More doodles! I’m extremely ill abt jfkonfucius atm, thye make me lose my mind

ALSSSOOO omg these four images together rlly show how inconsistent my style is 😭 Confucius looks different in ALL of them

From the booklet which comes with the Spider-Man Trilogy Limited Edition Collection blu-ray!

This talks about the making of Spider-Man 3, here’s the bit about the first Spider-Man movie and here’s the bit about Spider-Man 2.

Click for a transcript:

OLD FRIENDS… AND NEW FACES

“The heart of the Spider-Man films has always been the depth of the characters and their interconnected lives. Peter’s love of Mary Jane Watson and his friendship with Harry Osborn have always been the richest parts of our stories,” said director Sam Raimi.

In Spider-Man 3, Peter Parker faces his biggest challenge to date – and the greatest battle of all is the battle within himself.

“We wanted to explore the darker side of Peter’s character,” said producer Laura Ziskin. “When his suit turns black, it enhances and emphasizes characteristics that are already in the host. In this case, it makes him stronger and quicker, but also more prideful and aggressive.”

“When I read the script I was really excited about the different direction we were going with Peter Parker and the other characters and storylines,” said Tobey Maguire, who returned to the role of Peter Parker. “We are covering a lot of new ground here, with a fresh take on the story while maintaining the continuity of the characters from the previous two films.”

In Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man takes on two classic villains: Sandman, who first made his appearance in the fourth issue of “The Amazing Spider-Man” and Venom, one of the comic book’s most memorable villains.

“Marvel comic books – and especially the Spider-Man books – have always had a great bunch of villains to choose from,” noted Raimi. “So many great Marvel artists and writers developed these characters. It was a very easy task to pick up these wonderful tales and images and develop our story from them.”

Thomas Haden Church played Flint Marko, a man haunted by the mistakes of his past, who is caught in a physics experiment gone wrong. “I consider it an honor, really,” said Church, an Academy Award nominee for his role in Sideway, on joining the franchise. “The Spider-Man films stand tall in the pantheon of superhero movies. Many are called, few are chosen, and I’m proud to be one of the few.”

“Flint Marko becomes Sandman when he stumbles into a radioactive test site where they’re performing a molecular fusion experiment and he accidentally becomes fused with sand,” Church added. “As a result, he can change his shape and adapt to his environment. He can be 10, 30, 80 feet tall. He can form giant sand fists, hammers, a mace. He can shift into a sand tornado, or sift into sand. He is as malevolent and menacing as any villain can be.”

Church spent over a year preparing for the role, with a physical training and diet regimen which led to his gaining about 20 pounds of muscle before shooting began. “In the comic book, Sandman was a bulky-muscled guy – he looked like a guy out of the WWF,” said the actor, “For the movie, we decided on a leaner look – street hardened, like Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront.”

Topher Grace joined the cast as Eddie Brock, a character in some ways similar to Peter Parker, who transforms into Venom – Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis. “When I was first talking about the movie, Sam asked me if I knew what ‘arch-nemesis’ meant. I thought it meant a huge villain, but Sam pointed out that it really means a villain who has the same powers and abilities as the hero, but uses them for evil,” said Grace. “Sam has gone to great lengths to make this character Spider-Man’s equal and opposite. You might say that Eddie is the guy that Peter would have been if he didn’t have the good fortune of having Aunt May and Uncle Ben to bring him up.”

Grace, a self-described “skinny guy,” put on about 15 to 20 pounds for the role, working out during the several months before shooting began. During pre-production, Grace was subjected to body scans and motion capture data analysis for use by the costume and visual effects departments.

“They were doing a scan of my body, and someone mentioned that the scan would be really helpful for making my action figure. My action figure!” recalled Grace. “It hadn’t even occurred to me that I would become an action figure! It was very exciting.”

“The Spider-Man books have probably the greatest rogues’ gallery of any superhero comic – there are so many memorable villains throughout the books,” said executive producer and Marvel’s president of production Kevin Feige. “With the villains in Spider-Man 3, we wanted to continue the tradition – following the Green Goblin and Doc Ock – of presenting villains that not only provide spectacle and a physical challenge to Spider-Man’s abilities, but characters that are multi-layered and conflicted.”

“At the beginning of Spider-Man 3, we find Peter Parker pretty much where we left him at the end of the second Spider-Man story,” said director Sam Raimi. “He is coming to terms with what it means to be a hero and the sacrifices he has to make to do the right thing. Peter has never had anyone look up to him as someone they admire. Certainly, he’s never had anyone cheer for him before. This has an unexpected effect on Peter: it stirs up his prideful self. This is the beginning of a movement toward his dark side in this film.”

That dark side is brought to the forefront when he comes into contact with a black substance that attaches itself to Peter’s Spider-Man suit. When the substance turns his suit black, he finds he has greater strength and agility than ever before… but also the substance brings out his pride and his vengefulness. “In the climax, Peter has to put aside his prideful self. He must put aside his desire for vengeance,” Raimi continues. “He has to learn that we are all sinners and that none of us can hold ourselves above another. In this story, he has to learn forgiveness.”

Another fan favorite, Gwen Stacy, made her film debut in Spider-Man 3. Well known to fans of the comic books, Gwen made her first appearance in December 1965 “The Amazing Spider-Man #31” and quickly became Peter Parker’s first love. Bryce Dallas Howard took on the role. Despite the differences between the comic book and screen versions of her character, Howard was able to use the comic book as inspiration in bringing Gwen Stacy to life. “There was a very deep relationship built into the comic books – that became my foundation,” said the actress. “This a person who, had things been different, could have been a good mate for him. Because her father is a police captain, she’s accustomed to someone leaving and putting his life in jeopardy every day and loving him unconditionally. I was able to build on that, to play the character that was written in the comic book.”

“It’s wonderful to bring new actors into the series because, although you have an existing set of rules and storylines you want to adhere to, at the same time you need to shake it up, bringing new voices and energies to the film that we haven’t experiences before, “noted Raimi. “It gives the audience a new experience, with the characters they love, but with a new energy dynamic, with those new faces on screen with them.”

“In terms of logistics and scope, Spider-Man 3 is by far the largest of the three films,” said Ziskin. “Sam has really upped the ante for this film, in terms of action sequences and visual effects involving Sandman and Venom, so it is a gigantic endeavor, with over 1,000 people working towards that goal.”

During production, Raimi relied on key members of his filmmaking team to bring to life before the cameras as much of Peter Parker’s story as possible. “Whenever it’s safe and practical, I like to capture the action in camera,” said Raimi. “Visual effects are an amazing tool for action that human beings can’t do – but if a human being can do it, let’s do it.”

The talented team of stuntmen was ready, but so was the cast. Bryce Dallas Howard, especially, surprised the filmmakers by being game for anything they could throw at her. At one point, the actress found herself hanging from a harness.

After performing several portions of the sequence on soundstages in Los Angeles, Howard was eager to get in the harness again to fly with Spider-Man over Sixth Avenue. “What’s so great about movies is you get to really experience these crazy, crazy stunts, things that you would never emerge from alive in real life,” says Howard. “I knew I would be 100% safe because Sam and the stunt team really protect the actors. So I tried to do as many things as possible, because it’s really fun and a great adrenaline rush!”

Thomas Haden Church was also up to the challenge – in fact, even more so. Whether it was being yanked five feet in the air so he could do a face-plant in the mud, or being chased (and caught) by dogs, or dangling off the side of a set, or falling onto train tracks, or having his face smashed into a pane of Plexiglas, the actor found himself bruised and battered repeatedly, but was ready for anything. According to producer Grant Curtis, “It wasn’t intentional, but it seemed sometimes like if any actor was required to get beat up in any way, Thomas was always drawing that short straw.”

Two members of the production team that played key roles in ensuring that these action sequences were both as safe and as spectacular as possible were special effects supervisor John R. Frazier (who previously served in the same capacity on the first two Spider-Man films) and second unit director Dan Bradley (a veteran of Spider-Man 2). “Working with Sam is like going back to school,” said Frazier. “You have that moment where you say, ‘Oh, this is going to be really, really hard, but a lot of fun.’ It’s  not unusual for me to be on a movie like Spider-Man 3 for nine months, from the beginning planning stages through production.”

One scene that highlights their work is the Subway Drain portion of an elaborate fight sequence between Spider-Man and Sandman. Raimi worked closely with Frazier, Bradley and visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk on the sequence, in which Sandman is blasted by the force of a burst water pipe and, quite literally, goes down the drain. Sam wanted Sandman to melt away, in essence, during this sequence.

“This is the largest water gag for one shot I’ve ever done for a film,” recalled Frazier, who had previously supervised the special effects for Poseidon. “We used 50,000 gallons of water, shooting out of a pipe which blasted the rear of the set fifty feet away. When you see this sequence, the water appears to be a six-foot-thick column of water; however, we made the center of the pipe hollow, and used a restrictor plate to control the size of the column of water. The water is recirculated using pumps, which are able to pump 3,000 gallons a minute. We can fill both tanks in about five minutes, so that we are ready for another take.”

The sequence was covered using eight cameras, according to Stokdyk. “This sequence is where Spider-Man discovers Sandman’s weakness – water. We had to put a CG Sandman in here because the velocity of the water is too great to have Thomas Haden Church or a stuntman perform portions of the sequence. Water is a huge challenge for visual effects, especially on a large scale, so our goal here was to seamlessly integrate the elements for the sequence between practical and CG.”

Bradley and Frazier’s work is also on display in an action sequence during a bank heist, in which a security guard (played by none other than producer Grant Curtis) falls victim to Sandman’s wreath. “As a producer, Grant is uniquely qualified for guarding money,” laughed Bradley, “so Sam typecast him and invited him to spend a lot of time on set being buried underneath tons of sand as one of the armored car guards.”

Apprehensive as he might have been about performing the stunt, Curtis says that it would have been pointless to argue. “I’ve worked with Sam for ten years, so I know that once a decision’s been made, he’s going to get his way,” he said.

The sequence begins spectacularly, when Sandman smashes into the top of the armored call with his fist – which, in reality, Frazier’s team made of polyurethane foam. It was eight feet tall, six feet wide, and weighed over 500 pounds. Then, debris – sand – came flying at Curtis. “On the first take, I anticipated the crash and reacted too early,” he remembered. After an adjustment, he nailed the second take.

At the end of the sequence, the guard is buried in sand. To film the scene, the armored car was lifted and tilted at a 50-degree angle so that the sand could be dumped in and fill the car but with a fraction of the pressure on Curtis. The producer soon found himself beneath 4,000 pounds of ground corncob – the filmmakers’ ingenious substitute for sand.

The idea of using ground corncob as a double for sand did not come immediately to the filmmakers. The first man charged with investigating what kind of sand would make Sandman or solving any number of other costuming challenges, Acheson’s motto was: when in doubt, go back to the original text. “We derive our inspiration, as always, from the comic,” he said. “Sandman is one of those remarkable characters who can change shape, dissolve, disappear, grow, or become mud or concrete. We designed various stages and different scales of Sandman’s evolution, working with wonderful sculptors to create maquettes, small statues of Sandman in his various appearances.”

As much as Sandman required each of the departments to step up their game, so, too, did Venom – Spider-Man’s equal and opposite. Acheson and his team created various stages of Venom’s look, working with Raimi to create a tension in the sculpting of the suit. “It was important to Sam and to James that we keep the suit really sharp and aggressive, as with the tendrils that crawl across Venom’s face at points,” said head specialty costumer Shownee Smith, whose company Frontline Design worked under Acheson’s direction to manufacture the specialty costumes for the film.

For scenes where Brock transitions into Venom, Grace spent an hour being placed into the suit, which added between 120 and 140 pounds to his weight. The actor then spent an additional four and a half hours in makeup for the addition of appliances, including special sets of teeth worn by Grace to give the character the illusion of a larger, more menacing mouth. The filmmakers also attached monofilament to the skin on Grace’s face so that they could pull and distort the character as he makes his transformation.

“At one point while shooting the transition scenes, I thought, ‘What have I signed up for?!’” Grace laughed. “I had black goo poured all over me, wires attached to my face that people with fishing poles were pulling up, and other people below me were pulling down… When you see my character in pain, well, there wasn’t a whole lot of acting required.”

Also interacting with each of the departments was production designer J. Michael Riva, the member of the team responsible for bringing Raimi’s stylish vision to life. Riva was especially proud of his work in cresting the construction site that serves as the arena for the film’s final battle. “Making a construction site doesn’t sound very difficult, but if you have only eight weeks to design and build, it’s practically impossible,” he said. “We used over 20 tons of steel, 100 welders, and 200 carpenters working around the clock, seven days a week to get it done! But we all did it.”

The set took six weeks to complete, using tons of steel from a cancelled building project. A construction elevator, complete with operator, transported cast and crew to the various levels of the elaborate set. For the extensive lighting and electrical needs required for the sequence, a labyrinth of connections was designed and installed 80 feet above the stage floor, using over four miles of electrical cable. By the time the set was ready for shooting, Stage 27 was outfitted with approximately 21,000 amps, enough power to service over 200 homes.

“The great thing about a construction site is that it’s a very dangerous place. First, besides the implied height of the set, you have a lot of steel and rebar lying around at such a site. You can always rely on Sam to see opportunities and come up with an effective way to use these set elements to enhance the danger in a scene,” said Riva. “Second, it was an open structure, pretending to be 50 stories high, open on all sides. It offered Sam a jungle gym of possibilities to web up and down, to do a chase all over the face of the steel structure. The higher they go fighting their way up the building, the more the danger and tensions increase. It’s a long way to fall if you’re not Spider-Man!”

For visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk – the man charged with bringing the visual effects to the screen – those words were the beginning of a two-year process to develop the technology that would make Spider-Man 3 the most visually stunning film in the series so far. “When we began the pre-production process, the computer programs had not yet been developed which could achieve the look of Sandman and his capabilities that Sam wanted to see,” recalled producer Grant Curtis. “However, Scott Stokdyk and his team created new technology to manipulate every piece of sand on our character. The existing technology allowed management of thousands of particles at once – but to animate Sandman the way Sam wanted to, we would have to be able to render billions of particles. In the end, the new software they wrote required ten man-years to code.”

Stokdyk says that he and his team prepared for the challenge by first observing how sand moves in the real world. “One of the first things we did was to organize a sand shoot with Sam and Bill Pope, the difrector ofg photographer,” Stokdyk continued. “We shot footage of sand every way we would need it – thrown up, thrown against blue screen, over black screen. John Frazier, the special effects supervisor, shot it out of an aero can at a stuntman. Anything we could imagine sand doing in the film, we shot.”

“There’s a character the, emoting, but it’s just a pile of sand,” said Stotdyk. “If we’ve pulled together enough grains of sand to make feel something, then we’ve pulled it off.”

In the end, the artists were all extremely proud of their creation. “Sony Pictures Imageworks delivered on Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, but for Spider-Man 3 it changed the industry standard,” said Curtis.

Sandman, of course, was not the only character that posed a considerable challenge for Spencer Cook; animating the black-suited Spider-Man required subtle changed to reflect the character’s more aggressive personality, “He’ll move a little quicker here and there, hunch his shoulders a little more, put his elbows up a little higher when he’s stuck to a wall. We tried to find poses that the classic Spider-Man would not do – where the red-suited Spider-Man was graceful and elegant in his motions, black-suited Spider-Man is more blunt, rough, and reckless.”

In creating Venom, Stokdyk notes that the character has at least three different stages. First, of course, is the initial transformation, in which Topher Grace’s skin is pulled away from his body and tendrils of goo cross his face until they completely envelop him. “As he gets angrier, he turns into more of a monster, more of a beast,” Stokdyk noted. First, he becomes a kind of double for Spider-Man, played by Grace. By the very end of the film, he becomes an entirely CG character – the classic Venom from the comic books, with a menacing, unhinged jaw and a full mouth of very sharp teeth. “Everything is alive on ‘comic-book Venom,’” Stokdyk continued. “The challenge was to make a character that was monsterous, very detailed, very kinetic – but not delicate. Despite all the detail, he’s still menacing.

Stokdyk was also determined to break new ground in terms of live-action integration with the visual effects. The supervisor was on hand during production so that he could be ready to take the ball as soon as the scenes were filmed. “It was important to Sam and me to incorporate as much live-action into the CG as possible,” he said. “The typical reason a shot is animated is because a person can’t do all of it. We wanted to find a way to have an actor or stunt person do part of the action, and synthesize the rest. The goal was to find a balance between keeping the shot real and making it exciting and cinematic.”

One dramatic example of this idea comes early in the film, as Peter Parker finds himself ambushed by the New Goblin – his friend, Harry Osborn. “It was Sam’s idea to show Peter fighting as Peter not as Spider-Man,” said producer Avi Arad. “It’s a terrific amount, because it brings home what a personal battle this is for Peter when you can see his face.”

Tobey Maguire and James Franco completed much of the aerial stunt sequence themselves, doing wire work suspended high above the stage floor. “Tobey is really handy with stunt situations, and he picks it up really quickly,” said stunt coordinator Scott Rogers. “James is also terrific – he’s got a great attitude. Both actors are used to the type of physicality required for their roles, and they excelled.”

For Stokdyk, achieving such great heights would not have been possible without the contribution from his team at Sony Pictures Imageworks, assembling, in the end, between 200 and 250 people to complete more than 900 effects shots. “You live and die by your team,” said Stokdyk. “They were always ready to respond, always on their toes. That’s bit of the process of working with Sam, you have to be flexible and ready to deliver.”

“When developing this third installment, we asked ourselves, ‘What does this young man still have to learn?’” said director Sam Raimi. “We placed him in situations where he’d be forced to confront his absences of character – obstacles that, in previous stories, he might not have been able to surmount. In this way, he would either be defeated or grow into the heroic person who might be capable of overcoming these obstacles. As the depth of our characters grow, they become richer human beings and can achieve more than in the previous films.”

Is privacy a myth today? A perspective with respect to social media

Abstract

Doesn’t everyone want to stand out and be unique? Social media has provided a vast platform for daily interactions with shareable content that helps people connect from all across the world and find a way to be different and unique without in-person interactions. The amount of content that is shared on a daily basis perhaps increases with every second. Now the question to be asked is how far can we trust these platforms? Is our content safe and private? The more one digs deep, the more one realizes that the controversy of piracy has come to life for a reason and the reason being that none of our content is truly private.

  Many authors like Foucalt have discussed Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This originated with an architectural phenomenon of a jail cell. This prison was arranged around a central well like structure in the center of which enabled the prison guard (who was assigned to that very position) to keep an eye on all of the prisoners.

(Zhang, 2017)

  Privacy with reference to the Panopticon

                       The Panopticon is, as Gibson Burrell puts it, ‘the metaphor for disciplinary mode of domination’ (Mc Kinlay & Starkey, 2013). Although Panopticon usually is a study on its own, one can use it as an example of how one with power holds the highest position in society. Considering Facebook as an example, issues of piracy have surfaced. One give away of this issue can be noticed on the platform itself. Facebook users would have often come across the term “suggested friends” and they are usually people we have searched for in the search bar or someone who has constantly searched our name in their search bar but neither of them actually follow each other. Wonder why? Almost nothing is private on these platforms. They can access almost any detail pertaining to us. Now who are these “we?” “We” are the people behind the curtains or metaphorically speaking “we” are the prison guards in the Panopticon. They keep an eye on us and can see almost every activity we perform on our account irrespective of it being public or private. Much like the prisoners of Panopticon, we are the prisoners of social media.  Here is a video of people experiencing, with the help of a VR gear, what a Panopticon looks like.

https://panoptic-lab.com/panopticon/

How other forms of media portray social media

                        (IMDb, 1999) 

        (Instagram, 2019)    

The plot of cube revolves around 6 people trapped in a cube trying to figure out how to get out and not die in the process. One of the 6 is actually an architect who helped build the outer layer of the building they’re trapped in. If we see this from the perspective of social media, we realize that no matter how close you’re to finding out all about it or even a minor part of it (for e.g., users) the complete control of the whole platform belongs to someone else. Now another question arises. Why do we tend to fall back into the same patterns knowing it can harm us? One might answer: makers and builders of these platforms target audiences’ psyche and deliberately make it addictive, but does one see the irony in this whole thing? We as users, in spite of being aware tend to incline more and more on these platforms. We are a major part of this whole power run system. Power can simply not exist without the audiences who obey. A great portrayal of this very phenomenon has been shown in one of the episodes of an English TV series called black mirror which gained great momentum in the recent past. The protagonist of the episode goes on to mention how he constantly used social media and it was like his phone was glued to his hand. (Brooker, 2019).  

   We are the prisoners of our own mind

We engage ourselves in this and hence fall into the hands of evils like piracy. We live in a world of hypocrisy. We are part of the system and we let the system be the system. We as informed consumers must realize that the importance social media holds isn’t its true value. Consumers must understand, accept and keep the usage optimal. We must learn to enjoy these privileges and not base our entire life on it. We must remember, we control our minds, our minds shouldn’t control us.

.

References

Brooker, C. (2019). Black mirror [Film]. United Kingdom: House of tomorrow.

 Duenas, A. (2017). The New-Age Panopticon: social media [Image]. Retrieved from https://images.app.goo.gl/yKryELgFNiqnPBPEA

 IMDb. (1997). Cube [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/

 Instagram. (2019). BlackMirror [Image]. Retrieved from https://dankanator.com/20008/topher-grace-psyched-black-mirror-season-5/

 McKinlay, A., & Starkey, K. (2013). Foucault, management and organization theory. Milton Keynes UK: Lightning Source UK.

 Natali, V. (1997). Cube [Film]. Canada: Viacom Canada.

 Panopticon lab. (2015). watch or be watched [Video]. Retrieved from https://panoptic-lab.com/panopticon/

 Zhang, X. (2017). Power of Panopticism in Modern Society [Image]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@xzhan065/power-of-panopticism-in-modern-society-79ea015fab9a

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The ex Meets the ex From Centuries Ago

TC walked into the hospital well-prepared for whatever the night shift had for him, or so he hoped. Except of course, seeing Jordan. Topher had to finally succomb to giving slightly mixed up schedules, meaning he could no longer keep the two ex-lovers apart during the workday.” the shift, after a couple hours was nothing special. No big accidents or storms had happened yet, something all the employees of San Antonio Memorial Hospital appreciated. Of course when TC thought they would make it through the rest of the shift with no major incident that would send any weird cases their  way is when a man stumbled through the ER doors.

Just by the looks of him, TC thought, ‘it’s a wonder this guy made it as far as the hospital,’ as he hurried over to help him. The, admittedly handsome, man had ebony hair, bright blue eyes, and multiple bullet holes through his blue shirt, brown jacket, and jeans.

As TC approached, allowing a better look at the man who basically passing out on the floor before him, TC was hit with a block of pictures flashing in front of his eyes, causing him to stumble and grab hold of the big reception desk behind him.

Images of medieval Europe shot through his brain. The young man before him, Merlin his brain provided, in a bar fight along with a fit blonde lad, Prince Arthur. They were fighting big brutes alongside, TC realizes with a start, himself. Well, it wasn’t really him, this version had longer hair and a sword and was more tipsy than what TC liked to keep it at.

Then the visions come and go faster. He’s brought to Camelot. He leaves. Merlin finds him in another. They’re by a bridge when the TC-twin, Gwaine, discovered Merlin had magic but didn’t say anything. They save the prince. Taken by slavers. Being knighted. Average duties of being a knight. More… intimate time with Merlin…fuck it, they’d gotten together and physical. It’s a secret. He tells Merlin he knows about his magic. The attack; the final battle. His death.

Tc comes reeling back to reality just as Jordan reached Merlin. “Shit, Merlin,” Gwaine, or more so TC in this time period, mumbled as he quickly collected himself and adjusted to the new identity that was so suddenly jammed into his mind.

Jordan in the meantime had risen to a standing position with Merlin’s arm around her shoulder/ “You alright, TC?”

“‘M fine, just worry about the patient.” Gwaine made eye contact with Merlin and gave him a smirk coupled with a head nod before the injured man flashed him a bright grin before he completely lost consciousness. TC put Merlin’s other arm around his shoulder. Together, the doctors brought him to trauma 3, the closest available room.

Working in unison, they set the man on the bed. TC pulled down his pants to reveal a bullet wound on Merlin’s upper right thigh. At the same time,, Jordan had torn his shirt open and was met with two more bullet holes, one on the left of his chest and the other in his right shoulder.

Jordan and TC shared a look before TC laid out the plan. “Alright, first we get the bullets out, then check for damage, and hopefully close him up.” And the two set to work. TC ‘had’ to rip a bit of Merlin’s boxers for better access to the wound. Okay, he didn’t /exactly/ need to, but it’s also going to make it easier to wake the bastard up when they were done patching him up.

TC and Jordan worked in as close to silence as they could in the hospital. Relatively soon to when they started working on him, Merlin looked as good as the first day he had walked past the castle guards of camelot.

“I’m going to go check on my other patient,” Jordan informed him, getting up.

“I’ll stay with him, let him know what happened when he wakes up.” Jordan gave TC a nod before exiting via the curtain. “Okay, time to wake you, love,” TC mumbled more to himself than for Merlin’s benefit. Gwaine moved his body so it mostly blocked Merlin’s from view, should anyone check up on them. Confidently, Gwaine glided his hand up Merlin’s leg until her got to the rip he had made earlier. Gwaine slid his hand through and squeezed whatever he could grab.

“Mmm, Gwaine!” Merlin moaned rather loudly as his eyes flew open. A momentary look of shock flashed across Merlin’s face as Gwaine looked up and gave him an innocent grin while taking his hand back. “You absolute clotpole!”

“Would an absolute clotpole save your life?” inquired Gwaine, playfully.

“Apparently,” Merlin replied, “Now get over here before I ruin whatever you just did to me.” Both men were grinning as Gwaine eagerly climbed up Merlin, careful not to mess up the stitching he and jordan had recently finished.

After what felt like ages to Merlin, Gwaine finally encased Merlin’s lips in his. It was their fireworks moment. Their not caring about the world moment. They got to experience it again. They could’ve been naked in the middle of the knights’ training and Merlin wouldn’t have cared, as long as long as they were in this position, in the most amazing and passionate kiss he had ever even witnessed. Hands down.

Obviously one of the best moments in both of their lives had to end. Unfortunately, the human body does need to breathe. Obviously and unfortunately, Gwaine had to point out Merlin’s little predicament. “You’re a little had. Seriously Merlin?!” Was mumbled against the aforementioned man’s lips.

“Of fucking course I am, you know, it’s only been centuries.” Gwaine and Merlin just layed there, faces mere inches from each other, just taking in what Merlin had been missing for literally ages and what Gwaine just discovered he was missing from his life.

The moment was ruined, Merlin expected what with his luck, by someone saying, “Hey TC…” Startled, Gwaine fell off Merlin and his bed onto the floor, face-first. Merlin felt his whole body flush with the little amount of blood that wasn’t still rushing downward. Gwaine popped up from the floor and took in the scene before him: Merlin lying on the hospital bed, still very hard, and very aware of his lack of clothes as he brought both his hands to his front to hide his situation, and Jordan standing just inside the curtain with a lot of the people who were passing by, having stopped upon seeing briefly what was happening.

“Jordan? I can explain!” Even if they weren’t still together, it was shocking and confusing to see someone who was going to be her baby daddy fooling around with some guy. Jordan pursed her lips, tilted her head back and forth before putting her hands on her hips, deciding to listen to what her ex had to say. “Okay, so this is Merlin,” the man on the hospital bed gave her a nod, “ we used to go out but we got separated.This is the first time we’ve seen each other in years,” Tc told her, extending his hands at the end as if to exemplify his point.

Jordan paused for a second, then said, “So….you’re gay now?”

TC cleared his throat. “Actually I’m pan; I like anything.”

“Yeah, there was this one time with an apple-”

“Merlin!”

“Shut up?”

“Plus, I had completely forgotten about him when we were together.”

Jordan was about to reply when Merlin cut her off. “Sorry love,” he said to her, then to Gwaine, “but you said you forgot about me. Did you forget every thing?” Merlin added a nod down while raising both his eyebrows to make sure Gwaine knew what he meant.

Gwaine thought for a second about what Merlin was trying to get at before he jumped up, clapping his hands together. “Yes! So now all we have to do is find them-”

“-because this probably happened to the whole Round Table-”

“-which means we need to find Arthur-”

“-before Morgana does,” Merlin ended with a dark undertone.

The Rise Of Skywalker” Misinformation Hell Is The New Future Of Everything #ReleaseTheJJCut

Woody Harrington for BuzzFeed News

Last week, a post on the r/SaltierThanCrait subreddit — a forum that started as a place for Star Wars fans to pick apart 2017’s The Last Jedi — caused an eruption. Written by a user named egoshoppe, the message claimed director J.J. Abrams’ original cut of The Rise of Skywalker was 40 minutes longer than the film’s two hour, 22-minute theatrical runtime and contained a large chunk of material that would have made some fans happier, including a scene featuring actors Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson, reprising their roles to help fellow Jedi Rey defeat the resurrected Emperor Palpatine.

Why would Disney, the media conglomerate that bought the science fiction franchise from its creator George Lucas in 2012, cut huge chunks out of Abrams’ final edit? According to egoshoppe, the reasons were twofold: to make the film more palatable to the Chinese government and to damage the professional reputation of Abrams, whom Warner Brothers was courting to work on films set in the DC Comics Cinematic Universe, which includes characters like Batman and Superman.

“Marvel’s biggest threat is a well-operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now,” the post reads. “Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.”

The post inflamed long-running Star Wars fandom paranoia that Disney has been using social media to manipulate fans. In it egoshoppe warns that all previous leaks about the The Rise of Skywalker were shared by users “tied to Disney directly.” (Fans have accused Disney of molding social media for years.)

It was impossible for Redditors to ascertain whether egoshoppe was telling the truth, trolling for fun, or lying to help Abrams, whose film has faced a critical and fan backlash. Regardless, #ReleaseTheJJCut trended on Twitter as fans pieced together links and quotes from the cast, screenwriters, and directors that seemed to prove a different cut of The Rise of Skywalker existed.

The Star Wars fandom is now a nesting doll of speculation, paranoia, and anxiety about corporate overreach — growing more insular and reactionary in the eight years since Disney took over Star Wars.

The misinformation and anger inside the Star Wars fandom is what happens after decades of corporatization and anonymous decentralized networking. It is a glimpse of a future in which anxieties over the motives of the megacorporations that drive our culture — down to our very mythologies — set off conflicts between warring information tribes who inhabit their own artificial narratives. What began with small but vocal insurgent online communities like 4chan or the alt-right has now come for the mainstream.

Except there is no “mainstream” culture — just as there is no central Star Wars fandom anymore. Today, popular culture is just Gamergates of varying size.

Frank Trapper / Getty Images

A Star Wars fan works on a computer while waiting in line to see The Phantom Menace in Los Angeles on April 15, 1999.

Fandom isn’t new. Most of the tropes we associate with modern fan communities, like fanfiction, letter-writing campaigns, zines, conventions, and infighting entered the American consciousness in the ’60s, thanks to the female audience of a different star-based sci-fi franchise: Star Trek. The girls and women who loved the show were excluded from male-dominated fan spaces and so created the networks that built the foundation for how communities now find each other online. Women all over the US started creating zines and sci-fi clubs as a way to share Star Trek fanfiction. Star Wars, released in 1977, was a late entrant.

But Star Wars fans have used the internet to socialize (and bicker) since the beginning of the franchise and the internet. The earliest archived Usenet posts about the movies date back to at least 1983, the year that Return of the Jedi came out. “Are you sure other scenes showed an abnormal (or no) star field while in hyperspace,” one user writes in a thread — which wouldn’t look out of place on Reddit in 2019 — titled “Continuity error in STAR WARS – the ANSWER.” Through every stage of internet development, Star Wars fans have been at the forefront — two of the first viral memes were “Star Wars Kid” and “It’s a trap!”

And for as long as there have been Star Wars fans, there have been discontented Star Wars fans. According to a 1999 Empire interview with George Lucas, some have been angry with him since A New Hope. “Fans absolutely hated R2 and C3PO in the first film; in the second film they hated Yoda,” Lucas said.

In 1997, Lucas, still the owner of the franchise, released a remastered version of the original trilogy. The most infamous change in the special edition concerned a shootout between the smuggler Han Solo and the Rodian bounty hunter Greedo. In the original version, Han shot first. In 1997, Greedo shot Han first, missed, and then Han shot back. Fans were outraged. The “Han Shot First” meme spread on early blogs, via novelty T-shirts sold at conventions, and in forwarded emails. The issue is still debated. (In the version of the film just released on Disney+, a new change was added. Greedo now shouts the word “maclunkey.”)

A Han Shot First moment occurs when a previously unified fandom is suddenly given two realities to choose between. Once an HSF moment occurs, it’s impossible to bring the fans back together. And Star Wars has experienced many such HSF moments since.

The Phantom Menace and the subsequent prequels Attack of the Clones and Revenge Of the Sith were never going to appease every fan, but the frenzy around the lead-up to the movies, led by early internet communities, imploded when they arrived in theaters.

There was no longer a central agreement about what Star Wars actually was. There were older fans who thought Empire Strikes Back was the only good movie, younger fans who thought the podracing in Phantom Menace was wizard, fans who thought Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith should have been edited differently, and critics who retroactively decided the whole series was just embarrassing. The actor Topher Grace cut the prequels down into one 85-minute movie. There’s also the Machete Order, a way to reorder all the films. There’s even an infamous 20,000-word “Ring Theory” blog post, in which a fan spent two years writing about how the prequels and the original trilogy “rhymed” with each other when viewed within a concatenated structure. There was also Red Letter Media’s viral-before-viral 70-minute demolition of The Phantom Menace, uploaded to YouTube in seven parts, most of which have been viewed over 9 million times each.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Daisy Ridley as Rey (left), and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker.

Things move a lot faster now. Something like Baby Yoda from the Disney+ show The Mandalorian can balloon into a worldwide phenomenon in days. And fandom toxicity can now manifest instantaneously. In 2016, fans of Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe harassed one of the show’s artists off Twitter because they were upset that an episode didn’t confirm a same-sex romance between two characters.

Disney, the current owner of both Star Wars and Marvel, has, more than any other company, figured out how to harness this chaotic energy into a massive financial engine. Marvel’s 23-movie, $22.5 billion cinematic universe is a direct descendant of Star Wars. The studio made $13 billion in worldwide box office in just 2019. And once The Rise of Skywalker crosses the $1 billion mark, Disney will have released seven movies last year that grossed that amount. Armed with a nearly unlimited portfolio of intellectual property, an integrated network of theme parks, and the new Disney+ streaming service, Disney is inching closer and closer to a completely seamless transmedia reality its audiences can live inside. Once fans would have had to travel to Disneyland for that immersion — now it travels to them online.

It isn’t just Disney. As corporate monoliths amass more money and power, consumers become more feverish, fanatical, and paranoid. Supreme hypebeasts, Fortnite players, PewDiePie commenters, VSCO girls, K-pop fans, Tesla evangelists — there seems to be a divided fan community for nearly every form of media or product or service.

And as quickly and strangely as modern fandoms form, so are they mutated by Han Shot First moments. These schisms are rarely deliberate — rather, they are sparked by a director’s cut of a popular film, an offhand remark made in an interview. They are willed into existence by conspiracy theories, by fanfiction, by leaks of material never intended to be seen.

Since Disney took the reins of the Star Wars franchise in 2012, fans had a racist meltdown over the casting of a white woman and a black man as the leads of the sequel trilogy. Some of them brigaded against 2017’s The Last Jedi because they thought it was too woke. (This campaign was amplified but not created by Russian trolls.)

These campaigns have had real consequences. Vietnamese American actor Kelly Marie Tran, who played mechanic Rose Tico in the film, suffered so much racist abuse she deleted her Instagram. Tran ended up with significantly less screentime in The Rise of Skywalker. Disney has been accused of caving to a racist and misogynistic vocal minority of fans. The film’s cowriter, Chris Terrio, said that Tran’s character Rose appeared in fewer scenes because of the difficulties that arose in repurposing footage of the late Carrie Fisher.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Writer Chris Terrio and director J.J. Abrams consult on the set of The Rise of Skywalker.

On websites like Tumblr, vicious fights have broken out about which characters should be shipped, or romantically paired together. Those who believed the villain Kylo Ren and the Jedi hero Rey should end up together — Reylos — have waged extensive flamewars, and in the wake of the Kylo Ren’s death at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, are sending Abrams death threats.

And it’s not just the fans: Star Wars actors have gotten in on the HSF moments too. Oscar Isaac, who played pilot Poe Dameron, has told every news outlet who will listen that he thought he and John Boyega’s character, former stormtrooper Finn, should have had a romance. Meanwhile, Boyega spent New Year’s Eve trolling Reylos on Twitter, arguing that his character should have ended up with Rey.

Any one of these things could be true. Or they could all be false. It doesn’t matter.

Whether it’s fans of the K-pop group BTS believing there’s a missing eighth member of the group, fanatical Facebook groups for enthusiasts of smart home devices like the Ring surveillance cameras, the near-constantly forming pockets of misinformation on TikTok, or the DC fans who purchased an ad at the FA Cup demanding Warner Brothers “#ReleaseTheSnyderCut” — a reference to that group’s struggle to see a different cut of the Justice League movie — we’re awash in our own home-brewed misinformation.

Seventy-one days before the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a Reddit user named JediPaxis published a post titled “The Rise of Skywalker: Reshoots and Edits (Story Summary v3.0)” on the r/StarWarsLeaks subreddit. The post was JediPraxis’s fifth post documenting information gleaned from what they claimed was a “trusted source.”

JediPraxis’s story summaries nailed down details with shocking accuracy. They knew the name of the planet Emperor Palpatine was hiding out on. They guessed the movie’s twist — that Rey was his granddaughter. They even knew about Babu Frik.

As with egoshoppe’s #ReleaseTheJJCut conspiracy theory, JediPraxis’s predictions meant one of three things. They’re telling the truth and had a source involved with the film’s massive production who was comfortable leaking. Or JediPraxis was actually working for the production. Or JediPraxis’s leak was sanctioned by Disney, as part of a meta-campaign by the film’s producers to fuel a grassroots hype cycle.

“I’m pretty sure [LucasFilm] is feeding a ton of [bullshit] to leakers,” one commenter wrote under the post, two months before Rise of Skywalker had hit theaters.

“It’s now MORE likely this than anything else,” another commenter replied. “What’s more likely, that a Reddit user has a direct line to the top .01% of people involved in one of the most anticipated films of the last several years, and this person is still employed despite leaking the ENTIRE plot, AND that they managed to reshoot this much of the movie AND cut it in — or that someone is taking the piss?”

Any one of these things could be true. Or they could all be false. It doesn’t matter. There will be fans who believe whatever gets posted and fans who don’t. Every leak or fan theory creates a new reality. Han shot first. Or he didn’t. ●

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First-time Golden Globe love: Beloved vets to breakout stars

Former winners and perennial nominees will pack the Beverly Hilton Resort for the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards Sunday night time. However of their midst shall be a slew of TV and movie actors — from established stars to recent faces — getting acknowledged with a nod for the very first time. Listed here are six such stars. The Ingénue | Elsie Fisher Elsie Fisher in “Eighth Grade”A24/Everett Assortment The position: Kayla Day, a socially anxious 13-year-old, in “Eighth Grade.” Up for: Greatest Actress in a Movement Image, Musical or Comedy. Greatest recognized for: Voicing the giggly tot Agnes in “Despicable Me.” The character, in her phrases: “Lots of people are already like Kayla,” she informed Teen Vogue. “She helps folks understand they’re good as they’re.” Breakout second: An uncomfortable sport of reality or dare that leads to her warding off a predatory older boy (Daniel Zolghadri). Coming sights: Within the animated “The Addams Household” film (out in October), she’ll voice Parker Needler, daughter of the household’s arch-nemesis. The Overdue Star | Kristen Bell Kristen Bell in “The Good Place”Colleen Hayes/NBC The position: Eleanor Shellstrop, a nasty gal with a second likelihood to turn into good, in “The Good Place.” Up for: Greatest Actress in a TV Collection, Musical or Comedy. Greatest recognized for: “Veronica Mars” and voicing Princess Anna in “Frozen.” The character, in her phrases: “Look, I think about myself a really good individual and there are many occasions I need to scream at somebody on the road,” she informed The Guardian. “And Eleanor does that — she tells folks to eat their farts.” Breakout second: A scene through which Eleanor reveals to Chidi (William Jackson Harper) that they had been as soon as in love, in the course of a brawl with demons. Coming sights: “Frozen 2,” which drops in November, a “Veronica Mars” revival on Hulu, and the remainder of the third season of “The Good Place.” The Groundbreaker | Constance Wu Constance Wu in “Loopy Wealthy Asians”Warner Bros/Everett Assortment The position: Rachel Chu, an economics professor who discovers her boyfriend’s household is extremely rich, in “Loopy Wealthy Asians.” Up for: Greatest Actress in a Movement Image, Musical or Comedy. Greatest recognized for: Enjoying no-nonsense mother Jessica Huang on the sitcom “Contemporary Off the Boat.” The character, in her phrases: “Rachel grew up in a spot the place she was not the dominant tradition. She didn’t see herself represented in media,” Wu informed Rolling Stone. “For myself and for Rachel, once you undergo that, you surprise what elements of you’re Asian and what elements are American.” Breakout second: A sport of mah-jongg that sees her go toe-to-toe together with her boyfriend’s intimidating mom (Michelle Yeoh). Coming sights: A voice position within the animated film “Want Dragon,” and the tip of the fifth season of “Contemporary Off the Boat.” The Legacy | John David Washington John David Washington in “BlacKkKlansman”Focus Options/Everett Assortment The position: Ron Stallworth, a real-life detective who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, in “BlacKkKlansman.” Up for: Greatest Actor in a Movement Image, Drama. Greatest recognized for: The HBO sequence “Ballers” and being Denzel Washington’s son. The character, in his phrases: “He was a person of his mission,” Washington informed NPR. “He completely believed in what he was doing. He couldn’t get too emotional and [had to be able to] keep in character to . . . take down this group of hate.” Breakout second: When he reveals in his remaining cellphone name with Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) that he’s not white. Coming sights: The fifth season of “Ballers.” The Humble Hunk | Richard Madden Richard Madden in “Bodyguard”Netflix/Everett Assortment The position: David Budd, a warfare veteran combating PTSD as he protects the UK’s house secretary, in “Bodyguard.” Up for: Greatest Actor in a TV Collection, Drama. Greatest recognized for: Enjoying Robb Stark on the primary three seasons of “Recreation of Thrones.” The character, in his phrases: “[He has] a whole lot of demons,” Madden informed Deadline. “It was an enormous problem, attempting to present all of that inside him. By nature, this man has to be somebody who doesn’t present his feelings.” Breakout second: His response to witnessing a personality commit suicide. Coming sights: He’ll star as Elton John’s former supervisor and lover in “Rocketman,” out in Could. The Reinvention | Darren Criss “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”FX Networks/Everett Assortment The position: Andrew Cunanan, the person who murdered the titular designer in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.” Up for: Greatest Actor in a Restricted TV Collection or Film. Greatest recognized for: Enjoying heartthrob Blaine Anderson in “Glee.” The character, in his phrases: Cunanan was “somebody who had the potential to achieve this rather more,” Criss informed Self-importance Honest. “How does that individual turn into synonymous with one thing so unhappy, violent or scary?” Breakout second: A haunting confrontation along with his former lover David (Cody Fern) after murdering one other man in entrance of him. Coming sights: A task in Roland Emmerich’s World Conflict II drama “Halfway,” out within the fall, with Woody Harrelson and Mandy Moore. Share this: https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/first-time-golden-globe-love-beloved-vets-to-breakout-stars/ The post First-time Golden Globe love: Beloved vets to breakout stars appeared first on My style by Kartia. https://www.kartiavelino.com/2019/01/first-time-golden-globe-love-beloved-vets-to-breakout-stars.html

Infiltrate Hate

Hate groups walk a very particular line, only they don’t know it. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be out of line to call members of the Ku Klux Klan and related organizations domestic terrorists. Entire seconds of research shows us a vast number of murders, lynchings, rapes, and attacks that are physical, emotional, and psychological in nature.

On the other hand? There’s no other way to say it — they’re ridiculous. Grown-ass adults spending their time dressing up in sheets, using secret codes and goofball titles, and fervently believing the most nonsensical conspiracy theories possible. Look at a picture of a Klan rally or a white supremacist group and marvel at the concept that these people think they’re the master race.*

That’s the strange dichotomy of hate groups and racism as a whole. It’s a blend of the idiotic and the dangerous, and that dichotomy is what prevents our country from reckoning with the crimes of the past and healing. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to either deal with this nonsense in our day-to-day lives or reckon with our culpability. I may not be all the way woke, per se, but I know I’ve got miles to go before I sleep, you know?

But what happens if you’re not a straight white dude, and you get involved with an institution that’s historically a stronghold of straight white dudes? Ron Stallworth knows a thing or two about that. In the 1970’s, he lived in Colorado Springs and became the first black police officer and detective with the Colorado Springs Police Department. He had a very strange experience, and the mighty Spike Lee brings that experience to life in his new film BlacKkKlansman.

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) checks his perfectly sculpted afro,** adjusts his clothes, and strides into the Colorado Springs Police Building. He wants a job as a cop. It won’t be easy. During his interview, he’s asked what his reaction would be if a racial slur was thrown in his face by a fellow officer. In shock, Ron responds with, “That would happen?”

As it turns out, that will happen quite a lot to Ron. His career in law enforcement begins in the records room, but his dreams are bigger. Ron wants to be an undercover detective. That’s never happened with a rookie, and it’s certainly never happened with a rookie who’s also a person of color. Ron is persistent, and Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) reluctantly assigns him to infiltrate a black student group hosting a speech by former Black Panther Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins).

He’s got a knack for the undercover stuff, and he connects with the fiery activist Patrice (Laura Harrier). Patrice is understandably suspicious of cops, but Ron “passes” as a civilian. This is by no means the first time we’ll get into the subject of someone passing for something else. Ron takes it to the next level when he sees a recruiting ad in the paper for the Ku Klux Klan. Inspiration strikes as Ron calls the number. Walter (Ryan Eggold), the local chapter president, responds, and Ron unloads a veritable trashcan of racist invective.

Turns out the very black Ron is just what the very white Walter is looking for to swell the membership of the KKK. A meeting is arranged, and Ron’s undercover colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) will meet Walter as the “real” Ron Stallworth. The good news is that Walter and hulking dimwit Ivanhoe (Paul Walter Hauser) take an immediate liking to “Ron.” The bad news is that hair-trigger maniac Felix (Jasper Paakkonen) immediately suspects Flip is Jewish, which he is. Ron and Flip must share an identity as The Stallworth Brothers, successfully infiltrate the Klan, and attempt to stop a moment of Charlottesville-like violence.

BlacKkKlansman is Lee’s most accessible film in years, a skillful blend of popular entertainment and righteous anger. All films are the product of their times, and this film is no different. It’s high-level trolling against the Trump Administration, and a reminder that we’re not so far away from the Civil War or the 1970’s. However, this is more than a grumpy screed against racism and facets of the modern Republican Party. Lee effortlessly juggles the tension of the investigation, the sweet romance between Ron and Patrice, and the banalities of the Klan, and he does it all without sacrificing tone or pacing.

We’re lucky to have a filmmaker like Spike Lee. He stands in the first rank of American directors with Scorsese and Spielberg, but he’s never quite gained the same level of respect. That’s probably because he’s also one of our most fearless and political directors. He’s made some crowd pleasers like Inside Man, genuinely strong films that went almost totally unseen like Chi-raq, and Do The Right Thing, one of the greatest films ever made. Lee has no interest in sugar coating racism, and his films are precision-engineered to piss you off. While Spielberg wants you to love him, Lee welcomes your fury.

Along with the simmering rage, Lee and his co-writers Kevin Willmott, David Rabinowitz, and Charlie Wachtel have written a screenplay with an impish sense of humor. They’re interested in the group dynamics of the Klan, and there’s a funny bit where we learn that the costs of hoods are not covered by the yearly membership fee. Along with the humor, the script takes pains to empathize with the characters. We can see flashes of the crippling fear lurking under the white supremacist bravado. The script has a recurring theme about concealing your true self. We see that with Ron concealing he’s a cop from Patrice, Flip hiding his Jewish identity, and how the truth ultimately bubbles to the surface.

Actors love working with Spike Lee, because he’s able to provide them with strong characters and coax out equally strong performances. Topher Grace plays Grand Wizard…I’m sorry, I meant National Director David Duke as a satanic Ned Flanders, using bland slogans to conceal hateful invective. Alec Baldwin appears briefly as the amusingly named eugenicist Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard, and his scene is intentionally reminiscent of a certain Bill O’Reilly clip. As Patrice, Laura Harrier is an effective unyielding idealist. Jasper Paakkonen’s Felix is a creepy and alarming antagonist.

This film really is a two-hander between John David Washington and Adam Driver. Spike Lee’s camera loved Denzel Washington, and Denzel’s son gets the same treatment. As Ron, John David Washington is funny and determined. He’s not quite as emotionally open as his old man is, and there are a few moments where we should get a strong sense of what Ron’s feeling but don’t. I think Adam Driver probably walks away with the movie as Flip, and there’s a strong scene where the non-practicing Jewish man has to outdo the white supremacists in anti-semitism. Flip has gone for years without being forced to confront who he really is, and Driver subtly shows us his conflict. He’s equally funny in a scene where he learns to mimic the “white” Stallworth voice by repeating James Brown lyrics.  

2018 has been an excellent year in movies, and BlacKkKlansman is one of the year’s best. This film recognizes the jagged wound of racism past and present, and it responds with a furious middle finger. Spike Lee is working at the top of his game, and he’s made a movie that must not be missed.

  *Take a look on Google at the images from last year’s protest in Charlottesville. A veritable sea of polo shirts, khakis and tiki torches, and these guys are supposed to be the ones leading us to a brighter tomorrow? Please.

**As a completely bald man, it kills me to see amazing hair like that.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/infiltrate-hate/

Variety Critics Name the 12 Best Movies From Cannes 2018

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Variety Critics Name the 12 Best Movies From Cannes 2018

The 71st Cannes Film Festival may have gotten off to a bumpy start, underwhelming audiences with Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish-language “Everybody Knows” and taking several days to serve up anything that felt universally praised (eventual Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters”), but by the end, even those who had arrived skeptical seemed to agree that the overall quality of this auteur-thin, American-light edition was higher than usual. Looking back on 12 days of discovery, here are a dozen films that most impressed Variety chief critics Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge.

BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee has made three extraordinary films that toss incendiary racial firecrackers: the classic “Do the Right Thing” (1989), the majestic “Malcolm X” (1992), and the wild (and insanely underrated) black-face satire “Bamboozled” (2000). Here, for the first time since then, he creates a scalding zeitgeist spectacle of American bigotry laid bare. Set in Colorado Springs in the early ’70s, “BlacKkKlansman” is an undercover thriller, at once light-fingered, ominous, and deeply funny. It casts John David Washington as Ron Stallworth, a rookie cop as furtive as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, who infiltrates the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan by impersonating a white racist over the phone. Adam Driver, as his fellow officer, joins the chapter in person and hoodwinks these small-town haters, who are so open about the ugliness of their “Keep America white!” paranoia that they could almost be…the voices of the alt-right today. The story is ingenious but slightly cracked, never more so than when Stallworth bonds with David Duke (Topher Grace), the KKK Grand Wizard who puts a civilized face on racial terrorism. “BlacKkKlansman” is another Lee firecracker, and when it comes out this summer you’d better believe it will detonate. — Owen Gleiberman

Birds of Passage

After leading audiences into seldom-seen recesses of the Amazon jungle with “Embrace of the Serpent,” Oscar-nominated director Ciro Guerra and creative/life partner Cristina Gallego (here billed as co-director) show us a side of Colombian history that has somehow never reached the outside world, revealing how the indigenous Wayuu people were drawn into the early days of the country’s drug problem — a period known as “la Bonanza Marimbera,” when impoverished natives tempted by a chance for illicit wealth found themselves caught up in the marijuana trade, which in turn sparked outbursts of violence that devastated the community. If that sounds like the setup for a formulaic drug-trafficking epic, think again. Mixing established actors with wonderfully authentic-looking nonprofessionals, Guerra and Gallego go out of their way to document the Wayuu traditions, giving the entire story a visually stunning, hyper-surreal quality that reinforces how such criminal activity directly threatened an almost mystical way of life. — Peter Debruge

Climax

Gaspar Noé’s latest plunge into the forbidden zone is a drug-shock party movie, and for 45 minutes it’s mesmerizing. We’re in a rehearsal studio that looks like a bomb shelter, where 20 young dancers perform a double-jointed krump-in-overdrive EDM ensemble number that’s one of the most astonishing dance sequences you’ve ever seen. Noé then draws us into who these people are — at least, until the LSD in the spiked sangria they’re drinking kicks in. At that point, the movie becomes a descent into hell that’s both gripping and numbing; by the end, less has become more. Yet as bad trips about The Beast Within go, this one remains an experience, which is why it may have been the most buzzed-about movie at Cannes. — OG

Shoplifters

Unlike much of the Western world, theft is so uncommon in Japan that people often leave their bicycles parked unchained. Culturally speaking, that suggests just how deep the shame must be for a clan of petty criminals who rely on shoplifting to survive in Hirokazu Koreeda’s deeply humanist family drama. “Whatever’s in a store doesn’t belong to anyone yet,” reasons the gang’s ersatz father figure, and in a strange way, that logic extends to the abandoned little girl he finds starving and shivering on his way home one evening. Because her parents clearly don’t want the child, the man essentially adopts her (others might say “kidnaps”), setting up the director’s most sensitive look yet into the meaning of family. As Sakura Andô’s character heartbreakingly asks toward the end, “Is giving birth enough to make you a mother?” Turns out the answer isn’t anywhere near as simple as we thought. — PD

The Image Book

Jean-Luc Godard’s momentous new film feels like a bulletin. It’s the rare work of his that has the aura of a horror film (it’s suffused with images of violence, intertwining old movies and new atrocities), and the world he’s looking at through his color-saturated semiotic kaleidoscope is one that’s spinning out of control. Godard, who has now come around to ditching actors entirely, works in a free-associational collage mode that suggests MTV meets the Beatles’ “Revolution 9.” He rips images out of context, crashing together bits of music, old film clips, and video footage of terrorist murders to let us see and hear each one anew. The political killers seem to be carrying out a degraded — or maybe heightened — version of what the movies taught them. On the soundtrack, speaking to us in a voice so low and sonorous and croaky with import that he sounds like Charles Aznavour crossed with Gollum, the 87-year-old Godard says, “War is here.” He means that it’s here, and that it’s coming. —OG

Burning

In much the same way that binge-viewing has ruined the television experience, film festivals subvert the way movies should be seen by forcing audiences to cram multiple screenings into the same day, sinking their teeth into the next ambitious artistic statement before fully digesting the last. Consider this a partial explanation for my not immediately “getting” South Korean master Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning,” although no film has stuck with me more at Cannes — in part because it grapples with a poor, powerless character’s desire to find meaning in an unfair and often senseless world, meticulously teasing certain possibilities while denying easy explanations at every turn. What begins as a light romance inexorably builds to something much more complex — an existential thriller, of sorts — as an insecure writer fancies himself the protagonist in a mystery of his own imagining, one that may not actually exist, and whose irreconcilable ambiguity still haunts me a dozen screenings later. — PD

Bergman — A Year in a Life

Jane Magnusson’s portrait of Ingmar Bergman in the pivotal year of 1957 (though it covers his entire life and career) is one of the most honest and overflowing portraits of a film artist you’re likely to see. It captures Bergman as the tender and prickly, effusive and demon-driven, tyrannical and half-crazy celebrity-genius he was: a man so consumed by work, and by his obsessive relationships with women, that he seemed to be carrying on three lives at once. It was in 1957 that he first ascended to the iconic plateau of his creative power and fame, and Magnusson shows how his insatiable workload was about creating a bubble of alternative reality he lived inside: a neurotic fairy tale that never had to end. What got left in the lurch were his children and families. Without fail, Bergman’s films were about himself (they turned out to be the one place where he could be entirely sincere), and “A Year in a Life” captures his hunger and genius, the stories he needed to tell, and something else — a moment in the 20th century when a great many people got hooked on movies that turned the darkness of our hidden hearts into drama that wounded and cleansed you. — OG

Cold War

After struggling in near obscurity for the first part of his career, director Pawel Pawlikowski surprised everyone by making a risky black-and-white art film called “Ida,” earning the foreign-language Oscar for the gamble. Now, after having discovered an approach that earned him the respect he craved, it takes considerably less guts to make a second film in the same format, and yet, “Cold War” is more accomplished and satisfying in many ways, relaxing the Bressonian austerity somewhat to deliver an elegant film noir about the impossible relationship between a Polish musician (Tomasz Kot) and the beautiful young singer (Joanna Kulig) he recruits with the clear intention of seducing. The film was not only set but also written in a pre-#MeToo state of mind, and yet, as in “Ida,” Pawlikowski has not only created a formidable female role, but discovered a star in the process. — PD

Arctic

A quiet and captivating slow-build adventure film, starring Mads Mikkelsen as a researcher-explorer who has crash-landed in the frozen wilderness. It’s the first feature directed by Joe Penna, the Brazilian video auteur who became a sensation on YouTube, so you might expect it to be made with a touch of 21st-century flash. On the contrary, Penna tells this solo-survival story with an austerity that makes it feel, at times, like you’re seeing an ice-cap remake of “A Man Escaped.” There are no cut corners, no overly obvious only-in-the-movies gambits. This stranded man has little to rely on beyond his will, so we feel at every step that he could be us. The film is built around the gruff mystique of Mikkelsen, whose acting, like the filmmaking, never betrays a hint of showiness. His height and stalwart presence fill the frame, but his face looks inward and outward at the same time; it’s tense, focused, ravaged. The movie, in its rough-hewn, trudging-through-the-tundra, one-step-at-a-time way, is the anti-“Cast Away,” and that’s what’s good and, finally, moving about it. — OG

Girl

It was a good year for LGBT cinema at Cannes, with two gay films in competition (Christophe Honoré’s “Sorry Angel” and Yann Gonzalez’s “Knife + Heart”) and another four outside-the-box offerings sprinkled throughout the lineup. Both the Queer Palm and the Camera d’Or (awarded to the best first feature) deservedly went to Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s sensitively made debut: an intimate, infinitely relatable look into a 15-year-old’s uphill battle to become a ballerina, complicated by the fact that the aspiring dancer in question was born into a boy’s body. The filmmakers held an open casting call to find their star, cisgender actor Victor Polster, who juggles the role’s many demands, while literally embodying the film’s conflict — which isn’t conservative parents or homophobic bullies (virtually everyone is supportive here), but an internal one, where the young character’s transformation isn’t happening nearly as fast as she’d like. — PD

Whitney

Kevin Macdonald’s documentary about the life and death of Whitney Houston is entrancingly well-done. You can’t watch it without hoping that somehow, the beautiful enraptured young singer you’re seeing will find a way to defeat her demons, that they won’t drag her down. Cocaine addiction, of course, is an insidious monster, but to see Houston’s life story is always to be buzzing with a single question: Why? Why did the most astonishingly gifted singer of her generation go down a road of darkness and self-sabotage? The most knee-jerk answer is that she should never have gotten involved with the lightweight B-boy smarm-dog Bobby Brown. There’s truth to that, but as “Whitney” captures it’s too easy an answer. Macdonald pays tribute to the goose-bump bliss of Houston’s sound, but mostly he creates a multi-faceted portrait of Houston that allows us to touch the intertwined forces that did her in. It’s all capped with a smoking gun: Mary Jones, Whitney’s aunt and longtime assistant, claims there was a sexual abuser in her family, and that Whitney, as a child, was one of the victims. In a charged moment, Jones names the abuser: It’s the singer Dee Dee Warwick (who died in 2008). This is the missing piece in a potently plausible vision of how, and why, Whitney Houston couldn’t accept who she was. As a singer, she was graced with a gift that could heal the world. But she lacked the greatest love of all. — OG

Happy As Lazzaro

As diverse as the 21 films in Cannes’ official competition were this year, none seemed more surprising than Alice Rohrwacher’s third feature, which begins as a fanciful modern fable and ends as a wrenching critique of those overlooked and exploited by contemporary capitalism. Adopting a style that recalls Italian filmmaker-poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, the director mixes rugged realism with a dash of the supernatural, presenting a hard-working young sharecropper named Lazzaro who, in his wide-eyed naïveté, could be the Chauncey Gardiner of a tobacco estate in decline — a little soft in the head, but graced with a kind of magic. Though you never know where this movie is headed, something especially unexpected happens at the midway point that sets the already-unique tale on an altogether new course. Some audiences check out when the story shifts, although it is here that as relatively new voices go, Rohrwacher proves she has something fresh to say. — PD

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