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gaalee-events · 3 years

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What is GaaLee Hallo-week? How does it work?

GaaLee Hallo-week is basically a Halloween-themed ship week for the pairing Gaara/Rock Lee. Each day from Oct. 24 - 30th, there will be different prompts to fill. There are (at least!) two prompts per day: a spooky prompt and a sweet prompt, riffing off the idea of trick-or-treat. There is no sign-up and no obligation. Creations for this event can be fanfic, fanart, playlists, icon sets, panel edits, moodboards, memes, closet cosplay, or any other fannish pursuit you can think of! As long as it features the GaaLee pairing and fits a prompt, it counts!

Sounds great! How do I participate?

There’s no sign-up for this event, and it’s open to everyone. On the appropriate day, simply post your creation on Tumblr, indicate which prompt you’re filling, and tag the @gaalee-events blog! You can also use the hashtag #gaaleehalloweek, but be sure to tag the blog as well to ensure your creation doesn’t get lost. The GaaLee events Tumblr will then reblog your work for all to see! If you don’t have a Tumblr or would prefer to participate only on Ao3, that’s also fine. When you’re uploading your work, you can add it to the GaaLee Hallo-week Collection by typing ‘GaaLee_HalloWeek’ (without quotes) into the ‘Collections’ box. For people who choose to participate just on Ao3, the organizers will create a link post on Tumblr with a link to your fic. If it’s been 24 hours since you posted and you haven’t seen your contribution reblogged, please send an ask to @ghoste-catte, as it may have gotten lost in notifications.

So, what are these prompts you’re talking about?

Each day has a scary prompt and a sweet prompt associated with it! For a handy rebloggable visual guide, check out the prompts page!

Day 1, Oct. 24 - Haunted House -or- Hallowed Ground

Day 2, Oct. 25 - Demons -or- Deities

Day 3, Oct. 26 - Nightmares -or- Sweet Dreams

Day 4, Oct 27 - Fear -or- Wonder

Day 5, Oct 28 - Movie Night! (The Amityville Horror -or- The Addams Family)

Day 6, Oct 29 - Scary Stories (“I do not love men. I love what devours them.” - Prometheus Illbound, Andre Gill -or- “People don’t want to see what can’t possibly exist.” - Mort, Terry Pratchett)

Day 7, Oct 30 - Trick-or-Treat (free day!)

How do the Movie Night / Scary Stories / Free Day prompts work?

In the second half of the week, let your imagination run wild! You can be inspired by the suggested movies, images, or quotes, or you can create something for the overall theme of “Movie Night” or “Scary Stories”. For the final day of the event, you can create whatever your heart desires, as long as it’s scary or sweet, and GaaLee-themed! As with the previous days, you can also use “Trick-or-Treat” as your prompt and create something based on that.

What are the minimum requirements for a prompt fill?

This is left open to the individual participant’s discretion. If you feel that what you created meets the prompt, then it counts! A single creation can only count for one day, but it may be inspired by one or both prompts on that day. (For example, you could create something for October 25th to fit the prompt “Demons”, or “Demons and Deities”, but not “Demons” and “Nightmares”.) You can create multiple creations for a single prompt or a single day. If you make something that has multiple components, like a multichapter fic or a multipage comic, each chapter/comic page/etc. can be counted towards a different day/prompt, as long as they’re posted on the correct day and fit one of the prompts for that day.

Do I have to participate in all seven days? Do I have to fill every prompt?

Not at all! You can fill just one prompt on just one day, you can fill multiple prompts across multiple days, or you can fill all the prompts on all seven days. Think of this event like that bowl of candy on your neighbor’s porch that’s labeled ‘Take One’ -- you can do whatever you like with it; nobody’s going to stop you. That being said, if you do create something for all seven days, you’ll be in the Monster’s Ball, which sounds very cool but really just means that your creations will be listed at the top of the event wrap-up summary in a fancy text box.

Does everything I make have to be Halloween-themed?

Nope! While we’ll all be getting in the mood for Halloween, ghosts, ghouls, and pumpkins don’t need to feature in your creation. As long as you feel like your creation fits one of the prompts, it counts. That being said, we’d love to see the fandom flex their horror muscles and go full Spooky Season on us. Bring on the blood and guts!

I have something I’m already working on that fits one of the prompts, can I use it for this event?

Yes, with a couple of caveats! The creation must be new and posted on the date of the prompt that it was created for. If you already have a partially published project and something new you’ve created for it fits one of the prompts, that can absolutely count. For example, if you’re writing a 20-page comic about a haunted house, and you post a new page on Oct. 24th, you can count that for the prompt “Haunted House”. If you say you created something with this event in mind, we’ll take your word for it. The only other restriction is that if you’re creating your project for a different event (such as an exchange, ship week, theme week, big bang, etc.) and it also happens to meet one of the GaaLee Hallo-week prompts, you should check the other event’s rules to ensure they don’t have any restrictions on counting a single work towards multiple events.

Are there restrictions about what kinds of content can be created for this event?

Because of the Halloween theme, it’s to be expected that some works might be transgressive, upsetting, or triggering. However, we want this event to be enjoyable for as many people as possible! We ask that you use caution and consideration in your creations and be mindful of the ways that traditionally ‘scary’ tropes have been used to harm marginalized groups. Tag judiciously and use your best judgment. Be wary of ableism, such as using a person’s mental illness or physical disability as a scare factor or to make them seem more monstrous or mysterious. This does not mean you can’t create works with or about disabled or neurodivergent characters, simply be mindful of how those characteristics are portrayed and the role they serve in your work. Avoid transphobia, such as portraying a male character in a woman’s costume for laughs or using a character’s trans identity to make them seem villainous. (Lookin’ at you, Buffalo Bill.) This doesn’t mean your characters can’t explore gender roles! But it’s important to be thoughtful and intentional about how you portray transgender characters in a horror setting. Also, please be aware that the word ‘spook’ is an anti-black slur, and should be avoided in the creation of your works. (‘Spooky’, the adjective, is fine.) This is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list, and your judgment as an individual creator is important! If you have concerns about something you’re making, you’re more than welcome to message either of the organizers (@ghoste-catte or @puregaalee) for feedback. The organizers reserve the right not to reblog or republish work that is not appropriately tagged or that may not fit the spirit of the event.

What about sexually explicit (NSFW) content, is that allowed?

NSFW content is more than welcome, with some guardrails. NSFW content posted on Tumblr should be appropriately tagged and behind a ‘Read More’ cut. Any NSFW content hosted off-site should likewise be clearly labeled. If you choose to create NSFW images, be aware of Tumblr’s content guidelines. You may want to consider posting a cropped or censored image on Tumblr and linking to another site (Twitter, Privatter, Pixiv, Imgur, etc.) for the full image. Individuals under the age of 18 may not create sexually explicit material for this event.

I’m so excited, I just can’t wait! Can I post my creations early?

Please wait until the assigned day to post your creations for that prompt. Creations will not be reblogged until the assigned day for the prompt that inspired them.

Eek, I’m running behind! What if I created something for a specific day, but I didn’t get it posted in time?

Late postings will be accepted throughout the week, so if you created something for October 25th’s prompt but didn’t get it uploaded until October 28th, that will still be reblogged. The two weeks following the event will be reserved for ‘late posting’, during which time you can still upload your creations and tag the blog to have them reblogged. An event wrap-up will be posted after the end of the late posting period.

There’s an awful lot of words on this page, but none of them answer my question!

Please send an ask to @gaalee-events and we’ll get it answered as soon as possible!

#gaaleehalloweek #faq

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thesunlounge · 5 years

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Reviews 205: La llama de Prometeo

Discómanos is a record label and collective of artists operating out of Spain and last year they released a beautiful compilation entitled La llama de Prometeo: La puerta de entrada a las Nueves Músicas Españolas. The title translates to “The Flame of Prometheus: The Gateway to the New Spanish Music” and indeed, this collection serves as an adventurous and breathtakingly gorgeous survey of Spain’s space music, new age, and ambient scenes during the late 80s and 90s, with many of the artists here having been associated to Hyades Arts, Grabaciones Accidentales, and Música Sin-Fin. I have to thank Ban Ban Ton Ton for turning me onto this one, for if Dr. Rob hadn’t mentioned the release when writing about his Chilled / January 2019 mix, I might never have come across it. Which is altogether surprising given my fascination with this corner of Spain’s rich musical history as well as the fact the big names such as Finis Africae, Iury Lech, and Suso Saiz all appear. But there are many wonderful artists that are completely new to me as well and in every case, compiler Daniel Nielles has selected tracks that have never before been released on vinyl. The music itself is dreamy and meditative, seeing soundworlds of seaside folk, pastoral new age, heart-melting ambient, and bleary-eyed kosmische all unite for a balearic float on waves made of light. And it’s all tied together by the myth of Prometheus and some beautiful poetry from Daneil, a line of which sums up the spirit of the collection perfectly: “this compilation is a deep scream from modern gods; the flame that is still alive in this new century.”

La llama de Prometeo: La puerta de entrada a las Nuevas Músicas Españolas (Discómanos, 2018) We begin with Suso Sáiz’s “El mar que tendrá el mar” and the sounds of waves crashing to shore. Pastoral piano lullabies are shrouded in fog as bass arpeggios background crystalline leads that splash through sea-foam pools. Then comes the stunningly gorgeous and tear-inducing “Reloj de luna (María)” by Pedro Esteven, where heavenly piano chords hover in the air as heart-melting string orchestrating rain down. Chiming starshine electronics move gently through synthetic layers of violin, viola, and cello…their melodies evoking heartbreak and lost romance as layers of new age space music float the soul. At some point, an operatic angel voice enters, her wordless dreamspells swaying through dark hazes into radiant baths of moonlight while strings, voices, and pianos all surge together to lift the heart towards the sky and atmospheric bass pulses carry everything towards cloudrealms of paradise enchantment. In Finis Africae’s “Olas a Formentera,” joyous whistles fly above seaside reed orchestrations and thumping acoustic bass textures until someone calls out the song’s title, at which point we drop into a sun-soaked balearic folk dance. Riffing string instruments and soloing sitars play to the spirits of the sea and sky, their shuffling magic and waves of propulsive acoustic wonder surfed on by island breeze accordions while guitars solo and double basses thump ecstatically. Elsewhere the mix spaces out, leaving zithers and six-strings to solo softly above pulsing bass movements and sea-shanty reeds while deep and entrancing vocals chant “Formentera” from atop the rocky cliffs of Es Vedra.

Pianos, marimbas, kalimbas, and other solar idiophones dance beneath starlight bell tapestries in Alberto Garralon’s “Iria Feliz,” while rainforest hand drums hold down an airy groove. Wavering guitar solos alternate with ghostly synth leads that squiggle through a sunrise sky and there are gamelan evocations in the way the interlocking loops of exotic metal generate hallucinogenic polyrhythms, with everything being wrapped around by aquatic organ waves. When the rhythms pull out, we find ourselves in a swooning section of nostalgic beauty, where FM synth fluids cycle around sprightly guitar patterns…everything moving together in a dance of multi-layered rhythms as organs drone out beneath noir-pop atmospheres that recall Angelo Badalamenti. One of the most surprising cuts comes from Juan Veron and Pedro Lahoze. Their “Adventures Flavour” locks ethnological drum explorations and alien hand percussion vocalisms into a hypno-groove that moves beneath wavering chime tapestries. Majestic synths, organs, and pianos climb through sparkling clouds of gold while dripping cosmic liquids coat skronking woodwinds. The ivory melodies are tracked by swelling space pads and ominous brass textures bring airs of exotic funk and Zeuhl prog. All the while, solar melodics skip through rainbow flower fields and the ritualist percussion energies merge with sonic clouds of ceremonial fusion fire.

The B-side opens with “Final sin pauses” by Iury Lech. Deep piano pulsations envelop the spirit in a fog of bass warmth as shadow and light swirl together. A mermaid sings out from oceanic depths with wordless songs of ancient magic…her mellifluous voice backed by ghostly male harmonizations as it all comes together for an aquatic aria of profound beauty. Ivory incantations and mystical voices coalesce and sooth the mind while the mix hisses and breaths with analog warmth and towards the end, the track gives itself over completely to haunted drone clouds built from dark and mysterious oscillations. The esoterica of Pablo Guerrero’s “Dragones negros” follows, with bowed string drones conjuring subterranean spirits. The mix is further adorned by bucolic windchimes while a sensuous and calming voice enters to entrance the mind, its enigmatic stories occasionally receding as harmonious clouds of ambiance swell and glow with a spectral light. The mesmerizing sonic motions are suffused by starshine chime tones and sometimes the vocalist zones out into pure throat singing and passages that resemble yodeling or Sami joiking. The droning voice fluids are backed by submarine clarinets that swim through the ever-present cascades of sparkling metal and the way these haunted woodwinds seem to float on a spectral sea of amorphous new age magic presages by decades one of my favorite songs: Eleventeen Eston’s “I Float, I am Free.” And as swirls of sound build towards slow motion ecstasy, the hypnotizing voice returns to entice the soul back to earthly realms.

Antonio García’s “Guitarra primitive” features bubbling hand drums soaring beneath the kind of metal-against-guitar string noise associated with GY!BE’s Efrim Menuck. There are shadows of Roy Montgomery and Loren MazzaCane Connors as well in the way the searing waves of droning guitar push the mind towards bliss and as the wailing six-string orchestrations drop away, they are replaced by strange sliding tones..like drops of silver ether moving upwards along the walls of a crystal cavern. The delay fx on the hand drums morph in and out of phase and generate feverish polyrhythms in a way reminiscent of early Popol Vuh and Ash Ra Tempel and the track spends the rest of its time alternating between careening bowed guitar atmospheres and sci-fi sliding fluids until the beats drop away for a coda of pure ambient shimmer. We end with Eliseo Parra’s “Noche tranquil y serena,” which sees the calming beachside field recordings return as waves crash and seabirds sing softly. A zither modulates under aqueous phaser waves while wrapping the mind around with dazzling runs and enchanting ocean romantics. Glistening chime strands decay towards a blood red sunset and a mystical voice calls out above it all, his sliding modalities evoking a mythical Iberian ritualism. As the track progresses, a head nodding downbeat groove emerges and floats on throbbing bass currents while high in the sky, psychedelic string clouds drop subtle waves of strummed starlight and wood flutes harmonize together as they summon shadow spirits from forgotten realms.

(images from my personal copy)

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davidmann95 · 6 years

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In a couple places, most notably on some of the old Morrisonia forums that have now folded it was alleged that his Three Ghosts represented different phases of conceptions of Batman. There is the gun toting pulp of the 30s, the hulking monster of Miller's 80s, and the mystic creature of the innovators of the 90s. Do you buy that argument? And if so, where would Morrison's other Anti-Batman, Prometheus, fall in that conception?

I feel like that doesn’t really fit, given the third ghost is so much 1930s Batman himself. Prometheus, on the other hand, is Morrison riffing on himself (I believe he even said that of the many things translated from The Invisibiles to JLA, Prometheus was basically King Mob), specifically his version of Batman.

#Batman #Grant Morrison #Prometheus #JLA #Opinion

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Severed Boy — Tragic Encounters (Caligari Records)

Tragic Encounters by SEVERED BOY

According to the guys in Severed Boy, the sort-of-ambient-sort-of-noisy interstitial track “Agony and Despair,” from their new EP Tragic Encounters, contains a reading of an excerpt from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). We’ll have to take their word for it. There’s definitely a voice in the mix, speaking in vaguely cultured, vaguely stilted tones, but the speech is too distorted to decipher — and all the creepy, echoing, not quite unmusical sound enveloping the voice doesn’t help. If those are some of Shelley’s words, the excerpt might go some way toward explaining the band’s gruesome name. Who is the “boy”? How and where and why has he been “severed”? Has he been made subject to the perverse will of another, as the Creature was cut up and returned to the lifeworld by Victor Frankenstein? In any case, “Agony and Despair” arrives halfway through this EP, effectively severing the record into two nearly equal parts. That impulse toward a logical, intentional arrangement of materials that drip, drool, growl and shriek mirrors to some extent the principal theme of Shelley’s novel: rationality can only take you so far. Eventually the flesh — horrified, mortified — will strike back.

Severed Boy is being presented as a death-doom band, and elements of that repulsive, sluggard subgenre are strongly present — check out the EP’s title track. But other moments on the record evoke sludge’s savage bum-out, and throughout, there’s a vibe that unexpectedly skews things somehow toward punk. That ends up making some sense. The two dudes in Severed Boy — Nicholas Wolf and Reid Calkin — played together for some time in Boston hardcore band Lunglust. Check out “Pooling,” the title of which suggests the action of blood at a low spot on a cement floor. The semiotics ooze in the direction of death metal’s humid yuck, but the riffs are built with the sort of toughened tunefulness that thrives in punk-adjacent spaces.

The tunefulness is sustained, even when Tragic Encounters proceeds at its most unpleasantly doomy pace. Through the EP’s second side, the death-doom-influenced songs graft onto Wolf’s and Calkin’s hardcore instincts, thumping and chugging implacably toward some grim destination. “Mindless Future Breaker” reaches for the grand riffing that undergirds a good deal of doom metal’s traditions, but the players’ inherent sensibilities imbue the playing with grit. The guitar break that suddenly sprints for the horizon line just past the song’s three-minute mark is both revelatory and too brief. You wish the duo allowed themselves more of those moments, which might build even more interesting combinations of death doom’s lachrymose loathing and hardcore’s impulse toward breaking bones. The flesh will always strike back. Tragic Encounters presents a version of Severed Boy that has just started to put itself together, but it’s a provocative beginning.

Jonathan Shaw

#severed boy #tragic encounters #caligari #jonathan shaw #albumreview #Dusted magazine #death metal #doom metal #metal #punk

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tube-thoughts-blog · 6 years

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tube thoughts vol. 2

zero stars - terrible, 1/2 a star - dull, 1 star - folly, 1 1/2 stars - lacking, 2 stars - fair, 2 1/2 stars - decent, 3 stars - terrific

zack snyder's 300: Rise of an Empire *Lady warrior commandeers the battle scenes and saves it from being a male meat fest like the first film.* 3 stars

rifftrax presents "Independence Day" *One way to make this movie more moronic would be if social media existed in its world at the time.* 3 stars with riffing 2 without

Cannon films "Ninja 3: The Domination" *Spunky shinobi, you must avenge me!* 3 stars

Septic Man *Municipal shit-storm* either zero stars for grossness or 3 stars for grossness and surrealness

"The Stuff" a Larry Cohen film starring Michael Moriarty *Ba-da-ba-ba-ba, I'm lovin' it.* 3 stars

Farscape premier episode *Awol from the ratcage.* 3 stars

Garth Marenghi's: Darkplace "The Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shoggoth" *Brocolli from space. I'd thought it had tasted odd.* 3 stars

Albert Pyun's "Omega Doom" starring Rutger Hauer *It's nice to know after we've killed ourselves off, through constant warfare, sentient robots will become gun nuts and start acting out cold war westerns.* 2 1/2 stars

Kenny vs. Spenny: "Who Can Sell More Bibles?" *The Devil is in the details.* 3 stars

Masters of Horror: Clive Barker's "Valerie on the Stairs" *Another bodice-ripper.* 2 stars

"I Spit On Your Grave" uncut 1978 either zero stars or 3 stars

"Beyond the Door" *Paranormal pregnancy with personality.* 3 stars

Twin Peaks: "The Condemned Woman" *Josie and the pine weasels* 2 1/2 stars

Lost and Found Video Night: Vol 7 -- 3 stars

Seinfeld: "The Frogger" *George's high score.* 3 stars

Kolchak, The Night Stalker: "Mr. R.I.N.G." *What's the difference between right and wrong? robot need to know.* 3 stars

Everything is Terrible "The Rise and Fall of God" *Homeschool is the answer.* 3 stars

Roger Corman presents Andrew Stevens' "Subliminal Seduction" featuring Sharknado's Ian Ziering and Critters' Dee Wallace Stone *CD-ROM Inception meets Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" type inept erotic thriller.* 3 stars

David Cronenberg's "eXistenZ" *Jennifer Jason Leigh penetrates Jude Law's port hole in order to play an addictive and twisted version of The Sims.* 3 stars

rifftrax presents "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" *Butter scraped over too much bread.* 3 plus stars with riffing 3 stars without

"Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" *Han Solo babysits a brat-pack ginger cutie, Ernie Hudson is Lando, and Michael Ironside is a Darth Humongous who believes that Earth Girls Are Easy.* 3 stars

"Riddick" *Robinson Crusoe machismo* 3 stars

Farscape: "I, E.T." *My name is Mud.* 3 stars

Dominion: pilot episode *Bright light city gonna set my soul on fire.* 2 1/2 stars

"Thor: Dark World" *Science lady Padme pines for Adam of Eternia so that she inadvertently stumbles into the evil fudge and awakens the 9th Doctor Keebler Who causes the realms to converge like ornaments on an imploding Christmas tree.* 3 stars

"Priest" *Paul Bettany's Obi-Wan character is disenchanted with his forced retirement in a Catholic 1984 dystopia and his regret filled dreams lead to the wasteland where his fallen knights of the old republic partner, a cowboy from hell Karl Urban, lurks about with his horde of bloodsucking bandits and xenomorph vampires. A decent cameo from Brad Dourif as a snake oil salesman. This movie's biggest flaw is that it forgets the classic genre work of Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, and George Miller and instead mimmicks the cliche Matrix ripoff style hack work of Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil flicks.* 2 stars

"Scanners 2: The New Order" *If you get inside me, go gently, and easy on the nosebleeds. This kind of telepathic power in the hands of a fascist P.D., no thankee.* 3 stars

Joe Bob's Christmas Special: Charles Band's "Pets" *Inhabits the same universe as other weird, dumb kids' adventure comedies like 'Garbage Pail Kids', 'The Super Mario Bros Movie', 'Ernest Scared Stupid', and 'Problem Child 1 & 2'* 1 1/2 stars

Sami Rami & The Coen Bros present "Crimewave" aka "The XYZ Murders" *Reminiscent of the Three Stooges, classic Mel Brooks, 40s cartoons, humorous Tom Waits song tales, and the original SNL.* 3 stars

Udo Kier in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss OSbourne' --sexploitation-- *Show me where it hurts. Fill me with hatred. My pleasure is seeing your dead body.* 3 stars

Masters of Horror: "Right to Die" *The crispy, vengeful ghost of Terry Shiavo.* 3 stars

William Lustig's "Vigilante" starring Robert Forster & Fred Williamson *Regular Joe nihilism* 3 stars

rifftrax presents Ridley Scott's "Alien" *H.R. Giger porn on the sattelite of love.* 3 plus stars with riffing 3 without

Josh Brolin is DC's "Jonah Hex" *Sometimes spooky, often dumb B-western that's sadly too gutless to show any blood n grit. Still it might fit into a marathon of 'The Quick and the Dead', 'Five Bloody Graves', 'Navajo Joe', and 'Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter.'* 2 stars

"Rhinestone Cowgirls" 1982 --xxx-- *Easy listenin' and screwin', plus plenty of other prickly situations protruding in Cactus Corner.* 2 stars

Kolchak, The Night Stalker: "Primal Scream" *Unfrozen caveman mauler.* 3 stars

"Shogun Assassin" *Daddy day samurai* 3 stars

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: Dino De Laurentiis presents "Orca" *starring Richard Harris as a salty sea-dog, Charlotte Rampling as a sensitive marine biologist, Bo Derek as a sexy shipmate and Shamu snack, plus the indian fella from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' lending his wisdom by saying things like, "The old ways no longer work. Now, even our gods dance to a new tune."* 2 1/2 stars

"Baron Blood" *Decent dubbing, giallo lite, moody nightscapes, cursed castle, creepy stalking.* 2 1/2 stars

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace: "Illuminatum & Illuminata" *Interviewer: Do you believe in the Horned One? the actor Todd Rivers: You mean the Hoofed One? Interviewer: Yeah.* 3 stars

Beavis & Butthead: "Time Machine" *Butthead: 1832, that's like not now. Beavis: Yeah, aren't we more than that?* 2 1/2 stars

Twin Peaks: "Wounds and Scars" *"A country habit. We are so very trusting."* 3 stars

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: Wes Craven's "The People Under the Stairs" *A ghetto version of Twin Peaks' "Black Lodge" where "Hills Have Eyes" type inbred freaks are trapped in the cellar and "Sometimes further in is the only way out." in a twisted Tom & Jerry style game of cat & mouse.* 3 stars

Masters of Horror: "We All Scream for Ice Cream" starring Lee Tergesen, William Forsythe, and the kid from Bad Santa and Eastbound & Down *The Good Humor Man returns from the land of the popsicles to scoop out and dish some cold and sticky revenge.* 3 stars

Gun Fu John Woo and Risky Bidness Tom Cruise present: "Mission Impossible 2" *We've got the cure, we made the disease. Dianetics incorporated.* 3 stars

Tim & Eric present: Bedtime Stories "Hole" *Spitting surreal absurdism sometimes sidetracks the sinister suburban satire.* 2 1/2 stars

MST3K presents: Charles Band's "Laserblast" *Moppy-haired stoner with a muscle-van gets to rain down the fire of the lizard alien gods on his stereotypical 70s burnout and redneck cop enemies in his one horse desert hometown.* 3 stars with riffing 2 without

Farscape: "Exodus from Genesis" *A hot time in the roach maternity ward in the outer reaches of the universe, tonight.* 3 stars

"Saga, Curse of the Shadow" aka "The Shadow Cabal" *Somewhere between Peter Jackson's LOTR and LARPers that run around yelling, "Lightning bolt, lightnight bolt, lightning bolt!" 2 1/2 stars

"Night of the Loving Dangerously" --xxx-- *With the allure of his ever-wanton ex-wife, Traci Lords, private dick, Peter North, is pulled into a web of blackmail involving his ex's new fiance- a perverted CEO with everything to lose, Jamie Gillis, his naughty daddy's girl daughter, and gay son's snooping photographer boyfriend.* 2 1/2 stars

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: "Poltergeist" *Joe Bob maligns Spielberg's involvement with a Tobe Hooper horor flick, Heather O'Rourke gives me the sads, an 80s kids bedroom is full of nostalgic shit, the mom looks sexy even with a streak of grey hair, there's some kind of message about the sinister nature of suburban sprawl, a sassy medium with a drawl steals the show, and Joe Bob ponders the difference between "Go into the light" & "Stay away from the light."* 3 stars

Lost & Found Video Night Vol. 5 *Hot diggity tallyho* 3 stars

"Purely Physical" 1982 --xxx-- *Schmaltzy motel fornicating where the lovers' lips refuse to move when the pillow talk gets filthy.* 2 1/2 stars

Kolchak, The Night Stalker: "The Trevi Collection" *Fashion victims. Some hilariously bad acting from a witch.* 3 stars

"Gallowwalkers" starring Wesley Snipes *Spaghetti vampire western. The kind of movie Blade 3 should have been.* 3 stars

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi ---despecialized editions--- *Impressive. Most impressive* 3 stars

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: 1954's U.S. version of "Godzilla" & "Godzilla vs. Mothra" *Tokyo stompin' in a Texas trailer park.* 3 stars

"Manborg" 2011 *Will Ferrell's 'Westworld', Scott Pilgrim vs. Mega City 1, Napoleon Dynamite 2: Judgment Day, Tom Green's 'Total Recall', Jim Carrey's "Battlefield Earth', Sam Raimi's 'Mortal Kombat: Annihilation', Paul Verhoeven's 'Army of Darkness', Patrick Swazy, Jacki Chan, Jake Busey, and Cynthia Rothrock in 'Revenge of the Sith'.* 3 stars

Masters of Horror: Stuart Gordon presents Edgar Alan Poe's "The Black Cat" *Pluto, the little devil.* 2 1/2 stars

rifftrax presents: "The Last Slumber Party" *More potty-mouthed and homophobic than a Wayans Bros. "Horror" "Comedy" "Movie"* 2 1/2 stars with riffing 1 1/2 without

The Outer Limits: George R.R. Martin's "Sandkings" starring Beau & Lloyd Bridges *Red menace* 3 stars

rifftrax presents: "Battlefield Earth" *L. Ron Hubbard's The Passion of the Prometheus as acted out by the rat-brained man-animal, John Travolta.* 2 stars with riffing 1 star without

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: Mel Brooks "Spaceballs" 3 stars

rifftrax presents "Fantasic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" *Fate of world hangs in balance while obnoxious bantering, obnoxious celebrity style wedding is overshadowing focus, obnoxious background extras actors mug for the camera and stare at the pop culture status heroes, obnoxious twirling mustache Dr. Doom villain moments, obnoxious studio thinking Galactus is a stupid concept and yet going through with having his threat to earth being the plot-- leaving us with a cloud of lame spacedust* 1 1/2 stars with riffing 1 star without

Troma presents: Lucio Fulci's "Rome 2072: The New Gladiators" *Televised brutality in a cyber-disco dystopia where the cities of the future are painfully obvious scale models covered in Christmas lights and dirtbikes along with karate chops are still considered pretty badass.* 2 1/2 stars

--- Game of Thrones: Season 3 episode 1

*The inept, pudgy comic relief gets to stumble around in the snow avoiding ice zombies,

the dashing dwarf gets dissed by dear old dad,

the high class pimp positions himself near the daughter of the woman who always shunned his advances,

the would be future queen shows kindess to orphans and gets politely scolded for it,

a crow defects to the king beyond the wall,

a fiery zealot harshly deals with infidels,

a shiprecked war veteran brother puts himself back in harm's way to try to talk sense to his witch's pussy whipped brother,

the king of the north returns to his scorched hometown and imprisons his mum there,

a puppy eyed dragon mama sails with her seasick soldiers and goes shopping for baby slaughtering drone warriors while narrowly escaping creepy child with scorpion assassination attempt.*

3 stars

-------------------------------------------------------

rifftrax' Mike Nelson riffs "Predator" *"Speak mono-Slavic-ally and carry a big stick."* 3 plus stars with riffing 3 without

George Lucas & Ron Howard present: "Willow" *In order to save a red-headed bastard baby, Frodo Skywalker fellowships a force of ragtags including a Han Solo in Pocahontas drag, an indian in the cupboard Kevin Pollack, and a wizard lady trapped by spell in the body of a wombat.* 3 stars

rifftrax presents: "Twilight: New Moon" *A frigid, psycho chick gets dumped by her prissy, older, unhealthy obsession. she then begins having night terrors ruining the sleep of her closet gay lumberjack dad. next, she begins leading a lovesick puppydog around on a leash while getting wreckless on a mopad, attempting suicide for attention and all before going on a sisterhood of traveling pants adventure to a pretentious Anne Rice version of faggy Europe. 1980s teens were awesome. 2000s teens are awful.* 2 stars with riffing 1 star without

---- monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs:

"Slaughter High" aka "April Fool's Day"

*These jokers aint' f-f-f-foolin'. They like their drugs, they like their sex, they like their cruel pranks on nerds.

Unlucky for them, their 10th year class reunion takes place at the now abandoned old high school in the middle of nowhere on a rainy night.

It's the perfect setting for an old dark house horror mixed with Agatha Christie style revenge picture.

This is one of the best episodes of monstervision.

It features a classic 1980s slasher flick, it has the original mail girl, Joe Bob skewers the logic of the TNT censors, and he reads an awkward letter from a male admirer named Rufus.*

3 stars

---------------------------------------------------------------

"A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" *Freddy flew over the cuckoos' nest* 3 stars

The Outer Limits: "Valerie 23" *Do androids sleep mode with electric wet dreams? 2 be or R2D2? See, I could think of some existential questions to ask my prototype sexbot over a romantic dinner, especially if she were the first sentient being of her kind, and had Hulk strength for no apparently necessary reason.* 2 1/2 stars

Jamie Gillis in "Midnight Heat" 1983 --xxx-- *Rare grime. A gem of a different time. Seedy NYC.* 3 stars

Masters of Horror: "The Washingtonians" *Patriotic blue hairs set their wooden teeth on edge about the disclosure of that rich colonial tradition of chomping on cherry tastin' child flesh.* 2 stars

Farscape: "Throne for a Loss" *Rigel, the royal pain in the rear.* 3 stars

"Hellraiser 2: Hellbound" uncut *The stigmata of Sigmund Freud, from the makers of 'Scratch it, sniff it, squeeze it, suck it,' now available at finer novelty shops.* 3 stars

Twin Peaks: "On the Wings of Love" *Hangover cures, hidden secret half-sister, hallelujah for the hard of hearing, hometown beauty pageant queen hitlist, and hoot owl hieroglypics.* 2 1/2 stars

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: Randy Quaid in "Parents" *A Norman Rockwell painting hanging on the wall behind the desk at the Bates Motel.* 3 stars

The Outer Limits: "Blood Brothers" *Twelve immortal monkeys* 2 1/2 stars

"Kill List" 2011 -- *This feels like it could be a Garth Ennis story. It has old mates drinking together and shooting the shite about life. It has acts of extreme violence almost to the point of dark comedy. It has a bleak poignancy. There's also the occult undertones like a Hellblazer comic.* 3 stars

William Hurt in Ken Russell's "Altered States" *Waiting, in a fish-bowl, for Godot.* 3 stars

Kolchak, The Night Stalker: "Chopper" *Stunt motorcycle riding, sword slashing specter with separation anxiety.* 3 stars

Farscape: "Back, and Back, and Back to the Future" *"Psychic Spanish-fly," alien lady combat, genetically structured spy seductress, quantum singularity also known as a blackhole used as a soul saving secret weapon of mass destruction that is seriously in jeopardy of being stolen or accidentally set off."* 3 stars

"The Wind" starring Meg Foster, Wings Hauser, & Steve Railsback *Swept up in stormy solitude and story.* 3 stars

The Outer Limits: "The Second Soul" *Lending our dead bodies, like they were used cars, to alien parasites, leads to some serious moral implications. Feels like a 50s style sci fi message about the dangers of multiculturalism given a more progressive twist at the end.* 2 1/2 stars

"Virgin Witch" --sexploitation-- *Prissy Galore throws a feisty spell when a group of dysfunctional devil worshippers decide they really, really fancy her.* 2 1/2 stars

Van Damme / Raul Julia "Streetfighter" *"Who wants to go home, and who wants to go with ME?!" Self aware dumb fun.* 2 1/2 stars

rifftrax' Mike Nelson riffs "xXx" starring Vin Diesel, Samuel L. Jackson, & Asia Argento *Double Ohhh Seven sez, "Do the DEW, dude."* 3 stars with riffing 2 stars without

4 notes · View notes

muthur9000 · 7 years

Link

Prometheus (2012)

1. Jon Spaihts was originally brought on when the film was simply the “untitled Alien prequel.” After a general meeting, where he riffed for about 45 minutes about what could happen in the film. When faced with a studio saying they wanted to go back to the Alienuniverse but wasn’t sure how to do it, Spaihts said, “The only way to do it was to go back in time.”

2. After his first meeting, it took only ten days before Spaihts had a meeting with Ridley Scott and the 20th Century Fox executives. He wrote his first draft in only 3 ½ weeks.

3. Although Scott has said that the location for the opening sequence is not necessarily Earth, Damon Lindelof describes it as a “sort of nascent, pastoral, lifeless Earth” and later identifies it as “the dawn of life on Earth.” However, several minutes later, Lindelof says it’s up for debate whether this was Earth.

4. The opening sequence included dialogue between the Engineers, and this was shot and included in the deleted scenes. However, the dialogue was removed because it was felt the Engineers speaking robbed them of their mystery. Lindelof, who recorded his commentary before the film was released, suspected he would be criticized for not saying exactly what happened.

5. Lindelof says that he and Scott had “a long and involved conversation” on what to call the film. “Ridley would constantly bust my balls about calling it Prometheus because he thought it was pretentious and hard to pronounce,” he says. “I said I agree it is both, but as I am a very pretentious person, I was able to sort of bludgeon him into it, and I think Fox thought it was cool.”

6. The name of the ship in Spaihts’ original script was the Magellan, and the name Prometheus was added by Lindelof. Continuing to admit he’s a pretentious writer, Lindelof says he chose the allusion to Greek mythology because Weyland (Guy Pearce) is trying to get immortality from his creators as Prometheus stole fire from the gods.

7. Even though the dig where we meet Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) was in Spaihts’ original script, Scott didn’t shoot it initially, choosing to start the action in space. This scene was added during reshoots. Other versions of the archeology scene includes one in which Shaw and Holloway make their discovery in a submarine, but it was cut for budgetary reasons. Another version had them finding archeology on Mars, but Spaihts felt that was too much of an easy sell to convince someone that aliens seeded Earth.

8. In regards to Prometheus being labeled a horror movie, Lindelof states, “I think Prometheus certainly has defined horror elements… They just can’t stay out of the attic even if they know that it’s dangerous.”

9. Spaihts identifies what he believes is the biggest shift between his script and Lindelof’s revisions: the amount of alien creatures in the film. Spaihts’ script had traditional facehuggers, chestbursters and xenomorphs. Lindelof removed many of those elements in order to avoid telling a standard Alien story.

10. Spaihts also felt a big difference in the script versions was there was “a pretty long drum roll at the top” in his script. Initially there were extended sequences of Shaw and Holloway making their case to find alien ancestors, using puzzle pieces of language, genealogy and pre-history. “By the time we got onto a ship, we’d been running really the ghost story of human past, the mystery story, for a solid twenty minutes of screen time in the scripts I wrote.” In Lindelof’s script, this exposition is put in during the crew briefing. Lindelof says he did this to be more dynamic by presenting the information to the crew members at the same time it’s presented to the audience.

11. Lindelof compares this exposition scene to the crew to his work on Lost. The scripted scene was 8 or 9 pages, and it throws a lot of exposition at the audience. He said when he worked on Lost, he avoided expository scenes “at all costs.” As a result, he says, “people hate me because the show was very confusing.”

12. Lindelof points out that David (Michael Fassbender) is perfectly happy to be a robot. He doesn’t’ have a Pinocchio complex. “Robots are like iPods,” he says. “You can put your own case on them or put your own apps on them.” This is why he emulates Peter O’Toole from Lawrence of Arabia, to personalize himself rather than to emulate humanity.

13.After she wakes up from cryosleep, Meredith asks David if everyone is still alive. She is specifically asking whether Peter Weyland survived. If he were dead, she would have turned the ship around and gone home.

14. Both Spaihts and Lindelof express disappointment in the casting of a younger, extremely fit actor like Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland. Originally, there were scenes in which David talks to Weyland in his dream, and he appears as a young, fit man. However, Scott dropped those scenes because he didn’t think they were needed. This led Spaihts to refer to Weyland as “a strapping old man” and Lindelof to point out the inherent silliness of not just casting an old man rather than using old-age make-up.

15. Spaihts addresses a common complaint about the Prometheus being so much more advanced than the Nostromo, even though this film takes place many years before the events of Alien. He points out that the Nostromo was “a tugboat,” and it’s possible that cruder ship had been around for 150 years. “I don’t trip too much over the anachronism of the technology.”

16. Lindelof compares Weyland’s quest for more life (rather than more money) to Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Scott’s Blade Runner. However, instead of an artificial being seeking more life from humanity, this film features a human going to his creator and asking for more life. He says, “For me, Prometheus was all about making an Alien-Blade Runner mash-up, using the best themes from both movies and dropping them all into the same world… I just assumed they were sequels of each other.”

17. Spaihts wrote five drafts of the film, generally adhering more to the original Alien and including more of the derelict spacecraft (which is later referred to as a “juggernaut”).

18. In Spaihts’ original draft, the pups used to map the caves rolled and crawled along the ground instead of flying. He admits that they look cooler in the air.

19. Both Spaihts and Lindelof address the often criticized helmet removal by the crew. Lindelof calls it a “leap of faith” for the characters and compares Holloway’s helmet removal to the scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which Richard Dreyfussremoves his gas mask to prove there’s no danger. Spaihts calls the issue an inevitable tug-of-war. “Logic demands the helmet stay on almost always for head protection, for atmosphere, pressure could blow, infection could set in,” he said. “The director and actors will always want their helmets off for performance’s sake. And there will always be pressure to give the actors a good excuse to take their hats off.”

20. Spaihts originally conceived that the Engineers saw a greater spectrum than humans did. However, so did David, and he could see signs and symbols in the corridors that the humans didn’t.

21. Lindelof says Holloway gave Shaw “probably the worst STD you can possibly get, an alien in the belly.” What emerges is progenitor of the facehugger, and he says, “Shaw and Holloway are kind of that facehugger’s mommy and daddy.” Spaihts also independently calls the alien embryo a sexually transmitted disease, adding, “A chestburster was actually conceived by the love of a man and a woman.”

22. Lindelof further discusses the motivation of the Engineers: “That’s kind of the point of the movie, I think. The idea that our creators really don’t have a particular sense of great ambition or meaning behind what they’re doing as Holloway described it in an earlier draft… The idea that Earth was just these people’s Petri dish. But perhaps there is more to why they created us in the first place, which is sort of the spirit in which the movie ends. Again if you’re listening to my commentary it’s probably because you’re interested in what I have to say or you hate me. In either case, one of the things that I love to do in my writing is not answer questions definitively. As frustrating as this is I rely much more on the human imagination and your ability to sort of theorize as to what you think may have happened. And although that’s why its’ frustrating, people talk about movies after they’re over.”

23. Lindelof anticipates fans taking issue with the explanation and human connection to the space jockey, as he did initially when he read Spaihts’ script. He says, “It’s a controversial idea because anything in a prequel that essentially recasts your understanding of the original movie has the opportunity to lessen that movie and therefore, it’s a risk.”

24. On how the film actually ties in directly with Alien and its sequels, Lindelof is continually vague: “We still don’t know what happened on LV-426. Maybe we’ll never know. This movie goes off in its own direction. But again we sort of wanted to have the sense that if Prometheus had never occurred, maybe Alien still would’ve happened. But we’re seeing a similar chain of events going in an entirely different way.”

25. Lindelof explains that David is hesitant to spike Holloway’s drink with the alien mutagen possibly because of his ethics programming. However, because Weyland has instructed him to do whatever is necessary to bring a solution, but more importantly because Holloway admits that he’d do anything to get his own answers, that allows David to override that part of his programming.

26. Spaihts originally conceived Janek (Idris Elba) as a Captain Nemo type. While Elba doesn’t physically resemble the bearded type Spaihts had envisioned, he did fit the part extremely well. In fact, Lindelof makes several mentions throughout his commentary that he would do anything to add more Janek moments.

27. The sex scene between Holloway and Shaw was originally more antagonistic, in which Holloway was upset because he wanted to disprove the existence of God. Lindelof rewrote the scene for a reshoot to make it more congenial. This allows the audience to feel sympathy for Holloway when he is eventually killed by Vickers (Charlize Theron).

28. In Spaihts’ original script, Holloway was impregnated by a facehugger in the tunnels of the pyramid, after being startled by the holograms and falling down on an egg. The chestburster then emerged while he was making love to Shaw. Spaihts specifically chose this moment to tie together sex and violence, as is often done in the Alien universe.

29. Lindelof added the element of Fifield (Sean Harris) getting stoned in his suit to match the pattern of a horror movie, in which characters that have sex or get stoned often die.

30. After Holloway and Shaw’s sex scene and the attack on Millburn (Rafe Spall) and Fifield, Spaihts elaborates: “It’s interesting to see the Alien franchise’s built-in sexualization of menace play out in different fronts here. And it’s something that I think Damon did well, you know, obliged to part company with facehuggers and chestbursters which are very rapey and sexual phenomena. Pregnancy. And you, know, oral rape and impregnation as the way of being done in a by a monster, really ghastly. It’s why there is an Alienfranchise and not one scary Alien movie… The blasphemy of it, the fact that it is so vile and it’s so transgressive in the way it victimizes a human being I think is what makes it resonate, what makes it so dark.”

31. In Spaihts’ script, David finds a huge cargo hold of eggs, which was meant to undo the experiment on Earth. David captures and restrains Shaw when she confronts him in there. She is impregnated by a facehugger, and because she witnessed Holloway’s death, she knows what it will do to her. This is what causes her to escape and use the Med-Pod to extract it. Spaihts says that this deliberate exposure of Shaw to the aliens is what he misses most about his screenplay.

32. Spaihts says his idea of the C-section alien removal is what got him the writing job because no one had ever survived that before in an Alien film. “The real trauma is the exit wound,” he says, “so if you get it out clean, you might live.” In his script, once the creature was removed, it was ejected from the Med-Pod, and Shaw stayed in there for hours to heal, all the while watching it grow and eventually kill people. “Either way, she ends up running away, bloody and half-naked,” he admits.

33. The imagery around David accessing the Engineers’ stellar cartography hologram was inspired by a painting from Joseph Wright called “The Orrery.”

34. When Holloway is torched by Vickers, Spaihts points out the challenges in Lindelof’s script: “This is a difficult moment. And I can see Damon here looking for answers. You know, deprived of the facehuggers and aliens that otherwise killed these characters, how do you do away with them and how do you provide a moment for the evil for your villains to play out?”

35. Lindelof identifies what he considers to be the fundamental difference between his and Spaihts’ scripts, which influenced the name and direction of the film: “Weyland was not a character in Jon’s draft other than at the opening. He’s not on the ship. He was driven by the idea that finding the Engineers would result in breakthroughs in terraforming technology and thus could make the company a lot of money. In this version, Weyland is not driven by money at all. He’s driven by the one thing his money can’t buy him, which is some iteration of eternal life.”

36. When the surviving Engineer awakens, Lindelof points out that there are no answers to what exactly the Engineers were doing. David gives a theory, but there are no answers, though Lindelof hints at some ideas that could be developed in further films. Spaihts offers a more concrete reason why there’s no explanation: “If you’re gonna wake up God, you’re gonna have Him talk to you, what on Earth could he say? What speech can he give you that will satisfy you that will be good enough, cool enough, deep enough? Here’s the alien super-race that made us what we are. What do they have to say to us?”

37. The Engineer originally did speak to David, which is included in the deleted scenes, but Lindelof said it was removed from the film because “it robbed him of any coolness or mystery.”

38. At the end of Spaihts’ script, after the juggernaut crashes, Shaw has to fight a xenomorph which emerged from the Engineer pilot. Lindelof decided to change it to the Engineer fighting her because he felt it was a movie about a creation confronting its creator, rather than a woman fighting an alien.

39. Spaihts chose the name “David” for the android because the first three androids were Ash, Bishop and Call, in that order. Alphabetically, David was the next logical choice. David was also a reference to Michaelangeo’s famous sculpture, which was a physical model for the Engineers. He’s also the first android to be referred to by a first name instead of his surname, and he was the first in chronology.

40. As he wraps up his commentary, Lindelof goes back to the question of whether this is an actual prequel to Alien or not. His final argument is: “This movie doesn’t end with a bunch of eggs on LV-426, and that’s partly what makes it not fit as a direct prequel.”

Best in Commentary

Lindelof: “That was my attempt to get Charlize Theron naked, but cooler heads prevailed.” (Regarding Meredith Vickers doing push-ups in her underwear after waking from cryosleep)

Lindelof: “How far away is that from LV 426?” About 185 LVs, whatever that means. Yes, I’m not as nerdy as I should be.” (Regarding the location of LV-223)

Lindelof: “David is not really the guy you want as your OB-GYN.”

Lindelof: “A spoiler alert here. If a man and a woman have sex, you can make a baby. And if that man has just been infected by a crazy android with weird black goop, that baby is going to be strange and upsetting.”

Spaihts: “Both of the women in this movie are in insane shape. It’s terrifying how muscular and powerful they are. Either one could kick my ass.”

Lindelof: “If you hated the movie, again, I apologize. And hopefully this made you hate me even more. And if you liked it, I’m really grateful that you did. And hopefully we’ll get to spend some more time in this universe because it’s one of my favorites.”

#prometheus #jon spaihts #damon lindelof

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

Photo

So basically you can’t talk to @mittensmorgul about anything, or it just goes all

And in this case it’s trying to explain, like, the ENTIRE tangled web behind the whole “crypt scenes” thing and why we even call it that when it starts with a thread beginning in 1x22 with John throwing off Azazel to save Dean, and ends up with me yelling at my screen when a tan-coat-wearing brainwashed dude answering to a heaven-like organisation is waving a gun at some random hunter whose only crime is being adorable and loosely romantically connected to Sam, and declaring it Prime Destiel Subtext.

This is the wire tangle in my brain that explains it :P

Details under the cut with the image above just so you can visualise all the bits of string, I guess, unless you can read my handwriting (on a browser, anyway, you can click the image to get it in a pop out, then right click, view in a new window, and view it in life size, and I used a LARGE sketchbook for it so life size is big ass spaghetti ramblings), in which case you get a prize.

Act One:

1x22 - John overcomes Azazel possession to save Dean

This is repeated with a better father figure in

5x01 - Bobby breaks possession to save Dean

This is direct start of season to end of season foreshadowing for

5x22 - Sam overcomes Lucifer’s possession because of Dean

A final repeat of it in this direct thread is in

7x23 - Bobby overcomes possessing the maid so as not to kill Sam

This starts with an act of obvious parental love (all other judgements about John put aside for now) that John would break the most terrifying possession and biggest stakes the show had ever seen at that point for Dean’s sake. This is the theme here for the Kripke era uses of it. Bobby was tied into this in 5x01 because he is the replacement father figure and to show he is equal to this love. He does it for Sam too, in Gamble era, which is the only notable moment of paralleling this I can think of, when it comes to following a thread of subtext. I think it was a pretty final conclusion, allowed Bobby to do it for both his boys (setting aside a good cry about that) and wrapped this all up pretty conclusively for what this was ever meant to do.

The final Bobby instance off in Gamble era shows the shifting themes from external evil and possession as a thing done by a totally separate thing, to loss of control, internal evil and darkness, and transformation to evil (4x21 where Sam beats Dean down while totally lost to demon blood and Ruby’s manipulation would be the obvious “crypt scene” of this time, but it is not framed this way, with no strong emphasis on the same gooey “I know you’re in there” sentiment - Dean assumes Sam has become a monster, is lost to him, and tells him something echoing what John once said to Sam about leaving and never coming back, so emotionally it has no real overlap with what these scenes are being used for, namely to convey the love between the people who are possessed and attacked)

Act Two:

8x10 - Cas kills Samandiriel while mind controlled

8x11 - Gilda controlled by the book & Charlie saves her from control

8x16 - small parallels with the staging and shifting loyalties with Artemis and Prometheus

^ these both add romantic subtext through mirrors before the Big Day to help change its tone

8x17 - CRYPT SCENE: Cas breaks through brainwashing to not kill Dean

“What broke the connection?” is left hanging while being bloody obvious

9x04 - Robbie continues throwing in small scale mirrors, this time showing that sibling and other platonic relationships have no effect on a “I know you’re in there” which is becoming a key phrase.

9x17 - confirms Henry only feels like Josie is a sibling, adding the 8x12 “I know you’re in there” to this list definitively.

Cas’s arc carries on relying on all this in the background as it builds up to

9x22 - low-key reverse crypt scene with Hannah echoing Naomi to ask Cas to choose between Heaven and Dean. He is NOT brainwashed, so struggles probably more with finding a way to have his cake and eat it, before admitting defeat that he “can’t” kill Dean. Especially not in sound mind.

This answers the “what broke the connection” question from the last crypt scene by showing how important Dean is in a different set up, and leads into the 9x22/23 “he’s in love... with humanity” “- all for Dean Winchester” thing, confirming with words some more of this unspoken subtext.

This of course is over Dean with the Mark causing problems, and everything’s swinging around to this as the main problem, with Dean succumbing seemingly to his inner darkness but of course it’s a literal external darkness affecting him, though on a deep, intrinsic level that’s filtered through his own personality and makes it hell to have a solid answer on what what Dean and what was the Mark.

Notably, Dean just takes a swing at Sam with a hammer, and Cas swoops in and saves Sam, and they cure him together, invoking no tropes from this thread whatsoever as Cas and Dean pointedly never look at each other once while Dean is a demon, and Dean never says anything to Cas. This plays off a thread of Cas restraining Dean in 9x23, 10x03, and finally 10x22 in the same way, with a 3rd time failure to control him, leading TO the crypt scene reversal, but I don’t think is properly connected.

While Dean is succumbing to the Darkness, the Colette Parallel comes into play, which strictly speaking is entirely other fuckery in the Destiel subtext, but dips in to converge on

10x13 - parallel in the MotW with the trenchcoat wearing wife talking her murder-rampaging ghost husband into peace, right before Cain returns, and is a crypt scene direct mirror

10x22 - REVERSE CRYPT SCENE: directly parallels the original, with the same director, flipped participants but nearly identical choreography (and this is where you play the Thomas J Wright card and point at the Dark Angel episode with the exact same staging of the end of the fight in similar circumstances). Dean manages to break out of the darkness fugue state just enough to not kill Cas, and to continue to defy Cain’s prophecy.

Literally textbook what everyone had been predicting a “reverse” crypt scene would be since Dean was affected with said external/internal darkness issue

Act Three:

11x03 - smol crypt scene parallel with Cas controlled, riffing off 10x22 for the theme of Cas’s lasting emotional damage from this

Cas ends up possessed by Lucifer as a result

11x18 Cas does not throw off the possession

this does however parallel 6x20 in the confrontation style

And ends a rule of three on wandering into someone’s head and saving them, PLATONICALLY, from 8x08 (Sam and Fred Jones), 9x10 (Crowley and Sam) and here (Crowley and Cas)

He has his Swan Song moment to show how much he loves Sam in 11x14, swapping right back to the classic “I am possessed by Lucifer but do not want to kill you” model (hence these more and more nested bullet points as we detour from The Point, but on the diagram, one long wobbly arrow back up to the top to show it is ALL STILL CONNECTED)

11x16 - Incidentally Robbie’s on his way out and sticks in one more failed brotherly “I know you’re in there” just to make a point I guess, while they’re working on new and better ways to resolve everything that are no longer like the past (represented by Bobby, and another arrow up to 5x01/7x23, just for him being around reminding us)

Meanwhile this all follows in the background of The Point, dealing with Dean’s internal/external Darkness problem, now manifest as Amara. Which leads us to the first break in the absolute rule of possession/internal darkness as he confronts his darkness externally with Cas absent from the action entirely in

11x21 - REVERSE REVERSE CRYPT SCENE: “Where are your thoughts?” Amara asks, realising her sway on Dean has all gone, and Dean is thinking of saving Cas, acting as decoy to rescue Lucifer - and by Lucifer, he means Cas. Notably, this is part of the TJW directing fuckery, and he’s not done yet.

Amara also uses the image of a bloody beaten Cas (echoing the haunting of a similar Cas as a result of 10x22 to Dean in 10x23) to motivate Dean to do as she wants in the first part.

Cas’s absence and the lack of interaction between them, by this point, is not essential for thematic Crypt scene parallels, especially as at this point Amara is still a romantic rival, subtextually, and clearly entangled in that love triangle, via the visual subtext of the episode, with her using Dean and Cas’s personal connection to communicate with Dean.

The Amara connection breaks, and is revealed to have been completely platonic in her heart after all, in

11x23 - Swan Song again! Dean goes and breaks up the cosmic sibling row on a scale one huge step above Michael and Lucifer, this time bloodlessly, this time about resolving the conflict peacefully, and with no heightened proving love drama except the hugs in the graveyard between Sam and Dean and Dean and Cas and whatever THEY tell us. It extracts the original Point of 5x22 and finally resolves it.

At this point there are now clearly 2 completely distinct branches of this subtext; the Swan Song parallels on one side and the Crypt Scenes ones on the other - the heightened love-proving drama has two completely distinct languages born from the same point. 11x21 resolves one, 11x23 the other.

Act Four:

(I didn’t separate them on the diagram, because I think it stopped *just* following on from itself and became more of a fractal in season 11, but you know what, for the sake of having a clear Dabb era section... Here, it fractals out from the previous versions and I was half-tempted to glue these all onto much earlier episodes, but went with a chronological layout. None of these remotely resemble the others OR the original crypt scene, and yet they ALL tripped my radar for the same train of thought...)

12x02 - going RIGHT back to the start, Mary parallels 1x22 with the ghost possession and not wanting to kill Dean. Again, platonic, and in the model of the Swan Song series of subtext, which 11x14 showed the pattern is still around and clearer than ever.

12x10 - TJW is at it again. Paralleing the 9x22 iteration, Ishim asks Cas to choose between himself and Dean. When the choice is too obvious, it swaps to paralleling 10x22 with the choreography and obvious importance to show Cas’s state of mind by using the similar shots of Cas feeling defeated and relating to Dean being in a POSITION to kill him. Of course this also, like 11x21, uses an externalised evil to make it all happen, lightening the direct interpersonal trauma, and obviously Dean chooses not to kill Cas as well when faced with the choice.

12x12 - Cas again hurt, working with 12x10 for Cas’s arc, as they were a set of episodes. The dialogue including an “I love you” finally includes the infamous dropped line from 8x17′s crypt scene, in a broadly applicable family setting, but also with room to wonder how much Cas meant it about Dean first, then everyone else. It’s at least an answer to 8x17. And “What broke the connection” - thematically it does not, however, look anything like a crypt scene, and yet EMOTIONALLY overlaps so much I can’t not mention it. Hence my thoughts about this thread becoming fractals of itself.

12x17 - Mick, an external (12x10, 11x23), brainwashed (8x17) threat, heavily mirroring Cas in his coat, threatens Eileen because the Code demands he kill her as punishment (9x22), and Sam talks him down into questioning his “Code” enough to allow them to escape. Sam and Eileen are coded as potential maybe one day love interests, because of Robbie fucking Thompson back in season 11, and general adorableness and laser focus on their interactions in this episode. Dean is present but Sam handles it because he has the stake in Eileen.

Semi-unrelated but Mick then goes on to die for “The original Mission” in almost identical form to Naomi (8x23), Gadreel (9x23) and Metatron (11x21), going out as he lived: one heck of a parallel to angels and their loyalty to Heaven... with Dr Hess as a Naomi parallel herself, making this emotionally pretty much an 8x17 Cas moment for Mick himself, flipping around the point of crypt scenes instead of revealing how he CARES as a proof of love (unless he really did fall in love with Sam while bonding as nerd-soulmates) but instead seems mostly to be platonically, as a moment of personal growth for him on this “original mission” thread instead. Of course, angels returning to the ideals of the “original mission” become Cas-aligned for however long they last while back on the good guys table...

Which I just like because it’s a double Crypt Scene parallel for both the romantic side and the threat, but they have fuck all to do with each other in that respect, this has just become so ridiculously layered you can’t walk into a bar without having to talk down a mind-controlled acquaintance, and at which point I stopped, looking hard at Mick and was like, what the fuck this started with John and Azazel and Dean.

#crypt scenes for ts #long post for ts #help #my stuff #spn meta #Destiel #uuh let's just go with #1x22 #5x22 #8x17 #9x22 #10x22 #11x21 #11x23 #season 12 spoilers #and leave it at that :P

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nickacostaisme · 7 years

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vimeo

ALIEN: MST3K from Nick Acosta on Vimeo.

I took one of my favorite all-time shows, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and recut it into a Sci Fi ‘Alien’ horror movie. Both franchises are returning this spring. MST3k returned in a near perfect reboot on Netflix and ALIEN: COVENANT will debut in theaters a few weeks. For this video I used only footage from MST3K’s ‘Host Segments”, the part where they do skits in-between riffing on the movie. It follows the formula of an Alien / Prometheus trailer. You start with an intro to the ship and crew, then things quickly escalates into people shouting, quick cuts, and that “Sci Fi horn” blaring over everything.

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alienvirals · 7 years

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Alien: Covenant review Ridley Scott’s latest space exploration feels all too familiar

Scotts sequel to the Prometheus prequel is capably made but plays like a greatest-hits compilation of the original films freakiest moments

Its back, with its vicious little fangs, squidgily formless body and nasty receding skull that swoops and tapers down the back of its neck, like the helmet of an Olympic cyclist. Ridley Scotts parasitic space alien has returned for this watchable if unoriginal sci-fi thriller though it doesnt grow all that much these days. Michael Fassbender is back, too, as the creepy deadpan robot who glides around in the style of a Jeeves/Lecter hybrid, wearing a tight-fitting outfit apparently made out of nylon, and in which he appears as flat-fronted in the trouser department as Barbies boyfriend Ken. And Scott himself has again returned to the helm of the Alien franchise he effectively created with the first film in 1979, before ceding directorial control to James Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet for the sequels, and others for the novelty bouts with Predator.

This movie is a sequel to the prequel Prometheus, which Scott directed in 2012, a movie that was there supposedly to set up the events in the first film, all about a space quest for mankinds Dniken-esque origin on other planets. Prometheus was set in 2094; this is happening 10 years later, in 2104, with a colonist ship, called the Covenant, travelling for years through space, intended to set up a plantation on a distant world which appears to have the means to support human life. But the terrified crew encounter an awful truth about the Prometheus, as well as a sharp-toothed, uninvited little guest.

youtube

Alien: Covenant trailer

Of course, it is futile to concern yourself with the timeline of the Alien films when effectively they are happening in parallel, not in sequence. They are variations on the same theme. The one change is that Prometheus and Alien: Covenant take the legendary android reveal at the end of the first Alien, and matter-of-factly incorporate it into the prequels as part of the establishing premise.

This film inflates Fassbenders robot role hugely. He first appears in an eerie, interesting opening sequence which the rest of the film cannot really match: a huge white room, with a grand piano, a panorama-window showing some generic alpine landscape, a full-scale model of Michelangelos David, and other high-art objects. There we find Fassbenders robot being questioned by his testy scientist-creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) and invited to choose a name for himself, the robot hubristically says David, after the statue.

Key component: Michael Fassbender as David in Alien: Covenant. Photograph: Mark Rogers/Fox Film

Inspired by his own achievement in fashioning this humanoid robot, Weyland himself insists that there must be a creationist meaning and purpose to the universe, a religious theme that is, vaguely, to recur. In Prometheus, Noomi Rapaces space voyager Dr Elizabeth Shaw wore a cross around her neck; in Alien: Covenant a crew member wears the cross of David. It could be a reference to the robots name.

But when we recognise this robot again, on board the Covenant, there are some immediately obvious changes, whose point is revealed later. A freak electrical storm awakens the crew prematurely from their artificial hibernation (rather as in the movie Passengers, with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, which riffed on the idea slightly more interestingly) and a calamity means that the unlikable rationalist Oram (Billy Crudup) is promoted to captain, with Daniels (Katherine Waterston) and Tennessee (Danny McBride) his immediate subordinates. The catastrophe means his crew are reluctant to resume their deep sleep and instead become fixated on an alternative possibility: another planet, hardly a few weeks voyage from their current position, on which there appears to be evidence of human life and which presents itself as a ready-made new home.

Should they chance everything by going down and taking a look? Should they, much more to the point, walk around down there without their protective helmets and spacesuits on, so that evil spores from little pod-like growths can get into their ear canals and up their noses? Have these people learned nothing at all?

Just as in Prometheus, the action is opened out from the claustrophobic confines of the spaceship to the vast prospects of a distant planet, which turns out to be a mix of Pompeii and Easter Island. There is a wonderful long shot of the explorers in the darkness of this planet, the tiny green beams of their torches darting around them.

The vu has never been so dja: its a greatest-hits compilation of the other Alien films freaky moments. The paradox is that though you are intended to recognise these touches, you wont really be impressed unless you happen to be seeing them for the first time. For all this, the film is very capably made, with forceful, potent performances from Waterston and Fassbender. That franchise title is, however, looking increasingly wrong. It is a bit familiar.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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3c-2018-veronique-blog · 7 years

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Boekverslag ‘Het bloed in onze aderen’

Titelbeschrijving

Ik heb het boek, Het bloed in onze aderen gelezen. Het is geschreven door Miquel Bulnes (geboren 1976) in het jaar 2011. Het boek is uitgegeven door de uitgeverij Prometheus in Amsterdam.

Motivatie van mijn boekkeuze

Voor school, voor het vak het Nederlands, moest ik een boek lezen in de meivakantie. Ik koos voor het boek Het bloed in onze aderen. Ik koos voor dit boek omdat het me een leuk boek leek. Het is een historische thriller en een psychische roman en dat sprak me wel aan. Ik houd namelijk wel van een spannend boek. Ook vind ik het leuk om dingen uit het verleden te lezen.

Korte samenvatting

Het bloed in onze aderen is een boek wat bestaat uit 5 aparte delen. Dit is dus moeilijk samen te vatten aangezien alle 5 maar een klein beetje met elkaar gemeen hebben. Daarom maak ik een samenvatting per deel.

Deel 1;

Rond het jaar 1900 is er een oorlog bezig in Marokko. Het Spaanse leger wil in het Rif, een gebergte, de macht hebben, maar er zijn burgers, Berbers genoemd, die ze deze macht niet willen geven. Het Spaanse leger heeft hier meerdere plekken waar ze kampen hebben. In het kamp van Annual, zitten de luitenant Emilio Amores en de kolonel Augusto Santamaría. De kolonel wordt door de soldaten als een hele norse man gezien. Op een gegeven moment wordt er een kamp gemaakt, 2 kilometer verder dan Annual, genaamd Igueriben. De kolonel moet daarnaartoe en moet een luitenant meenemen. Door een misverstand kiest hij Emilio Amores tegen zijn in, terwijl Augusto dacht dat hij dat wel graag wilde. Emilio wilde namelijk helemaal niet graag overgeplaatst worden. De Igueriben is namelijk veel gevaarlijker, het kamp is kleiner en minder goed gebouwd. Emilio wil graag naar huis. Zijn zwangere vrouw Helena wacht namelijk op hem.

Op een dag komen de Berbers in opstand, ze vallen Igueriben binnen. In het gevecht overlijdt de luitenant Emilio Amores. Kolonel Augusto Santamaría weet als enige van de negen duizend soldaten weg te komen.

Deel 2;

Tijdens het gevecht in Igueriben is Augusto in zijn knie geschoten. Hij is in Spanje verzorgt, maar niemand wist nog hoe Augusto als enige overlevende met een kapotgeschoten knie bij een ander kamp is gekomen. Omdat hij niet meer goed kan lopen, mag Augusto tot zijn grote spijt niet terug naar Afrika, maar wordt hij werkzaam bij de politie in Madrid. Hier krijgt hij al snel een goede vriend, inspecteur Salvador Albí. Augusto en zijn inspecteur moeten op een dag een moord oplossen op de kolonel Francesc Cartoux in een bordeel. Tijdens het onderzoek trouwt Augusto met de weduwe Helena, de vrouw van de overlede Emilio Amores, die ondertussen van haar zoon was bevallen. Het zoontje heet Pedro. Hij trouwt met haar uit medelijden omdat ze geen geld heeft en moeilijk alleen voor haar zoontje kan zorgen. Hij verwacht niet teveel liefde van haar, maar ze geeft hem dit wel, en daar komt soms wat spanning van gedurende het hele boek.

Ondertussen gaat het moordonderzoek nog steeds door. De hoer die met de kolonel naar bed ging op het moment dat hij vermoord werd, beweerd dat ze niks heeft gezien. Eigenlijk heeft ze onder een kast een dagboek gevonden van de kolonel. Zelf kan ze dit niet lezen dus besluit het thuis af te geven bij Augusto. Helena ziet haar echter aan als het nieuwe dienstmeisje wat ze geregeld had (Helena en Augusto woonden ondertussen al samen). Omdat dit een goede kans is voor het meisje (Esperanza) om haar leven te verbeteren, en weg te gaan uit het bordeel, zwijgt ze over het dagboek. Gelukkig herkent Augusto haar ook niet. Uiteindelijk besluit ze het boek wel te geven, omdat de moord zo niet opgelost kan worden. Uit angst om weggestuurd uit het huis van de familie Santamaría, en dus haar goede leven als dienstmeid van de familie kwijt rakend, geeft ze het boek via een vriendin van haar, aan inspecteur Albí. Aan het einde wordt de inspecteur vermoord omdat dit dagboek belangrijke informatie heeft voor wat mensen.

Deel 3;

In dit deel wordt er afwisselend geschreven in het perspectief van twee personen: Serafín, een socialistische politicus die in Madrid woont, en Angelita, een jong meisje die opeens in een gezin is met een vrouw die zich haar moeder noemt. Ook wordt ze Angelita genoemd, maar van die naam heeft ze nog nooit gehoord. Ze heeft een jong broertje; Paquito, en een oudere zus; Maria. Maria en haar moeder doen altijd gemeen tegen Paquito en Maria wordt nooit ergens voor gestraft. Ook mogen de 3 kinderen nooit het huis uit. Op een gegeven dag verdwijnt Paquito opeens. Angelita haar moeder doet raar over de situatie en ook Maria lijkt het niks te schelen.

Op een dag wordt er aangebeld bij het huis van Angelita, maar de moeder is er niet om open te doen, dus Angelita opent de deur. De buurvrouw stond voor de deur en had door dat dit meisje daar niet thuis hoorde en is naar de politie gegaan. Uiteindelijk wordt de gruwelijke waarheid over de moeder van Angelita en de verdwijning van Paquito ontdekt.

Serafín zit thuis met een doodziek zoontje, die het misschien niet gaat overleven. Ondertussen ontmoet hij een vrouw waar hij een verhouding meekrijgt terwijl hij getrouwd is. Op een dag vertelt deze vrouw, Enriqueta genaamd, dat ze zijn zoontje kan redden, maar dat dan op een speciale manier. De hopeloze Serafín gaat hiermee akkoord, maar weet niet dat hiervoor iemand geofferd moet worden. Een jong jongetje... Paquito.

Na een paar jaar, als Enriqueta allang is opgepakt, wordt Serafín gechanteerd. Enriqueta hield namelijk een dagboek bij. Het dagboek waardoor inspecteur Albí is vermoord in deel 2. In dit dagboek staan namelijk alle namen van mensen die bij Enriqueta een ‘elixer’ hebben gekocht. Toen inspecteur Albí werd vermoord, had hij echter niet het dagboek bij zich, maar een ander boek. Majoor Augusto Santamaría had dit dagboek al handen, en was dan ook de chanteur van Serafín.

Deel 4 en deel 5 vat ik niet samen. Hierin worden namelijk alle problemen die zich in de eerste drie delen verzamelen, opgelost. Bijvoorbeeld: Wie heeft de moord gepleegd? Moet Augusto naar de gevangenis omdat hij de oorlog als enige had overleefd? Welke van de vrienden van Augusto weet al al de tijd wie de moord heeft gepleegd (en is familie van de moordenaar)? Hoe loopt het af met Esperanza en haar vriendinnen? Hoe eindigt de ingewikkelde politieke kwestie? Overleefd Angelita haar gemene en moordlustige moeder? Wordt de familie Santamaría ooit nog een gelukkig gezin?

Mijn mening over het boek

Ik vond het een heel goed boek. Het was spannend, leerzaam en gedetailleerd.

In het hele boek was het spannend, je kon amper stukken vinden waar het dat niet was. Er gebeurden zoveel dingen, een politieke opstand, een moord die moest worden opgelost, meisjes die ontvoerd werden. Noem het maar op. Je had altijd wel iets om je ‘zorgen’ over te maken.

Ook heb ik er super veel van geleerd. Het boek speelde zich af rond 1900 in Madrid en Barcelona. Ik heb geleerd over hoe mensen met elkaar om gingen in die tijd en hoe de sociale verhoudingen lagen. Bijna het hele boek ging ook over politiek. Daarvan heb ik veel dingen bijgeleerd. Bijvoorbeeld de verschillen tussen Anarchisten en de socialisten. Het boek was ook erg gedetailleerd. Alles was zeer goed beschreven waardoor het boek veel mooier werd.

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thesunlounge · 6 years

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Top Tracks of 2017

Once again, vinyl purchases only. As well, I didn’t put any tracks that appeared on albums, EPs, or singles already featured on my earlier lists. I did this to cover more ground, but it kind of skews things because many of my sincere favorites are not on this list (Tornado Wallace’s “Voices” for example).

Calle Gravina - Venezuela (Balearic Social) This is balearic perfection and delivers everything you could want from a White Isle classic. There is bouncy dubbed out bass, a slo-mo disco beat, tasteful hand percussion, mallet instruments, sunny guitars and synths and even some tastefully freaky solos. The mix is spectacular, with cool psychedelic effects layered throughout the stereo field. But its those soaring choral vocals and that absolutely maddening “na na-na-na” refrain that will melt your heart.

Cantoma - Talva Lumi [Apiento Remix] (Highwood Recordings) “Talva Lumi” was a standout track from Cantoma’s Just Landed, so it is hard to imagine a remix topping the original, especially when you consider removing the heavenly vocals. But never doubt Apiento & LX, as their rework adds stunning gypsy violin, jazzy/afro keys, and a tight and addictive breakbeat to the original’s sunny acoustic shuffle. The mix is incredible and the whole track is vibrant and alive, especially when they bring in those romantic pads from the original during the dropout.

Earthboogie - Route Ten to Interzone [12” Mix] (Leng) This track is so wild, riding high on a catchy synth sequence and afro-disco groove with energetic hand percussion firing at the periphery. The sticky heat-wave pads up the delirium factor, but the gonzo vocals are what finally pushes everything fully over-the-top. The whole vibe of the vox reminds me of the best moments of Goat or even Sun City Girls, but here layered over a sleek booty-shaking burner.

Fantastic Man - Cool Waters (Superconscious Records) It is 100% about that ravey square wave bass sequence. Simple as can be, yet seriously so propulsive and hypnotic. When combined with sci-fi effects sounding like dolphins and seagulls soaring through space and that driving beat, it is like riding some futuristic and superluminal jet ski on the surface of a shimmering cosmic ocean. And after a short cool down, everything launches even further out with classic chopped up vocal samples and firing snares.

Ferdi - Little River (Claremont 56) The babble of water, soft finger picked acoustic, a light and breezy shuffle…this is the “Little River”. Jazzy keys interplay with delicate six-string, building to a loud-not-loud chorus of politely screaming organ and harmonizing guitar. And the middle section, featuring a meandering piano solo, is perfect cocktail lounge bliss. The whole thing is light as air, with a playful and uplifting spirit.

Kay Zee - Barny [Fuga Ronto Remix] (Phantom Island) Fuga Ronto transform the original’s acid-fried organ heavy psych jam into a blissfully stoned, totally sun-baked island dub. We get their muted echo-riffing, along with all sorts of shiny mallet percussion,and tripped out sound effects. But as on their legendary “L'uomo invisibile”, the vocals are what elevate the song beyond all expectations. Some of the more expressive hooks from the original are chopped up, looped, and accentuated with group chants and harmonies, creating one “hands in the air” moment after another.

Kolomensky - Santa Monica [Balearic Gabba Sound System ‘Dirty Monica’ Remix] (Clandestino) Really hard to choose between the original and this remix, but in the end I’ll go with the Balearic Gabbers’ supremely horizontal version. The muscular rhythms of the original are almost completely washed away and instead, an extended intro of spacey pads, tropical synths, organ trails, hand percussion, and sensual and lysergic vocal samples builds to a restrained, yet gloriously spaced out climax. The big drop you expect never arrives and the track is content to float on peaceful waves.

Love Creation - Sons & Daughters [Love Creation Long Edit] (Love Creation) Essential edit and extension of the Neville Brothers’ “Sons & Daughers”, zoning in on and beefing up the originals mean breakbeat and upping the tempo slightly. The still very relevant monologue of the original is cut down respectfully, heightening the scathing critique of prisons and of a complicit, unquestioning society. These subtle changes increase the paranoid vibe when compared to the original, which makes the wonderful transition hit even harder. The song eventually gives way to a soulful call to action brimming with hope, all over a strummy and catchy acoustic jam, here looped and extended.

Noche Espanola - Noche Espanola (Highwood Recordings) We start with a catchy uptempo beat, funky bass, a nice acoustic riff, and some synth and electronic guitar interplay…in other words, the beginning template of many a balearic groover. But when that emotive and totally romantic Spanish guitar hook hits, it could only be Phil Mison. It sounds like he is having a blast here, and the result is a retro-leaning beach party epic, equal parts dance floor heat and Café del Mar sunset gazing.

Tommy Awards - Prometheus [Jonny Nash Remix] / Hans Logan [Bartosz Kruczyński Remix] (Origin Peoples) Both of these remixes are so special and I couldn’t choose just one. Jonny Nash transforms the melancholic space rock of “Prometheus” into a doped out, Bohren & der Club of Gore style smokey jazz behemoth. The percussion is detailed and quietly adventurous, with miles of space between each stroke, the sax is thick and oozes classic noir vibes, the bass plods and meanders warmly, and the vibes sparkle like starlight underneath the dark surface. Magic, and totally audacious.

On the other hand, Bartosz Kruczyński takes the four-minute Harmonia and Kraftwerk infused bounce of “Hans Logan”, and stretches it into a vast, 15 minute long expanse of glistening drone, classical minimalism, Berlin school sequencing, and new age atmosphere. The song is bathed in nature sounds, soft piano melodies, and quietly builds, adding soaring pads and multi-part Reich-ian harmonies on synths and mallet instruments.

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alienvirals · 7 years

Text

Alien: Covenant review Ridley Scott’s latest space exploration feels all too familiar

Scotts sequel to the Prometheus prequel is capably made but plays like a greatest-hits compilation of the original films freakiest moments

Alien: Covenant trailer: Ridley Scott returns with sci-fi thriller

Key component: Michael Fassbender as David in Alien: Covenant. Photograph: Mark Rogers/Fox Film

Inspired by his own achievement in fashioning this humanoid robot, Weyland himself insists that there must be a creationist meaning and purpose to the universe, a religious theme that is, vaguely, to recur. In Prometheus, Noomi Rapaces space voyager Dr Elizabeth Shaw wore a cross around her neck; in Alien: Covenant a crew member wears the star of David. It could be a reference to the robots name.

This article was amended on 7 May 2017 to correct a reference from the cross of David to the star of David.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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