY, JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN, DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD

How did Rafiki see a random tuft of hair and immediately go “FUCK YEAH IT’S SIMBA HE’S ALIVE”, like he didn’t smell it (it would have smelt of shit though) or anything, he just looked at it and was like “SIMBA IS ALIVE”. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THAT.

“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” was a fucking delight, and my sister and I both sung/danced along to it, no regrets.

I jumped so hard when Nala just came out of nowhere and interrupted the song to be honest

The close-ups of Timon’s face in this film are hilarious to be honest - creepy but hilarious.

HOW DID NALA REALIZE IT WAS SIMBA RIGHT AWAY?! In the original she was like “who are you?” but now she just knew?! SHE THOUGHT SIMBA WAS DEAD BUT SHE SEES A RANDOM MALE LION AND IMMEDIATELY KNOWS THAT’S HER OLD BEST FRIEND WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD?! FUCK OFF

“Can You Feel the Love Tonight”...hmmm. Sorry, I gotta have a whole separate section for this.

Firstly...TONIGHT. CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT, DISNEY. IT’S AT NIGHT TIME. IN THE EVENING. AT LEAST PUT A FUCKING SUNSET OR SOMETHING TO SHOW IT’S EVENING.

Don’t get me wrong, the animation was beautiful, but jesus christ, it’s set at NIGHT TIME. How do you fuck that up?! It’s literally IN the damn song.

My sister and I are really not Beyonce fans, I’m sorry. Ciara literally leaned over and whispered “I’m going to sing the song myself to block out Beyonce”, that’s how much she despised it.

Look, Beyonce is a singer and yeah, she’s a strong singer. No one is disputing that. Do I think she’s overrated? Absolutely, but I can admit she can sing. She is NOT a voice actress and she should NOT be voicing a character like Nala. Every time she spoke, I just missed Moira Kelly’s performance from the original even more.

Beyonce’s voice just doesn’t fit the song. She was overpowering Donald Glover far too much - it was like he was a backup singer in a song meant to be a duet. A duet is supposed to have the two voices melding together and harmonizing to create a beautiful sound - not one person taking over and making it all about them

Okay but why the fuck does Seth Rogen sound like Kermit right at the end of the song? 

Anyway, moving on back to the rest of the film:

Another moment of my sister saying “BUT WHERE IS HIS STICK, HE HAS TO WACK PEOPLE WITH IT”

Disney really cut out the stick metaphor where Rafiki hits Simba and says “it hurts, yes, but it’s in the past”. Like COME ON DISNEY. That’s one of the key moments for god’s sake!

So they could animate Simba’s mane-hair being rolled along the ground in giraffe shit but NOT Mufasa in the clouds? LMFAO OKAY WHATEVER

Jesus Christ Disney, did you HAVE to put that “Spirit” song over Simba going back to the Pridelands?! It just a) doesn’t fit the scene and b) comes out of nowhere. Like nowhere else in the film is there a moment like that, so why now? 

Unpopular Opinion: “Spirit” is a bad song and my sister agrees. Everyone’s kissing Beyonce’s ass about it but me, my mum and my sister have all on separate occasions heard it and said “wow that’s fucking shit”. 

I miss the slo-mo of Simba running through the desert more than ever. Couldn’t we have just had a recreation of that scene with the same music and NOT Beyonce’s random song ruining it?

I had a feeling they would cut out the Hula dance thing but it still annoys me because that is ICONIC

My sister and I were both far too happy when Rafiki took his stick out of the tree, like we were like “FINALLY”

Instead Timon and Pumbaa start singing “Be Our Guest” and like...Why?! Is this a joke just for Disney fans? BATB and TLK aren’t even set in the same continent, for a start, let alone being a part of the same story, so how the hell does Timon know it? I mean, it’s hilarious if you’re a Disney fan but just...why? It makes absolutely zero sense. 

Sarabi still manages to be a badass Queen and I love it

The vocals during the big reveal scene really weren’t anywhere NEAR the standard of the original, especially on Scar’s part. It just felt so weak compared to Matthew Broderick and Jeremy Irons, to be honest.

Why...Why does Nala suddenly have beef with Shenzi? Just...yeah, Shenzi and like 50 other hyenas tried to eat Nala (and Simba) as a cub but like...why does Nala suddenly have personal beef with her based on that one interaction? They don’t even LOOK at each other again until this moment in the film.

The battle was cool, I guess, but maybe I’m just super blood-thirsty and gory so...who knows. The Simba/Scar fight was especially good.

I wish Rafiki using his stick was more karate/martial arts like the original, here it’s just like he’s flailing it about randomly

I did like that they reused the part where Scar basically flings smoldering soot/ash/rock into Simba’s face. Like that’s the kinda dirty tactic I live for.

“You were right about one thing, Scar...a hyena’s belly is never full” - OH SHIT, MY WIG WAS SNATCHED OH MY LORD WHAT A LINE

The hyenas eating Scar is so dark in the original and it’s even darker here because it looks so real, like I genuinely felt horrified watching it even though you don’t see anything.

Towards the end when Simba nuzzled two of the lionesses, I couldn’t tell which one was supposed to be Sarabi and which was supposed to be Nala.

THAT MUSIC AS SIMBA BECOMES KING, THANK YOU HANS ZIMMER FOR NOT LETTING US DOWN 

Okay but I genuinely want to know if the baby cub at the end is Kopa, Kiara or Kion. Disney can’t seem to make up their minds about Simba and Nala’s cub so...yeah. It could literally be any of them at this rate.

I had no idea that the first credits song was Elton John, and I miss his renditions of Circle of Life/Can You Feel the Love Tonight even more, like those are arguably two of the best Elton John songs.

THEY USED “He Lives in You” AS AN END CREDIT SONG AND I WANT TO WATCH THE LION KING 2 AGAIN

So here’s the thing...it wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it would be, and Ciara agrees. Ciara is arguably the one to ask about Lion King matters since it’s literally her favourite film (having said that, for the longest time I thought her favourite was Tangled so...). It was nowhere near the standard of the original, and you could definitely just stay at home and watch the original and get more out of it then paying £30 at the cinema (far more if you’re a family). Some of the jokes fell sort of flat, some of them worked, it was a bit of a mix. 

For the most part, the new voices weren’t too bad but none of them were better than the original voice actors. I honestly don’t understand why they didn’t bring back Matthew Broderick, Moira Kelly, Nathan Lane, Jeremy Irons, Rowan Atkinson, Ernie Sabella, Whoopi Goldberg etc. Obviously I know at least two of the original voice actors died (the ones for Sarabi and Rafiki) but why replace the ones who are still alive? I just...I don’t understand to be honest. Having more members of the original cast would have definitely triggered nostalgia for the adults watching the trailer/adverts and made them want to watch it more. 

I didn’t hate it as much as I expected to. I don’t think I would want to pay to see it again (so if I do end up seeing it again, it’ll probably be at my place and for free) but it was cute and I can understand why parents would want to bring their kids to watch it. I did feel super nostalgic but afterwards, I kind of just wanted to go home and watch the original again. And I literally rewatched it three days ago. 

It’s definitely not a masterpiece like the original was - none of the remakes are up to the standard of their original movies, but The Lion King is definitely nearer the bottom of my list in terms of how good a movie it is. Like I said, it wasn’t anywhere near as terrible as I thought it would end up being - I fully expected to want to leave halfway through and to have a raging headache, but that was not the case. It was a fine way to pass the afternoon, no doubt, and I think I ate too much food whilst I was there, but other than that...yeah, you get the idea.

If nothing else, it has adorable lion cubs in it so that’s a big plus I guess.

#the lion king #the lion king 2019 #disney #review #thoughts #cinema

[dukereviewsmovies]

Duke Reviews: Fast & Furious

Hi Everyone, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews, Where Today We're Continuing Our Look At The 3rd Film, The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo...

Drift...I Mean The Fourth Film, Fast And Furious?

Let Me Explain, When The Sixth Film Came Out It Created A New Timeline That Moved The 3rd Film After 6th So, Yeah We're Doing This One Next...

This Movie Sees Dominic Toretto (Played Again By Vin Diesel) Being Reunited With Now FBI Agent Brian O'Connor (Played Again By Paul Walker) As They Work Together To Get A Known Drug Lord Named Arturo Braga Who Is Involved In The "Murder" Of Dom's Longtime Girlfriend, Letty Ortiz (Played Again By Michelle Rodriguez In Case You're Wondering Why I Have Emphasized Murder That's Because Surprise Letty Is Not Dead But Instead Gets Amnesia And Ends Up Working With Gaston From Beauty And The Beast) Will Braga Face Brian Or Dom's Brand Of Justice?

Let's Find Out As We Watch Fast And Furious...

Now Before We Begin We Have Another Short That Ties Into The Movie (Thank God It's The Last One ) And It's Called Los Bandeleros Which I Am Briefly Go Over Basically Giving The Short Short Version Since Half Of It Is In Spanish Now...

It Starts In The Dominican Republic Where Dom (Played Again By Vin Diesel) Is Planning On Doing A New Job So He Hires Han Lue (Played By Sung Kang, Who Has Played The Character In Another Film Done By Director Justin Lin Called Better Luck Tomorrow, (Which Has No Connection To These Movies Whatsoever But I'm Just Mentioning It As It's Necessary) Before The Character Appeared In The 3rd Film Of The Series, Tokyo Drift Where He Died At The Hands Of Someone That I'm Not Going To Talk About Now) And Leo Tego And Rico Santos, (Who Don't Speak A Word Of English But Expect To See Them In This Movie And The Next One Fast 5) To Do The Job

But Dom Needs One More Member To Complete His New Crew And That Surprisingly Goes To Letty (Played Again By Michelle Rodriguez) Who Gets Back Together With Dom And Become More Than Just Partners But Husband And Wife Which We Don't Find Out Till Another Movie...

I Would Place The Prelude Up Here Like I Did The 2 Fast 2 Furious One But Unfortunately I Can't Find The Whole Short On YouTube, So Let's Move Onto The Film...

The Film Starts With Cars Driven By Dom, Letty, Han With His Girlfriend? And Leo And Rico As They Go After A Gas Truck, With Letty Hopping On, Han's Girlfriend Places On A Hook So They Can Tow It Once Lefty Uses Liquid Nitrogen To Break It Off Of The Truck (Which She Does) With Leo And Rico About To Place The Hook On And Letty About To Do The Same Thing She Did, The Driver Spots Her On Top Of One Of The Gas Tanks...

Falling Off When The Driver Hits Dom (Who's In Front Of The Truck), Letty Falls, Hanging On For Dear Life, Telling Leo To Unhitch His Hook, The Driver Shoots At Dom As He Goes To Get Letty Who Managed To Get Up. Dom Tells Her To Spray The End With Liquid Nitrogen But She Lost Her Hammer When She Fell So Instead Dom Breaks It Lose By Sideswiping His Car Into It, Now The Only Thing Left To Do Is To Get Letty...

Reaching A Dangerous Cliff, The Driver Jumps As Dom Gets Letty Just In Time As The Truck Turns Over Causing A Dangerous Gastank To Come Right At Them!

Dom!

(Start At 2:06, End At 2:12)

Driving Off, We Get A Brief Seizure Inducing Intro, As We See Dom And His Crew Celebrate At A Street Race Party Where Dom Talks Briefly With Leo And Rico Before Talking With Han Who Says That The Cops Raided Their Garage And That It's Probably Best If They Separated For Now But Dom Disagrees Saying They're After Him And Anyone With Him...

Telling Letty This, She Has No Intention Of Living Without Him Saying That They'll Figure It Out They Always Do While Also Saying The Phrase That'll Be Said From Now On In The Films "Ride Or Die" But Dom Doesn't Want To Figure It Out And Leaves In The Middle Of The Night While Letty Is Sleeping...

With Another Few Years Passing We Catch Up With Brian (Played Again By Paul Walker) Who Is Now An FBI Agent That Is Trying To Catch A Criminal With Connections To Known Drug Lord Arturo Braga. Eventually Capturing His Man, He Gives Brian A Name, David Park Telling His Superiors About Park, Brian Tells Them That Park Is A Scout That Recruits Street Racers To Be Mules For The Braga Cartel Or In Other Words If They Find Park, They Get Braga...

Meanwhile In Panama...

Dom Gets A Call From Mia (Played Again By Jordana Brewster) Who Tells Him That Letty Has Died. With Both Brian and Mia At The Funeral, We See That Dom Has Returned To LA But Does Not Attend Funeral Because The FBI Is There, Believing That Dom Will Show But You Can Tell In Brian's Eyes That He Knows Different...

Returning Home After The Funeral, Mia Finds Dom In The Garage Despite Her Telling Him Not To Come As The Authorities Are Monitoring The House, But He Had To See Her. Dom Also Notices His Father's Wrecked Charger That He Destroyed All Those Years Ago At The Railroad Track With Brian With Mia Telling Him That Letty Wouldn't Let The Authorities Touch It And That Whenever She Was Around She Was In Here...

Back At The FBI, Brian's Superior Tells Everyone Including Brian That If They Don't Get Anything On The Braga Case In 72 Hours, It's Over Because It's Been 2 Years And The Last 3 Agents That They Sent In To Braga's Organization Died From There We Gets Some Exposition On Braga Including The Fact That They Have Nothing On Him No Fingerprints, No Date Of Birth It's Like This Guy's A Member Of The Men In Black. But While We Listen To This, We Discover That Letty Had Connections With Braga.

Asking About David Park, They're Running Names Through City And Country Databases But There Are Too Many Possibilities Right Now. With Another Agent Named Stasiak Saying That Park May Be A Dead End, Brian Thinks That It's Not As Without Him, Braga Wouldn't Have Drivers Search Records And They'll Find Him...

Going To The Crime Scene With Mia, Dom Visualizes The Entire Incident In His Head...

Taking Mia Home, Mia Knows He Found Something At The Crime Scene, Saying That He Found Burn Marks On The Ground That Could Only Be Caused By Nitrometh And Surprisingly He Knows The One Guy That Sells It In LA. However, Mia Tells Him That Doing This Will Not Bring Letty Back And If She Was Here She Would Ask Him To Let It Go...

Oh, Dear God, No! GET THAT OUT OF HERE!

Just The Mention Of Those 3 Words Get That Song Going...

But Saying He Can't, Mia Says She Loves Him Before Getting Out Of The Car...

Getting Some Food, Brian Goes Through Various Files On David Parks As Stasiak Brings In Mia For Questioning...

The Next Morning, Brian Gets Rid Of Satsiak So, He Can Get Mia Away From The FBI While They Try To Find David Park...

Meanwhile, Dom Questions Some Guy We Never Get A Name On Who The Guy Who Killed Letty Is But He Says This Ain't Your Neighborhood Anymore Blah Blah Blah Which Leads To Dom Torturing His Ass!

But The Guy Talks Saying David Park Brought It In And It's A Green Ford Torino...

Having Coffee With Mia, Brian Says That He Doesn't Want Her To Get Tangled Up In Whatever Dom Is Involved In And To Stay Away From Him, But With Mia Bringing Up Their Past, Brian Tells Mia That He Never Meant To Hurt Her And That It Was The Hardest Thing He Ever Had To Do, But Being A Liar Got Him His Job At The FBI...

No, I Think It Was Your Connection With Bilkins That Got You Into The FBI, Brian...

But Then Mia Points Out Something Insightful, Maybe Brian's Lying To Himself, Maybe He's Not The Good Guy Pretending To Be The Bad Guy But The Bad Guy Pretending To Be A Good Guy...

Whoa, That's Deep...

Before She Leaves, Mia Asks Brian One Last Thing, Why Did He Let Dom Go All Those Years Ago? But He Says He Doesn't...

Heading Back To The FBI, They Have A List Of Possibles On David Park By Reading Off A List Of Cars But Eventually Hearing A 98 Nissan 240 With An Illegal Mod, Brian's Got His Man...

Meanwhile At Park's Address, Dom Drops By His House To Ask Park About Who Killed Letty, In The Interrogation Style Of Batman. As Brian Arrives, Park Is Hanging Out The Window, Which Leads To Brian Running Upstairs Where Both Him And Dom Are Reunited...

Telling Dom That Letty Was Running For Braga Till It All Went South, Brian Promises Dom That He Will Get Braga However Dom Promises To Brian That He'll Kill Braga And Anyone Who Tries To Stop Him From Getting His Revenge...

Taking Park Back To The FBI, Brian Gets Attacked By Stasiak For Taking Mia Out Of His Custody To Which Brian Slams His Face In...

No, You Did, You Asshole!

With His Superior Telling Brian To Keep His Attitude In Line, Brian Chats With Park Who Tells Them That Braga's Number 2, Ramon Campos Is Holding A Street Race In Koreatown Tomorrow Night To Fill A Slot On His Team To Which Brian Is Going To. Picking Out A Car, It's Just Like Old Times As He Chooses 3 Cars To Which He Makes His Own Car Out Of...

They Give Brian A Tracking Device To Know Where He Is At All Times As He Finishes Up His Car. That Night, Brian, Dom And 2 Other Racers (Who I'll Just Call Guy 1 And Guy 2) Meet With Braga's Second Hand Man, Ramon Campos And His 2 Henchmen, Fenix Or As Sly Stallone Would Call Him Fenix!!!!!!! And Giselle Yashar....

Who Looks Strangely Familiar To Me

Though I Can't Quite Put My Finger On It...

Yes, Before She Had Her Breakout Role As Wonder Woman In Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Gal Gadot Was In This Series As Giselle Yashar, A Villain Who Ends Up Reforming Herself And Joins Dom's Family So, Expect To See More Of Her After This Movie...

Anyway, Campos Tells Them That Braga Is Looking For Real Drivers With Dom Asking What Are They Hauling? Campos Tells Them That They Don't Need To Know But Dom Makes A Point Stating That A Real Driver Knows What's In His Car Liking What He Says, Campos States That Whoever Wins The Race, Gets The Info...

With Giselle Giving Them A GPS, The Drivers Go To Their Cars As The Race Is About To Begin...

With The Race Beginning, Dom Takes An Early Lead Where With The Others You Can't Really Tell Who's In Second, 3rd Or 4th Place As There Are Other Cars In The Road, So. To Make This As Short As Possible I'm Just Going To Say Who Wins And It's Dom With Brian In Second...

So, Yeah, Brian Loses But That Doesn't Stop Him From Going After One Of Braga's Other Drivers So That He Can Take His Place...

Going To A Club With Dom And Campos, Dom Asks Brian What's To Stop Him From Telling Campos That He's A Cop, With Brian Telling That It's The Same Thing That's Keeping Him From Telling Campos Why He's Really Here...

They Have Some Friendly Banter With Campos, To The Point That Dom Mentions That Brian Dated Mia...

Asking What Braga Is About, Campos Gives Somewhat Of A Little History Hinting That He Grew Up From The Streets But Now He Calls The Shots And Is Basically The Boss Of Bosses...

With Both Of Them Going Undercover, Brian Goes Upstairs To See Campos Talking With An Old Man Who He Believes To Be Braga, While Dom Goes Downstair Where He Finds The Car That Matches The Car That Was After Letty And Giselle, Tells Dom That The Car Belonged To Fenix...

Well, I Guess Dom Has A Reason To Say Fenix!!!!!! Now..

Before She Flirts With Him...

The Next Day At The FBI, Brian Brings The Shot Glasses Of Campos And The Guy Who Is Probably Braga To The Girl In Charge Of Forensic Evidence Telling Her To Run The Fingerprints To All Agencies Even Those Beyond Interpol, But As The Girl Says That That Could Take Weeks, Brian's GPS Starts To Buzz Which Means He's Got To Go...

Taking The Car Into A Wherehouse, They Scan The Cars For Trackers (Which Forces Brian To Kill His) And They End Up Loading The Cars With The Racers Inside Them Into A Truck For Mexico Where Giselle Guides Them To The Area, Once There, Dom Confronts Fenix On Letty's Death To Which He Admits That He Killed Her...

Asking What Dom Will Do Now That He Knows This Information, Turns Out Nothing Right Now As Dom Created An Escape Plan Before Leaving His Car By Unscrewing The Main Nozzle Of His Nos Tank And Pressing His Lighter, Which In Turn Causes Not Just His Car But All The Cars To Blow Up...

Despite All Of Fenix's Men And The Other Drivers Being Dealt Fenix Gets Away While Brian And An Injured Dom Also Get Away With A Hummer Filled With $60 Million Dollars Worth Of Heroin. Contacting The FBI, They Know That Brian Has Dom With Him And The Shipment And They Expect Him To Turn Both Of Them In. Deciding To Hide The Shipment, Brian Hides It At The FBI Impound Lot Cause That's The Last Place They'll Check It, Right?

They're The FBI, They're Not Stupid, If They're Looking For Someone I'm Sure That Guy In The Parking Lot Will Be Like "Yeah I Saw Someone Who Matched That Description Last Night, He Was Here With A Hummer" And They'll Find The Shipment!

Anyway, This Leads To A Joke By Brian Saying That When Dom Blew His Car Up, He Blew Up Brian's As Well So Now He Owes HIM A 10 Second Car...

Contacting Mia, She Heals Dom And The 3 Of Them Have Dinner Together Even Down To The First Person That Touches The Plate Gets To Say Grace Tradition...

Talking With Mia While Dom Looks At Some Of Letty's Stuff, Brian Tells Mia, Why He Let Dom Go, And It's Because He Respected Him More Than He Did Himself, Learning That Nothing Really Matters Unless You Have A Code...

Finding Letty's Cellphone Which Still Has Power In It Dom Calls The Last Number She Called And Unfortunately It's Brian's...

Punching Brian, He Eventually Explains That Letty Made A Deal With The Feds, In Exchange For Clearing Dom's Name, She'd Give Them Braga...

Wow, If I Didn't Know Letty Was Coming Back For Another Sequel, This Would Be Really Sad...

Returning To The FBI, With Everyone Looking At Him In Disgust...

Brian Tells Them The Shipment Is Safe But Instead Of Parading It In Front Of The Media Maybe They Should Use It To Try To Lure Braga Out In An Attempt To Cut The Head Off Of The Snake If You Get My Gist By Doing An Exchange With Braga Brian Has A Plan But There's A Price

Of Course...

They Nab Braga But In Return They Let Dom Walk...

With Dom Calling Giselle, She Hands The Phone Off To Campos So He Can Tell Him That He Wants A Trade Off But Campos Tells Dom That Braga Doesn't Negotiate But Then Dom Tells Campos To Explain To Braga How $60 Million Dollars Of Product Goes Missing...

Asking What Dom Wants, He Tells Campos He Wants 60 Million Dollars In Cash Delivered By Braga However, Campos Says That Braga Will Never Go For It, Which Leads Dom To Say That Either He Deals With Braga Or Campos Does...

Meeting Campos, Giselle, Fenix And Braga, They Get 2 Million And The Rest Will Be Delivered Once They Have The Items However, Before They Can Make The Trade, The Fingerprint Match Comes Through And It Turns Out Campos Is Braga...

With Gunfire Going On, Braga And Fenix Get Away, Giselle Is Saved By Dom...

Huh, Never Through I'd See The Day That Wonder Woman Was Saved By A Tree...

Who Gets Her To Safety, While Brian Captures The Fake Braga...

With Braga Beyond FBI Jurisdiction, Brian Is Taken Off Of Both Active Duty And The Assignment By People Higher Up, Brian Decides To Visit The Toretto House Where He Finds Dom Working In The Garage On The Charger And To Say That He's Going With Him To Get Braga...

Seeing Brian And Dom Working Together, Brian Goes To See Mia Who He Kisses And Makes Out With, Rekindling Their Old Relationship...

Driving Off In The Charger With Brian Beside Him In Another Car To Deal With Braga, They Eventually Reach Mexico Where They Reunite With Gisele Who's Returning The Favor For Dom Saving Her By Giving Braga To Them...

Hey, Dom, I Didn't Know Her Car Could Turn Into An Invisible Jet....

Heading To A Church, Braga Delivers Money To A Priest Who Gives Him A Blessing, He's Confronted By Dom And Brian With Braga Telling Dom That They're Not So Different But Dom Beg To Differ, Deciding To Let Brian Have Braga However, Fenix Is His...

With Fenix Hearing That Braga Is Gone, Fenix And Braga's Henchmen Catch Up To Dom And Brian...

One By One Cars Are Eliminated Until It's Brian, Dom And Fenix Who Destroys Brian's Car In An Attempt To Get Braga But Dom Kills Fenix When He Rams His Car Right Into Him...

With Fenix Dead, Brian Is Injured And The FBI Are On Their Way, Telling Dom To Run, Dom Says He's Not Running Anymore...

So, Being Arrested, Dom Faces Justice For What He Has Done But Despite A Good Word From Brian The Judge Believes That One Right Does Not Make Up For A Lifetime Of Wrongs And Therefore Sentences Dom To 25 Years To Life At Lompoc Maximum Security Prison With No Possibility Of Parole...

But Do You Honestly Believe That Brian Will Accept That?

(As Balki) Of Course Not...

Him, Mia, And Leo And Rico Decide To Break Dom Out Of The Prison Bus...

Which Is Where This Movie Ends...

And That's Fast And Furious And It's A Good Movie!

For A Reunion Movie, It's Good The Story Is Good, The Cast Is Great, The Cars While Not As Well-Designed As The Last 2 Movie Are Good And While There's Only One Race Scene I Still Like The Scenes With The Cars So, Yeah, In My Opinion, This Is Probably One Of The Best Fast And Furious Movies Of The Series And I Definitely Say See It...

Till Next Time, This Is Duke, Signing Off...

#fastandfurious #VinDiesel #PaulWalker #JordanaBrewster #MichelleRodriguez

[xemylixa]

WARNING: IT’S VERY LOUD! SORRY!

I got inspired by all the TF2 comic fandubs and tried my hand at some... um... directing? I guess? Anyway, it’s camerawork and sound design for panels 51-56 of “The Naked and the Dead”. (Apologies for Zhanna’s, Pauling’s and Megs’ voices missing - no original voice acting was involved.)

The cool fighting bit was an accidental discovery: I tried to cheat by using a camera layer and found out that, well, that panel is beautiful from more than one angle ;)

Music is from Kung Fu Panda 2. That fight scene had quite a similar “big damn heroes” moment, followed by some cathartic asskicking, and Messrs. Zimmer and Powell reflected that perfectly!

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #tf2 comic #tf2 comics #motion design #i create

[originallonemagpie]

A little late with this, since we're into the second week of the new year, but here's the annual soundtrack listing for my 2018... You may or may not know what some tracks represent, but if you found them all - artist and album are included - and played them you'd get a feel for my year... (Titles don't have a bearing on the representations, it's all about the actual music) 01) Helvegen (Wardruna)

02) Game Of Death theme (John Barry, Game Of Death)

03) Dirty Harry Main Title (Lalo Schifrin, Dirty Harry)

04) Building The Crate (Harry Gregson Williams & Nick Glennie, Chicken Run)

 05) Hans Gruber's Arrival (Michael Kamen, Die Hard)

06) New Tail (John Powell, How To Train Your Dragon)

07) A New Alliance (John Williams, The Last Jedi)

08) Recap And Agreement Reached (Jay Chattaway, Star Trek Voyager – Scorpion Part II)

09) Cheyenne (Ennio Morricone, Once Upon A Time In The West)

10) Starsky And Hutch 3rd Season theme (Mark Snow, Starsky & Hutch)

11) Block War (Alan Silvestri, Judge Dredd)

12) The Doctor's Theme (Murray Gold, Nu Who series 4)

13) A New Face (Jerry Goldsmith, Alien)

14) Platform 9 ¾ (John Williams, Harry Potter and te Philosopher's Stone)

15) Aston Montenegro (David Arnold, Casino Royale)

16) Breaking Free (Murray Gold, Dr Who Series 9 Heaven Sent)

17) Wargames (Basil Poldouris, Starship Troopers)

18)     Revisiting Snoke (John Williams, The Last Jedi)

19)     Rachel's Surprise/Who Wants To Live Forever (Michael Kamen, Highlander)

20)     The Ecstasy Of Gold (Ennio Morricone, The Good The Bad And The Ugly)

21) Fast Five Suite (Brian Tyler, Fast Five)

22) Face The Raven (Murray Gold, Dr Who Series 9)

23) The Ancient Combat/2nd Kroykah (Gerald Fried, Star Trek Amok Time)

24) I Need You By My Side (Ramin Djawadi, Game Of Thrones Season 6)

25) The Penitent Man Will Pass (John Williams, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade)

26) Nitro Heist (Ramin Djawadi, Westworld)

27) Don't Die With A Clean Sword (Ramin Djawadi, Game of Thrones season 2)

28) The Scavenger (John Williams, The Force Awakens)

29) Death Is Locked In (Murray Gold, Dr Who Series 9)

30) Torn Apart (John Williams, The Force Awakens)

31) Marcetta (Ennio Morricone, The Good The Bad And The Ugly)

32) Arrow Theme (Blake Neeley, Arrow)

33) Warrior Of Light (Ramin Djawadi, Game Of Thrones season 2)

34) The Legend Of Aramis (Two Steps From Hell, Volume One)

35) Kylo Ren Main Theme (John Williams, The Force Awakens, fan bootleg edit of Kylo's leitmotif from different scenes)

36)  Khaleesi (Ramin Djawadi, Game Of Thrones Season 6)

37) The Cybermen (Murray Gold, Dr Who Series 2)

38) Fate Has Smiled Upon Us (Marc Streitenfeld, Robin Hood)

39) Returning To Vulcan (James Horner, Star Trek III)

40) They Will Win (Basil Poledouris, Starship Troopers)

41) The Adventures of Robin Hood Suite (Korngold)

42) Theology/Civilisation (Basil Poledouris, Conan The Barbarian)

43) The Florin Dance (Mark Knopfler, The Princess Bride)

44) The Cybernauts (Laurie Johnson, The Avengers)

45) Bond meets Wade (David Arnold, track 25 of Tomorrow Never Dies isolated music score)

46) Borg Assimilate Enterprise Alt (Jerry Goldsmith, First Contact)

47) Honest Brave And True (Hans Zimmer, Muppet Treasure Island)

48) Death Is Irrelevant (Ron Jones, TNG- Best Of Both Worlds)

49) The Cave (John Williams, The Last Jedi)

50) Knockturn Alley (John Williams, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

51) Battle Of Dark And Light (Two Steps From Hell, Volume One)

52) Gumbolt's Safe (John Barry, On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

53)  Davy Jones (Hans Zimmer, Pirates Of The Caribbean Dead Man's Chest)

54) Magic Of The Season (X Ray Dog, Canis Rex I)

55) To Sleep (Jerry Goldsmith, Alien)

56) The Shepherd's Boy (Murray Gold, Dr Who Series 9)

57) Oh No You Didn't (Peter Stormare, Mercenaries 2)

#me #personal #2018 #music #playlist

[mloffredacmspl348]

Saw, Torture Porn and Video Surveillance

Photo credits: Cinematographe.it

“I want to play a game” is the iconic quote from the famous Saw, the first of a 7 films franchise, a 2004 horror movie directed by James Van. The serial killer Jigsaw carries out games which involve kidnapping of victims who are placed in a scenario in which they are forced to make intricate choices to solve an “enigma” in order to survive/save their beloved ones or otherwise die. These scenarios involve destructive torture instruments designed to provoke devastating pain and violence on the body. Behind the Jigsaw’s mask, there is the identity of John, a terminally-ill man, who chooses the victims based on their appreciation for life. All the victims of the games are people who are considered to be abusing their life or the life of others and the games serve as a way to teach the real value of life. The selected victim for this movie is a doctor, Lawrence, who has been unfaithful with his wife and uncaring towards his patients and founds himself with a stranger, Adam, locked inside with him that he is instructed to kill, or lead his wife and daughter die, in the setting of a dirty bathroom with a dead man at the center of the room.

Photo credits: Horror Italia 24

Catherine Zimmer in the first chapter of her book Surveillance Cinema explores the concepts of video surveillance, torture-porn and zones of indistinctions. Zimmer describes torture-porn films as engaging in explicitly systematic violence of torture scenarios and often including narrative reference to the ideological, economic, and social elements that constitute the torture as itself functioning within the logic of a broader system. Moreover, the incorporation of surveillance allow to consider the function of surveillance in the narrative formation of systematic and systemic violence. Torture and surveillance have systemic intersections, and the relations between different films highlights the relationship between violence and visibility that are key in the function of surveillance in contemporary horror cinema and politics.

Zimmer explores these connections through Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the “zones of indistinction” that is the manifestation of the state of exception. These films indicate a mode in which surveillance politicizes narrative by using narrative as a cinematic “zone of indistinction”. The majority of torture-porn films are American products and Zimmer emphasizes how, after the 9/11 attack, the American military actions which established the detention facility Guantanamo Bay and the abuses of Abu Ghraib, cannot posit Americans as the innocent objects of torture scenarios. The appearance of the economies, bodily experience, and technologies of torture can be seen in conjunction with the politics of torture of United States and the world. According to Zimmer, Saw introduces the cinematic narration of torture as a starting point for moral and ethical dilemmas, and each torture or death scene is framed by a consideration of fundamental values and a punishment that reflects the transgression. Furthermore, the characters are in some ways both guilty and innocent and the film incorporates themes embedded in contemporary politics such as the morality/efficacy of torture, definition of life, fundamentalist belief system, and bodily and psychological experiences of violence. Zimmer highlights the importance of the video surveillance apparatuses along with the way in which Saw formulates torture by introducing technological mediation and surveillance features into the rules of the games; the relationship between torture and surveillance constitutes torture as a function of surveillance. Video technology, in various parts of the film, functions as an organizational methodology (surveillance used to monitor the scene) intended to produce and control responses (used as representation incorporated into the torture scenario).

Photo credits: screenshot from the article

Jigsaw’s games are an exercise of biopower since they are designed to define who deserves to live. Agamben’s concept of “zones of indistinction” which produces the figure of the bare life that is a life without political and legal rights. Sovereign power in the modern form, according to Agamben, is the designation of the bare life and the production of zones of indistinction. Surveillance, in particular, operates as a zone of indistinction in the political discourse of security and terrorism and the increased normalization of the state of exception.

Saw’s torturous narrative logic parallels the manifestation of sovereign power through the biopolitical designation of bare life, and that Jigsaw’s games function as zones of indistinction through which he can manifest his victims as bare life (41).

Saw narrates torture as an ideological project that, nevertheless, operate in a highly political sphere. All the aspects of the narration of the film function as biopolitical technological tools to produce the bare life.