#martin: WAS ANYBODY ELSE PLAYING ROMANCE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gentlemancrow · 3 years

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jonmartin, pre-romance, #15/28??

I did manage to get BOTH of these in! So we have a combo of "You called me, remember?" and "It's too early for this". Much like the others, the MINUTE I read this prompt an idea popped into my head that I just HAD to go with! This is actually based off a real life incident I had with a friend (They know who they are...) but it fit both Jmart and the prompt PERFECTLY! The names have been changed to fictional characters to protect the innocent. (Hint I was the Martin in this situation) Anyway this was super fun and cute to write and I made myself all squishy a lot. HOPE YOU ENJOY! <3

There were precious few reasons why Martin’s mobile should be ringing at exactly 5:47 am on a Tuesday, and precisely none of them were good. Still, the anxiety inducing sound alerting him to something ominously, ambiguously amiss struggled to worm its way through a rather lovely dream of his acceptance speech after being awarded poet laureate. The poem he had prepared for the occasion was marrow-deep and hauntingly beautiful, or at least he remembered it that way until suddenly he was reciting the lyrics to Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ instead and sweating profusely as the audience began to murmur in disgust amongst themselves. Waterloo was indeed blaring, but from the ringtone of his phone, not from his lips, and his stomach performed a cold somersault with the force of the wave of anxiety that had begun in his dream and crested up to lap at the base of his barely functional brain. The few synapses he needed for basic motor function and reading comprehension crackled to life as he clumsily batted the buzzing device on his nightstand into his hand and squinted blearily at the name.

It was small. That was an immediate relief. If the care home had been calling about an incident with his mother, either her health or the staff’s as a result of her, it would have been the full moniker of ‘Sunrise Acres Care Home’ ticking across the caller ID. Yet small implied a name, a person, someone he had in his phone and not just a random spam call, and anxiety spiked again as Martin scrubbed at his eyes until ‘Jon’ appeared in white hot letters on the screen. Sleep dissolved from him in an instant and he sat bolt upright in a tangle of covers as he smashed the green answer icon with his thumb and threw the receiver to his ear.

“Hullo?! Jon? R’you okay? What’s happened?” he demanded, voice still slumbery thick and groggy.

“Martin!” Jon’s silky, prim voice, thinned out to a tin can vibrato over airwaves, answered, “Good, you’re awake. I need your help. Urgently.”

Martin was already out of bed by the time ‘need’ reached his ears, yanking on the first pair of jeans he spotted in the laundry heap on the floor and hopping on his free leg to the en suite with his phone pinched between his cheek and shoulder.

“I’m on it!” he assured him despite having no clue what ‘it’ was, exactly, “I’m coming to you as soon as I can. Where are you? Are you hurt? Should I bring a first aid kit? I don’t think I have a first aid kit… should I buy a first aid kit? There’s a Boots just down the block from my flat, I could-“

“Martin, stop! What the hell are you on about?” Jon’s annoyed tone cut through his panic like a scalpel.

Martin stopped in the doorframe of the bathroom, brows knitted, jeans puddling around the one leg he’d managed to get through and left once again in naught but his boxers as he gripped his phone back into his hand.

“Huh? What are you on about? You said you needed help!” he snapped.

“I do! But not like… not like THAT. What kind of mortal peril do you imagine I would find myself in at a quarter to six in the morning?”

The initial surge of adrenaline fizzling out uselessly in his veins the more Jon talked, Martin sagged against the doorway and pinched his temples as he strained his words through a colander of civility.

“I don’t know, Jon. You called me, remember?”

“Right, right…”

A terse, lowly hissing silence of dead satellite replaced Jon’s voice, twisting Martin’s nerves as acrobatically as he twisted to avoid the point. He kicked off his jeans and stalked grouchily back to bed where he threw himself face down and unmoving.

“So, what is it then? Wi-Fi gone tits up? Forgot how long to steep Darjeeling?” he hissed into his rumpled duvet, a little nastier than he would have liked given the deadly combination of interrupted slumber and primordial biological survival instinct.

“I uh…” Jon’s voice deflated over the speaker, “I have a… problem.”

“Yes, we’ve so very, very clearly established that. What kind of a problem, exactly…?”

“A problem of an upsettingly… Arachnid nature.”

“A spider…?”

“…Yes.”

Martin propped himself up on one elbow, eyes narrowed with genuine and curious concern.

“Wait like a… like a spooky spooky spider? Or just an ordinary kind of spooky spider?” he inquired with as much levity as he could muster, given one of the likely options.

“Stop saying spooky. And the ordinary kind. I think. No, I’m sure of it. It’s merely the sitting on my kitchen wall like it owns the place and staring at me rudely with all eight eyes, judging me for skipping breakfast again, kind,” Jon answered with clinical pointedness.

“O… kay…?” Martin drawled, suppressing a giggle, “So, what’s the problem then?”

“What do I do?”

Martin opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again as he doubted that he had actually heard Jonathan Sims, the irascible, pompous, only capable of truly looking at him down his nose Head Archivist Jonathan Sims, ask him, a lowly assistant, what to do. With a spider. It would have been almost adorable, had he not scared the life out of him initially, but even that knocked it only down a single peg to helplessly charming.

“I-I mean, the normal thing one does when encountering a spider in one’s home? You kind of only have the usual two options? Er well, three, if you count just leaving it be, but I doubt you’re amenable to that one.”

“No, absolutely not, out of the question,” Jon declared swiftly.

“Didn’t think so,” Martin chuckled, rolling onto his back and sagging in relief into the mattress.

“So?” came the impatient invitation to continue.

“So what?”

“So, then what do I do?” Jon repeated brusquely.

“Well, you either kill it or let it go, of course! What else is there to do? Invite it to brunch?”

“I know that! I’m not an idiot!” Jon erupted furiously, “Good lord, Martin! Do you really think I would have called you because I didn’t know the only two options for dealing with an eight-legged criminal invading my home were kill it or let it go? Really?! Did you suppose this was the very first spider I ever encountered in my life? Is that what you thought? Or perhaps I had my own personal valet to attend to all of my insectoid tribulations, hmm? Just call the bug butler, he’ll attend to it straightaway! Do you ever stop to think before you open your mouth? Or do you customarily just air out whatever inane notions blow through your ears, no matter how puerile? Christ!”

Martin let the phone drop onto the bed beside him, away from the verbal darts hurled directly into his eardrum and taxing the output matrix of the speaker, as Jon launched into an affronted, mortified tirade, smirking and shaking his head.

“It’s too early for this…” he mused to himself ruefully, rubbing both hands over his face and eyes.

Once the phone stopped humming and glowing white hot with remote rage, Martin scooped it back up and yawned into the receiver.

“You alright there, Jon?” he asked in a gentle tone.

A ragged sigh crackled into a blip of feedback from lips too close on the other end of the phone.

“…Not really?” came Jon’s tremulous reply, “Listen, I’m sorry I went off on you. That was unfair of me. I-I just… I really… really hate spiders.”

Something squeezed in Martin’s chest, something about the confident bass flayed neatly out of Jon’s usually assertively solid mannerisms, leaving it abnormally thin and rickety. He sat up on the bed, cradling the phone much more gently to his cheek.

“Hey hey, it’s okay,” he assured him, “If anybody sympathizes about being afraid, you definitely called the right person. Need me to stay on the line with you while you whack it? A good heavy book will probably do the trick, or if you need speed and agility a rolled-up newspaper or a magazine might be better?”

“No! I wasn’t calling because I needed advice on how to murder the damn thing! I’m quite capable of doing that on my own. Frankly, I’ve taken rather a vested interest in honing my spider termination methodology over the years. I called you because… well you were going on about how you thought they were…” Jon trailed off in a series of garbled sounds of disgust, “Cute… of all things.”

Martin grinned and had to put the phone on his bare chest a moment, as if Jon might somehow perceive his giddy glee through the receiver.

“To be fair I’m a little odd that way. Most people feel much the same as you do about them,” he commented as he picked it back up.

“True, but that’s not even the whole of it!” Jon went on exasperatedly, “I also overheard you talking… must have been to Tim or Sasha but… you were explaining about how helpful they are to the ecosystem and what a vital role they play in that natural order of things, and how we always see images of them eating butterflies and beautiful things that make them look sinister, but how really they mostly control pests and the like… how you thought they got kind of a bad rap?”

“Wow I uh… I can’t believe you remembered all that,” Martin muttered, freckled cheeks dusting a light pink, “But what does that have to do with your unwanted houseguest in particular?”

“It was the last part, mainly. That’s what got me. The part about fear. That they’re afraid, too… You said there had been studies that showed a clear fear response in spiders… to us. They’re afraid of us, demonstrably more so than we are of them…”

One word of all of those slipped between Martin’s ribs and into his heart. Too. They were afraid, too. His thumb stroked and consoled the edge of his phone unconsciously as Jon blustered on, unbothered by his own unconscious admission.

“And now I can’t do it! Now I have to set this bloody spider free because you think it’s cute and want to make friends with it, and I can’t make it an innocent victim of my fear and I have no idea how!”

Martin couldn’t help but smile, imagining how Jon must be in his flat on the other end, scrunched in a corner all hunched up shoulders and furrowed brow with hackles bristling, squaring off with a creature who was possessed of no knowledge of the fear she symbolized, or the grace to understand the iconographical divorce to her salvation. Only Jon, quivering and still bed-rumpled and frazzled, could understand the magnitude of cupping that fear in the palm of his hand while reaching out to him with the other. And now Martin understood it, too.

“Hey alright, I’ve got you. Steady on Jon, we’re gonna get through this together. I’ll talk you through the steps, you just follow what I say, okay?” he instructed in his best 999 operator performance.

A beat of silence ensued, followed by a much more robust and emboldened, “Okay.”

“So, what you want to do first is get a glass.”

“A glass?”

“Yeah, like a water glass. And a stiff piece of paper or cardboard or something. If you’ve got a bit of post lying about, flyers and coupons and the like, those usually work well.”

There was a period of distant shuffling, clattering, and indecipherable muttering as Jon gathered his weapons, then sucked in an audible breath through his teeth.

“Alright I’ve got them, now what?” he asked, sounding a bit winded.

“Now you very carefully put the glass over the spider, then slide the paper under the glass so you trap it inside. Then you can take it out without touching it or worrying about it scuttling off on you and set it free wherever you think it’ll be happy!” Martin answered sweetly.

“Okay, okay. I think I can do that,” Jon chanted for steadiness, “I’m putting the phone down so I don’t louse it up, but d-don’t hang up, stay on with me, okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Jon. I promise. You’re okay.”

“O-Okay… Okay… Okay…!”

Martin listened as Jon’s voice grew distant, but somehow stronger, more like a war cry, with the soft pad of socked feet on tile, then a short stretch of silence, and then a chorus of oaths and yelping, rising to the crescendo of a door being messily flung open, shut, then opened and shut again. A drumbeat of returning feet rolled mutely close and melded into the scratchy rustle of the phone being picked back up.

“I’m back,” Jon announced.

“Is it done?”

“The deed is done… your little friend is enjoying some lovely pink dahlias out front as we speak.”

“I’m pleased for her! And… for you, too,” Martin said, voice melting into lilting tenderness, “I’m honestly really proud of you, I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

“I… Ah… No, it wasn’t. Thank you, Martin,” came the sheepishly measured rejoinder.

“You’re very welcome.”

Martin smiled privately to himself, and ran a loving thumb down the edge of his phone once more.

“So then may I rightly assume I have permission to come in an hour or so late today so I can go back to sleep?” he continued, already knowing the answer as he flopped back down on his pillows and rolled up into the covers.

He was relieved to hear a husky chuckle rumble through the phone.

“Yes, yes. I think you’ve more than earned it.”

“Brilliant, see you in a bit then? And for lunch?” he added hopefully.

The brief silence as Jon calculated his response hung thick and palpable in the digital airwaves.

“Lunch sounds good,” he replied at length, “See you then.”

“G-Great! Great! See you!”

Their phones clicked mutually off without the awkward jumble of sign-offs, pleasantries, and accidentally stumbling over each other’s words. Martin thought glimmeringly of the spider hunting free in plush pink petals, none the wiser, and of Jon, with new and irrefutable proof that not everything ugly or quietly cunning in the world lurked behind to cast its shadow over him. A spider could be just a spider, and Martin back asleep with both hands still clutching his phone to his chest, dreaming of singing Waterloo again, but this time to a rapt audience and thunderous applause.

#The Magnus Archives #TMA #JonMartin #Jmart #jonathan sims #Martin Blackwood #Spiders #Crow Writes #Ask Drabble #distortingbones #Suddenlyapples

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theboombutton · 2 years

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Tagged by: @fakecrfan

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I do a surprising amount of my plotting and writing on my phone - in large part because if I'm at a proper computer, I'm either at work, or playing video games. I have a few drafts on other machines, but this is where the bulk of them live.

So, here are the titles of fanfic-related Notes in my notes app. Many of these are abandoned, some are outlines/notes for fics rather than actual WIPs, and a couple of them are brainstorms on non-fic fan content. A few of them are attempts at the same fic because I didn't like the older version and started over. I guess I'll mark which ones are related by coloring them the same? Default-color titles are standalone.

In reverse chronological order:

Somewhere Else fic

Mrs. Blackwood AU c1: Silver Worms

Romance fluff

TMA entities as classes

Feed the Machine FMV

Mrs. Blackwood AU Timeline WIP

Mrs Blackwood AU snippet

Starvation fic streamlined

Somewhere Else cosmic horror world note brainstorm

S3 blurb about Michael I guess

Michael Fic Early Notes (Divorce Edition)

Michael Fic Timeline

Michael Fic Character Notes

Michael Fic Notes (chronological)

Starvation Fic Notes

Dragon!Harold Revamp Notes

Post 200 starvation fic

Michael Shelley fic written on phone

Michael Shelley's childhood and the Ryan Incident

Fanfic notes for TMA post-s5 where Martin is the Eye

Tags, uhhh I'm counting the files that belong to a single story as a single fic, so that's 11 people to tag? @rubecso @the-wise-queen-of-jokers @soft-and-certain @gildedeggplant @crying-over-really-dumb-things @ninja-kitty-more-like-no @falserib @shakesqueer @m-e-w-666 @voidtone @twothousandgrumpybees

If anybody else feels like doing this, consider yourself also tagged I guess.

#ask game #tag game #tma #tma fic #inexplicables #inexplicables fic #fanfiction #ask button #ask theboombutton #do not archive

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perseffable · 3 years

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hello lgbtq community, here are my tma fancasts! sorry most of them are American, I don't watch much British television rip

Jonathan Sims- Danny Pudi, Avi Nash, Michael Greyeyes

so I haven't picked one yet, but starting with Danny Pudi, I think he could really bring out Jon's social ineptness and his prickliness to others. i also think since he's very good with comedy and jon isn't very talkative, he could 1. bring some great physical comedy and 2. really emphasize Jon's emotions via his body language

next up, Avi Nash! ive only seen him in the walking dead, but i think he was really strong in his connections to others especially Dante and Michonne. he could really bring some great chemistry with elias after it's revealed elias is evil, same with helen. i think he'd also show Jon's empathy toward people who have lost someone

finally! Michael greyeyes! i doubt anybody else knows who he is, but he's plains cree canadian and he was on fear the walking dead. i haven't watched anything else with him in it, but in fear he was a very strong leader, who sometimes went a little too far but had a good sense of loyalty to his tribe. he played a very good anti-hero, and I believe he'd be very adept at playing jon. also he definitely has that thousand mile stare that jon totally has lmao

Martin Blackwood- Cooper Andrews

I think you can see a pattern.... yes i am a big walking dead fan. anyway cooper andrews was also in Shazam! and his character in twd are both very comedic, but from various little scenes in twd, he seems like he could be a lot more quiet and lonesome and a lot more like martin

Elias Bouchard- David Morrissey

(finally somebody british lol) i think david morrissey is an incredible actor and a phenomenal villain! he does a lot of research for his roles, so he'd definitely be a very thorough elias and i think he'd drop some very subtle but amazing hints about elias' motives and actions

Timothy Stoker- Manny Jacinto

ah my favorite, Tim! im not exactly sure why Manny Jacinto speaks to me as Tim, but in the good place he's very emotional and i think he'd bring out some of the great emotional Tim moments, especially with the season 3 finale

Sasha James- Tirya Sircar, Karen David

Tirya Sircar had a small role in the good place where she played a demon (that parts unrelated) but her character was very knowledgeable and kind (until she was revealed to be a demon lol) somewhat similar to Sasha. she's also a slightly more comedic actress which is also essential for Sasha

honestly the more I think about, the more im leaning toward karen David (Canadian British!) who plays a former nuclear physicist on fear the walking dead. her character is jaded but still friendly and willing to help others. she puts the greater good above herself, and I believe she'd really fit sasha

Georgie Barker- Pearl Mackie

a British actress, known for doctor who, pearl mackie is excellent all around. she plays romance and friendships well, and i think she'd be a wonderful georgie

Melanie King- Aubrey Plaza

ah yes, the lovely aubrey plaza! as we all know, Melanie has some... violent tendencies and she can be quite temperamental, both things aubrey plaza excels at

there's a 10 image limit, so i can't put photos of my daisy fancasts, but a quick google search should remedy that for everybody lol

Alice "Daisy" Tonner- Louise Brealey, Kim Dickens

Kim Dickens is another actress from fear the walking dead, where she plays a mother who would do anything for her children and sometimes pushes the limit, which daisy does fairly often. dickens would really allow daisy to struggle with doing right versus wrong and succumbing to the hunt

Louise Brealey was molly hooper in sherlock, which is honestly a far cry from daisy's character, but there's something about her where I think she'd excel at playing a troubled and violent cop that struggles with her humanity

i don't have a fancast for basira really, so that's the only main character i believe im missing. i might do another one of these for other minor characters such as gertrude, gerry, and helen but we'll see. anyway lmk your thoughts on my fancasts!

#the magnus archives #the magnus institute #tma #jonathan sims #magnuspod #martin blackwood #tma fancast #rusty quill

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letterboxd · 3 years

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How I Letterboxd #10: Chad Hartigan.

Filmmaker Chad Hartigan talks to Jack Moulton about his prescient new sci-fi romance, Little Fish, why radio silence is worse than a bad review, and his secret system of Letterboxd lists.

Chad Hartigan has won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards for his acclaimed films This is Martin Donner and Morris From America. He’s also been a Letterboxd member since way back, joining what he proclaims as “my favorite website” in 2013. Hartigan has always been an obsessive logger: he has transcribed all of his viewing data since 1998 and continues to work on filling in the gaps in his downtime.

Like many ardent Letterboxd members, Hartigan is a diligent list-maker, keeping tabs on his best first viewings of each year and assembling an all-time top 1,000 films over the summer (with an accompanying 26-minute supercut). Perhaps unusually for a member of the film industry on Letterboxd, he’s unafraid to hold back his opinions and regularly voices his critiques on even the most acclaimed films.

Hartigan’s newest film, Little Fish, is a sci-fi love story starring Olivia Cooke (Sound of Metal) and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken). Written by Mattson Tomlin, it’s set during an imagined pandemic—shot long before our own actual pandemic—wherein a disease causes people to lose their memories. It was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and then postponed due to Covid-19. It’s now out in limited theaters and on demand, and we were delighted with the excuse to put Hartigan in the How I Letterboxd spotlight.

Olivia Cooke as Emma and Jack O’Connell as Jude in ‘Little Fish’.

You made a pandemic movie before the pandemic. How do you feel about accidentally hitting that unfortunate zeitgeist and now consequently being asked questions like this one? Yeah, strange. The questions are fine. If it wasn’t this one, it would be another that you would have to answer over and over again. One of the things that drew me to the project was that it felt like a fantasy that wasn’t necessarily rooted in reality in a way that my other [films] were. I liked that it’s old-fashioned in its attempts to purely take you somewhere and wasn’t intended to hold up a mirror to our times—but then in the end that’s exactly what it’s doing. I’m curious myself, and I’m checking Letterboxd to see the reactions from people because I really couldn’t guess what it would have been like [now].

Are there any prescient details you’re proud of getting right? I’m so grateful and happy that Jack [O’Connell] is wearing his mask correctly. That’s the number one thing that I’m glad we got right. I think it was very smart of Mattson to focus the movie on [the relationship] rather than the details of this global pandemic. I feel the reason it’s not in bad taste is because it dealt with those things as a backdrop and instead focused on people just trying to remember what’s important and clinging onto those that they love.

Onto our own favorite memory aid, Letterboxd. How did you discover us and how did you manage without us? I’ve been on since 2013, so I’m probably one of the earliest people to jump on it. I love the interface and the diary, just aesthetically it was really fun. I’ve been keeping track of what I see with analog [methods] for as long as I can remember. I have diaries and planners so I logged all that old information. If I was running for president, my platform would be that everybody is required to use Letterboxd comprehensively, because I just love to know what everybody is watching all the time.

Do you talk about Letterboxd in the real world with the other filmmaking people? Yes, and I’m often trying to convince them to join. Other filmmakers are more concerned about having their opinions on peers be public knowledge than I am, I guess. I’ve made four films now and each one’s been bigger and more widely seen than the last. The very first one was a total no-budget affair that couldn’t get into any festivals and I was very excited when I finally got it into the Hamptons Film Festival. It was about half-full and one or two people came up to me afterwards and said they liked it. This was pre-Twitter so I spent the whole next day Googling to see if anybody had written anything. I was so curious to see what people thought and there was nothing—not a review, not a blog—just total emptiness.

When the next film got into Sundance, there were people tweeting their reactions and actual reviews and I read everything. People were asking if the bad reviews hurt me. Absolutely not—nothing can be worse than the radio silence of nobody caring about the first film. The fact that people care enough to sit and write about this movie—good or bad—is a win, and I’ve carried that onward. I like to see what people think, it can be helpful in how you view the film as a success or failure. You learn and move on.

Jack O’Connell at least remembers how to wear a mask in ‘Little Fish’.

Some filmmakers have told us they’re kinder to films after making their own, but you’re not shy at all about being critical. How did making your own films change your perspective as a critic? I don’t consider myself a critic so that’s why I’d be less concerned with someone reading what I thought. Why should they put any stock into what I think? If they get hung up on it then that’s their own stuff because I’m not a critic. Like everyone else on Letterboxd, I just love watching movies. Obviously I can appreciate and understand some of the technical aspects maybe moreso than people who don’t make films, but at the end of the day, rarely that’s the thing that makes you love a movie or not. There’s a great bit in Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary track for Finian’s Rainbow where Fred Astaire’s doing a dance number and [Coppola admits] he totally messed it up because Astaire’s feet aren’t fully in frame. He’s very honest about his mistakes because it’s one of his earliest movies. Then he goes on to say that he thinks there’s the same number of mistakes in Finian’s Rainbow as there are in The Godfather, it’s just that he made mistakes on the things that don’t matter for The Godfather. No film is perfect, but if it can latch onto this one magical aspect that connects you to it, that’s what makes you love it or not.

You had a project where you chart the best films made by directors at certain ages as you reached that age. Tell us more about it. That was a great project. I got the idea when I was 26. This was back when I had a Netflix DVD subscription and it was just hard for me to randomly choose DVDs to throw in the queue. I needed a system. I decided to watch movies from directors when they were my age and see if there’s some common denominator, something I can learn. At that point, there weren’t many, there were films like Boogie Nights and Fassbinder films. Not many people had made stuff when they were 26 or 27, so it was very feasible. Every year there were more movies and more directors to add to the list and it became time-consuming. I did it all the way up until I was 34 and the reason I stopped was because I had a son and there was no way I could continue this level of viewing output.

My favorite part of your account is the fact that you log every viewing of your own films. You know for a fact that you’ve watched Morris From America 26 times and Little Fish fifteen times. Why do you log them? What counts as a viewing? I’ve clearly watched those movies many more times in little chunks but I’ll only log it if we’re sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. I have a ticket to see Little Fish in the drive-in on Saturday, so it’s going to be logged again. Why do I do it? Like I said, I wish everyone was required to use Letterboxd comprehensively. That’s what it’s there for for me, an accurate log of what I watch. This is psychotic behavior but I’m tempted to have a Letterboxd account for my son. I’ll do his views for him once he starts watching movies until he’s old enough to take over. It’ll just be, like, Frozen a thousand times but he’s not old enough to watch anything yet, so we’ll see.

Have you discovered any films thanks to Letterboxd discourse that influenced your approach to filmmaking? For sure, I can’t maybe say specifically, but once I dropped the directors my own age system I didn’t replace it with nothing. I’m a Virgo and I have a little bit of OCD, so I have to have some system. I’ve replaced it with a new complicated system where I pull from different lists and that’s now my main source of how I choose a movie to watch. I have like ten or twelve different lists, each about a thousand movies with a lot of overlap. One of them is my own list of every movie I’ve seen in a theater and I’ll go and look through that and if it’s something I want to revisit. Recently I rewatched Twister, which I hadn’t seen in a long time and is an old favorite from when I was in high school.

I have a bunch of private lists I cycle through; every movie nominated for a Spirit Award, every movie that’s won an Oscar, every movie that’s played in competition at Cannes, the top 1,000 films at the box office. There’s another great website that I use as a biblical resource which is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? and their lists of acclaimed films for all-time and the 21st century. I hit those up often. Something that I watched purely because of the very high Letterboxd rating and really loved is Funeral Parade of Roses. I try to see as many movies as I can that have a 4.0 rating or higher.

You respect the Letterboxd consensus. I do, but I don’t always agree with it.

‘Little Fish’ director Chad Hartigan.

Which is your most underrated or overlooked movie according to Letterboxd? I can say I was the very first person to log a movie called Witness in the City, which is an Italian noir movie I watched when I was doing my ‘directors my own age’ series. Literally nobody had logged it, so my review was like “whoa, I can’t believe I’m the first person to log this!”. It was very exciting for me because it’s great, but I’m the OG logger of that movie.

From your list of every film you’ve seen in a theater since you were twelve, which was your most memorable experience? The cheap answer is that it’s hard to top my own movies. The Sundance premiere of Morris From America at the Eccles Theater is maybe the best, but if I’m disqualifying my own films, seeing Scream 3 in a very packed theater in Virginia Beach was really fun, really rowdy. There was a trailer for a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and I remember the climax was Van Damme going “you lied to me!!!” and everyone laughed. Someone did a George Costanza move later during Scream 3 and yelled out “you lied to me!!!” and everybody laughed again—so that’s a high. That’s the thing I miss the most about movie theaters, and the worry I have if theaters go away, is that so much of how we feel about a movie can be tied to the experience; who we saw it with, what we did before or after, what the crowd was like, or if anything strange happened. There are a lot of movies I have strong memories and affection for because of the experience of seeing them and I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about if I just watched it at home on my laptop.

I typically like to cap interviews off with what filmmakers thought was the best film of the past year, but we have your data to hand. For you, it’s Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time. Can you talk a bit about what makes the film stand out for you? One thing I learned about myself from the pandemic is that the motivation and desire to see new things is very closely tied to the theater-going experience for me. Once that was taken away and you could watch a new movie at home, it joins the pile of all the other movies. The fact that it’s new doesn’t really do anything for me. Why would I press play on Da 5 Bloods when I still haven’t seen Malcolm X? I gotta see Malcolm X! There wasn’t an urgency, so I saw far fewer films than in an ordinary year. But Time I found incredibly moving and important. Similar to what I liked about the Little Fish script, it’s so hyper-focused on one relationship and within that one story it has so much to say about larger issues and the world at large. It was an emotional and rich viewing experience.

‘Little Fish’ is on demand and playing in select theaters now. Images courtesy of IFC Films.

#little fish #chad hartigan #life in film #film director #letterboxd #how i letterboxd #letterboxd member #letterboxd tips #olivia cook #jack o'connell #romance #romantic film #sci fi romance #pandemic movie #covid movie

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teashadephoenix · 5 years

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11 Questions

I got tagged by @pomegranate-belle <3 I'm sorry this took for fucking ever?!!??

I’ll tag @lioness--hart @fox-in-the-library and @whitegodiva if you guys want to do it? And anybody else, obvi <3

1. How long have you been writing?

Actually sitting down to type stories out? Eight years old. I've been making shit up since I could talk. I have it on good authority I am entertaining to listen to.

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)? LONG ANSWER

omg I really dont know. I spent several hours over several days banging on this question in my head both in front of the computer and away from it only to come to the horrified realisation that I Don't Know. *gay panic*

I know the things I like to write about. I like to write about free exchange of culture, of mutual respect and fraternity with your fellow humans (which leads to themes of unity, unconditional love not only of people but of the world, and the gray area of what it means to protect those things without giving in to hate, indifference and intolerance. THE GRAY AREA IS WHERE I THRIVE.)

I like to write about intergenerational relationships (which leads to themes of obsolescence, changing of the guard, and how people, in general, not individuals, never really change. Like, there's For a Good Time graffiti on the walls at Pompeii. That is HILARIOUS.)

I write a lot about family, both born and found. (Everybody has a place and everybody is loved.) I write about mental illness and being queer (which all by itself leads to themes of not knowing your place in the world even if you have one. Frequently comes up against the previously mentioned theme)

So yeah. I don't know. My big WIP, the Aalee Rise series, is about a young woman on the cusp of adulthood going out into the world for the first time. It's her idealism vs reality. The other main characters in that cast are all foils re: various facets of societal structure and ideologies. One challenges her idea of government, another her idea of religion. She falls in love, her loyalties to her brother and parents are tested, she makes mistakes, she fights monsters and saves the world. A lot.

tldr; It's my sandbox and I just wanted to build castles in it. I don't really know if the castles will mean anything when I'm done. I hope they do.

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

My greatest ambition is that I could ever write a hero as beloved as the heroes I read about growing up, figures that reminds not to give up hope, to get back up when we're down, that the dark times ahead of us will come to pass.

At best, if I've done that, I'll be ecstatic and satisfied.

At worst, as long as you had a good time, if you didn't throw the book across the room in disgust, I'll take it.

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

YAAAAS. I would literally never read it because Im terrified of accidentally absorbing someone's ideas and making them my own bc Christ alive that's a legal nightmare, but yes that would make my life.

And you can have my firstborn if you send me fanart.

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

Tea. Really strong and sweet. I make a fresh quart each morning and usually go through it by the end of day.

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

OMG ALL OF MY CHILDREN ARE PRECIOUS. (it's Aalee.)

Aalee Dering is the eighteen-year-old protagonist of my Aalee Rise series. When we meet her in volume one (Worldwalk) she and her twin brother are setting off on their coming-of-age journey around the country. Her people, the Noruahai, have defended humanity for generations from unearthly creatures called asmic, and if she wants to become a licensed Marshal like her famous mother (and wow, she really, really does) she'll have to prove herself on her Worldwalk.

Aalee thinks with her heart first and always. She loves beautiful things, and all things are beautiful to her. She's quick to cry and struggles with anger, as well as distraction; she has trouble keeping focus. Good for getting into trouble. Not so good when it comes to being a responsible adult.

It would probably be easier if she wasn't of two minds on every single decision she has to make. She empathises with everyone, which can be paralysing-- how can she fight someone whose point of view she gets?

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Mistakes are learning tools of life, darling. In writing they generally aren't the types that will destroy friendships, health, financial status, etc, which means they're generally easier to bounce back from. Unless you commit career suicide in some way...

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

1. Fall from the Aalee Rise series. He's a complicated human. Without getting into the context of the world he's from, he's hard to explain; but the short version is he's half-ghost so he can basically turn himself into the wind.

2. Rosie Frey from Color of the Stars but only when she's a lion. In her human form she's pretty normal.

3. Lynn Blythe (or any of the other vampires) from Echoes of Eden, because they're cheating cheaterfaces who use mystical vampy powers to be stronger and faster than humans

4. Sendmarshal Henley from the Aalee Rise series. Probably the fastest regular human. Imagine the most beautiful, tall, leggy black woman you can, all lean muscle and elegant grace, and now imagine her scooping you up and zipping out of danger with an easy smile on her face... *fans self* I stan.

5. When running headlong into danger to save someone? Aalee Dering. When running away? Frustratingly, satirically slow. She's one of those idiot heroes who stops to make sure everyone got away okay so Fall's always running back to grab her ("MOVE, IDIOT" "But that little old lady--" "FIRE-BREATHING MONSTERS. MOVE.")

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!! MORE LENGTHY BLAH

Relationships are the driving force of my writing. How one loves or is loved by other people, how they relate and engage with others, is how one grows, in real life and in fiction. There are a number of relationships in all my series that I'm fond of for various reasons. (For instance, even though she cannot STAND him, I'm eager af to write Eden and Lynn's relationship in Echoes of Eden because of how complicated it is.)

And as a rule all of my characters are queer or questioning unless otherwise stated, and I ship everybody with basically everybody else, and almost everybody has a love story in their history. (at least, their parents certainly do because I am a gross vile romantic and these fuckers came from somewhere.)

That having been said, for the sake of brevity I'll stick with Aalee Rise and limit myself to the Big Three: Aalee and her brother Elles, Aalee and her best friend Norah, and Aalee and Fall.

FAMILY: Aalee and Elles are twins. Born together and never separated, which stands out in a world where families are broken up by chaotic circumstances and random death on a regular basis. Aalee is easily distracted and has difficulty communicating her thoughts, so she tends to act on impulse; Elles is forever the cool head and the hand grabbing her by the back of the shirt to stop her from walking into danger. And after eighteen years of this... he's tired of it. He loves his sister, but he longs to see the world on his own terms, walk his own path. And Aalee doesn't share that sentiment. Not only doesn't share it, but is blown away when it comes into play. Her partner in crime wants to break away, and she does not take it very well. The first volume (Worldwalk) explores how their relationship suffers, grows, and changes due to this break.

FRIEND: Aalee's best friend of ten years is Norah. They met as little girls in a monster-ravaged town; Norah was entertaining the youngest orphans with a story and Aalee joined in. The pair of them spent a long night keeping civilians from panicking while Marshals battled asmic beyond the walls of the bunker. They exchanged addresses and became penpals over the next few years, since both of their parents travelled and they were rarely in the same place at the same time. That changed suddenly when Norah lost her father. Since then, Norah's family and Aalee's have lived in the same town. Norah is her warm hand in the dark, her shoulder to cry on, the first person she tells any good news. for Norah, Aalee is the only person (at the beginning of the story, anyway) with whom she can be her real whole self. They love each other no matter what.

ROMANCE: And then there's Fall. Aalee meets Fall when she rescues him from being murdered in a back alley-- except, oops, turns out it was a sting operation to catch the killer because he's not actually the helpless filthy vagabond she assumed he was; he's actually a powerful Marshal who was on assignment. Stuck together for various reasons, he becomes a mentor to her on her worldwalk, while she blatantly digs into the mystery of who he is, which turns out to complicate their lives, the lives of their friends and families, randos they happens across, their enemies, and also God's. To say they fall in love with each other is an understatement of cosmic proportions. They choose each other.

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

Yeah but I take the advice as intended; which is not, as most assume, kill your fave characters, but to get rid of that which does not work, even if you love it. That pearlescent line of dialogue, or that golden bit of allegory? Doesn't matter how much you love it and how proud of it you are, if it does. not. work. it HAS. TO. GO. (save it in a new file to reread when you feel down and scrap that shit from the main file.)

that said re: killing characters, in my youth I was very much of the George RedRum Martin camp of "KILL THEM ALL" but as Ive gotten older my main focal point has been "What purpose does their death serve?" Death is not the only sacrifice worth writing. So while I am not afraid to kill my characters, I do take the nature of their deaths in the writing very seriously. There has to be a point.

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

WORLDBUILDING MANYEXCLAMATIONPOINTSGOHERE! Plotting is like the maths of writing. It's measurement, it's brickwork, it's demolition when the wall you put up last week is three feet too long and now you have to scrap it and start over. Vital. But not my favorite part.

Worldbuilding is the art. It's the music your OCs hum and the stories that they treasure and the faith that holds them up when the crap you throw at them might tear them down. It's the story behind the jacket they wear and it's the reason they nod to the altar when they enter a place of worship and it's the meaning of their names. It's the magic. How the world works, the little details that make it real to the reader because it's real for your characters, is my favorite part of writing.

#long post #writing #about Tea which is me #tea writes

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uttersorcery · 2 years

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David K Frampton top 10 albums 2021!

This year I developed as a listener and as an artist. I became less concerned with notions of success and failure and more detached from current trends or movements. This was liberating as music and image are just tone and texture. It doesn’t matter how big, important, vital we are…Bandcamp has levelled the playing field and set artists free in the process. I have chosen ten of my most loved records of the year. A notable omission is the new Low album which in some ways requires it’s own dissertation as it might possibly be the greatest rock album of all time. I also omitted Eyeless releases as they would all have to be in there and that’s not fair on anybody else! So hope you enjoy my top ten of 2021….a painful and joyful year as any x

Melvins- Working with God

I’m kind of astonished by the Melvins..I feel I have a bit of a romance with their output and I’ve enjoyed their late career psychedelic leanings. There’s something complete about their albums..universes of sound..of “Beefheart metal” so they call it. You expect all the left hand turns and unpredictability that they bring to their heavy stew and yet they always come back to the joy of the riff and explore that totally within the context of each offering. Working With God reunited them with their original drummer Mike Dillard and they turned in an album back to back with hard hitters and good time humour. I hope they keep going forever!

Lorraine James- Reflections

Lorraine James really blew me away this year and I feel this album could be in most electronic music fans top ten…it’s got a cool feel to it like all the guest vocalists have locked into a certain zone a kind of delivery. I liked how bouncy it sounded and I also revelled in the texture of it and the emotional power too. Fantastic sleeve design to that captured the pure liquid electricity within.

Aya- I’m Hole

Relative newcomer Aya really caught my attention this year, at first I wasn’t sure what to make of this record as it blended drone, spoken word and urban styles with a real fluidity and depth of understanding. Before long this album was dancing regularly in my headphones as I lost myself in the 3D sound design and cracked broken grooves within. It’s an album to dive into with your eyes closed…discovering bliss.

Bloody Head- The Temple Pillars Dissolve Into The Clouds

I think along with Sweet Williams Bloody Head made the best Uk rock album of the year full of slidy Butthole Surfers influenced grooves and a kind of Amphetamine Reptile-esque (Cows/ Helmet/ Surgery/ Boss Hog) love of riffs and noise. That they come from Nottingham is even more great as something so home grown can create this much nihilist and huge sounding rock music. It’s worth tracking down the vinyl as each side feels like a narrative in it’s own right.

The Bug- Fire

A record soooo heavy it at times rivalled the likes of Godflesh for pure heady bludgeoning power…with Kevin Martin I feel my love has grown steadily for his music over the years..his classic London Zoo is one I’m fairly unfamiliar with however after his collaboration with Earth and last years ghostly, fluid Das Fig lp really switched me on….Fire was a connection of sorts a feral urban powerhouse communion of bass featuring black poetic luminaries such as Roger Robinson, Moor Mother and Flowdan…the album is utterly fearless and I’m super excited to see The Bug at Supersonic next year

God’s Teeth and the Interstellar Tropics

My favourite album of the year from my immediate community was without doubt the God’s Teeth record on Rosehill records…utterly entrancing propulsion of noise and drums and I’m sure many arcane sound making devices….it pulled my heart out as James Parsons rattling surging drums underpinned a sonic storm…a beautiful example of total immersion almost in a ritualistic way..powerful, unbroken spiralling upwards and inwards at the same time….

Good work!

Low Roar- Maybe Tomorrow

For some reason I really connected with this album this year. I had alot of depression and anxiety this year and this album just seemed to soothe me and calm me. The song “Captain” is my song of the year a stately elegant drifting electro-symphonic song. It made me come out in goosebumps and nearly cry every time the horns kicked in …the rest of the album joined the dots between space pop, electronica and neo-classical..a cerebral pudding of sound!

Serpentwithfeet - Deacon

The honeyed vocals and rich textures of Serpentwithfeet was pretty much my summer album and I believe the song “fellowship “ is so deep, uniting and beautiful that it deserves a noble peace prize. I was switched on by the video that celebrated queer, black love in a really accessible and open-armed way…..and the music in the album blends the perfect elements of pop ….technique, electronic sound design, gorgeous melodies and that voice! And made it their own. Just stunning xx

Fatima Al Quadari- Medieval Femme

You gotta kind of tumble into this music….her music demands attention but also a kind of drift a kind or suspension through space….the space between texture….and the beauty of melody. But above all there is a sense of the mysterious. There’s an enigma to this music, an emotional pull carries you away but you’re unsure why or where it’s leading x

Tirzah- Colourgrade

Tirzah’s first album Devotion was clearly a warm up to this, the main event which sees her pair down her sound to often just sparse beats and voice featuring production from Mica Levi, Kwes and Dean Blunt. It’s a beautiful document one that throws avant-garde shapes but remains truly accesible. Everything about this album is intimate and quiet yet somehow also really intense in it’s hushed delivery. It’s almost confounding and oblique yet for Tirzah’s gorgeous rich vocals that coat the deepest corners of the album.

#melvins #the bug #tirzah

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depechemodespiritera · 7 years

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Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan is having a wistful moment of gratitude, gazing out the picturesque window of his Beverly Hills hotel room at the sunshine that radiates like a golden blanket over steadily swaying palm trees and dreamy, magazine-ready homes in the hills beyond.

"L.A. has been there for us from day one, really," he says of his band's Angeleno fan base. "We were playing smaller places, but there was a cult aspect to the way people came to our shows and knew our music, before they even knew who the band was."

It's late April, and Gahan and his longtime partner in Depeche, Martin Gore, are doing interviews in their rooms at the Four Seasons as they gear up for a secret fan show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery's Masonic Lodge, a warm-up gig for an international tour in support of their latest album, Spirit. (The band's third member, Andy Fletcher, was not present.) Both speak enthusiastically about their love of L.A. and their fervent fan base here, which helped them sell out a record-breaking four nights at the Hollywood Bowl, something no other group has ever done.

Much has been made of L.A.'s Morrissey obsession, but it could be argued that Depeche Mode, who play those sold-out Bowl shows starting this week, enjoy an even more fanatical following here. There are club nights devoted to them and a popular DM convention held here every year, and the band's hits have never left rotation on L.A. radio, not just KROQ (where they got their first airplay) but mainstream pop stations as well.

Many Angelenos who came of age in the '80s and '90s feel a kinship with Depeche Mode and their songs' themes of sorrow and struggle, shameless romance and eternal outsider-dom. It's the same reason the goth scene is so popular here. Depeche Mode's music speaks to those of us who have always felt that the stereotypical image of sunny SoCal — wherein everyone is blond and beachy — is false and at odds with our true depth and dark proclivities. In an ironic way, dark music like Depeche's connects in L.A. more than anywhere else in the world. And you can dance to it.

Gore's ability to write emotive yet edgy songs with infectious hooks, and Gahan's visceral interpretations of them, have made them one of the most potent pairs in music. Personality-wise they could hardly be more different — Gahan the outgoing, dramatic frontman, Gore the quiet, sensitive songwriter. But they have much in common, too, including an obvious fondness for L.A. Gore lives with his wife and two baby daughters not far away in Santa Barbara. Gahan, who resides in New York, says his 18-year-old daughter, at the time of our interview, was considering attending USC. Still, their connection to L.A. runs even deeper than most people know.

Gore recalls the band being more of an underground phenomenon when they first came to L.A. during the "Just Can't Get Enough" era circa 1982, and how the crowds swelled when they returned around '85. "That was when it blew up," he says. "It seemed like alternative radio had taken hold of the country, but especially here in L.A. ... We went from playing small theaters to big ones, playing to 15,000 people. That was incredible for us at the time."

Gahan has a soft spot for early days, too, recalling the smaller shows when they were unknowns playing the Roxy and the now-shuttered Perkins Palace. He peers intently out his window once again, this time as if he's looking for something. "When I first came here, I was like, 'I wanna live here!'?" he says, pointing at the skyline.

In 1989, Gahan left his first wife and moved in with the band's PR director, Teresa Conroy, whom he later married. His second wife is a big link to Gahan's L.A. story, one that many fans don't know much about. (Full disclosure: I have been friends with Conroy since 2008, after I profiled her in L.A. Weekly's 2008 People issue. Gahan brought her up during our interview unprompted.) What little they do know has, for the most part, been negative, with stories painting her as the scapegoat for Gahan's well-documented drug problems. With our conversation spotlighting L.A. and its influence on the band, the frontman seems eager to set the record straight.

"I fell in love with her during tour," he says. "We just connected and at the end, I told my wife in England I was not coming back. ... I showed up on Teresa's doorstep on Sweetzer and Fountain Avenue with my little suitcase and said, 'Hey!'

"We ended up getting married. We lived near Santa Monica, in Nichols Canyon and Benedict Canyon for a while. We moved around, but what brought that all down for me was I just wanted ..."

He pauses for a long moment. "Substances?" I ask.

"Yes. That's what I liked to do most," he admits, "and it tore us apart, so that was the end of it. I moved to New York around '97 and changed my life. My behavior was not gonna change in L.A.

"Some of what people thought about her might have been my doing, just blabbing my mouth off. I realized after being clean 10 years later, it was like, wow ... at the time, as long as I had what I needed, I didn't give a fuck about anybody else. And I didn't think I was that person, but I was that person."

Gahan, now 55 and married to his third wife for 18 years, has been clean and sober for more than two decades. He looks healthy and trim in a black T-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, with hints of gray on his chin and temples. But back then, he nearly died a few times from heroin overdoses, once at the Sunset Marquis where the band rented a villa on a frequent basis. Today, however, he seems to associate L.A. and his second marriage not so much with his addiction but with inspiration.

"I haven't talked about it enough, but that time in L.A. was wonderful. The few years I did spend here when we were just hanging out and I didn't work for a couple of years, there were all these great bands playing, like Jane's Addiction, Guns N' Roses. Going to clubs like Cathouse. There was this great music coming out of L.A. There was an energy in some of the new music coming up that I was feeling and seeing here."

Gahan's personal style at the time was influenced by the L.A. rock scene (more tattoos, longer hair, leather), and he sought to steer Depeche's music that way, too. When he went back into the studio to make Songs of Faith and Devotion after 1990's Violator, the career-changing album that included worldwide hits "Personal Jesus," "Policy of Truth" and "Enjoy the Silence," Gahan says, "I was like, 'Guys, we've gotta change it up! This is just too clean, too neat!'?" But Gore and the rest of the band "didn't like at all where I was coming from."

Gore, the band's primary songwriter, was the more provocative dresser in Depeche's early days. He fancied lots of guyliner and became a fan of bondage getups — often purchased, he says, at Trashy Lingerie, not far from the Four Seasons. It gave the band an androgynous edge that "the girls seemed to like," and complemented Gore's sensitive lyrics and rhythm-driven compositions. Depeche were huge after Violator, so it's no surprise that Gore didn't want to change the winning formula, even if music in general was having a heavier moment.

Looking tan and content during our conversation (the bondage attire is long gone, replaced by a fitted black ensemble not unlike Gahan's), Gore, 56, concedes that letting go of creative control has always been something of a challenge. He describes how the early dynamics of the band evolved, putting him "behind the wheel" in terms of writing the songs and shaping the band's sound.

"When we first started we were 18 and 19, and the main driving force behind the band was Vince Clarke. He was the main songwriter, and we were just along for the ride, really," Gore says. "And then he announced to us that he was leaving before the first album was released. So because we were young and didn't really think too much about anything, we just booked some studio time and went in and carried on laying down with a three-piece, as you would at 19 and 20. We never expected it to be a huge commercial success, especially at the time. But then we grew up a little bit."

With Clarke moving on to other projects (notably Yazoo with Alison Moyet and Erasure with Andy Bell), Gore just naturally took the reins, and his talent for songwriting grew as he did. "By the time we got to the third album, we'd traveled the world quite a lot and seen a lot more," he says. "I started to get, not exactly dark by the third album [Construction Time Again], but a little bit more worldly, maybe."

Though Gahan felt like he "wanted to take it to another level," after his time in L.A. in the '90s, he didn't officially contribute to actual Depeche songwriting until 2005's Playing the Angel. It was all Gore until then. Still, the edgier aesthetics and more visceral performance style Gahan honed did steer the band into grittier territory, which fans (particularly female fans) found dramatic and sexy.

Both Gore and Gahan admit their relationship has had its tempestuous and trying moments over the years. But Gore says that after working on their latest, highly political album, Spirit, it's "as good as it's ever been."

For this tour and the Hollywood Bowl shows, Gore promises to take lead vocals on the tender numbers fans have come to expect from him, plus lots of groove-driven guitar work on songs both old and new. Depeche's massive catalog of memorable, emotionally charged music aside, their live show is why they continue to sell out stadiums at this point in their career.

I was lucky enough to attend both a rehearsal at SIR Studios in Hollywood before our interviews and the warm-up "secret" show at Hollywood Forever, and the band are as good as they've ever been onstage. With stellar production (including visuals by famed photographer and video director Anton Corbijn) and support from a solid backing band, Depeche Mode are almost certain to deliver the transcendent experience their fans expect. The Global Spirit Tour is aptly named, and Gore and Gahan hold nothing back, complementing each other in the kind of caustic yet comfortable way that only the most iconic duos do.

"Sometimes a band needs to have a bit of friction. ... The best stuff sometimes comes out of this need to be heard," Gahan explains. "Creatively we're old enough to realize that we respect each other's differences, and we know that we need each other. That's what Depeche Mode is. It's a weirdness between the two of us."

#i love them so much #depeche mode #spirit era #los angeles #hollywood bowl

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vsplusonline · 4 years

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Love Wedding Repeat Review: Freida Pinto Holds Her Own Amid The Commotion

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/love-wedding-repeat-review-freida-pinto-holds-her-own-amid-the-commotion/

Love Wedding Repeat Review: Freida Pinto Holds Her Own Amid The Commotion

Love Wedding Repeat Movie Review: A poster of the film (Courtesy freidapinto)

Cast: Olivia Munn, Sam Claflin, Freida Pinto, Eleanor Tomlinson, Jack Farthing

Director: Dean Craig

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Murphy’s law and the perversity of love are at unbridled play in the new Netflix romantic romp Love Wedding Repeat. Everything goes wrong not just in the film, but also with the film. Don’t blame it on the randomness of life.

Screenwriter Dean Craig’s first directorial outing puts the stress squarely on the third word of the title. The resultant rigmarole is exasperatingly repetitive right from the point an oracle grandly stresses (in the voice of veteran English actress Penny Ryder) that love is all about “chaos and chance”. One false step and it all goes “right down the shi*ter”.

Love Wedding Repeat definitely does just that despite the game efforts of an array of British, American and Italian actors plus our very own Freida Pinto, who hunker down to the task of making sense of the arbitrary goings-on. Please do not imitate any of this at home: on this side of the screen, no attempt to derive meaning from the contrived comedy would be anything but a waste of good grey cells.

Love Wedding Repeat Review: A poster of the movie

The multiple get-togethers of 1994’s Four Weddings And A Funeral are condensed here into a single wedding in an Italian mansion, no less. The bride is the fidgety Hayley (Eleanor Tomlinson). The lucky guy is Roberto Carboni (Tiziano Caputo), a handsome Italian head over heels in love with her. Their first meeting six prior to this event had, it is revealed, started on the wrong foot, with the two exchanging obscenities in a car park. And here they are exchanging vows. “Life’s random,” says Hayley, trying hard to sound wiser than she is.

So true. No, not the wisdom bit, but the bit about life being random. Nobody knows that better than Hayley’s brother Jack (Sam Claflin). In an earlier scene, actually the film’s curtain-raiser, he is about to kiss his sister’s American journalist-friend Dina (Olivia Munn) at the end of a date in Rome when a ghost from the past appears out of nowhere and pulls him away from the act. The near-miss rankles, as we figure out three years later on Hayley’s wedding day.

If anything can rival the chaos that ensues at the nuptials, where Jack has to focus on several balls that are up in the air while struggling to keep his own wits about him, it is the whimsical screenplay that conjures up of two versions of this theatre of the absurd that scrapes the bottom of the barrel for laughs. Well, you might chuckle at times, but rarely for the intended reasons.

The ‘maid of honour’ at the wedding is a man, Bryan (Joel Fry), the bride’s actor-friend who is more intent on impressing Italian movie director Federico Vitelli (Paolo Mazzarelli) in the hoping of landing a role in his next film. Hayley’s “coked-up to the eyeballs” ex Marc Fisher (Jack Farthing) lands up uninvited, determined to be a party-pooper.

While a lot else is spiraling out of control around Hayley’s plans to keep Marc from scuttling the wedding, which includes spiking the champagne with a “seriously strong” sedative, Jack lucks out because he has another day at his disposal to woo Dina. It has been a long time since their aborted kiss in Rome and much water has flown under the bridge. Jack’s been through a failed relationship; Dina has survived a Taliban kidnapping in Afghanistan and a perfidious boyfriend who cheats on her with anybody he sets his sights on. Talk of reconnecting on the rebound.

A pragmatic Amanda (Freida Pinto), Jack’s former girlfriend dressed in flaming red, is also in the hall. She, on her part, is hard-pressed to rein in her current boyfriend Chaz (Allan Mustafa), who is desperate for a clear ‘yes or no’ response from her to his marriage proposal by the end of the day. Amanda is in no hurry.

The skittish Rebecca (Aisling Bea) confesses that she once thought penne was Italian for penis. Chaz cannot stop talking up the size and thickness of his. The toilet humour isn’t inspired ribaldry: it is all terribly laboured and does nothing to tickle the funny bone.

For good measure, one of the wedding guests is Sidney (Tim Key), togged up in a kilt although he isn’t remotely Scottish. He has a hard time keeping his jocks in place. The film’s jokes, stuck hopelessly below the belt for the most part, are no better than a faux Scotsman looking for friendship and love in a weird wedding.

On the acting front, Claflin and Munn seem to be having a great deal of fun through it all. Pinto, in the guise of an unsmiling lady in red who draws blood from the male protagonist’s nose without batting an eyelid, holds her own amid all the commotion. The supporting cast members, especially Tomlinson as the harried bride, frequently do far better than the material allows them to.

More than love and romance, there is confusion in the air in Love Wedding Repeat. In normal circumstances, the film would have been dismissed as avoidable. But do we, in the middle of a lockdown, have a choice?

Ignore the film’s intrinsic lapses and watch it without expecting the world. If nothing else, be all ears to the music on the soundtrack – chamber, lounge, orchestral, romantic, the works, ending with Dean Martin’s On An Evening In Roma over the end credits. Next, please!

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