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rotatedaxis · 2 years

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I'm just gonna ramble about Alice Oseman for a hot second then I'm going to crawl away and go to bed.

So, I was talking to a friend about Radio Silence the other day and how we're both devastated. And I'm just like she writes about people in such an intoxicating way. I have not yet read Solitaire (I fear what it'll do to me but in a good way), Loveless, Nick & Charlie, or This Winter because my bank account might explode if I do. But, I read I Was Born For This in the span of a day and Radio Silence across three days (I've also read Heartstopper, up to where it is now, twice).

But I love how they write about fandom in I Was Born For This - it's so realistic. And I adore how she shows off the best and the worst parts of fandom and it's affect on the artist/creator/person at the centre of the fandom. There's the best and worst of each person involved. There's the horrible feeling after realising what you idolise will not be there, in its current state, forever. There's the aspect of parasocial relationships and how soul-destroying it can feel when your ideas about someone are proven wrong. Again, there's the positives of parasocial relationships - in terms of combating your own loneliness or feeling like there's somewhere for you to belong or that someone does understand you. But also the negatives, where you feel you can control someone's behaviour or can change the decisions they make for themselves - the dismissal of privacy as something everyone deserves. The impact of fame. She just writes about it all in such a nuanced way and I feel like that's really important to do. Because fandom was never all good or all bad - it's another facet of society that anyone can access. It's another community where people turn to when they want to have fun or when they need to feel less alone or need to escape life's stresses. Fans are more than people into bands because the band members are attractive - they are people who might be lonely, or might be looking for a distraction, or after a good time, or just want to be entertained alongside their personal life - it's people who fell in love with something and want to have friends who also enjoy that something. Fandoms have made friendships that would've never happened very, very real. Much like Angel and Juliet. Much like me and the person I met on twitter and stayed with at a show two weeks later.

Then there's radio silence. Alice also writes about fandom there. With Aled and his need for privacy being totally violated by a fandom - showing off the darkest parts of a community with doxxing and invasions of privacy only aiding to destroy someone who didn't want to be famous and only wanting something that he could have fun with but was a call for help to his sister in disguise. Anonymity online was disastrous for Aled because people could send him the worst things and he couldn't do anything to stop it and he was already trapped in something horrible - his very own, on the nose but really effective, Universe City. Frances was the good in fandom - someone who gained from being well-known in fandom and who was able to escape from her life as School Frances and take on her own interests and feel like a three dimensional person (with her artwork and her love for Universe City) beyond what school governed her to be. Her losing her Head Girl role was earth-shattering for her because she had been dead set on keeping it to make her UCAS application - which set the ball in motion for what she thought she wanted to fall apart. As someone in that age group, it was both heartbreaking and hopeful to read someone struggle through inadequacy and being pressured into top grades for university's sake - even if it isn't necessarily what you want. Especially with Daniel, you see the realisation that being smart in primary school makes you special but, in reality and as you grow up, you realise that you aren't anything special. Inadequacy creeps up on you and bites you when you're at your most stressed and tired and lost with where you're going - I know the feeling well. He needed to get into Cambridge to feel like he was someone special. That's what Frances thought she needed before she realised that she was making a mistake and that she wouldn't be happy there - at the worst/most inconvenient of times, as per usual. Her realisation after the fall out between her and Aled showed that being two people for different groups is awful. My friends have called me an npc because I don't talk all that much or share my interests (because they talk over me when I make the effort to listen to them but let's not go there at this exact second), so I deeply related to Frances having who she is at home and with Aled (loud, funny, and unapologetic about being herself) to who she is a school (quiet, studious, "boring") and while that isn't quite me, I could put myself into her head really easily. Hiding interests in public but adoring more niche things in private. Either way, this two sides to someone was important. The showing off of fandom and what is does for the good of some people and to the detriment of others was amazing, even though it was to a lesser extent than what came later in I Was Born For This, because it was already so intertwined with Frances' life and Aled's life and (as much as he was on the recieving end) their roles in a fandom setting were inaccessible to people who weren't already close to them. It made them more than what school was - a university machine, a grades factory, a place where teenagers are pushed one way and dragged from another to fulfill the expectations and whims of adults (and don't get me started on Aled's mother and the dichotomy between her and Frances' mother).

I sort of lost my point. But what I'm saying is, please read Alice's writing. She is an incredible author and I'm looking forward to catching up on what she's written before and whatever they will be writing in the future.

#something entirely irrelevant #goodnight now i spent like an hour writing this #you can tell i read radio silence nore recently haha

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jade-marie · 3 years

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Post 4.08 Thoughts

I haven't felt this good after watching an episode since S3 tbh. Vindication is mine and it is fucking sweet. This episode literally confirms what I've been ranting on about for like a year, so I'm not particularly angry. Nothing that happened was new, it's the same game they've been playing since 2.13.

Occam's Razor

A principle from philosophy. Suppose an event has two possible explanations. The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation.

Annie spelt it out for you lmao. Stop looking so hard for subtext to match the narrative you want to be true. Stop looking for outfits and parallels and song lyrics to change the meaning of what's happening on the screen. Look at Beth's face. Listen to the dialogue. They are telling you what they're trying to get across. People commend Christina's acting ability and her expressive face - well all season her face has flitted between uncomfortable, disgusted and scared whenever she's around Rio because that's how he makes her feel. Disgusted, uncomfortable and scared. That is where we're at now and it sucks, but it's the reality of what these asshole writers decided to do.

Rio's Arrest and the Whole Investigation

Literally, why do they want Rio more than Beth??? What is the justification for letting her get off scotfree? This isn't the FBI who've been trying to nail him for ages. He's a new person of interest for the Secret Service and they only know about him because of Beth. But realistically, how is he the bigger collar for them? They have a 3 woman counterfeiting operation dead to rights. What exactly do they think they're gonna get from Rio? Beth didn't even know he had a boss before and she knew nothing about his operation, so why are they so willing to let her get away with everything?

The arrest scene was beyond a joke. He's in handcuffs and multiple officers slam him down on a picnic bench for no fuckin reason and Beth has zero reaction. Entirely unsurprised, because like I keep saying, SHE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT HIM. The fact that Phoebe and Dave were shocked he was released and the DA wasn't pursuing charges shows that they know nothing about him, so again, WHY DO THEY WANT HIM MORE THAN BETH????

Rio Threatening Beth's Family

Ok so I definitely think that was incredibly OOC, and before the "Rio's a bad guy" bandits come at me, I AM WELL AWARE OF WHO AND WHAT HE IS. Being a 'bad guy' doesn't mean he hurts kids or random innocent people for leverage. That's never been his MO. Back in S1, it would've made more sense. He was trying to scare Beth in a very real way but she never had any concerns that he would hurt her kids. Now, I don't necessarily think he meant he would kill her kids when he threatened her family. He probably meant Dean, Annie, and maybe even Ruby. However, the fact that Beth immediately thought he was talking about harming her kids is fucking telling. She has never been afraid he would hurt them, not even in s1 when she knew nothing about him. Not even post 2.13.

Once again, this is part of a pattern of consistent writing choices they've been making with Rio's character and the way Beth views him. We had the fake pregnancy storyline, where the implication was that Beth needed him to believe it was his baby because if not, she thought he was capable of killing a pregnant woman. Now she thinks he would actually harm her children. Because she sees him as a psychopathic serial killer who only cares about money. She doesn't have feelings for him, she likes fucking him.

But aside from that, they've been consistently positioning Rio as a true threat to Beth, her safety, and that of her family. They've been giving her justification for when, I predict, she eventually kills him or gets him sent to prison.

Beth's Choice

I mean.... I did say this last week. She never chose him. She never will choose him. So stop acting so surprised. This is literally Beth doing what she's always done and Rio being turned into the idiot who trusts her and falls for it.

Last episode ended with Rio telling her she had a choice to make, the whole of this episode was her making that choice and the final scene was Rio confirming that she didn't choose him. Occam's razor. It's not complex. The song lyrics and outfit choices don't change that.

Rio's Backstory

Again, I said it would be bullshit and look - it was bullshit. So it's now canon confirmed that Rio is as dumb as a pile of rocks and his brother cousin has been manipulating him basically his whole life. He's not the smart kingpin we thought he was, he's a puppet who's been taking the fall for Nick for the last 20+ years for no goddamn reason.

So many question marks about the whole thing. Like i always figured his boss was a politician, so that's fine. But how the shit does Rio go from petty theft at a country club to running a protection racket and killing innocent shop girls? Like he goes to jail for 6 months and gets a tattoo? Murder Birdy on his neck possessed him and the sweet lil grandbaby who was stealing to buy his grandma a new stove has left the building? Why would he even continue working with Nick? Why was he risking his whole future by stealing anyway? Gonna do a separate post on the flashbacks because this is getting mad long but it was so dumb.

#this show is literal bullshit #good girls nbc #rio good girls #nbc good girls #gg season 4

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addictedtostorytelling · 3 years

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that cath & sara post was so good, wow! you mentioned that sara’s a little offended (idk if that’s the right word for it but it’s the only one i can think of right now—) that grissom tends to take cath’s side in situations like 4x08 — why do you think that is? is it just that he genuinely thinks she’s right or is it something more? (if you’ve already answered something like this feel free to just direct me there!)

hi, @red-and-frantic!

thank you for your kind words! i’m glad you enjoyed the post. ❤

as for episode 04x08 "after the show,” i think a big part of sara's upset in that situation is due to her sense that what is happening is unjust. however, there are some other factors in play, as well.

more discussion after the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.

______

as talked about in the previous meta, sara doesn't really buy into the idea that the most senior person is necessarily the best person for the job; she also doesn't believe that more junior people must automatically submit to more senior people just because they are more senior. she’s very much a “choose the best candidate for the job (and if all options are otherwise equal, choose the candidate who showed up first)” kind of thinker.

to sara, it doesn't make sense that catherine should get to take over as the lead investigator just because she's the most experienced criminalist on the team besides grissom. sara doesn't view herself or nick as being any less capable of solving the case than catherine is. since they’re all csi level iiis and they’ve all proven themselves in the field before, then the only deciding factor as to who should take the lead position on the case (in her view) is to whom the assignment was first made.

it also goes without saying that she doesn’t believe it is either ethical or prudent that howard delhomme should essentially get to “pick his own criminalist.”

to her, the logic is self-evident: among a group of three experienced criminalists, all of them equally capable of solving the crime, the only real question as to who should get to take the point position is “who got the call first?”

since the original missing persons call in this case was hers and nick's, in her mind that makes the case theirs.

the only way she would accept her and nick being passed over for the job is if grissom claimed the case for himself, as he is someone whose authority she does inherently respect and whom she feels does have advanced skills and capabilities beyond those of catherine, nick, and herself.

of course, even then, she’d probably still be a little bit grumbly, particularly if grissom didn’t let her play the role of his wingwoman.

all of the above said, when grissom backs catherine’s claim on the case over nick and sara’s, his doing so strikes a nerve with sara for a number of reasons.

firstly, because of the unfairness factor.

while sara knows that, generally speaking, life isn’t fair, in the sense that good isn’t always rewarded and evil isn’t always punished and shit just tends to happen regardless of who is “deserving” of what, she does believe that on a micro level, there are particular situations where fairness can be achieved.

though it may not be possible to make sure every innocent child in the world is protected and every horrible murderer in the world is punished, it is possible to divide up the pizza slices at the company picnic so that every employee gets the same amount to eat, you know?

this situation is one where sara believes that it is possible to do things fairly, making decisions based on what is logical.

consequently, that grissom opts to do something illogical, making what is seemingly an arbitrary decision based not on logic but on a whim, really grinds her gears.

it is as if two kids were playing nicely together with a communal toy and then an older kid came over and took the toy away from them; when they protested, an adult intervened, but rather than making the older kid who had stolen the toy give it back to the younger kids who had had it first, he decided that the older kid should get to keep the toy just because she was older.

to sara, the decision makes no sense and is deeply unjust.

how come catherine is being rewarded? because some might-be murderer thinks she’s sexy?

unless there is a legitimate reason why grissom thinks that catherine would be demonstrably better at solving this case than nick and sara would be, then his edict making her the lead investigator is bullshit.

accordingly, the second reason why sara gets so upset about grissom giving the case to catherine is due to the implications of him doing so.

if sara is correct and catherine, nick, and herself are all equally capable of solving the case, then someone as logical as grissom should arrive at the same conclusion that she has, which is that the case should go to whoever had “dibs,” i.e., her and nick.

since grissom doesn’t back her and nick, his refusal to do so either insinuates that he doesn’t view catherine, nick, and sara as all being equally capable of solving the case which is a painful possibility to entertain, as sara would like to believe that her faith in herself is justified and that grissom considers her “worthy” OR that even if he does view them as all being equally capable of solving the case, he for some reason (having nothing to do with logic or fairness) favors catherine, regardless which is a painful possibility to entertain, as it implies that grissom is more willing to “go to bat” for his platonic friend catherine than he is for sara (who had thought he had romantic feelings for her).

—and that brings us to a third reason for sara’s upset, which is the personal factor in this situation.

it is important to remember that the events of this episode take place prior to sara overhearing grissom’s monologue at the end of episode 04x12 “butterflied,” meaning that at this point—after he has been so aloof from her throughout s4 so far—she really doesn’t know what to make of how he regards her.

she had always previously thought that they were mutually attracted and that he perhaps even reciprocated her feelings, but ever since she asked him out and he declined her at the end of s3, his behavior toward her has been so harsh that she truly has to wonder if maybe she didn’t overestimate his affections.

his actions with regards to this case only serve to deepen her doubts.

while i don’t believe that sara thinks that grissom is in love with catherine, i do think his decision to champion catherine here throws her.

that he would choose catherine over sara even in a situation where the logic was (by sara’s own estimation) on sara’s side suggests not only that he esteems catherine more highly than sara—even just on a platonic level—but also that he is perhaps still “punishing” sara after she “overstepped boundaries” with him earlier in the year.

it is worth noting that the events of this episode take place, within the universe of the show, probably only about a week after those of episode 04x07 “invisible evidence”—i.e., in the wake of the famous “pin me down” scene.

that sara might see some kind of correlation between her and grissom’s sensual encounter by the bloody bed sheets and him taking a career case away from her seven days later is not outside of the realm of possibility.

from her perspective, she probably thinks that she spooked grissom by getting too close to him again (and particularly since she “broke the rules” and directly mentioned their romantic connection, which is typically something forbidden between them), and he is reacting by “putting her in her place,” reminding her that he’s the boss and she’s the subordinate by making arbitrary decisions and then essentially telling her “deal with it.”

to me, their body language in the silhouette scene in this episode is so, so telling.

while normally they stand closer to each other than there is ever a practical reason to, even in wide-open spaces, here, they stand a yard away from each other, sara with her arms folded protectively over her body, forming a barrier between them. though grissom’s posture is not unusual (except for that he is much farther away from sara than he might usually be, as previously mentioned), sara’s bespeaks defensiveness; it is almost as if she is warding him off.

some of that safeguarding on her end might be because she’s just angry about the situation in general (as, after all, in the scene in question, she is expressing direct displeasure regarding the team’s capitulation to delhomme demanding to work with catherine); however, my guess is that at least part of it is personal and based in her feeling that grissom is against her and maybe even “out of get her.” she clearly does not feel comfortable around him, which is a big departure from her typical m.o.

so.

all of this rambling is to say that there are several layers to sara’s upset here.

she’s raging against the injustice of it all; she’s also feeling slighted, like grissom either doesn’t trust her on a professional level and/or is punishing her on a personal one; and she’s also wondering if this is the “new normal”—if grissom is just going to keep stonewalling her for the rest of time because she had to be this big idiot and open up her mouth and talk about feelings to him twice!.

toss in a soupçon of insecurity with regards to how she compares to catherine (not necessarily in terms of how grissom views them but in terms of how the world does, i.e., as the “hot, popular girl” vs. the “crazy, unpopular one”), and you’ve got a recipe for a sara who is on edge, to say the least.

of course, to give sara credit where credit is due, while she starts off the episode pissed af and belligerent about it, she does eventually come around and submit to working under catherine’s direction for the sake of solving the case. like grissom says at the end of the episode, for whatever hang-ups she may have going in, she is ultimately a “pro” and does do her job, never mind her personal feelings about the way things have been handled.

anyway.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

p.s., i like your new username!

#answered #red-and-frantic #asks: csi #**#my meta #meta: csi #meta: sara #csi #sara sidle #let's talk shop #04x08 #csiverse

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undonesarc · 4 years

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* 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒆𝒕 // repost, don’t reblog !

𝑩𝑨𝑺𝑰𝑪𝑺 :

FULL NAME. augustus hugo suarez. NICKNAME. shortens his first name to august, and has since childhood, but he’s most predominantly referred to as romeo, the nickname he was christened with upon entering the criminal world because of how ‘pretty’ he is. he owns this nickname, and since entering a life of crime genuinely instead of just as an undercover, it’s his go-to for introductions, even in settings where it’s not necessarily needed (i.e., not on a job.) he’s open with acknowledging august as his name, too, but he’s really taken to romeo. GENDER. cis man. HEIGHT. 5′8″. AGE. 38. ZODIAC. scorpio. SPOKEN LANGUAGES. (castilian) spanish is his native tongue (but he is familiar with latin american variants), english, american sign language, and very basic french.

𝑷𝑯𝒀𝑺𝑰𝑪𝑨𝑳 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑺 :

HAIR COLOR. black. EYE COLOR. a dark brown that mostly seems black, depending on the lighting. SKIN TONE. bronze might be the right word? BODY TYPE. strong, muscular, highly and almost compulsively athletic. VOICE. he’s “uncharacteristically” soft-spoken, at least as far as what’s expected of a guy who looks like him. there’s a faint trace of a spanish accent, but he’s been known to exaggerate it, mostly because he thinks it makes him more attractive, fading more with every year. DOMINANT HAND. right-handed. POSTURE. he doesn’t ‘slouch’, but there’s an obvious relaxation in the way he carries himself, though he’s also sure and vaguely professional, but it isn’t actually law enforcement professional. he never took to “acting” like a cop, which is why he was better undercover than in a uniform. SCARS. a few nicks here and there, but the most notable are a gunshot wound on his left bicep and one down his right arm (from elbow to wrist) from an accident on his stepfather’s farm. TATTOOS. to be determined. i don’t picture him having many, but a few little tiny ones here and there from his years spent traveling are possible. BIRTHMARKS. n/a. MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). his smile, mostly because his canines are really sharp, natural fangs, and he has a more-than-slight gap between his front teeth (but this doesn’t bother him in the slightest, and he’s never wanted to get it ‘fixed’.) he has lots of freckles on his nose and cheeks, too, and they garner a lot of compliments.

𝑪𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑫𝑯𝑶𝑶𝑫 :

PLACE OF BIRTH. valencia, spain. HOMETOWN. valencia, spain. SIBLINGS. n/a. PARENTS. clara and alvaro. he’s kind of estranged from both. august hasn’t seen his father, alvaro, since the age of 16, and he’s perfectly content to keep it that way. his mother, clara, has remarried an american named michael, but august doesn’t see her new husband as a father in any way, despite michael’s attempts to get august to open up to him (and constantly calling him son, because he loves august, even knowing august doesn’t feel the same). august hasn’t spoken to his mother in a few years beyond some brief texts and phone calls; he hasn’t seen her since he was 21. he loves her, but he feels his life is really complicated now, and she’s finally in a good place and happy with a man who actually cares for her, and he doesn’t want to ruin that.

𝑨𝑫𝑼𝑳𝑻 𝑳𝑰𝑭𝑬 :

OCCUPATION. ex-undercover cop, now a full-time criminal. CURRENT RESIDENCE. atlanta, georgia. CLOSE FRIENDS. he's a new character, i haven’t done any plotting yet, so as of now? none. hmu if you want to change that :) RELATIONSHIP STATUS. single. FINANCIAL STATUS. working class. DRIVER’S LICENSE. yes. CRIMINAL RECORD. no. VICES. he’s incredibly impulsive and it just ruins his life constantly.

𝑺𝑬𝑿 & 𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑨𝑵𝑪𝑬 :

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. bisexual. PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch LIBIDO. medium. TURN ON’S. confidence, strength, people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty or raise their voices and challenge the world and its expectations. timidity doesn’t work well with him, since he acts so brashly and without thought most of the time, and he prefers people who can keep up and are willing to put up with his spontaneity. on a more physical aspect, he likes it when people - of any gender - are taller than him, but he’s not so shallow that it’s a complete deal breaker. he’s very much an extrovert and gravitates towards people who are the same. TURN OFF’S. people whose ‘loudness’ is just rudeness. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. he’s not good with commitment; he’s only had two real relationships in his life, one which, surprisingly, lasted two years, with a man in new york, when he was 21; august sees this as his only experience with real love. it ended because he felt august was still too childish in many ways, because august felt he took things too seriously, and so they decided to end things amiably before anyone got hurt, because their lives were just too different - but august still got a little hurt anyway, and it’s affected the way he views romance to a certain degree. his second ‘real’ relationship was with a woman in D.C., but she ended things in favor of furthering her political career, and didn’t see him as the type to fit into that scene, which only furthered his distaste for commitment, feeling like it’s too big, and like he’s never going to be equipped for it, because that’s how people keep treating him. he has a few connections that last a couple weeks every now and then, and then a handful of one-night stands, but he does wish for something deeper sometimes, especially as he grows older, as he’s finally beginning to really mature.

𝑴𝑰𝑪𝑬𝑳𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑬𝑶𝑼𝑺 :

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. fearless by pink floyd. HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. hiking, running, watching soccer, visiting art exhibits, recreational and lowkey boxing, and writing - he’s been writing short stories for a while now, has a good chunk of a novel done, but it’s all only for him; he doesn’t have any intention to publish them. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED. i’m not smart enough to figure this out PHOBIAS. deep water and airplanes. SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. definitely..... higher than what’s accepted. he loves himself a lot, thinks highly of his abilities, the way he looks, just his general presence. he thinks he’s a good friend. he rarely ever doubts himself, and it definitely comes across as annoying, but he also doesn’t care if people get annoyed by it. he’s happy and he’s thriving. VULNERABILITIES. his impulsiveness, because it was impulsion that caused him to leave home, become a cop, inevitably betray the cops and switch sides... he makes split-second decisions and it’s just stupid and terrible of him, he rarely stops to think about what happens two or three moves from the one he’s currently making, and it’s going to be what kills him, eventually.

𝑻𝑨𝑮𝑮𝑬𝑫 𝑩𝒀 — @armsdealing 𝑻𝑨𝑮𝑮𝑰𝑵𝑮 — @sabortooths, @constantwar 4 heath, @wanlidas 4 aaron

#long post #AUGUST SUAREZ.#A. SUAREZ: META.

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gomoviesweb01-blog · 5 years

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My Most Anticipated Movies of 2011

1. Sucker Punch

Director: Zack Snyder

Writer: Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya

Stars: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens and Abbie Cornish

Release Date: March 25, 2011

Genre: Action Fantasy Thriller

What is it: A young girl is institutionalized by her wicked stepfather. Retreating to an alternative reality as a coping strategy, she envisions a plan which will help her escape from the facility.

Why it should be good: Really hot and badass chicks wearing schoolgirl outfits and other skimpy clothes, with swords and guns, coupled with Snyder's awesome visual flair? Yea, definitely count me in. The trailer for this thing just looks completely awesome. From the style to the action, even the story (while seeming a bit out there) seems cool. I'm beginning to thoroughly enjoy Snyder's work. If The Adjustment Bureau could be this year's new Inception due to its mindfuck story, then Sucker Punch could absolutely be this year's Inception meets The Dark Knight meets 300 meets Inglorious Basterds due to it's style and epic adventure, yet dark tone with alternate realities. This movie just oozes style and badass-ness and I really can't wait for what is sure to be an absolutely entertaining, epic adventure.

Why it could suck: Snyder can be a bit off his mark sometimes. While Watchmen was enjoyable, it did get a bit boring. And Legend of the Guardians is said to suffer from some pacing issues as well and has drawn mixed reviews from critics. Though to be fair to Snyder, he wrote neither of those movies, but is responsible for the writing (or at least screenplay) of the badass 300.

2. Sherlock Holmes 2

Director: Guy Ritchie

Writer: Kieran and Michele Mulroney

Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry

Release Date: December 16, 2011

Genre: Action Mystery

What is it: Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson join forces to outwit and bring down their fiercest adversary, Professor Moriarty.

Why it should be good: I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan. The Doyle stories still stand as my favorite books today. I love Sherlock. He's such a badass. And finally, a movie seems to have captured that pretty well. The first was one of the better portrayals of Sherlock I had seen. Rather than being portrayed as a snooty, 'proper' and sophisticated Englishman, he was shown with all the rough edges that Doyle wrote him with. While the movie was indeed Hollywood-ized beyond anything you'd find in the books, it was a fun adventure and quite an enjoyable movie. Guy Ritchie is a very good filmmaker as well. For these reasons, and my love for Sherlock, I'm very much eager to see how Part 2 turns out, especially as they go head-to-head with Moriarty. Also, I'm eager to see how well Noomi Rapace (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,etc) does in her Hollywood debut.

Why it could suck: New writers. The original writers from the first aren't coming back instead Kieran and Michele Mulroney are taking over the job. So let's see how they handle it. Relatively new to writing, the two previously wrote Paper Man which didn't fair so well with critics.

3. Paranormal Activity 3

Director: Tod Williams

Writer: Christopher B. Landon and Michael R. Perry; characters by Oren Peli

Stars: Katie Featherston

Release Date: October 21, 2011

Genre: Horror

What is it: Well, we have no idea what this one is going to be about as nothing has been given. However, the first movie followed a couple that were being haunted by an evil spirit who possessed Katie. The sequel (which was more of a prequel) followed Katie's sister's family as that same spirit haunts them and their baby. This all culminates to the two stories converging at the end of Part 2 where it gets to the point where Part 1 ends and we see what happens after the whole event. Undoubtedly, Part 3 is set to pick up where Part 2 and 1 left off. What happens from there? Your guess is as good as mine.

Why it should be good: The first Paranormal Activity became something of a cult phenomenon/sensation. Hailed as the scariest movie of the year, people flocked to the film making it a huge success. And rightly so in my book. It was a minimalistic horror movie that took it back to the roots of the genre by using tension and suspense to really instill fear and terror in the minds of the audience. Part 2, while some people seemed to not like it as much as the first, did more of the same. I actually thought Part 2 was pretty much right on par with the first. And the ingenious storytelling that created a parallel prequel to the first was definitely cool. The creator and writers of this franchise have really shown that the horror genre can be revived and doesn't have to be all about gore and such. They've done a good job with instilling that fear in the audience as well, tapping into that fear, leaving the audience's imagination to run wild while being completely captivated. I expect no less from the third.

Why it could suck: If you feel the second was worse than the first, then you may be in for some disappoint when you find out the same writers and director of the sequel are back. However, like with Part 2, Oren Peli (the creator of the franchise) is still very much involved and is serving as producer on this film.

4. Paul

Director: Greg Mottola

Writer: Nick Frost and Simon Pegg

Stars: Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Seth Rogen

Release Date: March 18, 2011

Genre: Sci-fi Comedy

What is it: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) reunite for the comedy adventure Paul as two sci-fi geeks whose pilgrimage takes them to America's UFO heartland. While there, they accidentally meet an alien who brings them on an insane road trip that alters their universe forever. For the past 60 years, an alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) has been hanging out at a top-secret military base. For reasons unknown, the space-traveling smart ass decides to escape the compound and hop on the first vehicle out of town-a rented RV containing Earthlings Graeme Willy (Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Frost). Chased by federal agents and the fanatical father of a young woman that they accidentally kidnap, Graeme and Clive hatch a fumbling escape plan to return Paul to his mother ship. And as two nerds struggle to help, one little green man might just take his fellow outcasts from misfits to intergalactic heroes.

Why it should be good: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost back together again. That should be enough. Seriously. When these two guys get together it's gold, as evidenced by Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This might be my favorite duo around these days. They'll also be pairing up to write this which is always a good thing as well (well, this will be Frost's first real writing job, but Pegg has been responsible for their first two outings together). Now, they won't be reuniting with Edgar Wright for this one, instead they'll be teaming with the director of Adventureland andSuperbad, two movies which I definitely enjoyed. On top of all of that, they have comedic star Seth Rogan joining them. Sounds like quite the team really and I'm rather excited for what I'm sure will be a very funny movie, and possibly end up being the comedy of the year.

Why it could suck: You do have to wonder if some of that magic from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz will be lost as Frost and Pegg carry on without Wright. I think they're great comedic talents though and can stand on their own. And the somewhat all-star get-together should compensate.

5. The Adjustment Bureau

Director: George Nolfi

Writer: George Nolfi; Based on Short Story by Philip K. Dick

Stars: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt and Terence Stamp

Release Date: March 4, 2011

Genre: Thriller

What is it: Just as he is on the brink of winning a senate seat, politician David Norris (Matt Damon) meets a ballerina named Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). Though David is smitten, mysterious men conspire to keep him away from the beautiful dancer. David learns he is up against the powerful agents of Fate itself, and, glimpsing the future laid out before him, must either accept a predetermined path that does not include Elise, or defy Fate to be with her.

Why it should be good: Honestly, this sounds like it could be this year's Inception. With plenty of mindfucks going on, it's a thriller involving different levels of reality and mysterious forces. Matt Damon really tends to shine in these types of movies. The trailer has me rather intrigued and looks like it could provide quite an enthralling adventure. While this is Nolfi's directorial debut, he did write The Bourne Ultimatum, thus will be teaming up with Damon once again. The movie is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, whose work has been the grounds for such movies asBlade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck and A Scanner Darkly. So with presumably some good source material, and a writer that can definitely do the part (as illustrated with The Bourne Ultimatum) we could be in for a real treat.

Why it could suck: This is Nolfi's first time in the director's seat, so we'll have to wait and see if he's in over his head. Furthermore, it is being billed as something of a romance thriller. So let's hope they don't go overboard with the romance part and make it some sappy romance film for which they sacrifice some of the plot to focus on the romance.

6. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Director: Rob Marshall

Writer: Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio

Stars: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane

Release Date: May 20, 2011

Genre: Fantasy Action-Adventure

What is it: Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and his daughter are after it too.

Why it should be good: Some people have hated them. Some have thought they've gotten worse as they went along. I've found the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to be a fun adventure. Just a fun movie with plenty of adventure, some cool special effects, and just good times. And maybe it's my man-crush I have on Depp, but I'm absolutely thrilled to see him back as Jack Sparrow. The character is so much fun and always provides for some entertainment. Should be interesting to see how they go about freshening up the franchise as well as they get a new cast of characters while Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann are out.

Why it could suck: It's a Hollywood sequel, those always have chances of sucking. Also, the exclusion of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann could put a damper on things. While there is a chance that it could freshen it up, there is just as much a chance that some of that magic might be lost as they look to replace those characters. Also, while we do get the same writers back, we have a new director taking on this sequel. Pirates seems to be out of Rob Marshall's comfort zone (best known for Memoirs of a Geisha and Chicago) so we'll have to wait and see how he can handle an action adventure of this scope.

7. The Hangover 2

Director: Todd Phillips

Writer: Todd Phillips, Scot Armstrong and Craig Mazin

Stars: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha

Release Date: May 26, 2011

Genre: Comedy

What is it: Not a lot is known about the plot of this sequel. What is known is that the gang is back to get into more trouble as they travel to Thailand. And Phillips promise a lot of fucked up surprises and hilarity.

Why it should be good: The Hangover was hilarious I thought. The cast of the original had good chemistry and the writing was hilarious. It provided for several laugh-out-loud moments and was one of the funniest movies of the year (one of the funniest I've seen in a while too). Hopefully, getting the gang back together will provide for more hilarity that the first one delivered.

Why it could suck: New writers. The writers from the first aren't coming back and have been replaced. Instead we get Scot Armstrong and Craig Mazin that have brought us such garbage asSemi-Pro, Starsky and Hutch, Scary Movie 4 and Superhero Movie. If their past work is any indicator of their talent, the writers could really butcher this franchise.

8. Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Director: Michael Bay

Writer: Ehren Kruger

Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson

Release Date: July 1, 2011

Genre: Sci-fi Action-Adventure

What is it: The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the Moon, and race against the Decepticons to reach it and learn its secrets, which could turn the tide in the Transformers' final battle.

Why it should be good: I've enjoyed the franchise so far. While Part 2, was blasted pretty well by critics, I didn't hate it that much. Granted it wasn't as good as the first, but I still found it fairly entertaining. And the movies are always a fun visual treat. Also, Michael Bay. I still have no idea why he receives so much crap while James Cameron is given a pass. Bay is just as adept a director as Cameron is. Anybody that still likes to tell me there's a difference between Pearl Harbor and Titanic will kindly receive a "fuck off" as you buy into the pretentious drivel. At least Bay knows his place (a mindless action director who can make pretty movies and fun explosions). Whereas Cameron believes his some gift to cinema which often leads to his films being poorly written, yet pretentious as hell. Seriously, I'll take Armageddon, Transformers, The Rock and Bad Boys over Titanic, Avatar, Aliens, and T2 any day of the week. Even though, yes, I know that will enrage many people and get me flamed for that opinion. Now, this movie (Transformers: Dark of the Moon) surely won't be a great cinematic piece. But as a mindless "let's make some cool special effects scenes and also blow some shit up" type of movie, it should be entertaining.

Why it could suck: Well, if I had to pick one movie from the franchise that was better, it's definitely the first. The writer for this third film, unfortunately, is the same writer from Part 2 rather than the first. Also, it's still Michael Bay. He's not the greatest of directors.

9. X-Men: First Class

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Writer: Jane Goldman, Ashley Miller, Jamie Moss, Josh Schwartz and Zack Stentz; story by Bryan Singer

Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence

Release Date: June 3, 2011

Genre: Sci-fi Action

What is it: Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Before they were archenemies, they were closest of friends, working together, with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known. In the process, a rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-MEN.

Why it should be good: A look at when Xavier and Magneto were younger. A backstory to where it all started. For such a thrilling franchise, this could be a nice take on the story and provide quite some entertainment and thrills. Plus, having directed movies like Kick-Ass andStardust, Matthew Vaughn is, I believe, much more adept at creating a movie like this than say a Jon Favreau or such. Vaughn also has the enjoyable Layer Cake under his director's belt, which very much shows off that he learned well producing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels andSnatch. Furthermore, his friendship and learning under the great Guy Ritchie, only further adds value to his role as a filmmaker. Meanwhile, the writers have brought us such movies as Stardustand Kick-Ass as well as TV shows such as Fringe and Chuck. Also, it has a pretty good cast.

Why it could suck: Well, those writers did also bring us The Sarah Connor Chronicles andAndromeda. Also, prequels sometimes have a tendency to not do so well. It's, sometimes, almost as if a prequel is a last resort when the writers have run out of ideas of where the current story can go, so they decide to go back and cash in on the name once more by filling in some gaps from the beginning. I guess only time will tell if this becomes a Batman Begins (ie a very good prequel movie that did very well to reboot the franchise) or it falls more in line with The Scorpion King (ie a complete waste of my time that probably shouldn't have even been made).

10. Source Code

Director: Duncan Jones

Writer: Ben Ripley

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga

Release Date: April 1, 2011

Genre: Action/Sci-fi-Thriller

What is it: An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.

Why it should be good: The trailer just makes this like it could be a cool creative story that provides for an entertaining thriller that could keep you on the edge of your seat. This is Duncan Jones sophomore release, after 2009′s highly acclaimed Moon. So, if he delivers again, we could have a nice treat on our hands and he could solidify his place as a talented filmmaker. I also really enjoy Jake Gyllenhaal. I think he's a great actor and should do fine in leading this movie. Vera Farmiga is also a really talented actress and one I definitely don't mind seeing. Meanwhile, Michelle Monaghan isn't too bad either.

Why it could suck: This is coming from an unproven writer. And while Duncan Jones' Moon was well-received, it's not rare that a filmmaker comes in to become something of a one hit wonder. Let's just hope Jones can deliver a worthwhile follow-up.

11. Battle: Los Angeles

Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Writer: Christopher Bertolini

Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez and Bridget Moynahan

Release Date: March 11, 2011

Genre: Sci-fi Action

What is it: A Marine platoon faces off against an alien invasion in Los Angeles.

Why it should be good: The official trailer makes it look so damn bad-ass. Maybe that's in part due to the great song selection for the trailer, but it looks just completely thrilling. It looks to be a sci-fi action movie that actually has some depth too. It sort of reminds me of Independence Day but with the seriousness, depth and emotional-center of some type of good post-9/11 movie. It's like we may finally get a really good sci-fi movie with the heart of the best war movies, coupled with the awesome actual and visual treats of some of the best sci-fi/alien movies. Eckhart is a good actor that should do well in this movie as well. Also, the writer's only past feature film work was The General's Daughter which I thoroughly enjoyed. So if that's any indication of the type of writing we'll get for Battle LA then we should definitely have a compelling story to go with the visual flare of it all. Likewise, Jonathan Liebesman has brought us The Killing Room which I felt was a fairly enjoyable suspense/thriller movie.

Why it could suck: Liebesman also brought us Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginningwhich was garbage. On top of that, movies like this can often take themselves too seriously and often times become pretentious and/or preachy and just plain unimaginative with no real heart to the movie (I'm looking at you War of the Worlds). Let's hope they avoid that here.

12. Cowboys and Aliens

Director: Jon Favreau

Writer: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof; based on the comic book by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg

Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde

Release Date: July 29, 2011

Genre: Sci-fi Action-Thriller

What is it: A spaceship arrives in Arizona, 1873, to take over the Earth, starting with the Wild West region. A posse of cowboys are all that stand in their way.

Why it should be good: It just looks fun. It's like Indiana Jones meets Men in Black with a good western feel to it. This also comes from the writers that brought us such movies as Transformersand Star Trek, and such TV shows as Alias, Fringe and Lost (though in my book "Lost" might be a bad example, though others seemed to enjoy it). Also, there's a good cast (Craig, Ford and Wilde), coupled with a nice supporting cast which includes Sam Rockwell and Paul Dano. At the end of the day, it may end up being a mindless action movie, but still looks to be fun.

Why it could suck: Jon Favreau. I'm sorry, but the guy hasn't sold me. People seem to like him, but I'm not entirely sure why. The guy hasn't delivered any really great movies. And only a few decent ones. Well, Elf I thought was really funny. Both Iron Man movies were really nothing to write home about though. Both were enjoyable, but they definitely weren't spotlights in their genre. And the second one was panned quite a bit (though I enjoyed both, but the second was a bit lacking). And that's really the only movies (Iron Man) that he's done in this genre/realm. So that doesn't give me a big vote of confidence in the guy. His other movies: Zathura was crap andMade was decent. Nothing else to note really. On top of that, the writers did also give usRevenge of the Fallen, which I enjoyed well enough, but wasn't on par with the first Transformersmovie. And they're also responsible for such things as The Island and Legend of Zorro.

13. Apollo 18

Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego

Writer: Brian Miller and Cory Goodman

Stars: None Given

Release Date: April 22, 2011

Genre: Sci-fi Horror-Thriller

What is it: Apollo 18 is a found-footage movie that claims to be "a film about the real mission to space in the 1970′s that was canceled by NASA." With the tagline "There's a reason we've never gone back to the moon", while implying a government cover-up of monsters existing on the moon.

Why it should be good: With these found-footage movies, they tend to go terribly wrong or be very entertaining. This one is looking to go the way of the latter. It's giving a fresh take on the rising sub-genre and taking us to an interesting location. Furthermore, it's basing itself on some real actual events, thus adding some extra layer to it. The viral marketing on this movie is going along nicely and the film has become something of a hot ticket. Gonzalo is a Spanish-born director who has had a couple of critically-acclaimed films in the past as well.

Why it could suck: It's kind of the nature of the genre. If they don't hit they mark, then they tend to really suck. Couple that with a pair of brand-new writers, and there are no guarantees for this movie. I'm getting a feeling though that this will end up being up there with Paranormal Activity.

14. Unknown

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Writer: Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cromwell; based on the novel by Didier Van Cauwelaert

Stars: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger and January Jones

Release Date: February 18, 2011

Genre: Drama Mystery Thriller

What is it: A man awakens from a coma, only to discover that someone has taken on his identity and that no one, (not even his wife), believes him. With the help of a young woman, he sets out to prove who he is.

Why it should be good: Liam Neeson is a bad-ass. Watching the trailer, I'm reminded of Neeson's past movieTaken. Seems to be that similar mystery action thriller type movie. And I absolutely loved that movie. Neeson made it a very good film showing off his bad-assness in it. If Unknown turns out to be as good as Takenwe'll have a very entertaining movie on our hands. Didier Van Cauwelaert, whose novel the movie is based on, is an award-winning author with multiple best-selling novels. The novel this movie is based on has met plenty of praise. So, we're sure to find that the story/source material is good.

Why it could suck: Two virtually unproven writers. While the source material may be good, they could mess it up and adapt a bad screenplay. On top of that, the director is responsible for such things as Orphan and House of Wax, neither of which were that good.

15. Red State

Director: Kevin Smith

Writer: Kevin Smith

Stars: Melissa Leo, John Goodman and Michael Angarano

Release Date: TBA (Screening at Sundance 2011)

Genre: Horror Thriller

What is it: A horror film in which a group of misfits encounter fundamentalism gone to the extreme in Middle America.

Why it should be good: Kevin Smith. Smith is one of my favorite directors around. While last year's Cop Out was rather bland, this year he returns to writing his own material with Red State. Furthermore, he'll be treading into a new genre with his first horror movie. I love Kevin Smith as a writer/director and have been fond of pretty much all of his work. From Clerks to Mallrats to Clerks II to Jay and Silent Bob, everything Smith has actually wrote and directed, I've enjoyed really. Couple that with the enjoyable John Goodman and the "fresh off an Oscar-worthy performance" Melissa Leo, and we should be in for a real treat.

Why it could suck: As stated before, this is Kevin Smith's first venture into the horror genre. Some writers/directors find gomovie that there are just some genres that they can't do, while they're better suited for another particular genre. We'll have to wait and see how Kevin Smith's foray into the horror/thriller genre goes.

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blind-rats · 6 years

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In 2004, UPN debuted “Veronica Mars” to what quickly became an adoring audience. Three years later, after a chaotic run that involved a network change, the constant threat of cancellation and a thwarted attempt at a Season 4 set at FBI headquarters, the series came to a close.

This week marks the 11 year anniversary of that last episode, and while it wasn’t the last we saw of Veronica (Kristen Bell) and her friends thanks to the 2014 feature film, the show’s cancellation stung. For fans who might want to revisit the first season’s highs and lows, we’ve come up with a list of the ten best episodes that demonstrate why “Veronica Mars” remains gone but not forgotten. If you’re looking for a quick introduction to the show, this list might also work (which is why we’ve arranged it chronologically). But if you’ve never seen it, watch it from the beginning. Season 1 is just. too. good.

“Pilot” (Episode 1)

Written by: Rob Thomas Directed by: Mark Piznarski

In less than an hour, creator Rob Thomas sets up the universe of Neptune, California — a rich elite used to getting what they want, the lower-class folks just trying to get by, and plucky teen detective Veronica Mars, forging her way through this polarized world while also investigating the case of her life. So many shows have begun with this question: “Who killed [name of girl here]?” But the fact that the person trying to solve the mystery wasn’t some unrelated detective, but the girl’s best friend elevated the series to a new plane. All of this and more was set up by the pilot, immediately diving us into a show rich with scandal and secrets, one with its own voice.

“The Wrath of Con” (Episode 4)

Written by: Diane Ruggiero Directed by: Michael Fields

This early episode doesn’t feature any major plot reveals — but it is hugely informative when it comes to the girl who was Lily Kane, and the impact she had on her friends. In paying tribute to Lily (who was brilliantly played by a then-unknown Amanda Seyfried), “Veronica Mars” went beyond the “tragically dead girl” trope to make sure Lily was remembered as vibrant, complicated and real — a message made explicit by Logan’s (Jason Dohring) tribute video seen at the end of the episode, as well as Veronica making good on a long-ago promise.

“Like a Virgin” (Episode 8)

Written by: Aury Wallington Directed by: Guy Bee

We meet the awesome Mac (Tina Majorino), the show takes on slut-shaming in an era prior to the term slut-shaming, and Veronica gets confronted with a major reveal. “Like A Virgin” is one of the show’s great examples of how to blend one-off narratives with a season-long arc; the final sequence features a jaw-dropping gut-punch pulled right out of soap operas, except the show makes sure it feels well-earned. Bell’s performance, as she copes with the potential reveal, is the primary reason for that.

“An Echolls Family Christmas” (Episode 10)

Written by: Diane Ruggiero Directed by: Nick Marck

A fateful poker game becomes a layered mystery with multiple points of view — a classic mild “Veronica solves the case” investigation with plenty of fun “Columbo” flare. What makes this a standout episode of the series, though, is the other storyline: A stalker is threatening Logan’s father Aaron, and the final minutes unravel the Echolls family in a brutal fashion. It’s one of television’s most deeply cynical Christmas episodes, but captivating on that level.

“Silence of the Lamb” (Episode 11)

Written by: Jed Seidel & Dayna Lynne North Directed by: John Kretchmer

Hey, special guest star Aaron Paul! It’s a few years before “Breaking Bad,” so he’s not listed as special, but he’s special in our hearts. Also, the case of the week is a rare dive into a hardcore murder investigation but comes with a big surprise for Mac and notable movement forward for Veronica as she takes on the Kane family’s attempts to silence her.

“Clash of the Tritons” (Episode 12)

Written by: Phil Klemmer & Aury Wallington Directed by: David Barrett

There’s a fair amount of silliness in this episode (including a sequence entirely devoted to creating an opportunity for Kristen Bell to show off her singing talents), but it’s enjoyable silliness. It also unveils a fair number of student secrets and, in the final moments, sets off a plotline that has a major impact on the rest of the season.

“Mars vs. Mars” (Episode 14)

Written by: Rob Thomas (story), Jed Seidel & Diane Ruggiero (teleplay) Directed by: Marcos Siega

This is a standalone installment from the first season, but it kicks off with a fascinating dilemma: A charismatic teacher is accused of sexual misconduct by a student and Veronica sides with the teacher. It probably helps that Mr. Riggs is played by longtime Thomas collaborator Adam Scott (who would go on to star in the seminal Starz comedy “Party Down,” created by Thomas, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge, and Paul Rudd), but the great guest star appearances don’t stop there, as future “Gossip Girl” queen bee Leighton Meester plays the girl who stands by her story despite the evidence Veronica uncovers.

“Weapons of Class Destruction” (Episode 18)

Written by: Jed Seidel Directed by: John Kretchmer

Would this episode make this list if it didn’t feature the season’s most anticipated kiss? Absolutely yes, even though it might be one of the most notable kisses of 21st century television, because the episode is also an interesting look at the issue of school violence and bullying, from a time when there wasn’t a prescribed approach on how to approach it, and even a former bully might have a tender side. Jonathan Taylor Thomas as a guest star isn’t necessarily a selling point, but he does add interesting spice to the mix (especially given that the show features no shortage of actors well above the age of 18 playing younger). More importantly, Joey Lauren Adams, as a substitute journalism instructor with the best of intentions, is legitimately a heartbreaker.

“A Trip to the Dentist” (Episode 21)

Written by: Diane Ruggiero Directed by: Marcos Siega

There were two major mysteries running through the first season of “Veronica Mars”: What happened to Lily Kane, and what happened to Veronica the night she was roofied and maybe raped? One of the show’s most brilliant moves was to solve the latter so that the former could be the entire focus of the season finale, and the way in which Veronica untangles the mystery surrounding Shelly Pomroy’s party makes for maybe one of the show’s most captivating installments.

“Leave it to Beaver” (Episode 22)

Written by: Rob Thomas (story), Rob Thomas & Diane Ruggiero (teleplay) Directed by: Michael Fields

“Leave It to Beaver” hinges on a few key reveals — it’s a deliciously twisty episode — followed by a terrifying conclusion that’s rich with action. Most importantly, it manages an impossible task: Create real closure for the season arc, but also establish interest in the narrative to come. And believe us, Season 2 is equally soaked in riches.

#Veronica Mars #Rob Thomas #Kristen Bell #Jason Dohring #Amanda Seyfried #VMars

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theprocrastinatingalien · 6 years

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Beyond Avengers 4 (looking ahead at Phase 4 of the MCU)

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

We currently know very little about what comes after AVENGERS 4. This makes sense, as we really don't (officially) know that much about the follow up to INFINITY WAR.

We DO know that head honcho Kevin Feige has stated that there will soon be a divide In the MCU... everything before AVENGERS 4, and everything after. The face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is changing... we don't even know if we'll get a 'Phase 4'. Personally, I hope we do. I think it's nice to have a group of films. It helps with marketing. It helps when charting character arcs. You don't end up with an endless mash of movie titles (I'm looking at you DCEU!). It helps gives direction.

For the moment, let's assume it IS called Phase 4. if only to keep me happy. What can we expect from it? Well, boss man Kevin has apparently plans for 20 more films after AVENGERS 4. That's basically as much as the first three phases put together. It will be a mixture of sequels and new titles.

Let's start with what we know.

SPIDER-MAN: THE NEXT AVENGER

Okay, so I've made up the title, but it's better that HOMECOMING 2 (and there's already been a SPIDER-MAN 2). Okay, so let's get this straight - yes Peter Parker crumbled to dust following Thanos' click, but we already know we have this movie coming. It'll be the first movie in Phase 4. Obviously Marvel co-runs Spideyflicks with Sony, so they'd want a follow up as soon as possible... and that's in mid 2019! What's more, it's been guaranteed that an Avenger will appear. Now, it won't be Iron Man again (and I doubt Happy Hogan will feature either)... and whilst it could easily be one of the newer characters, I predict (and have done before), that it'll be Mark Ruffalo's Dr Bruce Banner and the Hulk. He's sciency, and more importantly, Ruffalo is meant to have one more film on his contract following AVENGERS 4. I could be wrong about Ruffalo, but Tom Holland will definitely be back (there'll be no switch over to Miles Morales), Marisa Tomei (Aunt May), Zendaya (Michelle) and Jacob Batalon (Ned) will all surely return too.. It'll be interesting to see which villains they use. A VENOM movie is coming out, entirely Sony, starring Tom Hardy (which may or may not cameo Hollan), as well as BlackCat and Silver Sable movie coming too. Will the MCU decide to use more characters that Sony haven't used before, or now start reusing known characters such as Green Goblin or Dr Octopus? Filming will start later this year, so casting news will surely have to start hitting... giving away that Spider-Man isn't really dead...

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3

James Gunn confirmed this, and has apparently finished the script. It's definitely coming in 2020, and will likely be the first movie of three that year - probably around May time. Now, obviously, there's a small matter that all but one guardian have died. Will the film be entirely about Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper)? Of course not. Just as sure as I am that Spidey will be safe, I think all the others that disappeared from the click will be back. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) will all be back. The big question mark for me is Gamora (Zoe Saldana). She died a different way, and that could be a permanent. Whilst I'm sure Saldana's back in AVENGERS 4, that could just be a tie to the soul stone and Thanos. beyond that, I really don't know. It could be that, just how VOL 2 came right after the first movie, VOL 3 could follow that... it might all be set before INFINITY WAR, in which case Gamora will be as right as rain. If the movie truly follows on from AVENGERS 4, then we won't really know until that movie has come out... or VOL 3 starts filming before that movie comes out as we see Saldana on set. Karen Gillan's Nebula survived the most recent movie, but I personally believe she'll die in AVENGERS 4... so don't think she'll be in VOL 3. If I'm wrong though, she will be...depending on whether Gamora is. (I think Nebula's storyline is pretty tied to her 'sister'). Mid credits in VOL 2 told us that Ayesha had created Adam Warlock, so he could well be a main focus of the sequel - despite Gunn suggesting otherwise. Sly Stallone's Stakar Ogord assemble his older generation of guardians too... so they could play a part. And what happened to Sean Gunn's Kraglin? It's possibly, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) could join the team following AVENGERS 4, whilst she waits to be given her own sequel. Maybe Howard the Duck (voiced by Seth Green) could play a bigger part than a cameo. No, I didn't think so either. For me the biggest question here is the time placement... before INFINITY WAR or after AVENGERS 4. The more I think about it, the more I think it could be before...

BLACK WIDOW

Okay, so we don't know this is happening... officially. But it IS totally happening. Writers have been assigned and Chris Evans pretty much confirmed it. However, unlike the previous movies I've talked about so far, this film does NOT mean Scarlett Johansson survives AVENGERS 4. It's highly expected that the movie will be a prequel, going back into her history as a spy. There's a lot they can do with this, and it also means a lot of characters could pop up. There's already been speculation that Sebastian Stan could feature as The Winter Soldier (back when he was still under Hydra control). Obviously everyone expects (and will probably be disappointed if not) Clint Barton to appear. It sort of feels like Jeremy Renner has got a bum deal, so flashing out their friendship would work wonders. There's also the suspicion that Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) could appear... about what about fellow agents Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Any of them could feature to some degree. After playing a supporting character since IRON MAN 2 (back in 2010), it'll be nice for Johansson to headline a film in the MCU, finally. In a year, Marvel like to have at least one sequel and one new film. I expect BLACK WIDOW will likely act as the 'new' movie that year, probably sandwiched between the two sequels GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 and...

DOCTOR STRANGE 2

You see, this is the problem... another character who disappeared at the end of INFINITY WAR... back for a sequel. I suppose it's possible the sequel could be set between the first movie and INFINITY WAR, but I doubt it. Now all the sequels can be set before, and I feel Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) will a major force going forward in the MCU. Both Kevin Feige and James Gunn have stated the franchise will be a lot more 'cosmic' going forward, and Strange's magic, and use of different realms, will likely play a strong part in that. I think DOCTOR STRANGE 2 will round off 2020, with Benedict Wong returning as Wong, Rachel McAdams getting more screentime as Christine Palmer and Chiwetel Ejiofor playing a much bigger role as Mordo edged towards what could well be the 'new Loki'. I don't know much about the comics for this particular character, but word is Nightmare will be the primary villain this time around. No word on who might play him though... but with Cumberbatch and Ejiofor at the front line, it'll need to be someone impressive.

BLACK PANTHER 2

Obviously the first movie was a massive hit. Obviously there's going to be a sequel. Obviously there's a problem because the title character died at the fingerclick in INFINITY WAR. However, unlike with Strange or Spider-Man, the sequel doesn't necessarily need T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) to live to go ahead. In the comics, Shuri (Letitia Wright) becomes Black Panther, and Queen of Wakanda. Now, if T'Challa's death was 'real'... that should already have happened before/during AVENGERS 4. Wright could be the new BP! Shuri was certainly popular enough, and Boseman could still appear via a spirit walk-thing. You know, that thing they do. He apparently has 5 movies on his contract. Now that could work as CIVIL WAR , BLACK PANTHER, INFINITY WAR, AVENGERS 4 and... BLACK PANTHER 2. It could. Of course, I don't think that's the case. Well, actually, in the comics, both T'Challa and Shuri are Black Panthers... and I reckon that might be where they take it - but Chadwick Boseman's character will be the lead, and alive. I also expect Danai Gurira's Okoye, Luputa Nyong'O's Nakia, Angela Bassett's Ramonda all to return. Probably Winston Duke's M'Baku. Possibly Martin Freeman's Everett K Ross. I also predict Marvel will place the movie around the opening of May in 2021. That's where they put all the films they're confident in.

ANT-MAN 3 (aka ANT-MAN AND THE WASP 2)

We haven't seen ANT-MAN AND THE WASP yet, but you have to assume Marvel are working on the assumption there will be a sequel. When they announced their third phase slate, an ANT-MAN sequel wasn't included. They waited to see how the first would do . By the time they finally get around to announcing Phase 4, I expect they'll known whether ANT-MAN 3 will be on the table. My guess is, it will be. Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, with Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne will probably head-line again. Beyond that, with both ANT-MAN AND THE WASP and AVENGERS 4 to come, I wouldn't like to predict more than that. Other than I think it'll be released in 2021 - although it's worth pointing out that both ANT-MAN movies have been released AFTER an AVENGERS movie... so it could be held back until after...

AVENGERS 5

We know there'll be one... the question is, when. Typically AVENGERS movies are released at the start of may, three years apart. THE AVENGERS came out in 2012, AGE OF ULTRON in 2015 and now INFINITY WAR in 2018. Obviously, we're breaking that tradition with AVENGERS 4 in 2019. The earliest I expect AVENGERS 5 will be May 2022, but with an expanding slate of sequels, and the intention of including new titles, they might push it back a year to 2023. It will, in theory, be the first to not feature the likes of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). Nor might it include Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) or Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). I mean, it might, but it's unlikely. So who will it include? Personally, I have no idea who the villain will be but as for heroes... I guarantee it'll feature Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Black Panther (probably Chadwick Boseman, possibly Letitia Wright). It'll probably feature Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Wasp (Evangeline Lilly). There's also someone else it might feature. You'll notice I missed out Steve Rogers from the earlier list? Well, as far as Chris Evans goes, he'll not be back after AVENGERS 4, but I doubt that can be said for...

CAPTAIN AMERICA 4

In the comics, the mantle of 'Captain America' has been used by several people - most notably Bucky Barnes. Whilst Evans only had 6 films on his contract (extended to 7 to encompass AVENGERS 4), Sebastian Stan signed up for 12 movies. Right now, he's only spent four of those - the CAPTAIN AMERICA trilogy, and INFINITY WAR. AVENGERS 4 takes him to five and if the rumoured appearance in BLACK WIDOW happens, that's only half of his contract. That leaves (potentially) three more Cap movies, and three more Avenger movies. I've no idea who the villains will be in a fourth Cap movie, unless the movie itself is a 'Battle for the Shield', an idea I came up with that I'm taken with. Anthony Mackie is already Falcon in the franchise, and in the comics, Sam Wilson becomes Cap also. There's also the potential for Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) to take on the shield. There could be a three-way tussle for the mantle. Ultimately Stan will probably take the lead, as it seems to be the order of things. As a side note, Wilson's Cap is trained under an older Steve Rogers, his age caught up with him. It's possible, rather that outright killing Chris Evans' character, they swap him out for an older actor, to train the younger successor. Possibly not, but it's an option. The biggest question here is, when do they roll out this new Cap? Before or after AVENGERS 5? THE FIRST AVENGER lead into the first film to unite the characters, and a new character picking up the shield could do the same. We'll just ignore that both Bucky and Wilson turned to dust. They'll be back. Extra note - despite the title, with a new actor headlining, Marvel might treat the movie as a new franchise.

CAPTAIN MARVEL 2

The trickiest one on the list really... as the first CAPTAIN MARVEL comes out next year, certainly less than two months before AVENGERS 4. That will probably be enough time for Marvel to figure out if the movie deserves a sequel. So far, only THE INCREDIBLE HULK has stood alone, with no sequels to speak of. I'll lay money on it staying that way, and CAPTAIN MARVEL 2 will be in the Phase 4 slate. If the first is set in the 90s, then a sequel could be set in the 00s. More likely though it'll be present, so she can lead the Avengers. As I mentioned earlier though, it's possible (rather than shoehorning a sequel into the slate) Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) could find herself back in space, now with GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3... possibly filling the void left by Gamora.

NEWBIES

This is where we get really sketchy. There's been rumbles of a film for THE ETERNALS, it might be time NAMOR gets some underwater adventures, or if the day-walking vampire BLADE comes in on the actions. Let's also not forget that the deal with Fox will mean the X-MEN, FANTASTIC FOUR and DEADPOOL can crossover into the MCU. It won't be yet... but look how quickly Spider-Man entered the area.

If I had to predict Phase 4, I'd go with the following:

July 2019 - SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING 2 (confirmed) - May 2020 - GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 (basically confirmed) July 2020 - BLACK WIDOW (sort of new) November 2020 - DOCTOR STRANGE 2 - May 2021 - BLACK PANTHER 2 July 2021 - CAPTAIN MARVEL 2 November 2021 - NEW FRANCHISE (example BLADE or NAMOR) - February 2022 - CAPTAIN AMERICA 4 (sort of new) May 2022 - AVENGERS 5 July 2022 - ANT-MAN 3 / ANT-MAN & THE WASP 2 So there we are, those are my predictions for Phase 4. How wrong am I? I expect we'll have an idea come Comic Con 2019!

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rewolfaekilerom · 3 years

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ginny & georgia is good.

//NOTE: This was originally posted to Wordpress on 05.01.2021//

Let me start by saying that I tried to think of a clever title for this post, but all I could think of was the simple fact that I really like Ginny & Georgia. Excuse my lack of cleverness this week. I’m not sure if it’s my body responding to the first vaccine dose or if it’s the fog of seasonal allergies, but my brain is mush; my sense of smell is also not right. Also, Bug scratched the hair off of one of her ears (I’m pretty sure that’s seasonal allergies, poor thing) and I’ve spent a cumulative 15 hours this past week rendering, exporting, and uploading one single video onto YouTube for work (lost story short: I’m back at the rendering stage after I realized the audio got unsynced in the second half of the video. Ugh). It’s been a WEEK.

Excuses, excuses.

So, while I wait for my laundry and as I take a break from New Pokemon Snap (omg, it’s so good), I thought I’d brain-vomit my thoughts about Ginny & Georgia. Proving true to the portrait I gave of myself in my last post, I’m happy (or embarrassed?) to say that I watched Ginny & Georgia (henceforth G&G) twice this week. I finished episode 10 and immediately started rewatching episode 1, and it’s taking everything in me to not start rewatching for a third time. But depending on what you consider a week, I might be on week two now? ANYWAY.

I’ll start this brain-dump by saying, again, I really like this show. I described it to friends as a cross between Gilmore Girls and Pretty Little Liars or Outer Banks–maybe with a touch of Dexter. I don’t think it’s just that, but I think that’s a good way to summarize how it feels to watch the show, and those are good things in my book. GG and Dexter are probably in my top 5 favorite TV shows, and OB is up there too. I’ve watched OB through twice, and it definitely quenched my mid-winter thirst for the beach and my perpetual desire for a solid mystery/intrigue. I grew up watching the Travel Channel, so any show set in an even moderately interesting locale is immediately catching my interest. Oh, and I watched the entire PLL series with my mom while I was a teenager and even after I went away to college; it was “our show”–our way of sharing cultural ground even when I was away from home for the first time. We watched each episode together when it aired on TV, and we’d be the first to admit that the show was–at best–illogical, comically dramatic, and unrealistic to the umpth degree. But sometimes it’s fun to watch a show and laugh at its absurdity.

G&G doesn’t fall into the same traps that a lot of those types of teen shows do. It has drama and intrigue; it has sex and “teen problems” (which are really just person problems). But it also has real conversations about race and sexuality and parent-child relationships that go beyond the CW/Freeform problem-for-problem’s-sake model (hi, PLL)) or the WB squeaky-clean-problems approach (I’m talking to you, Seventh Heaven). It takes a Skins approach to issues young people face–well, if Skins was made for a puritanical US audience, but not THAT US Skins reboot. We’ll never talk about that. Shhh. Look away.

I’m not going to rehearse the plot of G&G, so look it up for yourself right now. I’ll wait.

Just kidding. I’m not waiting. Go look it up on your own time.

The similarities between G&G and GG are glaring (hell, Georgia even calls herself and Ginny the Gilmores with bigger boobs). In both, you have a young, single mom who had her daughter at 15/16 and then ran away from home. The mom is plucky, charismatic, and doesn’t always navigate the world by making the most, er, ethical choices. The daughter initially seems a bit more reserved and like she wants to play by the rules, but deep down is just a younger version of the mother, and that comes out of the course of the series. The two relate to one another as friends, but it’s complicated by the fact that they’re parent and child and that there is an inherent power imbalance there. The daughter is a little too mature for her own good and the mother is a little too immature for her own good. They butt heads, usually over the mother’s past and present choices (particularly regarding men) and the daughter’s present and future choices (also often regarding men). Their fights and falling outs are truly spectacular–they fight like only a mother and daughter could, but they also love one another–though they can’t express that love in the most logical or legible ways. They’re dysfunctional in every way you could imagine, and they really should be in family counseling.

But that’s not all. If that were it, I’d say, “oh, boohoo, they have similar types of characters. As if this is novel? Hasn’t this been done before? Get off your high horse.” NO. The parallels between these two shows go WAY deeper than that. Georgia is Lorelei and Ginny is Rory–hell, their naming practices are even similar. Georgia named herself after the state she was in the first time she had to come up with a pseudonym; this initiated a naming practice wherein she names her children after the cities/states they’re born in–hence Ginny, for Virginia. Rory is a nickname for Lorelei. (Side note: Lorelei is a hard name to type.)

Fine, fine. But we also have the tripartite relationship dynamics. Lorelei’s Big Three are Christopher, Max, and Luke; Georgia’s are Zion (Ginny’s dad and Georgia’s “penguin”–still not positive what that means, except that they can’t let go of one another?), Paul (the mayor, a white collar, public-facing profession), and Joe (the cafe/restaurant owner). If teenaged Rory has Dean and Jess, Ginny has Hunter and Marcus, respectively; Rory and Ginny obviously belong with the “bad boy”–they have infinitely better chemistry and get one another–but struggle with how good they “look” with the good guy, who’s actually kind of a judgmental jerk (as the bad guy points out).

Stars Hollow looks a whole lot like Wellsbury–hell, they’re both in New England. Wellsbury IS the most New England town name ever. Period. I love me some picturesque New England town bullshit.

Oh, and the side characters. Ellen and Sookie fill the same niche, and it’s a good one. They’re easily the most likable characters in both shows, and their husbands are genuinely funny characters in their own rights. GG has the sexually ambiguous (until he’s not) but oh-so-sarcastic Michel while G&G has Nick. Arguably, you could lump Kirk in with Michel to get Nick, but Nick isn’t as bumbling as Kirk, so maybe that point doesn’t stand. Hell, for friends Rory has the angel and devil on her shoulders in the form of Lane and Paris; Ginny has Max and Abby. And if Stars Hollow has Taylor Doose, Wellsbury has Cynthia Fuller. The list goes on.

Of course, a staple of GG is Emily and Richard Gilmore, but we glimpse that in G&G’s flashbacks to Zion’s parents, who help Georgia and Zion when the two first have Ginny. They’re similarly exasperated with their child’s choices and come off as a little overbearing but nonetheless have good intentions. They don’t have nearly as much screen time as Emily and Richard, which is a shame, but they serve a similar function.

Oh! And the flashbacks. They’re one of the charming parts of GG–they give us really important backstory on Lorelei’s life and life choices prior to the series’ start (and Rory’s birth, frankly). They’re less charming in G&G because Georgia’s background is far darker than GG ever could or would have conjured.

This gets me to why G&G isn’t just a GG rip-off. G&G isn’t just a woke GG. It isn’t just GG with people of color, in the LGBTQIA+ community, of varied socioeconomic classes, or from outside New England. If you like GG, you might like G&G, but you also might not. G&G addresses real life challenges teenagers, women, people of colorm hell, most Americans face in 2021. It depicts the US in its multiple angles, some of which are very, very ugly. Some might say that it’s GG for 2021, and maybe it is, but if that’s true, I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. I’m just not sure it’s totally true.

I’m going to cool it on the GG-G&G comparisons for a moment and just talk about G&G because I think you get my point. Before I cool it completely, though, and as a point of departure, I’ll say that if we do go with the idea that G&G is GG for 2021, then we need to recognize what G&G does differently: it gives us glimpses into how a whole range of people experience the US, and it doesn’t look away from ugly, unflattering, hateful truths that reside just below the surface of sparkly, shiny, pretty, picture-perfect towns. It doesn’t shy away from reality, even if that reality is uncomfortable for white, middle-class, cis, het viewers.

The important things about G&G that I haven’t yet mentioned in specifics are a’plenty.

Ginny (and Hunter) is mixed-race, a subject that comes up on a number of occasions in the form of explicit conversations about how being mixed-race doesn’t necessarily mean belonging to two communities but can instead mean feeling out of place in both. It also comes up in a very hard-to-watch argument between Ginny and Hunter where the two trade insults about one another’s lack of belonging; the argument escalates into a screaming match in which the two effectively diminish not only one another’s claims to their Black (in Ginny’s case) and Taiwanese (in Hunter’s case) identities but also the prejudices they experience at the hands of a hegemonic white society that systematically denies opportunities or a sense of belonging (among other things) for those who don’t fit into readily identifiable “boxes.”

Georgia ran away from her childhood home in rural, impoverished Arkansas because she was being sexually abused by her stepfather, who then went on to sexually abuse her half-sister.

Georgia has killed people, often for “legitimate” (???) reasons, including posing threats to Ginny.

Georgia used to be in a biker gang and still has connections with at least one member, a lawyer she has on retainer to help her “disappear” her misdeeds, including said murders.

Marcus and Ginny have struggled (or are currently struggling) with self-harm and suicide ideation.

Literally every single one of the teenagers in this show is under immense pressure to over-engage in extracurricular activities that will make them competitive candidates at top universities.

Parents’ unhealthy relationships with one another, divorce, and everything else in that realm also shape the teenaged characters’ lives.

Abby struggles with an eating disorder that’s fueled in part by comments her male peers (notably, an asshole named Press) about her body. Male characters make sexist, stereotyping comments to Ginny about her body, too.

I’ll stop there, but I do so with full knowledge that I’m likely leaving something out. Hell, as I type this I remember that Austin (Ginny’s younger half-brother) literally stabs a kid in the hand and there’s a private detective trying to figure out Georgia’s past, including if/how she murdered her previous husband (the impetus for the family’s move). Like I said, there’s so much more to this show than just its similarities with GG. But I’ve also seen articles online decrying viewers who make the connection, and I don’t think that’s quite the right approach. The show clearly isn’t copying GG. Even if G&G did take inspiration from GG, it takes that inspiration in a fresh direction.

I wonder, though, about how we, the viewers, are supposed to respond to certain aspects of the show.

For instance, the show pits the US South as the source of obvious Bad Stuff ™–child abuse, incest, poverty, etc.– and the US Northeast as a place where the Bad Stuff ™ is hidden beneath a picture-perfect veneer. I get what the show’s creators are going for. They’re attempting to give us a multidimensional perspective on the US in all its prettiness and ugliness, but I wonder if associating the South with only the Bad Stuff ™ is doing a disservice to a region that has a rich cultural past and present–a past and present that’s certainly included problems like poverty, racism, and abuse but cannot be defined by those things alone because those things are not all that’s there. To tie those things primarily to just one region because those are stereotypes that are often perpetuated about that region seems a bit . . . overly simplistic? Troublesome? Dare I use the old grad-student favorite–problematic? It’s too easy–it’s lazy, in fact–to pit South against Northeast as the source of the US’s outright ugliness. It’s the rhetoric surrounding the 2016 presidential election all over again, and, frankly, we could all use a break.

The other thing that regional competition does is it makes it possible for the show to gloss over the fact that those Bad Things ™ exist in the Northeast, too. I feel silly saying that because it seems so obvious, but the simplistic portrait the show paints of the US means that it sacrifices accurate representation and complexity for the sake of–well, actually, I’m not sure what it’s for the sake of. Maybe straightforward storytelling? That might make sense if the show didn’t dwell in other complexities and commit itself to attempting to represent other identities and aspects of American life with some degree of accuracy, so I don’t know.

I can’t speak to whether the show accurately represents the experiences of mixed-race people, LGBTQIA+ people, or people with disabilities. I suspect that it represents the experiences of some people accurately but, of course, not all people because that would be impossible. I’m also not sure if I think the show’s commitment to representing a variety of experiences of US life borders on tokenism. I can’t speak for how someone who occupies one of those subject positions experiences the show because I do not occupy that subject position. My gut reaction is that the show does seem to make an effort to go beyond the whole “look at us, we cast all sorts of people in our show” by attempting to humanize all of its characters as real humans with rich, complex lives. It weaves the characters’ lives into a tight web, making clear that a character like Max and Marcus’s dad isn’t noteworthy just because he’s deaf. You don’t look at Clint and think “oh, that’s the deaf character.” You think, oh, that’s Clint; he’s Ellen’s husband, Max and Marcus’s dad, he’s deaf, he makes pithy remarks about his over-the-top daughter and slacker son, and he performs strip-teases for his wife. He’s noteworthy because he’s an engaged (and absolutely hilarious) husband and father whose deafness is one of many identities of his that influences his children’s lives as any other cultural identity would influence a family’s dynamic. The entire family is (at least) bilingual, communicating in sign language and spoken English while also teaching their sign language skills to friends and significant others. His deafness is one identity among many that the show invests him with, and he’s not in all that many scenes.

I could be wrong, but that was my experience while watching the show and thinking about it a bit afterward and while writing this post.

The show depicts mixed-race identity in a complex way, too, but it dwells on it a bit longer and with a bit more detail. I mentioned that Ginny and Hunter are both of mixed-race parentage and that their mixed-race identities become a subject of a relationship-ending argument. To back up a bit, though, the show attempts to paint a vivid portrait of the challenges Ginny in particular faces as a she navigates middle-class, white suburbia as the daughter of a Black father and a white mother. We see how she reacts when a police office walks toward her at a gas station while she pumps gas in her mother’s BMW, when a teacher tells her she’s being “aggressive” (while her classmates, who display similar behaviors, are unremarked upon), when her hair frizzes out after her friends pressure her to let another student’s white mom brush her curls into a ponytail using a boar-bristle brush, when a male friend (multiple male friends?) tells her that she doesn’t look like a stereotypical Black girl, and, among other things, when another student asks her “what are you?” in an attempt to pinpoint her racial/ethnic identities. Each instance is painful to watch because the actress who plays Ginny plays her well; the camera stays trained on her face as she responds to each of these interactions, allowing the viewer to observe the range of emotions she feels as she repeatedly navigates a community of peers and adults who can’t get their shit together and respect her existence. These interactions aren’t quirky neighbors asking silly questions about why she hangs her laundry a certain way or informing her that she needs to only mow her lawn on Thursdays. These are interactions that repeatedly undermine her sense of belonging, that tell her she’s somehow different, and that question her very right to exist. It’s heartbreaking, but I think it’s important that it’s depicted because that’s reality for many, many people.

The scene with Hunter is interesting because it shows the two turning something that was common-ground into a source of conflict for them. I’m not entirely sure how to read this scene. It’s difficult to watch because it rapidly descends into a “who is the most disenfranchised?” competition rather than a respectful conversation about each partner’s different experiences with prejudice. I wondered if the subtext here was some commentary on how members of one racial community pit themselves against members of other racial communities. (I’m not being clear here, and I’m struggling to clarify even as I go back to edit this post. I guess what I mean is that, when I initially watched this scene, I worried that this was a negative commentary on the Black community in particular and how it engages with other racial communities. I hope that makes sense.) Frankly, I’m still not sure if that’s not what’s happening there or if that’s not what was intended. What I’m fairly certain of, though, is that the scene makes clear that we, the viewer, are being told pretty explicitly that we can’t identify the two as “good partners” on the sole basis that they have mixed-race parentage in common. In other words, the scene undermines the idea that experience of racial prejudice is the only (or even the most important) factor that brings two people together and makes them good partners for one another. It also undermines the belief that experiencing prejudice doesn’t mean a person is automatically awakened to the prejudices other people also experience.

This is also one of the scenes where Ginny truly is unlikeable. Hunter is, too, but he’s unlikeable in a number of scenes throughout the show. He’s the Good Guy™ character in a nutshell–says all the right things, does all the right things, is all the right things, but maybe isn’t all those things for all the right reasons. In this scene, Ginny enacts the prejudicial treatment she’s suffered at the hands of her peers against Hunter; she questions the validity of his identity and the veracity of his experiences of prejudice at the hands of his peers. This scene is the breaking-point where the two have to come to terms with the fact that they’re not compatible even though, on some surface and by some set of metrics, they might appear to be.

Hunter sucks, but so does Marcus–for different reasons, though. Marcus is detached, withdrawn, sarcastic, unmotivated, disrespectful, and dishonest. He’s unaware–and doesn’t attempt to improve at all on this–of how his actions impact other people. He just doesn’t care about anyone but himself–until he does, a little bit. Some part of me has sympathy for Marcus and genuinely likes him; I’ll blame the show for that. Another part of me–the part that’s 30 years old and has known plenty of Marcuses–doesn’t have time for his shit. I’m conflicted, but the majority of me wants Marcus and Ginny to end up together because the things they have in common and the things that bring them together are the things that most people look for in a relationship. Marcus is a lazy shit most of the time, but he makes a genuine effort to understand Ginny. By the end of the season, we see that he also respects her and accepts her as she is–warts and all. He seems to genuinely want the best for her, which is a nice development in character from our first introduction to him, tumbling out of his mother’s minivan after having been caught smoking weed on a street corner. Again, though, he wasn’t always so respectful. His past behaviors make it hard to trust him, so it makes sense when Ginny doesn’t bring him along at the end of the season. It does, though, make you hope that he’s back in season 2 and that we get to see more of their relationship.

Speaking of which, I hope that season 2 also explores Georgia and Joe’s relationship a bit more. It seems like they’re headed in the Lorelei-Luke direction, which will make me happier than words could express, but I could also see the show’s creators flipping the script on us and setting Joe up with his own gloomy backstory–something to do with the ethically ambiguous labor situation he’s got going on at his farm and in his cafe, perhaps? Still, I think that might make him and Georgia even better suited for one another than they already are. After all, he’s one of the first people who showed Georgia true, genuine kindness after she ran away as a teenager.

And of course I want more of Ellen in season 2. The actress who plays her is hilarious and her character is just . . . really likable.

On a somewhat lighter note, one little thing I noticed while watching the show is that the characters slap their thighs a lot. This, again, might by my seasonal allergies brain, but the “[slaps thighs]” notation on closed captioning came up an infinite number of times over the course of this show. It came up so often that I started thinking you could catch the entire plot of the show if someone just spliced together every instance where a character sighs and slaps their thighs. I’d watch that video.

After all that, I still think the parallels to GG are there, but I still defend that G&G is also more than those parallels. And the “more” it offers is good. It’s intrigue; it’s gloomy realities and often-ignored truths that don’t offer viewers a sunny break from reality. But I think that’s good. I don’t like the argument that TV should be a “break from reality” or that a show is good on the sole basis that it offers us a “break from reality.” I think that argument is an excuse used to defend media that is too lazy to do the responsible thing and convey storylines that are inclusive and meaningful.

Well, my laundry is done, so I have to go deal with that. Happy Saturday, and happy initial inoculation!

XOXO, you know.

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tori-castellan · 6 years

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Tori and Luke’s Relationship

Okay, don’t get me wrong, I love Luke and Tori, I love their relationship, but I honestly feel that it is almost insanely unhealthy, not because it’s abusive - it’s not - or because either of the characters are bad - they aren’t, at least in my opinion - but because of how completely and utterly dependent Tori is on Luke.

Really, this is clear from the time they meet. In ITPS, it’s established that Tori and Luke met and formed a friendship soon after she arrived at Camp Half-Blood. This was a very vulnerable time in her life; her mother was dead (and she watched her die and was injured herself), she felt disconnected from her brother, and she had been suddenly thrust into this word of myth with no warning or preparation.

And then she met Luke.

Honestly, I don’t think their relationship started like this, or that Luke preyed on Tori. I fully believe that they were fairly normal friends, even if Tori leaned on him more than usual because of her circumstances.

But the problem lies in one simple fact: Not only does Tori not really have any other strong emotional bonds, she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t put any real effort into making friends or connecting with her half-siblings, Dan, or even the other Cabin 11 campers. She does end up having other friends, especially in INAS, but she always comes back to Luke. At her lowest points, either unconsciously or on purpose, she always looks to Luke and his memory for comfort and guidance. Essentially, she doesn’t think of Luke as a want, but as a need. To her, he is air or water, not cake or a car, or even something also that’s considered necessary to be safe and healthy, but not necessarily alive, like shelter.

Throughout ITPS, INAS, and Colors III., Tori’s goal is always Luke. In INAS, when Luke is dead and Tori thinks he is beyond her reach entirely, she’s . . . almost lifeless, in a way. She has no goals of her own beyond existing. She mostly does things because she has to or is forced to. Even when she decides to join in the fight against the gods, this decision is somewhat inspired by Luke’s own fight against them, and she does it at least partially because it offers the possibility of Luke coming back.

Now, this is by no means Tori’s only character trait, and she definitely has hobbies, thoughts, ideals of her own, but they’re all overshadowed by this. To Tori, the most important thing in her life is Luke, or finding Luke, or mourning Luke. Basically, this is Tori:

Life: Okay, so there are two options. The first one is Luke-

Tori: That one.

Life: Hold on, you haven’t heard the second one-

Tori: I don’t care. I want Luke.

Life: Yeah, but-

Tori: No buts. Give me Luke.

Life: You don’t even know what the second option is.

Tori: I don’t care, I want Luke.

Life: What if the other thing is five Lukes? Hm?

Tori: Is it?

Life: . . . No.

Tori: Is it any number of Lukes?

Life: . . . No.

Tori: Then it’s not what I want.

In contrast to this, Tori’s relationships with others are pretty surface-level. She pretty much doesn’t have any sort of connection with anyone else in ITPS because Luke was still alive, so even when they weren’t actively together, she was looking for him and trying to reunite with him. This changes some in INAS, where she has fairly good relationships with her siblings, but again, it feels shallow. They’re only really starting to connect, and they don’t understand Tori on a deeper level. They care about her, and she cares about them, but to her, they’re more stand-ins for Luke, at least on an emotional level. I honestly think that if Luke just randomly showed up alive, offered absolutely no explanation for this, and asked Tori to leave with him but that it would mean completely abandoning her siblings and everyone else forever, she would do it. She’d probably feel bad about it, but she’d do it. And her ‘feeling bad’ would be more guilt than sadness, because it would be so overshadowed by how happy she was because, hey! Luke!

And I don’t know if all of this was intentional in ITPS and INAS, but it was when I wrote Colors III. Tori honestly cares about Dan, Annabeth, Percy, and others, but still chooses Luke, even when she knows it’s at a possible or even certain detriment to herself or others.

During the final battle in Colors III., Luke needs to kill himself to kill Kronos. Even with the belief that this is absolutely necessary, this is Tori’s reaction:

“No! I don’t care! You can’t do this to me, Luke! Please, baby, I love you, I love you so much.” She started kissing him, his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his lips. “Please don’t leave me. Please.” (This wasn’t even the first or only time she said this during this part; she continually said “No” from the moment she realized what was going on, and continued even as it became clear to everyone else that this had to happen.)

And finally, part XXVI. of book five: The battle is over; Tori has had time to get clean, her hair is down, and she’s wearing a light blue shirt - partly for Luke’s eyes, but also for clarity and thought. She has sat down and come to a purposeful decision: “I’ve chosen to stay with you . . . Whatever your fate, I’ll share it.”

(Keep in mind that at this point, that could mean literal death and eternal torture (and she absolutely knew that and still meant it) and that it actually did end up with them having their memories wiped and new, fake ones inserted, and thus being completely cut off from everyone they knew.)

Now, I don’t necessarily think this all is a bad thing from a story perspective. Just from a purely relationship perspective, that it is. And the reason for this is actually shown pretty well in INAS, which leads me to believe that it’s at least partially intentional on TheBrightestNight’s part. Without Luke, Tori completely falls apart. She is an emotional wreck with very little to fall back on now that the only person she had any real relationship with is gone. And, as of chapter 43 of INAS, she hasn’t really moved on from Luke and his death. And yeah, she has people she cares about, but I never get the feeling that her and these people really understand each other on a deep, emotional level, except for maybe Percy and Annabeth, but she doesn’t interact with them very much. Tori clearly doesn’t feel for anyone as strongly as she did and still does for Luke. She is, at times, suicidal, not just because he’s gone, but because without him, she has no one left.

While I personally am in favor of Luke coming back at some point in INAS, I think that even if he does, Tori needs friendships with people apart from Luke (not Nick, I don’t care for Nick). But I don’t think that can come purely from her effort, just because she wouldn’t see a need to put any in. After all, she would have Luke. What else does she need?

Credit for Tori’s creation goes to @notesofarichlycolorednight

TheBrightestNight’s AO3 Account .

My AO3 Account

It’s the Perfect Story

I Need Another Story

The Colors AU

#itps #colors #colors au #colors iii.#inas #notesofarichlycolorednight #analysis #fanfiction #pjo fanficition #brief suicide mention #tw: sucide mention #tw: suicideal feelings #luke castellan #luke/tori #tori williams #oc: tori williams #pjo #fanfiction analysis

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ayearofpike · 6 years

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Final Friends, Book 3: The Graduation

Pocket Books, 1989 238 pages, 25 chapters + epilogue, 10-page introduction ISBN 0-671-73680-9 LOC: CPB Box no. 1779 vol. 23 OCLC: 670303406 Released December 10, 1988 (per B&N)

When we last left our friends, they were all going their separate ways in the wake of the tragic accident that paralyzed the homecoming queen. Now, six months later, they’re brought back together for Tabb High’s graduation ceremony, and the after-party cruise to Catalina. It creates a deadline by which the kids need to find Alice’s killer before they’re apart for good. This last party is the end of all possibility – an end made more pressing by someone’s goal to make sure the ship never reaches the island.

I think I was more confused by this than was actually warranted when I read it at 13 or whatever I was, because the very idea of familial death, the anxiety and personal blame that someone might go through in the wake of it, and treatment by electroshock and its effects were just not something I could relate to or even try to empathize with. Because –

Well, let’s just tell the damn story in reverse: it was Polly. She accidentally distracted Alice into falling off a ladder at the party, and the blow to the head killed her. But Polly had shocked herself trying to change a light bulb earlier, and presumably the shock manifested some of the guilt over the death of her parents that her previous ECT had helped her suppress. Yes, Polly was in the car that went off the cliff, and was distracting her father right before the accident! So to keep herself from being blamed for Alice’s death (maybe more to herself than to anyone else) she staged a suicide: posed her sister with the gun in her mouth, muffled the gunshot so that it would look real, then went outside and fired a shotgun blast near the bedroom window so the final revelers would hear it and think it was Alice.

What about Maria’s fall from the parade float? That was Polly too. See, she expected Jessica to win homecoming queen, but also subconsciously blamed her for the party happening in the first place and thereby Alice’s death. So she compromised the queen’s platform, expecting Jessica to climb up there, break it, and break herself. Because Maria was so much smaller, it took a second ascension for the boards to finally give. She also stole Sara’s homecoming dance money to keep it safe, because she was worried Sara would do just what she did and leave her purse somewhere and lose it. Oh, and she chopped down the varsity tree, maybe because Russ wanted to but also because she wanted to punish Bill and Clair and The Rock and the other pretty people who’d started the fight at the party that preceded Alice’s death.

The thing is, she wasn’t even fully aware she was doing these things. Just before something terrible happened, Polly would see Clark, who would offer hints and threats against her classmates. We slowly learn that she’s been imagining him: his strangeness and his closeness to her pushed him into the role, in her mind, of her angry avenging side, one that she didn’t always have total control over. She tells Michael and Jessica both that Clark is somehow responsible for these things, even though they know on some level that he can’t be. Like, here Polly swears up and down that Clark is on the boat, but a) Michael went to his house right before coming on board and didn’t encounter Clark on the way, and b) Jessica was one of the first three people on the ship, with Polly being another, and she knows that Polly came aboard alone. Plus, there aren’t many places for this weirdo to hide; all the staterooms save three (for the first three girls) are locked, and Michael inspects the whole rest of the ship to no avail.

He starts to suspect that Polly isn’t telling the whole truth (actually, while he’s at Clark’s house), but doesn’t confront her with it until the whole group is gathered below decks in the engine room to try to smoke out the real killer. Maria’s on board with this too. She’s been in a rehab facility since her accident – lots of time to think about Michael’s perspective and realize that if Alice was killed, it was probably the same person who tampered with the float and left her paralyzed from the waist down. So she pretty much uses Nick to scare everyone into showing up for the gathering.

Now, I understood a lot more about how the Final Friends got to this point on this reread, but that doesn’t mean that I necessarily agreed with how it went down. Like, Michael pretty much stern-voiced the mental illness out of Polly. He barked at her about what he suspected had happened and how she was making Clark up in her mind, and that “his” malicious anger at the group was coming from somewhere inside Polly. And, ta-da, she suddenly remembered everything and had clarity. Which, like ... that’s not how it works. I feel like we’re all aware in 2018 that you can’t just decide to not be crazy, to say nothing of whether someone else can do it in seconds. And, sure, the ECT she underwent as a child might have contributed to this mental state in some way, but the procedure typically stems from the fact that mental issues are there in the first place. (See also Carrie Fisher’s defense of her own experience with it.)

It doesn’t really matter, though. Not only does Polly remember doing this stuff, she takes ownership of it and is prepared to follow through. So the bomb “Clark” planted in a locker against the hull? Yeah, literally a bomb! Well, construction explosive from Polly’s company, set to blow at 2 am when everyone was asleep and maximize casualties on the sinking ship. She protects it with the shotgun that “Clark” strategically planted for her to find. So it blows up and the ship starts sinking, but the friends get off the boat and into a lifeboat. But then Polly produces another bomb from her jacket! She’s already gone from blaming the others to blaming herself, and she’s ready to put an end to it. So everyone bails. Except Jessica.

Sure, this is partly because Jessica can’t swim and has a broken arm besides and there are no life vests left. But, realistically, if she’d said so, someone else would have given theirs up. The truth is Jessica knows, somewhere deep down, that she’s the only one who can help Polly right now. Michael’s just yelling and unsympathetic; Jessica’s known Polly her whole life, and she knows Polly didn’t try to kill her parents, and she knows Polly didn’t try to kill Alice. Polly also knows Jessica can’t swim (which was part of the rationale behind “Clark” sinking the ship), but as they talk Polly starts to realize that someone does care about her, and that she’s not beyond help. So at the last second she throws the bomb overboard.

So everybody’s alive! And has a happy ending? Let’s wrap up the loose ends.

Did Michael and Jessica end up together? Yes, finally. But not before Jessica all but gave up on him and tried to seduce Bill, who ran away and called her a slut. Apparently, he did the same thing to Clair at the party, and that plus his defense of The Rock and his attempts to hang with Michael outside of school lead them to draw the conclusion that Bill is gay. I mean, there are more explanations for what happened, and I’m not totally sure Pike did justice to homosexuality in this book, but remember, 1989. We can build more nuance into our understanding because we’re more empathetic to this stuff now.

What about Clair? Did she really have an abortion? She did, in fact. But wait! If she didn’t fuck Bill, whose was it? No surprise, if you were paying attention: it was Bubba, somehow. Yeah, the repulsive little troll managed to weasel his way into her panties, and when trouble arose he took care of it – and pretty much instantly regretted it. So the experience brought him and Clair closer together, and when they get back to the mainland they’re going to drive to Vegas and get married. WHAT. Just one more example in fiction of gross-ass weirdos getting girls way beyond their means.

Did Nick and The Rock ever bury the hatchet? That actually happened in Book 2. Nick realized that The Rock had mistaken him for a dealer in his old hood, took him to meet the dude, then saved his life when The Rock tried to flex and almost got got. The experience taught The Rock to know his role and shut his mouth, otherwise someone might lay the smack down on his roody-poo candy ass.

But Maria’s stuck paralyzed, right? No, actually. She’s been in the rehab facility learning to walk again. But she didn’t tell anybody because her plan was to gather the gang together, stand up and walk across the room, and see who looked most guilty or upset to figure out who’d sabotaged the float. Turned out that she was at least able to get the gun from Polly, but by then her plan was already tits-up. Also: she’s going to marry Nick at the same time Bubba and Clair get married, so she doesn’t get deported! Yay immigration laws!

What about Sara and Russ? They’re working through their bullshit. It seems that even though Sara is totally head over heels for this dude, she can’t ever just say so, and takes it for granted that he wants her too and understands her snark. Which he doesn’t! I mean, he does want her, but when she’s jokingly mean to him he takes it at face value and assumes he’s off her short list. They finally manage to have a conversation about it, but us adults know we can’t magically fix everything by talking once.

Was anybody actually hurt by the bomb? Well, Jessica broke her arm in the explosion, and The Rock was trapped in the engine room but managed to swim out the hole and get to safety. Otherwise, everyone was fine, thanks to (get this) Kats. This wasn’t entirely altruistic, though; he was going to prank everyone into the lifeboats by setting smoke bombs and making them think the ship was going down. Fortunately (?), this happened just before Polly’s big badaboom, so Kats comes out a hero.

Wait a sec – if Sara lost the money in Book 2, how did they pay for all this shit? Gambling! Bubba is a lifelong Lakers fan, and the night of the party is also Game 7 of the NBA finals. He put a bet on the game that would be big enough to cover the student government’s debts for the entire year, including this cruise. Alas, the Lakers lose on a desperation 3-pointer that clangs off the rim. It’s a good thing Bubba bet on the Celtics.

And with that, we’re through Pike’s first multi-book series. Confusing? Convoluted? Not really – more like a soap opera where you have to keep track of multiple storylines to get the whole picture. It’s got its problems, but it continues to do that Pike thing of reaching for something more than most teen books gave us at the time, and so I’m going to keep on reading.

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years

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The Weekend Warrior 11/20/20 – SOUND OF METAL, MANGROVE, RUN, EMBATTLED, COLLECTIVE, VANGUARD and More!

There are some really great movies out this week, oddly two of them being from Amazon Studios, although only one will be on Prime Video this week, while you’ll have to wait until after Thanksgiving for another. Honestly, I’m a little freaked out by the fact that next week is Thanksgiving, and normally I’d be pulling my hair out trying to figure out the box office in what’s always a difficult week to predict. As of now, I’m kind of giving up on box office for a while – just like Governor Cuomo (rimshot) -- so hopefully you’re able to enjoy some of these reviews and find some movies to enjoy out there. I’m just sitting here waiting for the last shoe to drop. (Not sure what’s weirder this week, that four of the movies premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year or that four of the movies are directorial debuts.)

Although I already reviewed Mangrove, the first film in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology,” when it played at the New York Film Festival a few months back, it will finally hit Amazon Prime Video this Friday. If you hadn’t heard or don’t remember from when I first wrote about it, “Small Axe” is McQueen’s five-film anthology that’s set within London’s West Indian community, exploring the issues they’ve had with the racist London police from the late ‘60s to the ‘80s. (I’ve only seen three of the movies but Mangrove is clearly the best, in my opinion, although all three have warranted repeat viewings.)

Mangrove actually works pretty well as its own standalone movie, starring Shaun Parkes as Frank Crichlow, owner of the title club that becomes as local community hang-out for the West Indian community. It’s also the target of violence and racist police, led by Sam Spruell’s PC Pulley, who are constantly raiding Frank’s establishment making it impossible for him to do business. The community circles around Frank, joined by young Black Panther activist Altheia Jones, played by Black Panther’s Letitian Wright. They eventually decide to protest, which leads to a conflict with the police, and of course, Frank and the other black people at the otherwise peaceful march end up having to go to court to defend themselves.

Since I’ve already reviewed the movie – and you can read that review at the link above – I won’t go too much further, but honestly, if you saw and enjoyed The Trial of the Chicago 7, you need to see McQueen’s film, which in my opinion, handles history that’s far tougher and is far less known in the States in a similarly brilliant way. I’m a little bummed that being a part of an “anthology” that isn’t getting a theatrical release, we’re not going to hear Mangrove discussed until next year’s Emmys, I assume, but it’s some of McQueen’s best work with an incredibly engaging ensemble cast that keeps you invested for the entire two hours. (The next two chapters, Lovers Rock and Red, White and Blue will be on Amazon Prime Video on November 27 and December 4 respectively.)

(Also, I will have an interview with filmmaker Steve McQueen over at Below the Line very soon.)

Since I’ve already reviewed Mangrove, I’m going to go with Darius Marder’s SOUND OF METAL (Amazon Original) this week’s “Featured Flick.” This is a movie that I feel like I’ve been hearing a lot about over the past few months but actually, it’s one of three movies in this week’s Weekend Warrior that premiered over a year ago at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Riz Ahmed from The Night Of and Nightcrawlers plays Ruben Stone, drummer in a loud touring metal band with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke), but Ruben’s loud playing style is finally taking its toll, as he has practically lost all of his hearing. Unable to communicate with Lou or play, Ruben agrees to spend time in a camp for the deaf to learn how to survive without hearing where he’s kept in line by his tough counselor, Joe.

I assumed I’d like this movie because it takes place in the world of music, but it’s not really about the music. In fact, I was a little puzzled when my screener seemed to have subtitles stuck on, and I couldn’t figure out why that would be. Well, it certainly makes sense as the film goes along as Marder and his sound team start playing with the sound to give you some idea what Ruben is and isn’t hearing. It’s probably one of the more masterful uses of sound I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time.

And yet, it doesn’t do anything to take away from Ahmed’s amazing performance as a young musician who has issues with violence and addiction and frustration with the fact he can no longer hear Lou. At first, Ruben looks into possibly getting some sort of hearing aids although the surgery needed so that he could hear again would cost upwards of $40,000, which is money he doesn’t have. He agrees to go into the camp where he finds himself in sign language class with a group of far younger kids. Ruben obviously has a hard time adjusting to his new environment, especially since it separates him from Lou and the outside world.

It’s interesting to note that the original story is from Derek Cinafrance, who is a masterful storyteller in his own right, and who co-write Place Beyond the Pines with Marder, which may be how it arrived on Marder to make as his directorial debut. And what a directorial debut it is! Even once you admire the brilliant storytelling and pacing of the film, you watch Ahmed’s performance and realize that this actor who we’ve known is talented for quite some time can still blow us away by playing a character so different from himself. It’s a jaw-dropper of a performance at times, but Cooke and

I really don’t want to say too much more about the plot from there, because Marder really has weaved an interesting for journey through coming to terms with his deafness. Sure, there may be more than a little bit of comparisons to make with Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, which was one of my favorite movies the year it came out, but that may just be because they’re both movies involving drummers, but that’s where the comparisons begin and end, because Marder’s film is just such an emotional journey where you can feel for and understand Ruben every step of the way even when he’s doing things that seem counter-productive to his rehabilitation.

You may think you know where Sound of Metal is going, but you’d be very wrong, and it in fact leads to an ending that is probably one of the more powerful and emotional ones I’ve seen this year. There’s no question in my mind that Sound of Metal and particularly Ahmed and some of Marder’s crew will be in serious talks for awards in the new year.

Anyway, Sound of Metal will be in select theaters on Friday, maybe some drive-ins, too, although I’m not sure all the incredible sound work will work in that environment necessarily. Either way, it will be on Prime Video on December 4, and I hope you’ll make an effort to see it however way you can. It should be able to quite readily get into my top 10 for the year.

Also very good is Aneesh Chaganty’s thriller RUN (Hulu), the follow-up to Chaganty’s Searching from a few years back, which will be available on Hulu starting Friday. It stars Sarah Paulson from every Ryan Murphy everything as Diane Sherman whose daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) is born with all sorts of maladies. 17 years later, Chloe is a teenager and ready to possibly leave the nest and go off on her own despite her illnesses that keeps her wheelchair-bound, but she starts noticing her mother behaving oddly and giving her a new medication that makes her suspicious.

While Chaganty’s previous film Searching used a clever and innovative method of telling a story, all from a laptop screen, he decided to take a more traditional approach to this “empty nester thriller” (for lack of a better spoiler-free description) that effectively mixes Hitchcock with a movie like Misery. With that latter reference, you might immediately assume you know where every beat of Run may be going, especially when it becomes obvious that Paulsen’s character is one that will do anything to keep her daughter rom going off on her own and leaving her behind.

As much as I hate comparing Chaganty to M. Night Shyamalan, only because they’re both of Indo-American descent, but they both decided to take a similar career path in terms of using twisty thrillers as their calling card and impressed early in their careers. Similar to Shyamalan, Chaganty has created a well-crafted thriller that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat while never slowing down, and it also doesn’t try to hit you over the head with twists as Shyamalan sometimes does.

That said, Run does indeed have a pretty major twist that may or may not help endear those to what they’ve seen up until to that point, but that’s always the danger when you try to turn a genre on its ear, and Chaganty’s film does get into some crazier and crazier places as it goes along. A lot of that comes down to Paulson, who is playing an absolutely insane crazy, but kudos go out to the young Ms. Allen who was quite good, and honestly, I never realized that she actually used a wheelchair in real life.

I’m a little bummed Run missed its opportunity to find a theatrical audience, because it’s very much the kind of movie that would be fun to watch with others. I’m sure it’ll get seen, and Chaganty will continue to do interesting things as a filmmaker. I know, maybe this was one of my lamer reviews, but you know what? If you want to pay me to write them, I’ll put more effort into it. :)

You can read more about this movie in my interview with Chaganty over at Below the Line a little later.

One of the nicer surprises of the week was director Nick Sarkisov’s EMBATTLED (IFC Films), which I didn’t have very high expectations of, mainly since it was another MMA drama, this one about a father and son, rather than being about brothers. Also, about a decade ago, I might be a little hesitant to watch a movie starring either Stephen Dorff and Elizabeth Reaser, because they’ve both made a lot of bad movies… but this is not one of them. Dorff plays Cash Boykins, one of the most successful MMA fighters on the circuit, who is trying to reconnect with his estranged 18-year-old son Jett (Darren Mann) by training him while staying away from his ex-wife (Reaser) or their other son Quinn (Colin McKenna) who has a learning disability.

If you’ve read that far, you may already think you know where this is going, because let’s face it, there have been way too many boxing and fighting dramas that generally used the same techniques and plot devices. Heck, just a few weeks away, we got Jungleland, which was a very rare case of a movie that was able to surpass its overused genre. Oddly enough, Embattled is now the second decent fight movie in a matter of weeks.

If I may address the Stephen Dorff in the room, this is easily one of the actor’s best performances in many years, possibly since Ric Roman Waugh’s Felon. Dorff plays Cash as just such a despicable villain in terms of his racist attitude and the abusive way he treats his sons and his current wife Jade (Karrueche Tran). Even more impressive is Mann, who holds his own both in and out of the ring. The movie really is about the conflict that dates back to a violence incident between them that eventually forced Jett’s mother to split with Cash. Even with the focus being so much on Cash and Jett, Reaser is quite good as we watch her trying to get her life together by dating Quinn’s wheelchair-bound teacher, played by Donald Faison.

I really wasn’t familiar with Sarkisov as a producer, but this is another impressive directorial debut this week. In many ways, it feels like the film’s screenwriter David McKenna is getting back to his dramatic roots from writing American History X. I also kind of liked his adaptation of Blow with the late Ted Demme.

I’m not sure I necessarily believed the film’s last act, which turns into a high-profile Vegas grudge match between Jett and his father for a huge amount of money, but Sarkisov finds a way to end things on a high note despite the film frequently resorting to overused clichés, such as the tired training montage. Despite Embattled being a little predictable at times just by the nature of its genre, Sarkisov and his cast end up creating an unforgettable family drama that uses MMA merely as a jumping off point to far more interesting realms.

One of this week’s docs I was able to get to was Alexander Nanau’s COLLECTIVE, which is finally getting a digital and VOD release by Magnolia Pictures over a year after it debuted at the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals. It begins with a massive fire in the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv in 2015 that leaves 26 people dead on the site but then 38 more of the burn victims died after the fact, leading to a huge inquest into the horrible condition of the city’s hospitals and whether government corruption could have led to some of the deaths of innocents.

Even though Collective has been in circulation for a while, I never really heard much about it, so I literally had no idea what it is about. While you might assume that it’s about this fire, and you may be shocked that there’s actual footage of the fire starting as a metal band played fairly oblivious to the fact that their pyro set it off. The real story takes place when a team of investigators, including Catalin Tolonta, a reporter from the Sports Gazette, learns that the dozens of deaths could be traced back to bacteria in the disinfectant used in the burn ward that had been diluted up to ten times, basically being ineffective in creating a sterile environment for the Colectiv victims.

Nanau uses a cinema verité style of documentary filmmaking that I’ve never been a huge fan of because it takes out the narration that’s often needed for context, especially in a case like this where we’re dealing with a foreign country which Americans might not be that familiar with. Listen, I know from the movie The Death of Mr. Lazrescu that I would never want to have a medical emergency in Romania (where I’ve been a few times)

Nanau’s film is a terrific investigative piece that follows three of the key players, the aforementioned reporter, the incoming and quite beleaguered Minister of Health, and one of the surviving victims, a model whose beauty is still evident despite losing limbs and being horribly scarred. Following these three subjects, Nanau and his editor was able to weave an intricate journey to find answers for why so many innocents died within the Bucharest hospital system. More than once, I was pleasantly surprised that Nanau was able to have his cameras present during important conversations between the minister and others about what to do about the corruption. The sad part is that the Minister’s hopes for change rely heavily on an election similar to the one we just had in America. In that case, it results in what might have happened if Trump won reelection in terms of dashing many hopes, including the whistleblowers who come forward to call those responsible to task.

I know that Collective won’t be for everyone, not just because it’s a foreign language doc i.e. two strikes against it but seeing how much worse things are in other countries, might help you appreciate our own medical system, which is constantly being put at risk as it gets overrun due to COVID. (It almost makes you wonder how Bucharest has been able to handle COVID, and if things have improved despite the overwhelmingly corrupt government.)

I wasn’t quite as bullish about Jesse Dylan’s SOROS (Abramorama), which has a live streaming premiere Weds. before going to virtual cinema this Friday. That may have been just because I wasn’t particularly familiar with the film’s subject George Soros or his principles, but also, I’m just not in the mood for a political doc that involves our country right this moment. Maybe I’ll check it out eventually, but this week, I just wasn’t up for it.

A couple of other docs I was hoping to get to but just ran out of time, include LEAP OF FAITH: WILLIAM FRIEDKIN ON THE EXORCIST (Shudder) and THE ORANGE YEARS: THE NICKELODEON STORY (Gravitas Ventures), both which are fairly self-explanatory.

This week’s WWII drama is Dan Friedkin’s THE LAST VERMEER (TriStar Pictures/Sony), a movie I went into rather cynically, because who keeps asking for these post-Holocaust movies that we seem to get almost like clockwork whenever the weather turns to awards season? This one stars Danish actor Claes Bang (Force Majuer, The Square) in his second movie about artwork of the year after The Burnt Orange Heresy. In this one, he plays Captain Jack Piller, the Dutch officially put in charge of discovering how a rare Vermeer painting ended up in Goebbels’ private collection, which brings him to Guy Pearce’s Han Van Meegeren, a painter and art enthusiast who seems to have connections to the Nazis but also has a secret Piller has to find out before Van Meegeren is hung as a traitor.

This ended up being another pleasant surprise for me this week, because as much of the beginning of the film feels a bit like the same-old same-old, where a troubled and conflicted man is given an assignment that turns into an obsession. In this case, it’s finding the owner of a rare and valuable Vermeer painting, but also trying to find out how the Nazis got their hands on it. As much as I enjoy the handsome and gregarious Bang in this type of role, it’s really Pearce’s performance as Van Meegeren that I found to be the most worthwhile among an ensemble cast that also includes Vicky Krieps (who incidentally will be at the Metrograph Friday night for a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread for digital members!)

As someone who isn’t necessarily an art lover, I still enjoyed this in a similar way as a film like Woman in Gold. In this case, it at least leads up to a spectacular last act showing Van Meegeren’s court trial, in which a massive rug is pulled out from under the viewer, while still leaving room for one more shocking twist after that.

More than anything else, I was most impressed by the fact that (like so many other films this week), The Last Vermeer is Friedkin’s directorial debut. It’s just such an involved and intricate story to tell, as well as one where I literally had to go online and check to see whether it was based on real history after watching it. (It is.)

From China comes VANGUARD (Gravitas Ventures) the latest pairing of filmmaker Stanley Tong and Jackie Chan, who made the first two Supercop movies together and whose film Rumble in the Bronx helped break Chan in the States 25 years ago. In this one, Chan plays the head of a global security agency called Vanguard hired to protect a wealthy businessman and his daughter, a mission that takes them across the globe and puts them against all sort of awful characters.

Where do I even begin with a movie that’s clearly very bad but has so many enjoyable and crazily entertaining at times that I can’t completely toss it into the trash as I might have liked? It starts out with such an amazing opening in London that’s more about seeing the rest of the cast: Yang Yang, Miya Muqi and Lu Ai (all huge Chinese superstars, I’m sure) in action while Chan sits back and lets the youngsters have all the fun. The opening section ends with a stretch limo drifting through the busy streets around (seemingly) Covent Garden.

From there, we meet the members of Vanguard for real, Yang Yang’s handsome Lei, the James Bond of the group, family man Kaixuan (Lun Ai) and the tough Mi Ya (Mugi) before they’re sent on their mission to retrieve and protect the daughter of the businessman we see trying to be kidnapped in that opening scene. The bad guys’ next target is the bubbly Fareeda (Ruohan Xu), activist and animal lover, something we see by her cavorting with some awful CG lions that make the ones in Favreuau’s The Lion King look good. After another fight and chase, she’s taken hostage but so is Lei, so now Vanguard’s mission includes rescuing their teammate.

Vanguard’s biggest problems are two-fold, the first one being that the writing by Tong and presumably his daughter, Tiffany Alycia Tong, is terrible. Also, by trying to blend equal parts action with laughs, Tong throws everything but the kitchen sink at the viewer, and only some of it sticks. Chan does have a few fun moments, although wisely, he leaves most of the heavy lifting to his younger cast. Even so, he’s still allowed to deliver a few of his trademark moves, a couple quips and his usual beloved charm. Other than Chan, I particularly liked Miya Muqi playing the type of tough, kick-ass martial arts heroine that’s a large part of why I love Chinese action movies.

For the most part, the movie is full of all sorts of crazy stuff, not just the massive explosions and gun fights we’ve seen many times before, but other stuff that tries to take advantage of the movie’s global setting, some of which works and other parts, not so much. (Seriously, those CG animals in the African section of the movie are absolutely horrid and inexcusable! Did they run out of money before post-production?)

As much as Vanguard is a flagrant Mission: impossible rip-off that both Chan and Tong to be long past their sell-by dates, there’s an aspect to it that makes you think they realize this and just want to have one more absurd fling. Realizing this allows Vanguard to be way more entertaining than it ought to be. Vanguard will be in over 700 theaters this Friday, which might indeed be wider than every other movie I’ve mentioned put together.

Matthew Rankin’s quirky retro-comedy THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Oscilloscope) was another interesting surprise this week, which I’m not even sure I can properly describe or tell you why you should or shouldn’t see it. (Let’s face it. I’m getting pretty burned out on doing so many reviews each week, especially when I’m getting zero feedback, which really sucks.) The film stars Dan Beirne as Mackenzie King, a young man who we watch on his rise to become the leader of Canada. As far as I can tell, it’s completely fictitious. (Nope. King really was Prime Minister... for a long time, too!)

Anyway, this is very quirky movie set in Canada that reminded me so much of Guy Maddin’s work, which I used to hate, especially the first time I saw The Saddest Music in the World, which Rankin’s film reminded me of. Fortunately, I’ve gotten over whatever issue I had with the weirdness of Maddin’s work, and this one was weird but also quite witty and had me openly laughing, especially a race for Prime Minister of Canada that had the contestants churning butter, writing their name in the snow with pee and yes, even clubbing baby seals.

The production design, while looking and feeling very low-fi, still has a very original look, and besides the obvious Guy Maddin reference, you might find yourself harking back to some of David Lynch’s earlier films, particularly Eraserhead or The Elephant Man. Sure, if there’s such thing as a movie being TOO weird, The Twentieth Century certainly can be seen as guilty of that, but to me, this was akin to a Canadian Monty Python that had me chortling even when I wasn’t even quite sure what was so funny.

Check out the trailer below and you can watch it virtually through your favorite arthouse with a list of venues here.

youtube

Chad Faust’s GIRL (ScreenMedia), which will be in select theaters this Friday and then on VOD on Tuesday, stars Bella Thorne and Mickey Rourke. Thorne plays a young unnamed woman who returns to her hometown with plans to kill her abusive father, only to learn that someone has beaten her to the punch, so she tries to find answers, going up against Rourke’s sheriff of the town and his son, played by Faust himself. I don’t have a ton to say about this movie because it’s a fairly bland indie that never improves from Faust showing up as a lethario Thorne encounters in a laundromat. As much as I enjoy watching Thorn throw an axe, it wasn’t as enjoyable as watching her kick-ass in last week’s Chick Fight. (She does get into a fun tussle with Faust though, but that wasn’t enough to keep me interested.)

Now available on Disney+ is the LEGO STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL, which certainly has quite an onus over its head due to the quality of the LAST Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. This one at least has the added entertainment value that comes with the LEGO creative team. Honestly, I had enough of Star Wars with last year’s The Rise of Skywalker, and I certainly didn’t have much interest in seeing more of these characters.

Also starting on Disney+ this week is the new Marvel series (and the only thing you’re getting from Marvel this year), Marvel’s 616, which is a series of documentaries about a variety of subjects, including women comic book creators (directed by Gillian Jacobs), one that follows Paul Scheer trying to find some lost Marvel characters to turn into the next hit (directed by Scheer) and what?!? There’s also one directed by Alison Brie, so that’s TWO of the six episodes directed by ex-Community members. But none by Danny Glover or Chevy Chase? Shame.

Other stuff that I just didn’t have time to get to, although there may be some true gems in there, who knows?:

Team Marco (Samuel Goldwyn) One Night in San Diego (1091) The Test and the Art of Thinking (Abramorama) The Truth is the Only Client (Gravitas Venturs) Ghosts of the République Murder on Middle Beach (HBO Documentaries) Crazy Not Insane (HBO Docs) Lowdown Dirty Criminals (Dark Sky Films) Donbass (Film Movement) In Wonder (Netflix)

Also, RJ Cutler’s well-received BELUSHI doc will hit Showtime on Sunday, and Sean Durkin’s thriller The Nest (IFC Films), which I reviewed a few months back, will hit VOD this week.

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #reviews #Vanguard #Run #SoundOfMetal #Embattled #Collective #VOD #Streaming #TheLastVermeer

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effectivedetectivc-blog · 6 years

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Nick's feelings on the other companions?

Dogmeat: An angel, possibly literally. Always showing up right where he’s needed most, ready to be A Good Boy at a moment’s notice. A force to be reckoned with and never underestimated. Nick’s got a vague idea of Dogmeat’s odd, possibly supernatural heritage, and is honored to be one of the people he’s picked to hang around and help.

Piper: A handful, but a bot couldn’t ask for a better friend. He’s never told her so, but she reminds him very much of Jenny, and he’s very protective of both her and Nat partially as a result of this. Supportive of her endeavors in search of the truth, but worried about her recklessness - and about coming home one day to find her vanished, and no one willing to talk about it.

Preston: Good guy, good heart, good manners - somebody he’d be more than willing to get to know better and call a friend. The Commonwealth needs more people like him, desperately. Really does not want to see the wasteland chew him up and spit him out, but has an idea that after Quincy he’s closer to that than his laid-back demeanor lets on.

Codsworth: One in a million, literally: all Mr. Handy’s are theoretically capable of achieving true sentience, but in Nick’s experience they tend to go nuts first rather than form a fully-actualized personality. The fact that Codsworth’s dedication to his family managed to keep him sane and pulled together long enough for him to cross the barrier into debatable personhood is pretty incredible, and Nick’s happy to have him around. If anybody gives him trouble, there’s going to be trouble.

Deacon: Untrustworthy, but he’s almost positive he’s a good man underneath all the bullshit. Doesn’t stop him from being absolutely infuriating at times, but Nick finds him likable despite himself. No one he’d rather talk classic lit with at four in the morning.

Hancock: A crimelord, but an honorable one. Hancock is one of the many situations in which Nick has to grit his teeth against what the old Nick Valentine took to be moral absolutes and grudgingly accept that the world has changed, because Goodneighbor is better off for his leadership, and his “of the people, for the people” shtick isn’t just shtick. The fact that he also runs various criminal rackets is a pill that has to be swallowed in exchange. Personable guy, though. Not so bad to talk to. If Nick ever finds out why and how he was ghoulified, his respect for him will immediately shoot through the roof.

Maccready: The kind of punk the old Nick would have been taking into the station for shoplifting or brawling a couple times a month. Rude, prickly, crass - but again, Nick knows the type. He knows most boys of that age, situation, and disposition are putting up a front to compensate - he doesn’t know RJ is a single dad with a sick kid, but he wouldn’t necessarily be surprised to find out, and it would affirm his decision not to dislike him even when he’s being impolite as hell and stealing anything that isn’t nailed down.

Curie: An odd bird, but a good one. Desperately needs some good friends to help her along until she can figure herself out and become familiar enough with the real world to survive it. Like Codsworth, an incredible feat of artificial intelligence - also like Codsworth, makes him feel better about being a pre-bioengineering AI. Nice to have somebody to talk to about the gulf between organic and mechanical life experience and the nature of sapience and identity. Worrisome sense of medical ethics, though.

Danse: Prior to Blind Betrayal: a jackass. An unfortunate example of what happens when people feel like their life has no meaning, go looking for answers, and are drawn to a group of people with big guns and matching armor who are positive that they’re right, because absolute principles are more comforting than doubt, even if they’re often wrong. After Blind Betrayal, Nick becomes more willing to cut him a little slack, even worries about him, but this will only go beyond the point of civility if Danse puts in the effort on his end to open his mind and potentially change.

Cait: A firebrand, and not to be underestimated, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that she’s a victim of circumstance - like with Maccready, he recognizes her type and can see that the worst of her personality is a coping mechanism for having gone through some terrible shit, and it makes him willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Would be immediately supportive of her decision to get clean, and would feel enormously uplifted to see someone so beaten down manage to recover and grow despite it all.

Strong: A Super Mutant. A slightly weird one, sure, but he’s not expecting much there. He’s not one to talk about coming from a race of sentients stereotyped as being evil, and he hates generalizing anyone, so he shoots for civility, but he’s fully aware that Strong doesn’t actually comprehend what “the milk of human kindness” is, and that he still doesn’t have a problem with chowing down on an unsuspecting human. Wishes him the best on his journey to discover the value of kindness, but isn’t holding his breath.

X6-88: The only companion Nick will not give the benefit of the doubt to any degree. He knows what he’s about as well as X6 does, knows he’s comfortably settled within his role and doesn’t feel much of anything, and he’s wary of him at all times with the potential for actual fear at a moment’s notice. He’s an escaped synth and X6 is a Courser - it’s as simple as that, and they know where they stand. Nick would kill him in an instant if it meant avoiding being snatched and wiped or scrapped - he hates resorting to murder, but X6 represents everything about the Institute that terrifies him.

#;; HEADCANON #good shit thank you #I love that this entire list is either #'a good egg I like em'#or 'well I don't really like them but I understand where they're coming from and can try to get along'#and then there's x6

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123movies2-blog1 · 4 years

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My Most Anticipated Movies of 2011

As we kick off a new year in cinema, I thought I'd take time to look ahead at the films we'll be hit with over the course of the year. In this article, I'll be going over what my 15 most anticipated movies are for the year. Now it should be noted, these aren't the movies that I feel will be the best of 2011 necessarily. Rather, they're the ones that, as of the time of this writing, I am anticipating the most. So without further ado, here are my most anticipated movies of 2011. 1. Sucker Punch Director: Zack Snyder Writer: Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya Stars: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens and Abbie Cornish Release Date: March 25, 2011 Genre: Action Fantasy Thriller What is it: A young girl is institutionalized by her wicked stepfather. Retreating to an alternative reality as a coping strategy, she envisions a plan which will help her escape from the facility. Why it should be good: Really hot and badass chicks wearing schoolgirl outfits and other skimpy clothes, with swords and guns, coupled with Snyder's awesome visual flair? Yea, definitely count me in. The trailer for this thing just looks completely awesome. From the style to the action, even the story (while seeming a bit out there) seems cool. I'm beginning to thoroughly enjoy Snyder's work. If The Adjustment Bureau could be this year's new Inception due to its mindfuck story, then Sucker Punch could absolutely be this year's Inception meets The Dark Knight meets 300 meets Inglorious Basterds due to it's style and epic adventure, yet dark tone with alternate realities. This movie just oozes style and badass-ness and I really can't wait for what is sure to be an absolutely entertaining, epic adventure. Why it could suck: Snyder can be a bit off his mark sometimes. While Watchmen was enjoyable, it did get a bit boring. And Legend of the Guardians is said to suffer from some pacing issues as well and has drawn mixed reviews from critics. Though to be fair to Snyder, he wrote neither of those movies, but is responsible for the writing (or at least screenplay) of the badass 300. 2. Sherlock Holmes 2 Director: Guy Ritchie Writer: Kieran and Michele Mulroney Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry Release Date: December 16, 2011 Genre: Action Mystery What is it: Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson join forces to outwit and bring down their fiercest adversary, Professor Moriarty. Why it should be good: I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan. The Doyle stories still stand as my favorite books today. I love Sherlock. He's such a badass. And finally, a movie seems to have captured that pretty well. The first was one of the better portrayals of Sherlock I had seen. Rather than being portrayed as a snooty, 'proper' and sophisticated Englishman, he was shown with all the rough edges that Doyle wrote him with. While the movie was indeed Hollywood-ized beyond anything you'd find in the books, it was a fun adventure and quite an enjoyable movie. Guy Ritchie is a very good filmmaker as well. For these reasons, and my love for Sherlock, I'm very much eager to see how Part 2 turns out, especially as they go head-to-head with Moriarty. Also, I'm eager to see how well Noomi Rapace (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,etc) does in her Hollywood debut. Why it could suck: New writers. The original writers from the first aren't coming back instead Kieran and Michele Mulroney are taking over the job. So let's see how they handle it. Relatively new to writing, the two previously wrote Paper Man which didn't fair so well with critics. 3. Paranormal Activity 3 Director: Tod Williams Writer: Christopher B. Landon and Michael R. Perry; characters by Oren Peli Stars: Katie Featherston Release Date: October 21, 2011 Genre: Horror What is it: Well, we have no idea what this one is going to be about as nothing has been given. However, the first movie followed a couple that were being haunted by an evil spirit who possessed Katie. The sequel (which was more of a prequel) followed Katie's sister's family as that same spirit haunts them and their baby. This all culminates to the two stories converging at the end of Part 2 where it gets to the point where Part 1 ends and we see what happens after the whole event. Undoubtedly, Part 3 is set to pick up where Part 2 and 1 left off. What happens from there? Your guess is as good as mine. Why it should be good: The first Paranormal Activity became something of a cult phenomenon/sensation. Hailed as the scariest movie of the year, people flocked to the film making it a huge success. And rightly so in my book. It was a minimalistic horror movie that took it back to the roots of the genre by using tension and suspense to really instill fear and terror in the minds of the audience. Part 2, while some people seemed to not like it as much as the first, did more of the same. I actually thought Part 2 was pretty much right on par with the first. And the ingenious storytelling that created a parallel prequel to the first was definitely cool. The creator and writers of this franchise have really shown that the horror genre can be revived and doesn't have to be all about gore and such. They've done a good job with instilling that fear in the audience as well, tapping into that fear, leaving the audience's imagination to run wild while being completely captivated. I expect no less from the third. Why it could suck: If you feel the second was worse than the first, then you may be in for some disappoint when you find out the same writers and director of the sequel are back. However, like with Part 2, Oren Peli (the creator of the franchise) is still very much involved and is serving as producer on this film. 4. Paul Director: Greg Mottola Writer: Nick Frost and Simon Pegg Stars: Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Seth Rogen Release Date: March 18, 2011 Genre: Sci-fi Comedy What is it: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) reunite for the comedy adventure Paul as two sci-fi geeks whose pilgrimage takes them to America's UFO heartland. While there, they accidentally meet an alien who brings them on an insane road trip that alters their universe forever. For the past 60 years, an alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) has been hanging out at a top-secret military base. For reasons unknown, the space-traveling smart ass decides to escape the compound and hop on the first vehicle out of town-a rented RV containing Earthlings Graeme Willy (Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Frost). Chased by federal agents and the fanatical father of a young woman that they accidentally kidnap, Graeme and Clive hatch a fumbling escape plan to return Paul to his mother ship. And as two nerds struggle to help, one little green man might just take his fellow outcasts from misfits to intergalactic heroes. Why it should be good: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost back together again. That should be enough. Seriously. When these two guys get together it's gold, as evidenced by Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This might be my favorite duo around these days. They'll also be pairing up to write this which is always a good thing as well (well, this will be Frost's first real writing job, but Pegg has been responsible for their first two outings together). Now, they won't be reuniting with Edgar Wright for this one, instead they'll be teaming with the director of Adventureland andSuperbad, two movies which I definitely enjoyed. On top of all of that, they have comedic star Seth Rogan joining them. Sounds like quite the team really and I'm rather excited for what I'm sure will be a very funny movie, and possibly end up being the comedy of the year. Why it could suck: You do have to wonder if some of that magic from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz will be lost as Frost and Pegg carry on without Wright. I think they're great comedic talents though and can stand on their own. And the somewhat all-star get-together should compensate. 5. The Adjustment Bureau Director: George Nolfi Writer: George Nolfi; Based on Short Story by Philip K. Dick Stars: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt and Terence Stamp Release Date: March 4, 2011 Genre: Thriller What is it: Just as he is on the brink of winning a senate seat, politician David Norris (Matt Damon) meets a ballerina named Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). Though David is smitten, mysterious men conspire to keep him away from the beautiful dancer. David learns he is up against the powerful agents of Fate itself, and, glimpsing the future laid out before him, must either accept a predetermined path that does not include Elise, or defy Fate to be with her. Why it should be good: Honestly, this sounds like it could be this year's Inception. With plenty of mindfucks going on, it's a thriller involving different levels of reality and mysterious forces. Matt Damon really tends to shine in these types of movies. The trailer has me rather intrigued and looks like it could provide quite an enthralling adventure. While this is Nolfi's directorial debut, he did write The Bourne Ultimatum, thus will be teaming up with Damon once again. The movie is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, whose work has been the grounds for such movies asBlade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck and A Scanner Darkly. So with presumably some good source material, and a writer that can definitely do the part (as illustrated with The Bourne Ultimatum) we could be in for a real treat. Why it could suck: This is Nolfi's first time in the director's seat, so we'll have to wait and see if he's in over his head. Furthermore, it is being billed as something of a romance thriller. So let's hope they don't go overboard with the romance part and make it some sappy romance film for which they sacrifice some of the plot to focus on the romance. visit: 123movieshub.eu/ 6. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Director: Rob Marshall Writer: Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio Stars: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane Release Date: May 20, 2011 Genre: Fantasy Action-Adventure What is it: Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and his daughter are after it too. Why it should be good: Some people have hated them. Some have thought they've gotten worse as they went along. I've found the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to be a fun adventure. Just a fun movie with plenty of adventure, some cool special effects, and just good times. And maybe it's my man-crush I have on Depp, but I'm absolutely thrilled to see him back as Jack Sparrow. The character is so much fun and always provides for some entertainment. Should be interesting to see how they go about freshening up the franchise as well as they get a new cast of characters while Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann are out. Why it could suck: It's a Hollywood sequel, those always have chances of sucking. Also, the exclusion of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann could put a damper on things. While there is a chance that it could freshen it up, there is just as much a chance that some of that magic might be lost as they look to replace those characters. Also, while we do get the same writers back, we have a new director taking on this sequel. Pirates seems to be out of Rob Marshall's comfort zone (best known for Memoirs of a Geisha and Chicago) so we'll have to wait and see how he can handle an action adventure of this scope. 7. The Hangover 2 Director: Todd Phillips Writer: Todd Phillips, Scot Armstrong and Craig Mazin Stars: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha Release Date: May 26, 2011 Genre: Comedy What is it: Not a lot is known about the plot of this sequel. What is known is that the gang is back to get into more trouble as they travel to Thailand. And Phillips promise a lot of fucked up surprises and hilarity. Why it should be good: The Hangover was hilarious I thought. The cast of the original had good chemistry and the writing was hilarious. It provided for several laugh-out-loud moments and was one of the funniest movies of the year (one of the funniest I've seen in a while too). Hopefully, getting the gang back together will provide for more hilarity that the first one delivered. Why it could suck: New writers. The writers from the first aren't coming back and have been replaced. Instead we get Scot Armstrong and Craig Mazin that have brought us such garbage asSemi-Pro, Starsky and Hutch, Scary Movie 4 and Superhero Movie. If their past work is any indicator of their talent, the writers could really butcher this franchise. 8. Transformers: Dark of the Moon Director: Michael Bay Writer: Ehren Kruger Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson Release Date: July 1, 2011 Genre: Sci-fi Action-Adventure What is it: The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the Moon, and race against the Decepticons to reach it and learn its secrets, which could turn the tide in the Transformers' final battle. Why it should be good: I've enjoyed the franchise so far. While Part 2, was blasted pretty well by critics, I didn't hate it that much. Granted it wasn't as good as the first, but I still found it fairly entertaining. And the movies are always a fun visual treat. Also, Michael Bay. I still have no idea why he receives so much crap while James Cameron is given a pass. Bay is just as adept a director as Cameron is. Anybody that still likes to tell me there's a difference between Pearl Harbor and Titanic will kindly receive a "fuck off" as you buy into the pretentious drivel. At least Bay knows his place (a mindless action director who can make pretty movies and fun explosions). Whereas Cameron believes his some gift to cinema which often leads to his films being poorly written, yet pretentious as hell. Seriously, I'll take Armageddon, Transformers, The Rock and Bad Boys over Titanic, Avatar, Aliens, and T2 any day of the week. Even though, yes, I know that will enrage many people and get me flamed for that opinion. Now, this movie (Transformers: Dark of the Moon) surely won't be a great cinematic piece. But as a mindless "let's make some cool special effects scenes and also blow some shit up" type of movie, it should be entertaining. Why it could suck: Well, if I had to pick one movie from the franchise that was better, it's definitely the first. The writer for this third film, unfortunately, is the same writer from Part 2 rather than the first. Also, it's still Michael Bay. He's not the greatest of directors. 9. X-Men: First Class Director: Matthew Vaughn Writer: Jane Goldman, Ashley Miller, Jamie Moss, Josh Schwartz and Zack Stentz; story by Bryan Singer Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence Release Date: June 3, 2011 Genre: Sci-fi Action What is it: Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Before they were archenemies, they were closest of friends, working together, with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known. In the process, a rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-MEN. Why it should be good: A look at when Xavier and Magneto were younger. A backstory to where it all started. For such a thrilling franchise, this could be a nice take on the story and provide quite some entertainment and thrills. Plus, having directed movies like Kick-Ass andStardust, Matthew Vaughn is, I believe, much more adept at creating a movie like this than say a Jon Favreau or such. Vaughn also has the enjoyable Layer Cake under his director's belt, which very much shows off that he learned well producing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels andSnatch. Furthermore, his friendship and learning under the great Guy Ritchie, only further adds value to his role as a filmmaker. Meanwhile, the writers have brought us such movies as Stardustand Kick-Ass as well as TV shows such as Fringe and Chuck. Also, it has a pretty good cast.

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