#brightly evocative
Note
Ma’am… I am about to hit the hay, I am a little tipsy, and you drop this depressing seed in my brain?????
“they like to do it in a chair with their legs spread wide”
i’m so sorry for the late response i’ve been turning this over and over in my mind and have come to the conclusion that i am unable to understand how you find this idea—of Lena Luthor particularly. playing the cello. and having other such inclinations—depressing, instead of? exceedingly inspiring?
#by which i of course mean#deeply fascinating#hauntingly stirring#brightly evocative#etc?#lena plays the CELLO#sorry guys#but#this is a weakness i mean to bestow on all of you#ask me things!#TSOS#stnballoon
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It's an unexpected source, but there's a segment in the trailer for Arma 3's 'Laws of War' expansion, made in collaboration with the ICRC, that I actually found really evocative.
The scene starts with aerial footage of a light armoured car, with narration identifying it as a high-value target, a rare opportunity. We switch to a thermal view.
The HVT dismounts from the armoured car, and walks on foot, followed by a soldier carrying a rifle. Beside them, two people stand by a large van - though, they aren't armed. The narration states that the need for direct action should be calculated, balanced with the costs, as the camera drifts towards them.
However, as the camera flips to a wider view, we see the surroundings: the HVT is entering a large, blocky concrete building, with more armed soldiers standing by the armoured car, and a helicopter parked on the rooftop helipad. It's evidently a military location, and given the number of vehicles, likely a headquarters. Do unarmed military officers count as noncombatants?
Before we can consider it, we're switched back to a standard view. While the armoured car, camouflaged, blends into the pavement, the van stands out brightly: it's an ambulance. Outside of the thermal camera, details consolidate themselves - the sign above the entryway clearly marks this as a hospital. The line of vehicles parked outside are civilian hatchbacks and SUVs, as well as more ambulances. The helipad, a pale medical blue, is evidently used for medical airlift.
The footage stops.
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Couldn’t keep myself from doing one for Ashes too. Mm O’Reilly you could go to set me on fire and I’d probably already have melted from the heat of my gay
[Image: an ambigram that reads “Ashes” in one rotation and “Hades” in the other, with both displayed, one on top of the other. The letters have long descenders and sharp, tilted tips, evocative of flames. Both are coloured in brightly glowing gradients of fire, with “Ashes” in orange and red tones and “Hades” in cyans and blues. End ID.]
#The Mechanisms#UDAD#Ashes O’Reilly#Hades UDAD#Ambigram#Typography#Mm is a nonbinary honorific short for Mistrum it’s the one I use I did NOT just go mmm like a tasty snack. although.#👀#Eye strain#The Pictures of Dorian They#ID#3.9#2023#Also hello I am alive and drawing I’m just slow on posting
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Chapter 414 will parallel Katsuki being fired off at AFO in 404.
This panel is particularly evocative of Shigaraki’s current story…
AFO’s attire was drawn as Shigaraki’s lump of lead that Kudou will strike… because AFO is the one responsible for giving birth to Shigaraki’s pain.¹
This also highlighted to me that Katsuki was being contrasted next to the man who created someone’s lump of lead.
✨Sparkles and bursts of light ✨
I think the significance of this is… Katsuki’s entire existence is a light shining brightly inside Izuku’s heart.
A light which saves him. And saved him. He went through so many bad experiences as a quirkless person, and his Kacchan just… being… just existing near him… Izuku adored him his whole life, everything he was capable of… that shining explosion of pure potential, and this is what got Izuku through that painful time.
This accentuates Izuku’s defining contrast with Toga-chan who went down the wrong path because she hadn’t “known a love like that.”
Izuku did. He knew a love like that. And knowing a love like that made Izuku’s world easier to live in, and that love will find him, and keep him.
¹ Shigaraki’s pain
We’re talking things like: Targeting Nana’s family, killing OFA’s family members so often it produced the perfect toxic family environment around Nana’s abusive abandoned son, potentially having given Tenko his quirk and starting leading Tenko down to his fated tragedy of killing his whole family, grooming him and shaping his personality by throwing his family’s hands at him and telling him “hearts naturally heal, keep your grief close” to stop Tomura’s heart from healing.
I wouldn’t put it past AFO to make sure people around Tenko wouldn’t help him after his tragedy too, so he would come tighter into his clutches as “the only person who helped”… he was FIVE!
Everything painful in Shigaraki’s life was AFO’s machination. AFO is Tomura’s lump of lead.
#bkdk#bakudeku#bnha 414#Bnha 404#Bnha 413#kana writes#Izuku loves kacchan#bkdk canon#🥲#Bnha meta#shigaraki Tomura#Shigaraki
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My favorite Joan of Arcs
ok guys, so we all know Joan of Arc is an S-tier saint and historical figure. However, not all Joan of Arcs are depicted equally. Here are my favorite ones because she is an inspiration and an icon !
Joan of Arc by John Everett Millais
The sword, the armor, the red underneath it all... really nice composition. Her lower half being covered and obscured by the heavy red cloth brings to mind the flames consuming her at the stake, very evocative ! Not my favorite face, but eveyrhting else is impeccable.
Joan of Arc by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Something about the pose is really captivating, the blade laid across her face with eyes raised,... I like the conservative color pallet here, again the use of warm colors especialy for her hair beings to mind the flames that kill her.
Joan of Arc enters Orléans by Jean-Jacques Scherrer
This one captures her presence and significance to the people of France really nicely. While I do like the more intimate, close up depictions of her that are more in line with traditional religious artwork, it is importatn to remember Joan of Arc as a figure of history as well. This piece depicts her arrival to Orleans, which would lead to the French defeating the English army in that area. It is triumphant and almost angelic, her face is lit brightly before a white banner that distinguishes her from the crowd of peasants and soldiers. Such a great work of art!
Joan of Arc by Albert Lynch
This one has almost more of a fantasy vibe to it, but I do love the white flowers that surround her amid the white banner and staff she holds. I always loved her face in this one too, despite the expression being relatviely unemotive it conveys a muted sense of conviction and certainty.
ANyways shes kind of my #goat and one of the my personal favorite and most fascinating historical figures, inspiring in every way !
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33. Muriel
Chapter 33 of Too Wise to Woo Peaceably
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For thousands and thousands of years, Muriel’s existence had been a very proper, quiet, brightly lit, lonely sort of reality. Every once in a century (if they were lucky) someone stopped by to drop more paperwork on their desk or ask for a report, but the rest of the time it was just Muriel.
Muriel reading.
Muriel writing.
Muriel transcribing.
Muriel recording.
Muriel reading aloud (just to hear a voice, even if it was their own).
Muriel had found it - although they would obviously never be so impolite as to say it aloud - crushingly boring. The most exciting thing that had ever happened to Muriel before being lucky enough to be sent to Earth was finding an empty matchbox.
So the paradigm shift had been rather drastic.
Life on Earth was so changeable and exciting and strange and fun and frightening. Their experience of emotions, which for so long had pinged predictably between lonely and bored had expanded to catalogue dozens of feelings, some of which Muriel couldn’t even name.
Also, it seemed that thousands of years of repetitive tasks had worn smooth Muriel’s capacity for anticipation. In Heaven, Muriel had learned to expect the expected, which was much less disappointing than hoping to see a friendly face and then having to wait decades and decades for a face to materialise (and when it did, it was hardly ever what Muriel would call friendly).
By contrast, life on Earth was so unpredictable! For example, the previous Wednesday Muriel had had a wonderful day. It had flown by! Muriel had enjoyed spending time with the demon Crowley and arrived back at the bookshop feeling happy and relaxed.
By contrast, this day (also a Wednesday) had felt like it had been several weeks long and somehow it still wasn’t over.
Such a rollercoaster!
And far from the experience of being thrilled at the sight of a matchbox, now Muriel was closing out a day full of action and intrigue and violence and a daring rescue! And they held in their hand a notebook filled with experiences - real experiences - and not the experiences she had read about in non-fiction books, but closerwarmertighter experiences because these belonged to Aziraphale and Crowley, who Muriel knew better than she had ever known anybody.
Obviously that wasn’t saying much.
But still!
These same two were now staring at Muriel. Crowley was looking up at their face. Aziraphale’s eyes were fixed on the notebook, and although the day had taken its toll and he had looked quite pale ever since they had found Crowley, he now looked positively ashen.
“Where did you find that?”
“In a desk drawer?”
“And you read it? All of it?”
“No, of course not!”
“Ah. The first few entries?”
“Oh, no, I skipped to the bookmark!”
Aziraphale's eyes darted to Crowley and then back to the notebook.
“Muriel, that is pri -” His eyes flicked to Crowley again and his voice cracked into a higher register, “...precautionary notetaking!” He cleared his throat and his voice returned to almost-normal. “Nothing to concern yourself with, my dear. Just notes for my own records, for documentation’s sake.”
The high points of his cheeks had turned quite, quite pink.
Crowley’s expression - which had previously been one of detached interest - honed into one of sharp curiosity. Muriel fought the urge to smile. The two had seemed so serious before they had been interrupted, but now Aziraphale looked flustered, and Crowley had the ghost of a familiar expression on his wounded face; something sly and amused and considering.
Muriel turned to Aziraphale, wide-eyed and earnest. “Notetaking! Right! Of course! Well, you take really beautiful notes. And I would know, because I’m- well, I was a scrivener?” They smiled sweetly. “Your notes are extremely detailed and very… evocative!”
Aziraphale made a strangled sound.
Crowley stared.
Muriel grinned.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley spoke slowly. “Tell me you don’t keep a diary.”
“Look, I think we are getting rather off-topic. Let’s not get distracted with-”
“Muriel, read me some of these notes, would you?”
Aziraphale snatched the notebook from Muriel’s hand. “Absolutely not. We have more important things to be discussing than irrelevant notes from decades ago!”
“Decades ago,” repeated Crowley. “What year did you say Muriel? 1940?”
The gleam in his eye told Muriel he knew exactly what year, but they answered anyway.
“1941?”
Crowley’s tone was suspiciously casual. “Right, yes of course. The Blitz.”
“The… Blitz? I don’t think that was in it?” Muriel frowned. They were pretty sure they would have remembered such an interesting-sounding word?
An interesting redness was creeping up Aziraphale’s neck to join the pink in his cheeks.
“No mention of the Blitz.” The corner of Crowley’s lips curved upward. Muriel got the impression he was actually quite enjoying this. “That’s quite the omission.”
“I’m sure I mentioned it,” muttered Aziraphale, who suddenly seemed to realise he was nervously twisting the notebook in his hands. He flattened it out and placed it on a high shelf out of Muriel’s reach.
“Of course,” said Crowley soothingly. “Well Muriel, what was it you thought we should have told you about 1941 if not the Blitz?”
Aziraphale’s hands clamped down on Muriel’s shoulders and began to steer them away from Crowley with a muttered, “We absolutely do not have time for this!”
Muriel dug their heels into the floor and tried to crane around Aziraphale to look back at Crowley.
“It was about your- oh ow!”
Aziraphale’s fingertips were digging into their shoulders. “Muriel, I try to avoid violence where I can but today really has been extremely trying and if you say one more word, so help me-” Muriel felt a laugh bubble up-
They both caught sight of Saraqael at exactly the same time and fell instantly silent. Muriel’s laughter died in their throat.
The archangel looked at Aziraphale and pursed their lips.
“I feel I have been more than patient. Do you expect me to wait in the back room all night? You are supposed to be saying goodbye .”
The way they’d said saying goodbye gave Muriel a Very Bad Feeling.
Aziraphale’s fingers relaxed until they were simply resting on their shoulders in a way that felt comforting. He squeezed their right shoulder lightly before letting go.
“Yes. Of course. We should go.”
A startled hiss from Crowley then, who had shifted to turn his body towards Aziraphale. “You’re not going. Don’t even think about it.”
Saraqael approached, their face grave but not entirely unsympathetic. “You're too intelligent to be so wilfully obtuse. You know as well as anyone there is a reckoning still to come.”
“Fucking wait then until I’m able to join you-!”
“Retribution will not wait for you to return to good health, demon. If we wait, they will come for us.”
“So let them come,” he growled. “At least if they come I can do something.”
Saraqael tilted their head. “The same way you were able to do something when angels went around to your flat?”
Crowley jerked as if struck, and Muriel spoke without thinking. “That’s not very nice!”
“I’m only pointing out the obvious; he can’t come, and we can’t wait. You needn’t defend the demon, he can fight his own battles, Muriel.” They turned to contemplate his injuries. “...Or at least, he usually can.”
Crowley let out a harsh hiss of pain.
Sad.
Angry.
Sad.
Muriel frowned and moved in front of Crowley without really being aware of it.
“Obviously he doesn’t need me to defend him in a fair fight, I would probably be useless in a fight! But also nothing about today has been fair? And this whole day has been really, really horrible actually, and I definitely think now is not a good time to stick the boot in?”
There was a silence. Muriel turned to Aziraphale. “Did I say that properly?”
“Oh, ah, yes!” Aziraphale coughed lightly. “Yes, that’s very- that’s exactly right.”
Saraqael stared at Muriel for a long moment. “I suppose you have a point. Nothing about this has been fair. I have also not been fair,” they conceded, addressing Crowley. “Normally I’d consider you a formidable ally, but currently, as you well know, you’re nothing but a liability, and we can’t wait here any longer.” Then, their voice infinitesimally more gentle, “I know you know I'm right, Crowley.”
Some faint motion caught Muriel’s eye; Aziraphale’s fingers were playing with the hem of his jacket in small nervous movements. The way he was staring at Crowley was so full of yearning Muriel thought it must feel like a physical pull.
Crowley turned away from them all as much as he was able.
Aziraphale looked between Crowley and Muriel, uncertainty written all over his face, and they felt for the kindhearted angel. Muriel was very familiar with that quiet worry. They gave him an encouraging smile. “Well. I suppose we should take our leave. Crowley…?” Aziraphale bent on one knee and a hand hovered over Crowley’s shoulder as if afraid to make contact.
Crowley, face turned away, did not respond.
Aziraphale’s hand pressed lightly, tentatively to Crowley’s shoulder, and when he stood and faced Muriel his eyes were shining. “Muriel, I know you will take good care of him. Thank you.” He took Muriel’s right hand in both of his own. “I will make things right.” It sounded like an oath. His voice was bright and brittle as glass.
Then he walked to stand next to Saraqael, and Muriel blinked, and they were gone.
The room felt very empty. The only sound was the ticking of the clock. Muriel sat down at Crowley’s side, and he shifted slightly so that he was on his back again. Neither of them said anything for a very long time.
And if Muriel noticed tears on the demon’s face, they said nothing about it.
#good omens#ineffable idiots#ineffable#crowley and aziraphale#crowley#aziracrow#aziraphale x crowley#good omens fanfic#good omens fanfiction#aziraphale#good omens fic#good omens fic rec#good omens longfic#go2 fanfic#ineffable husbands fic#ineffable divorce#ineffable husbands#ineffable spouses#ineffable partners#crowley x aziraphale#azicrow#azcrow#good omens crowley#crowley x arizaphale#muriel
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Hiiiii I’ve seen some perfume posts going around and I’ve decided to make one for the old ghouls
Everything is purely based on vibes and what I think fits them best! Era 1- 3 ghouls (:
Alpha:
Smells of something smoky, mechanical. As bright as a factory fire.
- https://www.sirensongelixirs.com/products/archangel-mass-effect-garrus-inspired-perfume-blue-steel-icy-musk-leather-black-pepper-coal-gunpowder-sandalwood-vegan-indie
Blue steel, icy musk, kiss of leather, black pepper, dry coal & hint of gunpowder, citrus, & soft woods.
-https://six-scents.com/products/ierofante
Suede, Gasoline Accord, Nutmeg, Styrax Pyrogene, Smoky Leather, Golden Amber, Cashmeran, Vetiver
Omega:
Like a hug from an old familiar book, something intellectual and dusty
-https://us.akrofragrances.com/products/ink
Vetiver, Black Ink, Jasmine, Birch
- https://nuicobaltdesigns.com/products/bibliophilia?variant=31891723386957
The vanillic scent of aging paper, the tang of fresh ink, venerable bookshelves of oak and mahogany, a sweet trace of pipe tobacco, an undercurrent of faded leather. Wear this subtle potion to invoke spirits of arcane knowledge and empower your perceptions.
Water:
Bright crispy and refreshing. Smells of tropical waters and the feeling of meeting your childhood best friend on a beach
- https://www.smallflower.com/products/outremer-oceane-eau-de-toilette-1_7-fl-oz?variant=37056704610455
Let the scent of ocean mist transport you to the Southern coast of France, where the bright, fresh Mediterranean sea fragrances the air. Oceane is a mix of marine notes that conjures the salty, sultry allure of the beach.
-https://www.sephora.com/product/skylar-salt-air-eau-de-parfum-P456975?skuId=2468445&icid2=seop_2_title
Salt Air is the fragrance of a perfect seascape with notes of sea salt to give you a fresh-out-the-water feeling. Grounding driftwood and green seaweed mingle with light floral notes of water lily for a perfume that smells of endless summers and breezy, beachy days.
Earth:
Like a dark soil. A deep ancient being buried beneath the ground. Ominous greenery
- https://www.poesieperfume.com/featured-collection-ss/enchanted-forest
Notes: ancient hinoki trees shading moss covered stones, playful forest spirits, bone musk, a hint of gunpowder
-https://fantomeperfume.com/products/ruslan
Black spruce, smoky opopanax, oud, fresh cedar, hinoki, dry fir needles, oakmoss, frankincense, black tea.
Air:
Like a breath of fresh air. Air smells like the first deep breath in a national park
- https://www.victorinox.com/global/en/Products/Fragrances/For-Her/Morning-Dew/p/V0000897
Swiss made revitalizing scent interweaving a sheer citrus blend of lemon, bergamot and mandarin with white violet and airy musk.
-https://altraprofuture.com/products/ghost-flower
A maximalist gathering of smokey woods, rich resins and a singular White Lily. Notes of unripe tropical fruits surround the full-bodied floral, bringing an unexpected neon brightness. Bohemian at its heart, this evocative floral is enveloped by a veil of incense, leathery saffron and unifying spice.
Delta:
Something dark and horrifying. Like a terrible atrocity has occurred but you can’t place what makes you feel like something’s watching you
- https://sucreabeille.com/products/seems-legit
Rotten river mud, a few drops of blood, a swirl of tobacco smoke, sweet pumpkin pie, candy corn, tears.
- https://eaudespace.com/products/eau-de-space-the-smell-of-space-100ml
Latex, metallic, fire, gunpowder, rum and bitter almonds
Pebble:
Mossy. the smell of sitting on a rock the day after it rains
-https://www.cbihateperfume.com/0069
The smell of pavement on a rainy day
-https://alkemiaperfumes.com/products/gaea-perfume-oil-forest-loam-ferns-decaying-leaves-lichens-wet-stones
Forest loam under warm spring sunshine, new ferns poking up through decaying leaves, maple sap flowing over lichens, mosses and wet stones at the edge of a vernal pool.
Cowbell:
Warm and sterile. Light a brightly lit well lived in hospital room
- https://www.toskovat.com/product/anarchist-a_/
Top notes: credit cards, snow, whiskey
Heart notes: dirty dollars, ink, candle wax
Base notes: green sacra resin, holy water, old confession room, priest’s clothes, plastic bag
White-collared promises that children follow, a better tomorrow. Only if you work for it
for every tomorrow.
And me, waiting in the cold, snow on my face, rye in my pocket, hoping for answers for a different age.
Society remains dying. And we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
- https://fzotic.com/products/room-237
a bracing vinyl shower curtain note followed by a supernatural green-floral accord that includes wild fleabane and estragon. In the base: whispering aquatic notes that smell like cool steam haunt a blend of soft woods, opoponax, and costus root.
Mist:
Refreshing and feminine. Crisp ocean air on a cold winter night
-https://forstrangewomen.com/products/siren?variant=31095095361633
Siren opens with a salty overtone of Pacific Ocean air and Jasmine vines filled with tiny white blossoms along the coastal landscape. The blend dives deeper into the water with notes of seaweed, driftwood, and ambergris, finished with a bonfire on the beach.
-https://imaginaryauthors.com/products/every-storm-a-serenade?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAzJOtBhALEiwAtwj8tmsMiNIu7KuYJkeTgspW3Noe-Ck6deUEdECrK-ihHLGqGTFPuXcnDRoCChEQAvD_BwE&variant=30276992729165
Danish Spruce, Eucalyptus, Vetiver, Calone, Ambergris, Baltic Sea Mist
Ivy:
Sweet and inviting, like your grandmas garden after she waters it.
-https://margotelena.com/products/poison-ivy-eau-de-parfum
An ode to the powers of nature. Intoxicating notes of sumptuous Bergamot are lavishly laced with blooming florals of Eden Rose and Lily of the Valley, a tangle of Orris Root completes this brush with a dangerous beauty.
- https://www.perfumesclub.us/en/4711/acqua-cologne-blood-orange-basil-eau-de-cologne-spray/p_44880/
Acqua Colonia Blood Orange & Basil combines the aroma of exotic flowering blood oranges with the characteristic essence of basil.
Ifrit:
Warm and sweet. Masculine but comforting, like a hug from someone you love most
- https://www.vixtorm.co.uk/products/lava-cinnamon-b
Balsamic,earth,rich,root,smoke,spice,sweet,warm
- https://www.doctorsweettooth.com/products/cinnamon-bun-perfume-oil-roll-on
Irresistibly sticky and sweet cinnamon buns, the aroma of cinnamon spice and warm flakey pastry dripping with icing wafting through the kitchen
Zephyr:
Spicy, crispy, hurts upon first wiff but is addictive the longer you smell
- https://www.aedes.com/products/menta-y-menta-eau-de-parfum
Moroccan mint, peppermint, mint tea. The name of the perfume menta y menta is repeated like a captivating mantra reminiscent of the movements of the dervishes turning to infinity. menta y menta is definitively a mixted fragrance. Notes: Moroccan mint, tea leaves, citrus, jasmine and roasted coffee
-https://www.etsy.com/listing/836191387/solanum-tomato-leaf-wild-mint
Tomato Leaf, Wild Mint, Blackberries
River:
Dark water, an abandoned dock, secrets only a body of water can hold
-https://alkemiaperfumes.com/products/st-louis-cemetery-1-perfume-oil-moss-stone-cement-dirt
A BROODING OF SPANISH MOSS, CRUMBLING STONE, OLD CEMENT, RED CLAY BRICK, AND GRAVEYARD DIRT
-https://nuicobaltdesigns.com/products/queen-s-bath?variant=39376179724365
Its scent portrait balances cool floral notes of lotus, pikake, and tuberose with bracing springwater and moss-covered stone. Wear for bright blessings and to facilitate deep meditation.
Lake:
The inviting sound of waves crashing into the shore on an empty beach
-https://juniperridge.com/collections/perfume-cologne/products/redwood-mist-cologne
Fog Drenched Forest, Fresh Rain, Crisp Coastal Air
- https://www.poesieperfume.com/fragrance/full-moon
fragrant white rice, shiso leaf, bitter yuzu zest, hinoki wood, green tea, lakewater
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Gary Peters — Beginnings: Collected Pedal Steel Works (Scissor Tail)
Front and center on the cover of Beginnings is a pedal steel guitar. Behind it looms a futuristic city, something that might have adorned the cover of a mid-20th century science fiction paperback or an externally funded Sun Ra LP. The combination of images tells you what you need to know, and maybe offers a bit of what you need. The pedal steel is the main instrument Englishman Gary Peters’ main instrument throughout the LP. But the optimism projected by that title and the gleaming metropolis is also a potent reminder that in living memory people thought that a better life lay in the future, not in attempts to reanimate a brightly lit but remorselessly cruel past. Yes, we’ll take our aesthetic advancement with a side order of faith in human progress, thank you very much.
Happily, the music on the LP stuck inside that sleeve appeals to the ears as strongly as the painting courts the eyes and heart. Beginnings is entirely instrumental, and it represents an introduction to Peters’ work on the pedal steel guitar. That’s certainly not the only thing he does. There are 52 releases on his personal Bandcamp on which he plays guitars, mandolin, banjo and sings; he’s also written books on aesthetics, philosophy and musical improvisation. His approach to the instrument is not bound by its history, which is closely bound to country and western music. Played slowly through some effects on “Caged,” the pedal steel strikes some long, repeated notes that sound like a psaltery. But he doesn’t evade it, either; there’s no denying the country vibe generated by two dueling guitars swooping around each other on “One On One.”
Sometimes, Peters adapts the instrument to another genre. The titular track suspends some acoustic harmonics and string scrapes that betray a working familiarity with Derek Bailey’s techniques over a theme that, if fitted with words, could find its place in a Protestant hymnal. And on “Redemption,” the pedal steel courses melodically through some acoustic strumming, just like a singer’s voice might; you can bet that this guy has spent some quality time with singer-songwriter LPs and inside of folk clubs. But he isn’t confined by genre. The rhythm of “Chromatic Suspension” feels like a slowed-down tango, and the flourishes near its end could resonate with a sung lament, but the elongated notes that swirl around that stately cadence feel more like evocations of flight patterns than statements of a particular musical style. Like Chuck Johnson and Susan Alcorn, Peters’ transcendence of pedal steel convention arise from a determination to make music that is personal and has integrity on its own terms.
Bill Meyer
#gary peters#Beginnings: Collected Pedal Steel Works#scissor tail#bill meyer#albumreview#dusted magazine#pedal steel guitar
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2023 in Movies, My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)
10. NIMONA – we almost didn’t get 2023’s most socially important animated feature. When Disney acquired Twentieth Century Fox and everything went tits up for its various affiliates, animation house Blue Sky Studios bit the dust just as this long-awaited adaptation of influential She-Ra & the Princesses of Power showrunner ND Stevenson’s beloved fantastical graphic novel from Spies In Disguise directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quaine was nearing completion, and it looked like it might never see the light of day … at least until Annapurna Pictures and Netflix swooped in to the rescue, snapping it up, funding its completion and getting it out on streaming to the delight of all of us who’d thought it was essentially LOST. The end result is just about THE VERY BEST movie I’ve ever seen about the struggles of being non-binary and not conforming to any set gender norms in modern society, viewed through the fantasy prism of a shapeshifting “teenager” who effortlessly steals their own film. Chloe Grace Moretz is perfectly cast as the voice of the titular misfit anarchist troublemaker supernatural being, who finds an opportunity for some fresh chaos by joining forces with Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a newly-knighted commoner who becomes public enemy number one after being viciously framed for the murder of the queen of a futuristic medieval society (really!) built around chivalry and the righteous smiting of monsters. Ballister’s determined to prove his innocence, while Nimona just wants to create havoc, while they’re both being hunted by his former fellow knights, led by his ex-boyfriend Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang of The Try Guys), a direct descendent of the Kingdom’s legendary original monster slaying heroine Gloreth. It’s a gloriously original piece of work, the animation presented in a truly GORGEOUS brightly coloured 2-dimensional 3D graphic style that at once riffs on the ingenious visual inventiveness of the Spider-Verse movies while also creating something COMPLETELY NEW but simultaneously lovably reminiscent of the classic Blue Sky cartoony look, while the frequently chaotic action is just as infectiously anarchic as the lead character herself. It’s also fiendishly brilliant in its subversive message and twisty logic, making the viewer question what being a monster REALLY means, and if what we SEE someone as REALLY IS their true identity. Needless to say, Moretz runs away with the whole film, while the character of Nimona herself is a truly ENCHANTING and thoroughly inspiring creation who’s destined to become an iconic hero for non-binary and trans kids around the world, but Ahmed and Yang are clearly having a great time here too, as is Frances Conroy as the Director of the Kingdom’s knights, having a blast bringing icy menace to her deliciously duplicitous villainous turn. It’s an incredibly FUN movie, shot through with a rich and rewardingly infectious sense of humour, taking classic fantasy tropes and turning them on their head in new and wonderfully inventive ways, but it knows JUST when to get serious too, and there are some powerful moments when it grabs hold of your heart and DESTROYS YOU emotionally, especially in the incredibly evocative climax. Ultimately this ISN’T an overly faithful adaptation of Stevenson’s original graphic novel – he was in a darker place when he wrote and drew it, going through his own complicated struggle with his gender identity before finally making his personal transition in 2022 – but it certainly is rewardingly true to the book’s spirit and deep-down message of inclusion, positivity and being true to your core identity, which makes it one of the most important animated films to be made in a very long time. I’m so happy it’s received the TRULY MASSIVE amount of attention and LOVE it’s garnered since its release, and I thank Netflix and everybody else who made the effort to get this movie out after all when Disney seemed so reluctant to take a chance on it. This deserves to be seen, it NEEDS to be seen, and I urge you to check it out.
9. RENFIELD – my horror movie of 2023 sits very comfortably in the genre’s sub-category that I’ve always loved best, a jet black comedy of particularly rare quality and gleeful abandon that made it one of the most entertaining viewing experiences I had this past year. Yeah, like the best horror comedies it has enough genuine darkness that it CAN be genuinely scary when it wants to be, but given the sheer (literal) batshit craziness of its premise this is a BONKERS FILM, and so it wisely embraces its sheer lampoonery to full effect without reservation. Not that it’s overly surprising – director Chris McKay cut his teeth helming The Lego Batman Movie before branching out into live action with Amazon’s criminally underrated time travelling alien invasion blockbuster The Tomorrow War, both of which were excellent vehicles for him to master the gloriously anarchic style that he finally unleashes fully formed for this brilliant alternative sequel to the classic Universal Dracula movie with Bela Lugosi. That being said, the big box office draw here was always going to be Nicolas Cage, who pays loving tribute to Lugosi as the infamous Count, kicking into his typical “manic” setting to chew the scenery with ruthless abandon and, as a result, frequently steal the show right out from under Nicholas Hoult as his titular ghoul manservant, the long-suffering Robert Montague Renfield, who just wants the opportunity to finally find a real, simple life for himself and thinks he can pull it off in modern day New Orleans, only for his Master to himself become inspired by Renfield’s newfound ambition and set his sights on world domination with the help of the Lobos, a brutal local crime family. Thankfully Hoult DOES manage to hold his own in his scenes with Cage, as always proving ADEPTLY talented enough to deliver another winningly endearing performance while playing perhaps the single most pathetic specimen of his career to date … meanwhile the thoroughly adorable Awkwafina once again proves she’s well on the way to becoming the PREMIER kooky goofball female comedic lead in Hollywood as Rebecca Quincy, the one truly honest cop in one of the most corrupt police forces in all of America, who winds up falling for Renfield’s hangdog charm and puppy-dog eyes as he inadvertently becomes the key to her quest to bring down the Lobos after they murdered her legendary detective father. Shohreh Aghdashloo brings a much needed touch of class to proceedings as Bellafrancesca Lobo, the family’s seductively sly matriarch, while Space Force and Sonic the Hedgehog’s Ben Schwarz is a frequent non-PC laugh riot all on his own as her entitled constant disappointment of a son Teddy, and Ghosts’ Brandon Scott Jones is lovably flaky as the leader of Renfield’s endearingly pathetic support group for people trapped in toxic co-dependent relationships. This genuinely is a DEEPLY FUNNY FILM, perfectly geared up for a maximum hit count with the one-liners, in-jokes and situations, but then there’s no surprise here since writer Ryan Ridley (adapting a pitch from The Walking Dead’s original creator Robert Kirkman) is a seasoned veteran of TV comedy, particularly well known as an alumnus of the similarly edgy and madcap Rick & Morty, and this carries a lot of the same twisted, anarchic charm as that rightly beloved series, just in a much more big budget live action form. It’s also SPECTACULARLY bloodthirsty when it wants to be, the welcome reliance on what are clearly LARGELY physical effects meaning that this movie is another gore-hound’s wet dream, even if the film does mostly play the horror elements for laughs throughout, and it’s an impressively inventive and chaotic beast in THAT regard too, delivering some of the most gloriously OTT splatter-fuelled action sequences I’ve seen in a good while whenever Renfield eats a bug and gets an ultraviolent power boost. Altogether this is definitely some of the most fun I had at the cinema this past year, and I’ll admit I wouldn’t mind a bit more of this if they DID fancy trying the sequel road after all …
8. LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND – Mr Robot was one of THE all-time great TV revelations of the 2010s, creator/showrunner Sam Esmail becoming a genuinely challenging counter-culture voice responsible for hard-hitting, thought-provoking material which really shook up the status quo. Shocking, then, that his only real notable foray onto the BIG screen was with the offbeat but ultimately overlooked romantic comedy fantasy Comet, but that balance has FINALLY been redressed almost a decade later with this powerhouse leftfield tour-de-force dystopian apocalyptic thriller from Netflix. Adapting the already hard-hitting, critically acclaimed novel by Rumaan Alam, Esmail wastes no time in weaving a spell of subtly inexplicable unease as we follow a family of well-to-do New Yorkers who take the opportunity to get out of the city for a break on the coast after renting someone else’s house for a long weekend, only for the owners to suddenly return in the night with tales of a blackout and more bafflingly worrying events unfolding in the outside world, hoping they can stay too until they know more. Feelings of distrust and paranoia immediately settle in and refuse to leave even as the two families warily get to know one another, but then things are getting WEIRD – the internet and TV are DOWN, drones are dropping indecipherable foreign propaganda from the skies and there are sudden bursts of head-splitting noise coming from SOMEWHERE … all too slowly it becomes clear that something truly terrible is happening, and that there’s more than just rumoured cyber-attacks at work here. This really is CHILD’S PLAY for Esmail, who’s clearly having a wild old time crafting a twisting, unnervingly unsettling suspense thriller which sticks the knife in and keeps on twisting as things get more worryingly desperate, all while casting a deeply critical eye on the state of modern society, capitalism, pop culture and pervading racial and social divides. Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke are both typically EXCELLENT as Amanda and Clay Sandford, the white liberal upper class couple who find their deep-seated preconceptions forming their perceptions as they’re forced to deal with the as always truly MAGNIFICENT Mahershala Ali’s cultured stockbroker G.H. Scott and his brash, opinionated daughter Ruth (Industry and Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Myha’la), while there’s a brief but unsurprisingly POTENT turn from Kevin Bacon as Danny, the exact kind of paranoid, doomsday prepping redneck who’s probably gonna survive this coming apocalypse JUST FINE. There’s SO MUCH to unpack and explore in this film, it’s definitely one of those film’s that rewards repeat viewing with neat little twists, fascinatingly subtle hints and clues which lead to insidiously profound payoffs and more sneaky little easter eggs than you could EVER spot on a single viewing, leading to a truly HORRIFYING existential climax which will lead to many a sleepless night given the way this world seems to be heading. Speculative science fiction or worryingly potent prophecy? Only time will tell, I guess …
7. SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE – the animated feature that completely CHANGED THE GAME at the end of the last DECADE getting a sequel was pretty much a no-brainer, but it didn’t make the wait any easier, and after COVID put a dent in so many of the big releases coming forward this was definitely one of the most painful delays for me. Finally getting to see it was, therefore, ONE HELL of a cathartic release of tension, so much that even later discovering that not everything was exactly GOOD in the production studios at the time (namely the animators being crunched LIKE CRAZY by the ever-shifting nature of the vision they were being asked to realise, leading to a toxic working environment for many, which is NEVER cool) still didn’t dent my truly AWED appreciation for the finished film. Seriously, this is THE BEST animated feature we saw this past year, and ALREADY a strong candidate for best animated feature of THIS DECADE (although that’s likely to change if the incoming sequel turns out to be as good, if not BETTER, which it probability WILL). Honestly, I could end the review right here just with that recommendation, it’s GENUINELY THAT GOOD, people. But I still got a job to do here, so … once again, Miles Morales (Dope’s Shameik Moore), the new Spider-Man in his world, is at the centre of a whirlwind of narrative chaos as a new arch-nemesis he never knew he had emerges to hold him to account for what he did when he destroyed the Kingpin’s interdimensionally destructive supercollider in the first film – the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a former scientist at Alchemax who got turned into a walking mass of unstable wormholes when he got hit with the full brunt of all that quantum energy. As he embarks on his quest to take his misguided revenge on Miles, his interdimensional spree of carnage leads our Spider-Man to become connected with a Multiverse-spanning cadre of Spider-People, led by the spectacularly stern Spider-Man of Earth 2099, Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), who police the various Earths in order to combat and remove “anomalies” that arise to threaten them … and
the Spot is a BIG ONE of those. Oh, and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), the Spider-Woman Miles most definitely fell for in the first film, has started working with them too after her own father, police Captain George Stacy (Shea Wigham), who’s had it in for their Spider-Woman after she was mistakenly framed for the death of their Earth’s Peter Parker, discovered her secret identity and made her run from her own dimension as a result …yeah, it sounds pretty complicated, but this whole twisted labyrinth is, nonetheless, unveiled in the exact same super-slick, viewer-friendly way the first film pulled off its own exposition, which just makes more room for all the FUN as we get to follow our old favourites and a whole host of fascinating NEW incarnations of our favourite arachnid-themed superhero on their various insane adventures. This is JUST AS SPECTACULAR in terms of action, character work, pure invention and sheer, unrivalled SPECTACLE as its predecessor, in many places upping the wow factor SIGNIFICANTLY (particularly during a particularly colourful visit to the distinctly Indian-flavoured alternative version of New York called Mumbattan, which is the stomping ground of one of the film’s most memorable new Spider-folk, the irrepressibly chipper Pavitr Prabhakar, voiced by Deadpool’s thoroughly brilliant Karan Soni). Indeed, the most fun we have throughout this movie is definitely getting to hang out not only with our old friends but all these newcomers too, with Pavitr being joined by the fascinating likes of the very coolest Spider-Woman after Gwen, Jess Drew (Awkward Black Girl’s Issa Rae), digital avatar Margo Kess/Spider-Byte (The Hunger Games’ Amandla Stenberg), overly-angsty living Todd McFarlane comic panel Ben Reily/Scarlet Spider (the incomparable Andy Samberg) and even Mayday Parker, the impossibly adorable new baby daughter of Jake Johnson’s welcome returning fan-favourite OG Peter Parker (and, of course, Miles’ original mentor from the first movie), who’s ALREADY got her spider-powers, while Miguel is a FANTASTIC character, brooding like a champ and sometimes proving to be as much of an EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE villain in the story as the Spot, especially once his beef
with Miles is revealed … but at the end of the day, ALL of these new arrivals thoroughly PALE in comparison to one of this film’s BEST secret weapons, Hobie Brown/Spider Punk (Daniel Kaluuya getting to use his normal accent for once), a misfit non-conformist anarchist JOY with one hell of a problem with authority (Miguel’s IN PARTICULAR) who effortlessly steals our hearts just as much as EVERY SINGLE SCENE he’s in. That being said, it really is SO GREAT having our old crew back – Miles and Gwen are SO SWEET, their chemistry is just OFF THE BLOODY CHARTS without them even trying, and I adore every single scene of them together, never mind their own individual storylines (it’s PARTICULARLY great getting to see Gwen herself get a SIGNIFICANTLY enlarged narrative presence this time round, becoming JUST as important in this story as Miles himself), while any time we get to spend with Johnson’s Peter is pure gold, and we get to spend even more time with Miles’ wonderful, loving, hard-working parents Jeff and Rio Morales (Brian Tyree Henry and Lauren Velez), which is ALWAYS a plus. Needless to say, this is a whole LOAD of fun, shot through with the same classic winning humour, wild invention, visionary experimentation, thematic resonance and pure geeky in-joke easter egg-packing FAN SERVICE that made the first film such a winner, but it also comes through BIG TIME with more of those wicked FEELS, this time ramping things up FAR MORE with the serious emotional HEFT as we’re presented with some truly DEVASTATING character arcs whose after effects are gonna be felt for A VERY LONG TIME after. The fact that this is just the first half of a two-part SAGA, with Beyond the Spider-Verse currently in the works, means that we can look forward to PLENTY MORE, although here’s hoping that this time they give their animators a little more BREATHING ROOM to get it done right WITHOUT having to break their backs in the process, yeah? Then again, with the writers’ AND actors’ strike barely over, the likelihood of THAT is pretty strong …
6. OPPENHEIMER – really, is there ANY SURPRISE over this placing so high? You know what a MASSIVE Christopher Nolan fan I am, and him making a proper EPIC historical biopic examining the career and achievements of the father of nuclear power was GUARANTEED to not only grab my attention but also thoroughly please the serious high-brow cinema appreciator buried inside me over all that action junkie, superhero fanboy and sci-fi-nut stuff … but yeah, this was ALWAYS gonna be a fucking amazing film, wasn’t it? Nolan’s most regular acting collaborator (outside of Michael Caine, anyway), Cillian Murphy, stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who spearheaded the Manhattan Project which led to the creation of the very first viable nuclear weapons which were then used by the American military to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and end the Second World War. On the surface he seems like a driven, visionary man with a real fascination for the science he’s pioneering, but also a cool pragmatism which makes him the ideal man to usher in this astounding technological achievement, but as the film unfolds in Nolan’s typical non-linear narrative fashion we discover a far more complex man than we first supposed, Murphy unveiling Oppenheimer’s deep-seeded fears about the frighteningly real dangers his Project could give birth to. After all, he may have been the father of the Modern World, but this particular creation also gave rise to a century of technological horrors and a whole new, long lasting Cold War. Anyway, this is UNDENIABLY the greatest performance of Murphy’s career, if he doesn’t at least get an Oscar nod for this there’s no justice in the world, while, in typical Nolan fashion, the rest of the rich ensemble cast is a genuine embarrassment of riches, from Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s long-suffering wife Kitty and Florence Pugh as his ill-fated Communist mistress Jean Tatlock to Matt Damon as his nominal “boss”, Gen. Leslie Groves, Kenneth Brannagh as his mentor and idol Niels Bohr, the mighty Tom Conti as the even MORE awesome Albert Einstein and even Robert Downey Jr. in a particularly KEY role as Oppenheimer’s one-time colleague and later rival, Atomic Energy commissioner Lewis Strauss, who dominates the parallel narrative throughline presented over the course of the film as his own efforts to discredit and destroy the great man ultimately end up coming back to bite his own political ambitions. To a man, they’re all as MAGNIFICENT as the rest of the film, which is a fascinating journey into the dark heart of one of the greatest but also most historically and socially destructive scientific achievements in the history of the world, the man who ushered it in, and the hell he then went through afterwards when he then tried to make sure we didn’t make it SO MUCH WORSE once we had the power to destroy ourselves. It’s a film that raises extremely tough questions, and what answers we ARE able to come to are every bit as terrifying as any of the consequences that are either seen or merely suggested here. Nolan is, as always, A MASTER in the director’s chair as much as in the screenwriter’s corner, bringing his usual visionary flair and artistic brilliance to craft yet more of his trademark IMAX-rocking BEAUTY and opulence, while his sneaky, snaky narrative shenanigans once again frame things in ingenious, challenging and sometimes emotionally DEVASTATING ways before we’re brought to the bittersweet denouement. Tenet composer Ludwig Goransson’s expansive, evocative score is, ultimately, just the icing on the cake, making an already amazing film even more noteworthy. If this ain’t the toast of the Awards Season they really didn’t pay attention …
5. THE CREATOR – if ever there could be a film that would decry the state of the modern blockbuster blueprint, it’s this one. Seriously, that fact that something THIS fresh and original could flop in a market so saturated with cookie-cutter franchises and exhausted expanded-universe IPs just says it all, doesn’t it? Writer-director Gareth Edwards (along with screenwriter Chris Weitz, who previously worked with him on Rogue One) has had a look at our encroaching terror at the pervading rise of AI, taken a step back and looked at what COULD potentially happen if we actually end up OVERREACTING and blaming it for something which is actually entirely our fault … cue a troubling delve into a dystopian future where, after the accidental nuking of Los Angeles due to defence-Ai programming human error, the West has uniformly turned again artificial intelligence and set about waging an uncompromising war against it and the sentient androids it’s spawned. These survivors have fled to the more sympathetic nations of New Asia, but the oppressive machinations of the Western coalition and their obsessive hunt for the AI’s creator, Nimata, have given birth to a terrifying weapon, the deadly orbital weapons platform NOMAD. John David Washington is Joshua Taylor, a US Army sergeant who lost an arm and a leg in the LA blast, and then what innocence he had left in a subsequent ill-fated infiltration mission in New Asia, who’s drawn back into the fight by his former commanders when evidence emerges that his supposedly dead wife, Maya (an enjoyably complex turn from Gemma Chan), the daughter of Nimata he met and fell in love with on that mission, is still alive and in possession of a devastating weapon which they need to get hold of before it can be used to destroy the West. Going in with a special forces team, Joshua discovers that this so-called weapon is actually Alphie, an android child (newcomer Madeleine Yuna) with the power to control electronic devices, and he finds that the truth is nothing like what was led to believe … Edwards and Weitz have created a spellbinding science-fiction MASTERPIECE here, a breathlessly thrilling and expansively EPIC science fiction war saga which takes some challenging and thought-provoking ideas and heavy themes and takes a very interesting direction in their interpretation while posing profound questions about the nature of humanity, morality and love, all while delivering a truly intoxicating masterclass in peerless world-building, brought to astonishing living, breathing reality through some of the most seamlessly engineered visual effects I have EVER seen in a feature film (then again, Edwards DID start out as a visual effects artist, so he knows the game INSIDE AND OUT). Washington is an unusually complex, multi-layered hero as Joshua, fallible and driven by selfish desires but ultimately finding something much bigger than himself to believe in, while Yuna is a revelation, a sweet and inspiring little light in the darkness, while mighty support from the likes of Alison Janney, Ken Watanabe, Marc Manchaca (Ozark, The Outsider, No One Gets Out Alive) and Ralph Ineson rounds things out nicely. Powerful, inventive, affecting and endlessly thought-provoking, this deserves to be remembered not only as one of the most rewardingly original and genuinely brilliant movies of 2023, but of the entire decade, and I think it’s a genuine crime it wasn’t a massive hit like it deserved to be. Audiences really did SLEEP on this one …
4. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING, PART ONE – really, there should be NO SURPRISE that this topped off my list for the summer. I may have grown up with James Bond, and I LOVE the Jason Bourne movies too, but the Tom Cruise-starring cinematic adaptation of the classic TV spy show has been MY ABSOLUTELY FAVOURITE espionage-based film franchise since JJ Abrams established the tried-and-tested formula for the series with 2006’s seminal classic third entry. That being said, the franchise didn’t find its strongest voice until Cruise brought Jack Reacher writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, The Way of the Gun) on board for the dynamite fifth instalment, Rogue Nation, which was so fucking brilliant and well received by both critics AND audiences that Paramount saw fit to retain his services on the EVEN BETTER follow-up, Fallout, which came DAMN CLOSE to equalling the heights of Sam Mendes’ Bond masterpiece Skyfall … so of course it was a NO-BRAINER for him to return once again for this two-part intended send-off for Cruise’s seemingly immortal superspy, Ethan Hunt, as he not only faces his deadliest foes to date, but also a very dark ghost from his own past. As with its predecessor, this is another spy flick where knowing as little as possible going in works best for your enjoyment, suffice to say that this time Ethan and his loyal friends, master hacker Luther Stickel (the legendary Ving Rhames), tech wizard Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and former MI6 spook Ilsa Faust (Dune’s Rebecca Ferguson), really have their work cut out for them when they’re forced to go rogue yet again in order to track down and deactivate a supermassive AI program known as the Entity which has become fully self-aware, broken free of its constraints and is now wreaking havoc throughout the internet and beyond.
Unfortunately this seemingly unstoppable digital force has enlisted the aid of a particularly dangerous “avatar” to represent its concerns in the real world, a mysterious terrorist known as Gabriel (Ozark’s Esai Morales) who seems to be following a dark agenda of his own. The ensuing race against time takes in a grand tour of impressively picturesque locales, a collection of winningly well-written characters and a series of knuckle-whitening, visually arresting action sequences that have long since proven to be McQuarrie’s bread-and-butter just as much as his ingeniously twisty labyrinthine plots and sparky, sharp-witted quickfire dialogue, again showing that he really is THE VERY BEST filmmaker that Paramount could EVER have found for this franchise. Needless to say, Cruise is as spectacular as ever in what really has become the very best role he’s EVER HAD, by this point basically just INHABITING Ethan’s easy charm, admirably solid, unswerving moral principles and truly INCREDIBLE physical prowess, delivering equally well in the truly insane stunt-work which WE KNOW FULL WELL IS ALL HIM as he does in the acting stakes; meanwhile Rhames, Pegg and Ferguson once again shine bright in their now comfortably well-established roles while still managing to bring fresh depths and interesting new arcs to their well-worn characters, we get a lot more of The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby’s intriguing notorious second-generation arms dealer Alanna Mitsopoulis/the White Widow, and it’s an IMMENSE pleasure to finally welcome back the first film’s prickly yet verbose antagonist Eugene Kitteridge (Henry Czerny), Ethan and Luther’s former boss in the IMF, in a far much expansive role this time round. Meanwhile the franchise newcomers all impress as well, Morales easily proving to be the series’ VERY BEST VILLAIN to date as he menaces, seduces and murders his way through the story, brutally tearing our heroes’ lives apart as he pursues his mysterious master’s nefarious ends, while we get a brand new series heroine in the form of Grace (the MCU’s own Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell), a sly and duplicitous professional thief who essentially stumbles into the thick of the action before becoming Ethan’s EXTREMELY unwilling accomplice; meanwhile there’s strong support from Shea Wigham and Greg Tarzan Davis (who previously worked with Cruise on Top Gun: Maverick) as Briggs and Degas, a pair of US Intelligence agents sent to chase down the rogue IMF crew, and Cary Elwes as Denlinger, a particularly duplicitous US Director of National Intelligence. And then there’s Paris … ah Paris, my sweet, psychotic demon child. Guardians of the Galaxy’s Pom Klementieff actually gets to be FRENCH again as Gabriel’s unpredictably lethal pet killer, and she’s an absolute JOY throughout, so delightfully unhinged that she makes every second of her screentime an undeniable pleasure, and as a result she’s BY FAR my favourite character in this. Altogether, this is about as perfect as spy cinema gets, McQuarrie and his cast and crew working tirelessly to deliver not only the very best film in the series to date, but also the best film I saw all summer, very nearly my action cinema highlight of the whole year, and one of the VERY BEST spy movies I have EVER SEEN. Given the shake-up from the Strikes it’s not clear if we’re REALLY gonna get to see Dead Reckoning Part Two in May 2025 like it’s been slated since getting pushed back from its summer ’24 release,but whenever it DOES finally arrive, I KNOW it’ll be worth the wait … it just has to be bloody INCREDIBLE to be better than THIS ONE …
3. JOHN WICK CHAPTER 4 – and so, it has come to this … honestly, who’d have thunk it, back in 2014 when the first movie came out and (rightly) became a surprise sleeper hit that went a long way to revitalising Keanu Reeves’ career for a SECOND TIME as he found THE GREATEST ROLE HE’S EVER HAD, that almost a decade later it would’ve blown up into something THIS BIG?!!! I mean sure, back then it definitely was The Little Movie That Could, but still … well, after two increasingly BIG sequels which each maintained a surprisingly impressive level of quality throughout, the fourth and final John Wick chapter is finally here, and GODS is it good. I mean it’s FUCKING BRILLIANT. It just might be THE BEST ONE YET. Certainly it’s proving to be the most well received, landing BY FAR the best rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it genuinely seems like almost nobody has ANYTHING bad to say about this movie, even the CRITICS largely seem to LIKE this one. And it deserves every lick of love it’s been getting, this is definitely both the pinnacle of the series AND a perfect swansong for the greatest assassin in cinema history. I don’t wanna give too much away about the plot, even those who HAVE seen what’s come before shouldn’t be spoiled, even if these movies have never exactly been SHAKESPEARE in their construction they do still frequently leave you guessing in the best ways as to how they’ll turn out, and this one is definitely no exception. I’ll just say that, after all the killing John’s done to get to this point, his one-man-war with the international criminal network’s High Table has finally reached its zenith as Winston (the great Ian McShane), the Manager of the newly-demolished Manhattan Continental Hotel, gives him the means to finally find a way to get out and find peace while he’s still alive – namely by challenging the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgard), a high-ranking Table member who’s taken it upon himself to rid the criminal underworld of the “cancer” that John and his constant disrespect have wrought, to single combat in a ritualistic duel in order to take his place at The Table should he win. The
subsequent battle that ensues as John sets about facilitating this duel and the fallout that follows as he fights his way to that final, fateful meeting fuels the film in HIGH STYLE, so that even though this movie’s almost THREE HOURS LONG it never feels overlong or outstays its welcome. Once again the cast are all ON FIRE, Reeves once again proving that he is just about THE BEST LOOKING and most interesting action star working in Hollywood today when he’s mowing down endless bad guys with a stoic expression and the odd deadpan response, the role once again VERY MUCH playing to his strengths, while McShane and Laurence Fishburne (returning once again as the dethroned Bowery King) are both on fine form throughout, and it’s both a pleasure and privilege but also a genuine heartbreaking SHAME to watch the late Lance Reddick deliver one of his very last performances as Charon, the noble and quietly charismatic Concierge of the Manhattan Continental (at least he also shot one more turn as the character for the upcoming Ana de Armas-starring spinoff feature Ballerina, so it’s not QUITE the end); meanwhile the newcomers all serve admirably as well, with Skarsgard particularly impressing as one of the franchise’s best villains to date, slimy, entitled and exquisitely arrogant, the kind of Big Bad you just LOVE to hate, Wynnona Earp’s Shamier Anderson is a delightful revelation as Mr Nobody, a precocious up-and-coming hitman talent who certainly has a whole lot of potential for a possible future spinoff franchise of his own within this larger universe, Donnie Yen excels as usual as Cain, a former friend of John’s that the Marquis brings out of forced retirement in order to take the unkillable Baba Yaga out (clearly the filmmakers saw his blind badass take in Rogue One and they were like yeah, let’s have a whole lot more of THAT), Hiroyuki Sanada once more delivers effortless class and cool gravitas as Koji, the honourable and principled Manager of the Osaka Continental, and Scott Adkins is viciously impressive but also thoroughly surprising in an almost unrecognisable prosthetic getup as Killa Harkan, the brutish Head of the High Table in Berlin. In the end, though, we’re once again here primarily to MARVEL at all the action exploits on display while wallowing in some of the richest and most well-crafted world-building there’s EVER BEEN on the big screen – this is a thoroughly fascinating universe, realised with
exquisite precision with so many cool little winks and nods and in-jokes to make the geeks among us grin and chuckle with sheer joy over the immense bounty on display, while veteran stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski once again wrangles some of the VERY BEST cinematic action EVER COMMITTED TO FILM in a series of astonishing and punishing set-pieces bravely executed with nary a visual effect in sight. There are almost TOO MANY cool action beats in this movie to count, although the final BIG sequence, in which John fights his way up the spectacular but infamously punishing Stairs of Montmartre in Paris against an endless onslaught of thugs all determined to not let him reach the top, which includes one of the BIGGEST belly laughs I have EVER HAD at the cinema in my life, as much just over the joke’s sheer, ingenious AUDACITY, has to be the film’s undeniable highlight (closely followed by a genuinely INSANE run/gun/drive chase/shootout/fight sequence through the sheer chaos of the traffic around the Arc de Triomphe – every single one of these sequences is thrilling, they’re adrenaline fuelled and each crafted with such precision but also brilliantly varied inventiveness that it NEVER leads to vicarious battle fatigue. Best of all, though, as with the previous film’s there’s a surprising amount of soul and heart and heft to the film too, which ultimately leads to a climax which is both immensely satisfying but also pretty devastating in its emotional power. Altogether then, this was EASILY my action movie of the year, a fitting climax to an franchise which has come to SET THE BENCHMARK for this entire genre, and, honestly, just a damn fine movie in its own right.
2. NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU – the scariest movie I saw in 2023 is a very strange beast indeed, a genuinely original and very leftfield piece of work despite tackling one of the most classic movie plot tropes out there – the alien invasion of a small American town. What makes this such a noteworthy piece of work is that this film plays almost ENTIRELY without dialogue … SERIOUSLY, throughout the entire film’s run there’s only a SINGLE line of actual spoken dialogue delivered by its lead, the rest of the film relies entirely on sound effects and Joseph Trapanese’s atmospheric score alongside visual storytelling cues to gets its narrative across. It’s an incredibly brave prospect and one which I’ll admit I wasn’t even EXPECTING when I first sat down to watch Hulu’s most blindingly successful offering of the past year, it kind of snuck up on me realising that nobody was actually SAYING anything, but I still knew EXACTLY what was happening. This is because there’s ONE HELL of a writer-director at the helm of this project – I’ve been a big fan of Brian Duffield for a while now, having really loved his screenplay work in The Babysitter, Underwater and Love & Monsters, so when he dropped his actual FEATURE DIRECTING DEBUT in the middle of the Pandemic with 2020’s ingenious jet black teen comedy horror Spontaneous I was already onboard and in the aftermath simply COULD NOT WAIT to see what he’d do once he got his hands on a budget decent enough to actually deliver the kind of films he’d already been WRITING. But even so, this one STILL left me shocked by just HOW FUCKING AMAZING it actually is, seriously, this is almost certainly THE MOST IMPRESSIVE movie I’ve seen in the past year, and DEFINITELY its most important from a filmmaking standpoint. The story itself revolves almost EXCLUSIVELY around a slightly odd young woman named Brynn (Booksmart and Dopesick’s Kaitlyn Dever) living a seemingly idyllic but ultimately lonely life in her isolated home on the outskirts of a small town which seems to have universally shunned her for some initially unknown past crime … which means that she knows full well that there will, indeed, be NO ONE coming to her rescue when, one night, an alien walks into her home and starts tearing the place up using devastating telekinetic powers. She
manages to escape after accidentally killing the creature, but this simply makes things worse as, when morning comes, she discovers that the whole town is in the middle of a subtle but TERRIFYING alien invasion and that they seem to have marked her as a particular threat. From this beautifully simple starting point, Duffield has crafted a simply PERFECT scary movie, exquisitely paced and relentlessly driven as we hit the ground running the moment night falls after that initial time taken to establish Brynn’s place in the story, and he never lets off the brakes again until we reach the end. This is a genuinely TERRIFYING piece of sci-fi horror, with the varied creatures in particular presented in impressively near flawless standards of CGI which really should be used as a major benchmark moving forward with the artform, while the frequent and substantial knuckle-whitening set-pieces are executed with a precision that verges on the simply RUTHLESS throughout. It all plays out with a surprising denouement which feels cathartically PERFECT for everything that came before once you think about it a little, and the whole endeavour is aided ENORMOUSLY by the MASSIVE contribution of the film’s star herself – this is essentially a one woman show, and Dever easily proves the equal of the task, delivering an immensely potent performance that makes the striking lack of dialogue an ultimate significant VIRTUE since she’s able to convey SO MUCH with just a look, no matter the scene, so you find yourself latching onto her in the first ten minutes, meaning that when it goes from bad to worse to truly NIGHTMARISH you’re thoroughly invested in her desperate fight for survival. This really is a star-making role, and I don’t doubt she’s due for a MAJOR raise in her profile moving forward … altogether this is a genuine MASTERPIECE, easily one of the undeniable HIGHLIGHTS of the past cinematic year and a great sign of things to come, one would hope, should the rest of Hollywood take notice. Only time will tell … in the meantime take my advice, check it out and experience something TRULY SPECIAL …
1. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOUR AMONG THIEVES – so what, then, could POSSIBLY have beaten such astounding fare to the top spot this time round? If you’d asked me that at the year’s start I DEFINITELY wouldn’t have thought it could be THIS … I mean SURE, I love D&D as much as the next geek, but even so this felt like SUCH a shameless cinematic cash-grab from Wizards of the Coast and Disney (producing through Paramount) that I felt there was NO WAY it could REALLY be an actual GOOD FILM. At best I was expecting to be mildly entertained by a serviceable guilty pleasure, something that’s good for a Saturday night-in with a pizza and a six pack, not a genuine MASTERPIECE of cinematic adaptation. And yet, it turns out that’s EXACTLY what we got – this film has ONE HUNDRED PERCENT clearly been made with the utmost love and respect for the source material because the only possible interpretation for the way they wrote this was by taking Player’s and Dungeon Master’s handbooks, a Monster Manual, some character sheets and a few dice bags and just turning the mini-campaign that ensued into a two-hour screenplay. It’s clear that they are heavily steeped in respect and knowledge of the game itself, or were at least CONSTANTLY advised by experts who are, because this movie is AT EVERY STEP a pretty much PERFECT representation of the Forgotten Realms setting, the bestiary and even the game mechanics themselves IN ACTION, and it EVEN colours the way that the plot is laid out, how the characters interact and how some of the action sequences go. (Seriously – a perfectly executed knockout on a knife-wielding hostage taker with a hurled potato? That’s the Barbarian’s player landing a Natural 20 Critical Hit on their Attack Roll. It love it.) Sure, the results are likely to INFURIATE some people who think a little too highly about how FORMALLY WRITTEN their cinema should be, but for most folk this actually makes for a refreshingly honest and pretty unique piece of cinematic storytelling that actually works DAMN NEAR PERFECTLY from start to finish. It also helps that the writer-director duo in
charge here are a pair of stalwart comedy movie veterans, namely Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly of Horrible Bosses, Vacation and Spider-Man: Homecoming fame, whose extremely enjoyable previous directorial collab Game Night actually likely provided a useful throughline for them to get into tackling this one. The main cast of dysfunctional heroes we follow through the story are even put together like a typical motley band of player characters – Chris Pine once again proves that he’s at his best when he’s doing broad comedy, thoroughly delightful as self-centred, opportunistic roguish Bard Edgin Darvis who, along with his platonic partner, tough-but-fair and sweetly naïve Barbarian warrior Holga Kilgore (played to absolute PERFECTION by Michelle Rodriguez in what’s UNDOUBTEDLY the best role she’s ever had, and definitely my FAVOURITE character here), enlists the help of bumbling, neuroses-riddled half-elf Sorcerer Simon Aumar (Pokémon Detective Pikachu’s Justice Smith, twitchy, unsure of himself and UTTERLY adorable) and shape-shifting Tiefling Druid Doric (It’s Sophia Lillis, forthright, dependable and immediately done with all of Edgin’s shit) to help them knock over the accumulated fortune of their one-time colleague, Rogue-turned-nobleman Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant once again expertly bringing home the scheming sleaze persona he’s perfected in more recent years now he’s finally said goodbye to his earlier days as an upper class heartthrob) and foil the dastardly machinations of the monstrous undead Red Wizard Sofina (a genuinely chilling and unsettling turn from Shadow & Bone’s Daisy Head); meanwhile there’s a top-notch supporting cast of “DM-controlled NPCs” that help the story flow and breathe as effortlessly as the main stars, from Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page as deliciously dry Paladin Xenk Yendar, the obviously-overpowered PC from another campaign that the DM brings in to help the party out when things go COMPLETELY WRONG for them, and Chloe Coleman (Gunpowder Milkshake) as Edgin’s estranged young daughter Kira, to Bradley Cooper in a truly INSPIRED and genuinely hilarious cameo as Holga’s decidedly diminutive ex-husband Marlamin. Every single one of these is a well-rounded, living-and-breathing vital person in their own right, and the writers have crafted them and their misadventures with proper precision throughout, while the world has been realised with genuine skill and clear loving attention to detail, as well as a welcome reliance on real sets and locations and good old fashioned physical make-up and animatronics over pure digital effects wherever possible. There are some pretty spectacular action sequences on offer here (the Underdark sequence with a decidedly overweight dragon is a particular highlight, although my personal favourite has to be the scene in which Doric has to pull off an unexpected escape by Wildshaping between different animal forms, all unfolding in a spectacular unbroken “single” take), but in the end this film is, first and foremost, a COMEDY, and while there’s plenty of heart and pathos on offer, as well as more than a little genuine DARKNESS here and there, ultimately almost everything is VERY MUCH played for laughs, and the end result is definitely the funniest film I encountered this past year. It’s also just about the most effortlessly ENDEARING film I’ve come across in a very long time, and I have to admit I am SO GLAD that it managed to defy my low expectations SO MUCH, I feel VERY HAPPILY HUMBLED that I was proved SO WRONG this time round. I’m genuinely hopeful that we get LOADS MORE of this going forward, I’d love a whole campaign’s worth of movies to grow out of this humble one-shot. Best get those D20s rolling again, guys!
#2023 in movies#nimona#renfield#leave the world behind#spider man across the spider verse#oppenheimer#the creator#mission impossible dead reckoning part one#john wick chapter 4#no one will save you#dungeons and dragons honour among thieves
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helmut's hail mary truly is one of my favorite memory vaults. the title is so evocative. the juxtaposition of helmut's dinky venue in an ally as broadway lights shine in the distance. ford being his one and only audience member, getting seen, cementing the vision connection. helmut being the last to join up and everyone being excited to meet him. just the way he uses figments in his performances in both relevant images is so cool and creative. and of course bob ive gushed a million times abt bob and his gay little hands and his big gay smile and how its not only the moment bob got a little spark from seeing helmut but also this is helmut's memory so seeing bob smile so brightly stuck in his head so strongly he could hold onto for 20 lonely years. it is truly masterful stuff. memory vault of all time.
#cospn2#i think my other favs are like... ford cruller cracked. and cutting the roots#but theyre all so good is the thing
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Chapter 3: A Familiar Face
Summary: As the heiress apparent to House Selemchant of Amn, Dulcinea is used to getting her way. At 28 years old, she has never had to lift a finger unless it was to cast an evocation spell. That is, until she woke up on an unknown beach with a tadpole in her brain.
Rating: MA
Category: F/M
Relationships: Tav/Gale
Chapter 3/?
Word Count: 1.1K
“A little help, please?” a man’s voice called frantically from within the portal. Dulcinea recoiled slightly, noticing the frenetic energy that the portal emitted. The Weave that powered it hissed and popped. Whoever pulled this little stunt had created an unstable tunnel of arcane power. This person appeared to know what they were doing when they attempted this but managed to bungle it to the point that they were now mired within a mess of their own making.
That voice, Dulcinea thought to herself. I know that voice. Dulcinea was not in the habit of performing any degree of manual labor, never mind pulling people out of unstable creations of the Weave. She glanced at her companions from the corner of her eye, shifting uncomfortably. They were in a standoff with each other and nobody seemed particularly eager to yank someone out of a rock on the side of the road. Yet, Dulcinea could not shake the feeling that somehow she knew this person from somewhere.
Dulcinea groaned, throwing her head back dramatically. “Fine, I’ll do it.” She stomped over to the portal and paused for a moment. The stranger’s arm waved impatiently in front of her. Dulcinea thought highly of herself in many regards, but she was well aware that it was highly unlikely, if not altogether impossible, for her to pull a grown man out of a portal. She looked over her shoulder at her companions. “A little help would be quite appreciated,” she sneered. “I’ll pull the arm, but I need someone to pull me.” Shadowheart and Astarion exchanged conferring glances. They weren’t fond of their spoiled traveling companion, but she had managed to pull her weight in dire situations thus far. Shadowheart sighed inwardly, volunteering herself as a second assist.
Dulcinea grabbed the man’s forearm with both hands while Shadowheart looped her arms around Dulcinea’s waist. Dulcinea felt an unexpected prickle of excitement at Shadowheart’s touch. “We’ll pull on three. One… two… three!” Dulcinea leaned back into Shadowheart, pulling the stranger’s arm with all her might. Shadowheart pulled while stepping backward, adding additional traction.
“That’s it, just a little more,” the man instructed, relief already settling into his voice. Slowly, more of the stranger’s body began to emerge from the portal. Suddenly, Dulcinea felt a loss of resistance, sending her and Shadowheart careening backward into the ground. In their wake, the stranger came free from the portal, tumbling to the ground in from of them.
“Ugh, I fell on my tailbone,” Dulcinea whined as she rose to her feet. She dusted her dress off, huffing in irritation. She looked up to find the stranger standing in front of her. In fact, it was no stranger at all.
Her eyes widened. “Gale,” she breathed. Her pulse quickened, warmth rising to her cheeks. “What are you —”
“Doing here? I shall ask you the same question, Miss Selemchant. Although it’s quite a relief to see a familiar face, you and I are quite a ways from Waterdeep,” Gale interrupted.
Dulcinea swallowed hard. “I suppose we are, yes.”
It had been a year since she last saw Gale, but he hadn’t lost that rakish handsomeness that made her her heart race. His wavy chestnut hair was now streaked with grey and furrows in his brow and the smile lines that adorned his eyes had deepened. His eyes sparkled as brightly as ever in the mid-afternoon sun.
Gale turned his attention to Astarion and Shadowheart. “I’m Gale of Waterdeep,” he said, shaking each of their hands. “My apologies, I’m usually better at this. Magic, I mean.”
“Are you alright?” Shadowheart asked, a look of mild concern crossing her face.
Gale shrugged affably. “A bit shocked, but it’s certainly a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Although, I believe we all know each other, yes? In a manner of speaking. We were all aboard the nautiloid and I can assume that all of us were on the receiving end of an unwelcome insertion to the ocular region.”
Dulcinea shuddered. Her memories of being aboard the ship were fragmented and blurred like a fever dream. What she could recall with a visceral certainty was the tadpole wriggling its way into her eye socket. She remembered the searing pain and the aching of her vocal folds, battered and swollen from her screams.
Gale continued, uninterrupted. “This insertee, this parasite will trigger a process called ceremorphosis that shall turn us into mind flayers. Let me assure you that this must be avoided.”
Gale looked appraisingly at Astarion and Shadowheart. “Would either of you happen to be a cleric? A doctor? A surgeon? Uncannily adroit with a knitting needle?”
Shadowheart eyed Gale skeptically. “Surely you know enough about our condition to see that this is beyond the skillset of the average cleric.”
“Most, no doubt. I was hoping to find myself in the presence of one of the few. That wouldn’t happen to be one of you, would it?”
Astarion smirked. “I’m less of a knitting needle person, but I have other, ah, implements that I’m quite skillful with.” Visibly uncomfortable, Gale shifted his gaze from Astarion.
Dulcinea crossed her arms and exhaled forcefully through her nose in boredom and frustration. Her boots were not made for walking such distances, causing her feet to ache with every slight movement. Even in her summer dress, Dulcinea was drowning in sweat. “Right. I think it’s well established that none of us can do anything about this,” she said curtly. “So we need to find an actual healer. Now.”
“Dulcinea, you always cut through to the marrow of the problem. And right you are. How about we lend each other a helping hand once more and look for a healer together?”
“Yes,” Dulcinea responded, almost a little too quickly.
“Most excellent,” he smiled. “A tadpole shared is a tadpole halved, or something to that effect.”
“Shall we continue on, then?” Astarion asked, taking note of the sun’s progressive descent towards the horizon. “We’ve spent more than enough time staring at rocks and not enough time looking for a tadpole specialist.”
“Before you think you’re about to embark on a journey with a most ill-mannered a man, thank you for pulling me out of that stone.”
“How someone of your acumen managed to get stuck in a portal is beyond me,” Dulcinea said incredulously. “But… you’re welcome.”
She cleared her throat and set her sights on the road ahead. “Surely we’ll make camp soon, right?” she asked Astarion and Shadowheart, a pleading tone in her voice. “I’m desperate for a reprieve.”
“If it will give us a reprieve from your whining, we can make camp right now,” Astarion snarled.
Dulcinea snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “You don’t need to be so sharp with me. I was only asking a question.”
Astarion sighed in irritation. “Just lead on, will you?”
Dulcinea took her place at the front of the group. “I suppose we’re going… that way,” she said with feigned decisiveness, pointing northeast. Dulcinea didn’t have the faintest idea where she was leading her companions. All she hoped was that there might be a healer there. And a hot bath.
#bg3 gale#bg3#gale dekarios#gale of waterdeep#baldur's gate 3#bg3 fic#baldur's gate#tav x gale#gale x tav
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It's time for my analysis of the new house of black vignettes that are probably not even accurate but whatever:
First of all I would like to mention match at All Out with the new green gear and masks and how it ties into the title of the new vignettes- An Elegy of the Forgotten.
The vignettes leading up to that match all eluded to the color green not only as a symbol of decay and death (alluding to the idea that the House is rotting) but also of life and rebirth. And from that death new life can be reborn. This, of course, ties into the use of the word Elegy- a song or lamentation for the dead. So in many ways we have witnessed the "death of the House" and have entered into a period of mourning, but soon we shall see a new life emerge from that death.
Now for the vignettes themselves.
Julia:
Her vignette opens with her in her gear being shown from the waist up being illuminated (more on my thought of this a little later) and in the cut-away shows her in darkness with a close up of her face and eyes.
She also carries a lit torch in her hand in one of the cutaways as well. I think this is to represent her as a guiding light for the house- a beacon in the darkness, if you will. It could also tie into her role as Empress in the house. In tarot the card is a sign of support, nurturing, and guidance. The imagery here can also representative of the element of Fire.
Brody:
Brody emerges from the shadows in his vignette, steping into the light as he comes closer until he stops so that the camera shows him from the waist up.
In the cutaways he is shown being covered in a sort of gray chalk or dust. This covers his tattoos (thus hiding a huge part of his identity and overall look) and is evocative of the idea of ash to ash and dust to dust. This also ties into his role in the house as Death. In tarot Death can also be associated with the idea of new beginnings and rebirth. One could also interpret this imagery as representative of the element of Earth.
Malakai:
For me this one is the hardest to decipher. Like Julia, his opens with him clearly illuminated but only from the chest up. This could mean that both he and Julia possess a sense of confidence or wisdom in their present being as they start out in the light being clearly shown unlike Brody who has to enter into the light and unlike Buddy who I will get to in the next part.
In the cutaways we see Malakai in what appears to be a state of meditation. He also is shown wearing the signature House of Black articles if clothing. In this he could represent the element of air or spirit- having served as the figurehead of the House and spiritual guide. It could also represent a new turn in his role as The Devil. Upright the devil can represent obsession, dependency, excess, powerlessness, and limitations. But revered it represents freedom, revelation, and reclaiming power and control. In this rebirth ushered in by Brody and guided by Julia (aka the two remaining House of Black figures) perhaps this is Malakai’s way of taking back his power as the leader of the House and embracing his role in this new era.
Buddy:
His vignette is most unique of the four. Unlike the others, it begins with extreme close-ups of his chest, hands, and face. Also unlike the others we are only given bits and pieces of his image, not the whole picture. In the opening we clearly see that his has water dripping of his body and hair and he is also seen examining his hands.
In the cutaways we see more images of him in the water and submerged and once more examining his own hands. He is also the most brightly lit of all the house members. The element of water is the most clearly represented here. This could also tie into his role in the house as Judgement. He seems to be in a state of self-reflection, a trait very much associated with the tarot card. The bright light could also represent illumination and clarity while the water could represent a washing away of past mistakes or a baptism.
Well that's about all I got. Let me know what you think!
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ADEKUNLE GOLD IS CONSTANTLY EVOLVING
Adekunle Gold, the Lagos-born prolific singer, is one of the handful of Nigerian artists who can boast of a lasting presence in the highly competitive space that is the country's music industry. His was a journey of talent, consistency, invention and reinvention.
He was born Adekunle Kosoko, a member of the royal Kosoko family of Lagos Island, so when he chose to follow his passion in music, the name Gold readily appealed to him. Days spent riding to school with his father while they played Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade, as well as lullabies sung by his aunt at bedtime, planted a love for music in the young Adekunle. With time, his love for listening to music spurred him to create his own. Like many other budding artists, he cultivated his talents first by joining the junior choir in his church and later, by forming a band with a close friend, Michael Bakare, before deciding to pursue a career as a solo artist. Michael remains a major musical pillar of Adekunle Gold’s career, his songwriting and production credits can be found as recently as Adekunle's latest album.
Nigeria's first introduction to the artist, however, was through his creative work as a photo editor. Prior to the release of “Sade” in December 2015, Gold had been given the title of 'King of Photoshop' for his creative editing of his images on pictures of actress Tonto Dike, OAP, Toolz and especially afrobeats queen, Tiwa Savage. A young Adekunle Gold had finished school with a diploma in Arts and Industrial Design and was putting his degree to good use, doing graphic design work for a number of YBNL artists, including Viktoh, Lil Kesh and even street-pop legend Olamide.
In 2014, Adekunle Gold released “Sade”, a cover of One direction's “Story of my Life”, and based upon a real life Sade who had turned his affections down. As the song gained ground, Pheelz, YBNL's in-house producer, saw there was more To Adekunle Gold's creativity than visual arts, and after conversations with label huncho, Olamide, Adekunle Gold was unveiled as a YBNL artist in March 2015. Then, he got a chance at a proper debut single, and "Orente" was born; a folksy Yoruba-supported love ballad, featuring distinct Yoruba instrumentation, which would grow to become his signature style. He followed this up with “Pick up”, which amped up production for a Juju-influenced song that would be an excellent fit for a live band.
All these built up to the release of his first studio album in July 2016, Gold that featured successes such as "Work", "Ariwo Ko", and another all time classic, "No forget", a duet with Simi, a friend and fellow artist who had previously mixed and mastered songs for him. His debut album was a critically acclaimed success, peaking at no. 7 on the Billboard World Album Chart.
His next studio album, About 30, was released in 2018 after exchanging amicable farewells with YBNL. He assembled a team of instrumentalists into a live band, named the 79th Element (Gold), and headed by Michael Bakare. As a result the album drew chiefly from his unique upbeat trad-style music which he christened Urban Highlife, and it housed a number of memorable songs like the energetic "Money", the evocative "Ire" and the sombre "Fame".
Until 2019 Adekunle Gold had operated firmly within the boundaries of his self-styled Afro Urban genre, where live instruments could meet with intoned delivery to channel some of the essence of Yoruba Juju music in a more modern setting. For the next step, though, it was time for an artistic refresh, and to achieve it, he will have to sacrifice some of his folksy essence for better mainstream appeal. And so he braided his boyish afro into a macho cornrow, while he discarded the Adire shirts for brightly coloured jackets and flowing kimonos, left unbuttoned to show his new buff physique, completing his look with tinted glasses and loose fitting pants. His switch in music was a lot less acute. For "Before You Wake Up", his first solo single of 2019, he maintained a similar delivery but production was different, employing more studio-made Afrobeats rather than the live drums and keys he was more popular with. Also subtle was his use of English and Pidgin for the entirety of the single, in the past Adekunle Gold had relied chiefly on Yoruba.
It was in 2020 that he properly donned the artistic personality he would take for his next era. First came "Jore", a duet with Kizz Daniel that leaned into Kizz's brand of casual afropop that was backed by catchy lyrics and a flowing beat. Then he released "Something Different", which was as it was named, a continual of the sonic detour he was making towards the mainstream. In mid 2020, “AG Baby" was released, the manifesto for his artistic vision; on the track he alludes to being the "street boy popping on the mainstream shit". “AG Baby’ was homonymous with his new persona, and on his next album, “Afro-Pop Vol. 1”, he delved properly into who he was now and what to expect of him. A song like “Okay” handled this orientation nicely, as he spun the mid-tempo pop groove into a song deriding his haters.
While AG Baby was morphing into the popstar, Adekunle Gold was settling into family life. His marriage to Simi was for many a bolt from the blue, but insiders into the couple’s lives knew they had been an item even before either of them made their debuts in the industry. Simi had produced, as well as mixed and mastered a chunk of Adekunle Gold’s Gold album, and Adekunle has gone on record to credit her with helping him find his music style. The pair had collaborated across a number of tracks over the years, each time bringing amazing chemistry that most fans did not know was the product of real life love they shared. On January 17th they released “Promise”, a tribute to their new union and the first official announcement of it. A little over a year later, in May 2021, “Happy Birthday”was released; a love letter to their daughter, Adejare on her first birthday.
2021 also saw him release three successful singles that would appear on his next album, “Catch me if You Can”, “Sinner” and “It Is What It Is” followed the laid back, less-is-more delivery of his newly perfected style. But “High”, featuring industry heavyweight Davido, was a different dish altogether; an Amapiano heavy hit, foreshadowing another shedding, or perhaps more accurately, an extra layering of personality that would lead AG Baby to give way to Tio Tequila. The lover boy Adekunle who had withstood the transition from Adekunle Gold to AG Baby evolved to another man for whom “Love is not enough”.
His latest project, Tequila Ever After, is named after this new persona, and here he slows down his Afropop cadences to take in parts of Dancehall and RnB. By far his biggest project, Adekunle Gold assembled RnB megastars like Pharrell Williams and Khalid as well as budding Nigerian street stars like Zinoleesky and Odumodublvck. He has already hit the charts with two singles, “Ogaranya” and “Party No Dey Stop”, so he will be hopeful others can quickly follow suit. More importantly, though, he will hope his new project, and the persona he introduces with it, can significantly advance his global intentions. Adekunle Gold has described his latest project as a celebration of his wins so far.
With a solid discography encompassing five successful projects, a recently bagged contract with an international label in Def Jam Records and a career about to reach the 10 year mark, a celebration is much needed and well deserved. As the artist readies himself to consolidate his position in the Nigerian market and expand his wings even further beyond the shores of the country, he can take a shot of Tequila and toast to his wins so far, because it only gets better from here.
This article was written by Afrobeats City Contributor Ezema Patrick - @ezemapatrick (Twitter)
Afrobeats City doesn’t own the right to the images - image source: Instagram - @Adekunlegold
#Afrobeats#AfrobeatsCity#Adekunle Gold#Africa#African music#Afropop#Afrobeats article#Article#Music#Nigeria#Nigerian music#Def Jam#Tequila ever after
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The song A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square came out at the start of Britain's involvement in World War II, when lovers and couples were pulled apart as men were sent off to fight, and quickly became a wartime favorite owing to it's powerful evocation of feelings of separation and longing for a happier time. (source)
And if that doesn't leave you in tears, add to it that the "modern" song the Bentley chose to play for Aziraphale was Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade, released just a year before A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. Though the Glenn Miller version is instrumental, there are lyrics:
I stand at your gate and the song that I sing is of moonlight
I stand and I wait for the touch of your hand in the June night
The roses are sighing a Moonlight Serenade
The stars are aglow and tonight how their light sets me dreaming
My love, do you know that your eyes are like stars brightly beaming?
I bring you and sing you a Moonlight Serenade
Let us stray till break of day
In love's valley of dreams
Just you and I, a summer sky
A heavenly breeze kissing the trees
So don't let me wait, come to me tenderly in the June night
I stand at your gate and I sing you a song in the moonlight
A love song, my darling, a Moonlight Serenade
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MWW Artwork of the Day (4/25/23)
Abram Arkhipov (Russian, 1862–1930)
Spring Day (1913)
Oil on canvas, 102 x 95 cm.
Cultural History Museum Complex, Kozmodemyansk
In Russian art, the name Arkhipov is synonymous with compassionate and evocative portrayals of peasant life. In the early 1900s, Arkhipov embarked on a series of portraits of peasant women and girls from the Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod regions. Dressed in embroidered national costume and resplendent in brightly-colored headscarves, these portraits can be seen as a natural progression from his early sketches which depicted village life. Painted in a freer, more expansive manner, these portraits elevate the status of the sitters; the women fill the expanse of the canvas both physically and spiritually and are swathed in color and bathed in light.
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some stuff i read and watched in march:
daisy jones and the six: everything that wasn't daisy and billy being obsessed w each other was like, fine, daisy and billy being obsessed w each other was so good for me. sam claflin miscast probably but he's good at the Look!!
mae martin: SAP: i love them!!!! and i'm so excited for them on taskmaster, ep 1 was Delightful
shadow and bone (s2): CROW SHOW WHEN etc
all the beauty and the bloodshed: nan goldin 4eva, obviously i cried when david wojnarowicz turned up
rye lane: beautiful brightly coloured jewel of a romcom! feels like a musical without being a musical somehow, you should see it!!
saint omer: powerful and told with such restraint and empathy
god's creatures: emily watson paul mescal very good! honestly what's stayed with me is the sound design and this version of the wild rover which fucking goes so hard
diarmaid maccullouch, thomas cromwell: a life: finally finished this and it just made me want to plunge back into a wolf hall reread
rob delaney, a heart that works: strongly recommend listening to rob delaney tell this story about his son and love and loss and care, my heart
eleanor catton, birnam wood: i feel weirdly invested in catton ever since i wrote part of my MA thesis about her MA thesis (the rehearsal fucks!!), this was a fun and zippy, like, eco-thriller about how billionaires are the worst
carmen maria machado, in the dream house: a memoir: the structure of this is dizzyingly good, it's rough going but worth it
dorothy dunnett, the ringed castle: lymond 5/6!! had to take like a three month break in the middle of this because work was taking it out of me and i felt simply too stupid and tired to go on but ohhh my god. i'm at a place with these books now where i Know it's useless to try and like anticipate the twists and the turns bc dorothy is infinity times more clever than i am, but they pack such an emotional punch and the writing is!! wildly good!!! most evocative descriptions, so funny, bananas POV stuff... she can do it all
maggie millner, couplets: i had a false start with this at first because it was like, oh, it's like Couplets couplets, but when i picked it up again i tore through it and highlighted so many lines. more poems about fingering honestly!!
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