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oboevallis · 3 years

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a christmas to remember pt 3

if anyone’s seen judging amy im basing carolyns character off of maxine gray (both played by tyne daly) sorry this chapter is chopping and weird

“Link.” Amelia whispered shaking her boyfriend lightly. “It’s time to wake up.”

“Hmm. Five more minutes.” He begged.

“Okay, five more minutes.” Amelia got up from the bed and walked into her childhood room where they had the portable crib setup. She lifted up the baby who was wide awake babbling to himself. She dressed him in a couple of layers to assure he’d be warm when they went out, and then did the same for herself.

“I’m up.” Link groggily said once his girlfriend walked back into the room with their baby.

“You better be, we’ve got to get to the train station soon.”

“What? Why?” Link was unaware of the plans Amelia had made for them.

“We’re going to the city.”

“Oh, okay.” Link responded pleasantly surprised. He stumbled out of bed and went to his suitcase to find warm clothes.

“Christmas in New York is beautiful. I can’t wait to show you around. When we were kids my parents would always take us during this time.” Amelia said as she strapped their baby across her chest.

“Probably can’t be as beautiful as you though.”

“Oh shut it.” Amelia chuckled, as she exited the room heading downstairs. She walked into the kitchen to find her mother having a cup of tea and watching the morning news. “Hey ma.”

“Good morning Amy. Are you three going into the city?”

“Yeah, Links never been during Christmastime so I thought I’d show him.”

“Should be fun. Do you remember that bakery we would take you kids to when you were little?” Amelia nodded in response. “Great can you pick up some cookies so we can take it to Berties on Christmas Eve?”

“Yeah we can do that. Anything else?”

“That should do it.”

“Sorry that took so long.” Link apologized as he stepped into the kitchen. “Good morning Mrs She- Carolyn.”

“Good morning Link.” Carolyn smirked.

“It’s all good we can still make it to the train station. Bye ma see you tonight.”

“Have a good time.”

________________________________________

“So what’s the plan?” Link asked as he held onto the top bar on the train and had another arm around his girlfriend to steady her.

“No plan, really. Just kind of walking around we can go to the botanical gardens maybe?” Her boyfriend laughed to this.

“I don’t know why I expected a plan.”

“Me either you should’ve caught on by now.”

“I do have one request though.”

“And that would be?”

“We get pizza and donuts.”

“I think we can arrange that.” Amelia promised as the two exited the train as the doors opened.

“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Link asked holding onto the straps that held their son across her chest.

“Yes Link I know where I’m going. May I ask why your holding onto the harness?”

“I don’t want to lose you guys”

“Sometimes I forget you not used to this. You grew up in tornado alley, the middle of nowhere.”

“Hey, there were people around where I grew up.” Link defended as the two stepped out of the station and were onto the cities sidewalk. “Where are we off to?”

“Ever been to the Empire State Building?”

“Cant say that I have.”

_______________________________________

“Wow you can see everything from up here.” Link said with his hands on his hips.

“Oh my god your such a dad.” Amelia laughed watching her boyfriends stance.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing.” Amelia smiled, not believing it was possible to fall even more in love with the man she had tied her life to.

“Here let me get a picture.”

“Is that really necessary?” Amelia whined.

“It is, it is.” Link laughed wrapping his arm around his girlfriend and turned them around so they got view of part of the city behind them in a selfie. “Now would it be possible for us to go find some pizza?”

“I think we can arrange that.” Amelia looped her arm around her boyfriends, and the two walked back into the building from the terrace.

“Is Scout doing okay?” The boys father asked as they stepped into the elevator.

“Yeah, he’s going to be hungry soon though.” Amelia lifted up the blanket they had draped around their son to look at his sleeping face.

“Alrighty then.” Link said while leaning against the wall. The elevator dinged allowing the pair to exit leaving them on the ground floor. “Sooooo pizza time?”

“I already said yes, Link.” Amelia laughed at her boyfriends eagerness.

“Sorry it’s just New York pizza is so much better than the pizza at home.” Amelia smiled to herself hearing Link refer to Seattle as their home.

“That is correct, Seattle may have better coffee but they really need to step up their pizza game.”

“Right?!” Link agreed excitedly, he could go on and on about food. “I mean I guess in the long run coffee is more beneficial because we practically live off of it. But come on pizza is a staple item.”

“I agree if we live anywhere, the coffees gotta be good. I can do without the pizza.”

“Well I wouldn’t go as far as saying to go without pizza. You know if I was stranded on a deserted island and could only have one food. I’d say a slice from Pallattos. What about you?” Link asked as the two walked through the frigid New York air.

“Hmm, I’d go with one of your burgers.”

“My burgers aren’t even that good.”

“Yes they are Link! I’d eat them every day if I could.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You realize when we go back home that’s I’ll I’m gonna make.”

“I do.” Link smiled to himself, hoping one day she’d be saying that to him again. The couple walked in comfortable silence listening to the bustle of the city around them. “You know I’m surprised you said you could go without pizza. Italian foods your favorite.”

“That’s true, but pizza isn’t the only Italian food around.”

“That’s true.” Link admitted while he held the door to his favorite pizza place open. “I’m assuming you just want cheese?”

“Yes please.” Amelia smiled showing off her dimple as their son started to fuss. “I’m gonna go find a place for us to sit, and let this little guy eat.”

“One cheese and one pepperoni.” Link announced as he set the two plates on the table of the booth his girlfriend was sitting at.

“Thank you.”

“Once he’s done eating can I have some baby time?”

“I guess we can arrange that.” Amelia looked down to admire the hungry baby at her breast. “I’m impressed how well behaved he’s been.”

“You mean other than the plane ride?”

“I’m ignoring that plane ride. It never happened.”

“Oh I see. It never happened.”

“Correct never happened.” Amelia fixed her shirt and handed their baby over to her boyfriend. “Here’s your son.”

“Hey little guy.” The boys father cooed as he held him. He took a piece of pepperoni off of his pizza and offered it to his son.

“Don’t give him that.”

“Why? It won’t hurt him, it’s soft.”

“I don’t think he can have that, Link.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I’d listen to your wife.” An older gentleman directed towards Link, in the booth next the them. “I learned that the hard way.”

“That’s right you did.” The mans wife laughed at her husband. “How olds your son?”

“He’s ten months.” Amelia smiled looking at her son.

“I miss when our kids were that little. They’re all grown now.”

“How long have you two been married?” Link asked.

“42 years.” The wife answered. “Not quite sure how. I can barely stand this man.”

“Oh you love me.” The man chuckled. “What about you two?”

“Oh we’re not married.” Amelia blushed.

“Oh I’m sorry you two just act like an old married couple.” The wife giggled.

“Yeah we get that a lot.” Link smiled making eye contact with his girlfriend.

“Well, Happy Holidays.” The couple wished as they got up.

“Happy holidays.” Amelia and Link wished them the same.

“You think we’ll get there?” Link asked.

“42 years? God I hope not.” Links face drained of all color.

“Oh.”

“I hope we get to 50 years at the minimum.”

“Hmm, I was thinking more of 49 years. 50 is just too much.” Link sarcastically stated.

“Your such an ass.” Amelia laughed as she stood up to throw away their plates. “You want to carry him?”

“Sure. Can you strap him on?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna put him forwards facing since he’s awake now.” Amelia helped secure their baby onto his chest, she smiled when he turned to face her with their baby happily babbling. “Ready to go?”

“Yep. But I do ask that we get a picture out front.”

“We can do that.” His girlfriend smiled, knowing that one of his most prized possessions was the picture he got out front of this pizzeria with his favorite baseball players

________________________________________

“You want to head back to your moms? This little guys getting sleepy and I think a little cold.” Link suggested.

“Yeah, we just gotta stop at this bakery real quick. We need to pick up some cookies for Berties.”

“Bertie?” Link asked, racking his brain trying to remember one of her family members named Bertie.

“Oh, Berties not a person. It’s a place my mom worked in DCFS for awhile and when she retired she got bored so she went back into social work and started this kind of group home but with therapists and doctors to help the kids with their trauma.”

“Wow, I never realized that. That’s really sweet.”

“Yeah, year round my mother runs it and brings food over, but Christmas time is when she brings baked goods and sugary stuff the kids don’t normally get.” Link smiled to this and wrapped his arm around his girlfriend as they walked into the bakery to get the New York famous cookies.

#baby amelink #atticus lincoln #amelink #mama shepherd #amelia shepherd #greysanatomy #carolyn shepherd #scout lincoln #greys fanfic #greys anatomy fanfic

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calzona-ga · 5 years

Link

“Oh brother!” had nothin’ on “Oh sister!” in Thursday’s Grey’s Anatomy. While in New York with Link to perform (what ultimately turned out to be) a vertebral column resection on an 18-year-old named Jonah, Amelia wound up agreeing to have dinner with her horrible sister, Nancy (Embeth Davitz)… who surprised her by inviting her even more horrible sister, Kathleen (Amy Acker), whom she described as being like “Martha Stewart if Martha Stewart also had a license to diagnose you with a personality disorder.” Sensing that his bedmate was the “Good Shepherd” that gave the episode its title, Link not only stuck up for her, he went along with her charade that he was her husband, Owen — yep, she’d never told the relatives that hadn’t attended her wedding that it had been followed by a divorce!

The non-couple probably would’ve gotten away with their exercise in role-play, too, had Kathleen not “accidentally” mentioned the family reunion to their mother, Carolyn (Tyne Daly). Having met Owen on a visit with Derek, she no sooner was through the door than the jig was up. “Fake Owen,” Nancy told the so-called black sheep of the Shepherd family, might just be “the most demented thing you’ve ever done.” At that, Amelia stood up for herself, not that her siblings would give her credit for anything if their lives depended on it. When Link attempted to help, he only complicated matters by mentioning Betty and Leo. Finally, off the dinner from hell, Amelia kinda-sorta broke up with Link — he now knew too much about her for their non-relationship to remain uncomplicated!

Thankfully, before the duo returned to Seattle, Carolyn reached out to her daughter and expressed her remorse for pushing her away in the wake of her father’s death. “If you don’t think you’re worthy of love, you’re wrong,” said Mom, “and that’s on me.” So go ahead and blame her, and by all means, move on. What if Amelia couldn’t? “Then that’s on you.” Taking Carolyn’s words to heart, Amelia apologized to Link — with his favorite donuts, even. “You are more than a human blue light,” she admitted, “though you’re very, very good at blue-lighting.” And as if they were ever really off, they were now extra on. What does it all mean for Amelia — and for her and Link — going forward? Fresh off another knockout performance, here’s Caterina Scorsone with the answers.

TVLINE | Biiig episode for Amelia — and, thanks to her mom, a big turning point, too. Oh my gosh, yeah, huge! And when I heard Tyne Daly was actually coming, my heart leapt. I was terrified. All these years, I’d been playing creatively with the image of her as Amelia’s mom. Whenever Amelia’s thinking about her past, I’m picturing Tyne Daly in those inner narratives. So when she walked on the set and I met her for the first time, I burst into tears. It was so embarrassing!

TVLINE | Would you agree that the trick for Amelia going forward will be not falling into old patterns — in other words, not going when the going gets rough? I think what her mom gave her was consciousness. In the early years of childhood, there’s so much information being laid down in the unconscious brain, and for Amelia, that story had a lot of trauma. So as she became older, a lot of her reactions to external stimuli were informed by a fear response or a trauma response as opposed to a consciousness about why she was doing things. So when her mom was able to generously and courageously reflect back to her, “I wasn’t able to help you with attachment to heal after that trauma, and that might be why some of your reactions in relationships are a little broken,” she gave her that consciousness that she was too young to have as a 5-year-old. She now has the missing puzzle piece. She can move on. Not only that, [but Carolyn said, in essence,] “I believe that you can. You have the tools and the grit and the heart to take this missing puzzle piece and do amazing things with it.”

TVLINE | I thought it was so bittersweet that, after Amelia promised Owen she’d try be less wary, it wound up being Link, in a way, that she wound up doing that with. One of the things that’s always been difficult for Owen and Amelia is they both have some pretty severe trauma, so even when she’s trying to be conscious and practice contrary action when she’s afraid, if Owen goes into his fear reaction, they just kinda bump up against each other and their amygdalae are at war. [As the season goes on,] he starts to understand how traumatized he’s been in life, too, so hopefully, they’ll both continue this healing process and become more functional in the love department.

TVLINE | Since Link accepted Amelia’s apology, can we now say that they are officially, totally in an actual relationship? [Laughs] I don’t know if we can call it a relationship. It’s not like she’s wearing his pin or anything! But it’s definitely moved beyond the kind of alternative pain relief [that she initially called it]. She was trying to keep it very surface, but she has definitely realized that he’s more substantive than she had hoped. He’s actually a pretty stand-up guy. We’ll see where she goes with that. I think she’s wise to be a little cautious. She doesn’t wanna jump in with both feet, because that would be crazy — she just got out of a marriage.

TVLINE | Really, he should be sending a thank-you note to Nancy and Kathleen, because he never would’ve gotten quite such a golden opportunity to show Amelia what he was made of if they hadn’t been so utterly horrible to her. [Laughs] I know! And I feel like it’s so unfair [to their portrayers]. They’re just the most delightful, charming women, and they were forced into being these kind of “wicked stepsisters.” But yeah, Amelia’s kinda bewildered by Link. He’s so tirelessly supportive, and yet he has boundaries, where’s he’s like, “Mm, that wasn’t OK with me.” He’s got so much psychological health, it would seem, and Amelia hasn’t really encountered that, so it’s almost like he short-circuits her short circuit. She’s like, “What is this that’s happening here?”

TVLINE | Did you know that Amelia and Link were going to become an item way back when he gave her, I believe the term was, “pants feelings”? [Laughs] I did not. I thought that that line was only serving the storyline with Meredith, but here we are. You never know on Grey’s Anatomy.

#grey's anatomy #TVLine #Caterina Scorsone #Amelia Shepherd #15x21 #scoop

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gretagerwigcollection · 5 years

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Greta Gerwig: My Mother, My City By Greta Gerwig Greta and Chris Gerwig in Washington Square Park. Photo Credit Kathy Lo for The New York Times. Jan. 4, 2018

The first New Yorker I ever knew was my mother, Chris Gerwig. I grew up in Sacramento, and that was the only place I’ve ever known her to call home. She had, in fact, lived in Brooklyn briefly as a child, but that was not what made her a New Yorker. She had and has the spirit of a quintessential New York City gal. She’s brash and smart and tough and funny, and was always the mother my school dreaded a call from because she would push and push and push until she got what she wanted. I was the only kid who was allowed to take both band and Spanish because of her insistence. She has more go-get-’em energy than almost anyone I’ve ever met.

I was too young to remember New York City the first time I visited from Sacramento. My dad was there on business, and there are pictures of me at 2 years old toddling around Central Park, sitting on the statue of Balto the Alaskan sled dog hero and having “tea” with the “Alice in Wonderland” characters. In the photographs, my mom is right there beside me, looking like I do now, with her big (slightly gummy) smile and lanky arms and a desire to walk until she can’t walk anymore.

At 5, I visited a second time. We were staying with family friends who taught at Columbia. It was summer but also somehow gray. As a Californian I had never known a gray summer. It was the late 1980s, so New York still had something seedy and dangerous about it. There was a story of the professor’s wife walking into a drug deal going down in the hallway of their apartment building and how she street-smarted her way out of getting hurt. I didn’t understand drugs or mugging, but I did remember an anxiety that was indistinguishable from excitement. It felt a universe away from the kids-on-bikes town that was Sacramento. It seemed impossible that it was the same country. And yet somehow, it also felt like home.

Sacramento is a place where you can always see the horizon. It is flat and beautiful and open. But I loved the crowdedness of New York City, how when it rained it seemed like the buildings were raining, not the sky. My mom held my hand tight as she walk-sprinted through the city. She was in her element here; everyone was moving as quickly as she was. She was joyfully sweaty. So was I. The Gerwig women belonged in New York.

The only thing standing out from the concrete and asphalt were the neon lights advertising kicks of different stripes. Musicals, alcohol, women. (I had just learned to read, and the concept of “Live Nude Girls” was extremely interesting.) When we waited for hours to get rush tickets for Broadway shows, Mom befriended people in line, just as she makes friends everywhere (the grocery store, the D.M.V., the library). They became very invested in the little blond girl getting in to see the show. And I did: “42nd Street” with Jerry Orbach. “Gypsy” with Tyne Daly. “Cats” with cats. At night, back at the apartment, everyone would play music — my dad on trumpet; his friend, the piano; his friend’s wife, the tuba. Someone taught me how to play spoons. My mom would clap along, saying, “Your dad is the one with the talent” although she had talents that were less performative but no less impressive.

There were children in New York, of course, but they seemed confined to the playgrounds. “It’s a great place to have a family” is a true thing that is often said about Sacramento. To be a kid in Sacramento then was to be in the right place at the right time. Nearly everyone had a backyard; some people had pools and even their own personal jungle gyms; you could choose which kids were invited to slide and swim and swing. My mom did not believe in having your own play set. She thought it defeated the point of a playground, which was to make new friends and get comfortable with people who weren’t your family. In Sacramento, she would walk me down to McKinley Park. It was a couple of miles away, but it had the best playground. I was walking that distance with her by the time I was 4.

Later, when I told a boyfriend about the walk, he didn’t believe me: “That’s just a story your parents tell you.” He thought it was an exaggeration. But I am certain of its truth. My mother had raised me to be a walker, to be on the move. Two miles to the playground at 4 years old was real. My mom wasn’t my playmate, but she was the person who brought me out into the world and taught me that it was not scary. In New York, no one, not even the very wealthy, had their own private paradise; it had to be shared. City kids were good at playing, everyone was a stranger and everyone belonged. She had prepared me well.

But New York, ultimately, seemed to be a city of grown-ups. It was the adult world and I was a guest there. It was always past my bedtime, and all the normal rules were suspended. Once, my mom and I were in a cab (maybe we were late to something? My mom would never just “take a cab”) and I told her that the next day I wanted to wear my rock ’n’ roll outfit. It was a pink skirt and top with white guitars all over them. The cabby overheard and met my eye in the rearview mirror. He winked and said in a thick New York accent, “I’ll wait for you, doll.” Maybe now I’d think it was creepy; maybe my mom did think it was creepy; but at the time it was thrilling. New York was the place to be a grown-up, and I had to figure out how to get back.

At home in Sacramento, my mom took me to Tower Records to order the double cassette tapes of the original cast recordings of the musicals I had seen. She found me the best tap-dancing teachers in town to support my newfound love, and when I also expressed interest in hula dancing, she found the sole Polynesian dance group in Sacramento and signed me up. We had left New York, but she was still bringing as much of it as she could to me, with just as much bravado and hustle as the city itself.

When I finally made it back to New York to attend Barnard College, I was 19 and felt “Ah, yes, now life can really begin,” as if life hadn’t been going on before. Against explicit warnings not to, I climbed to the roof of my dorm to look down at the city below. It was my city, or I wanted it to be. But I had no idea which way was uptown and which was downtown. This place I had wanted so badly to be part of was still a mystery.

So I did the only thing that made sense to me. I got on the subway and rode it as far away as I could, deliberately getting lost to learn it. I spent the next several hours trying to find my way back without a map. Walking the streets and puzzling out how West Fourth Street could be right next to West 12th, I realized that I was doing alone what my mom had done with me years before. Walking, walking, walking, learning the city by foot, every inch. She was the reason I believed this was the proper way to introduce myself to the city. And the city felt like my mother. New York City felt like home because it felt like her.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 7, 2018, on Page AR16 of the New York edition with the headline: Greta Gerwig: My Mother, My New York.

#new york times #greta gerwig #Chris Gerwig #Kathy Lo

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letterboxd · 6 years

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Ballad.

Dominic Corry is in New York to see the Coen Brothers’ latest opus, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs starring Tim Blake Nelson (above).

The Coen brothers unveiled their latest work The Ballad of Buster Scruggs at the New York Film Festival last week, and it’s yet another masterpiece from the peerless filmmakers. Perhaps even more so than their acclaimed True Grit (2010), which garnered ten Oscar nominations, Buster Scruggs betrays their extreme affection for—and deep knowledge of—the Western, cinema’s first and longest-lasting genre.

The Netflix-backed project was erroneously initially reported to be a TV series, but according to the brothers it was always planned as an anthology film comprised of six individual stories. Each one embodies and gently subverts a particular Western sub-genre, from the singing cowboy films typified by those starring Gene Autry, to the fatalistic grime of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, to a wagon train drama, with multiple stops in between, ending on a dark tale that wouldn’t be all that out of place as a Twilight Zone episode.

It’s funny, tragic and savagely ironic in the manner only the Coens seem to be able to pull off. The stories feature a host of amazing actors doing fantastic work, including, but not limited to: Liam Neeson, Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits, James Franco, Stephen Root, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson and the great Clancy Brown (albeit briefly), whose presence elevates anything he appears in. The only person missing was the late Walter Brennan, the Western genre's all-time greatest old coot who I am confident is smiling down upon this film from wherever he may currently reside.

Zoe Kazan, Joel Coen, Tim Blake Nelson and Ethan Coen at NYFF 56. / Photo: Evan Agostini

Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) is absolutely hilarious as the title character (the aforementioned singing cowboy), whose story kicks off the anthology. He joined the Coens on stage following the screening for a discussion of the work. Here’s some highlights:

On the origins of the project: Joel Coen: The first story [we wrote] was the first story in the movie. These are stories that were written over 25 years really, so that goes way back, that one. They follow, with a couple of exceptions, in a kind of chronological order in terms of when they were written, roughly. They just got put in a drawer because they were short movies and we didn’t know what we were gonna do with them. We probably didn’t even expect to make them until maybe eight or ten years ago when we started thinking, “well, maybe we could do these”. They could be seen as a sequenced series of stories or tracks on a record album or something like that. It’s a weird animal in terms of the format.

On whether or not they considered merging the stories into one larger narrative: JC: No. Like I said before we had these stories, they were all westerns so there was that and then they seemed to relate to each other, but kind of retrospectively, rather than consciously when we started doing it. There was never the impulse to [combine them] but as I said it’s kind of a strange form but it grew out of just the odd nature of how they came into existence.

On the experience of the actors: Tim Blake Nelson: We all got to read the entire script before we shot our individual constituent parts, unrelated to the others, but I think probably as actors we all felt a responsibility toward the genre of each film in which we appear. Because what I think is astonishing about this is it’s six different movies within the Western genre but then each one is in the vernacular of a sub-genre in and of itself. And that, at least for me, and I’m pretty sure with the other actors, just underscored one’s responsibility to appear indelibly within the genre in which you appeared. And so understanding that and then getting to see the successes of the others, it was just really rewarding to encounter that in all the stories. So that’s what was most gratifying about seeing the whole, was experiencing the success of others.

On the public confusion over whether or not this was a series or a movie, and whether or not any stories got culled: JC: I think that’s an artifact of what a strange animal it is. None of us really knew what to call it or how to classify it. Aside from the confusion about the classification, what we were going to shoot, the length of all the stories, which vary, there was never anything we were considering doing differently. There were never any more stories, and they were always intended to be seen together as a group.

On the large presence of animals in the film, which prominently features a dog and and owl, among other critters: JC: Flies are very hard to work with. There are a lot of animals. We do tend to load the movies up with domestic animals don’t we? It’s a Western, there are horses. It is true, I have to say, you do a Western, you spend 90% of your time dealing with and thinking about the horses.

Ethan Coen: And the oxen. The oxen were new to us. I asked Travis, who was the oxen wrangler, we wanted the oxen to do something specific for a take, and I asked him if he could do that and he just sighed. He looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “Driving oxen is not self-evident”.

On collaborating on this film with longtime composer Carter Burwell: EC: As Tim said, they’re all Westerns but they’re such different kinds of stories, we would talk about to what extent the music should play off those different [genres] and to what extent it should tie the things together. It’s a question we confronted. They’re so different. How much are you gonna accent the differences and how much are you gonna say it’s all the same movie [with the music]?

JC: It’s something that wasn’t just limited to the music, it’s an issue that came up in terms of the shooting styles and the color timing look of the movie, and how much to differentiate between the different stories and how much not to. How much to push that and how much to pull back a little bit in terms of your original instincts about it. And that went through a lot of iterations. It’s the kind of thing that’s very easy to iterate and re-iterate now that color timing is done in a computer as opposed to photo-chemically, so that went back and forth a little bit too and sort of found its place.

On how Joel and Ethan have evolved over the years as filmmakers: TBN: Yeah they finally know what they’re doing. They figured it out on this movie. [Big laughs from the crowd.] At a previous Q&A I suddenly realized the oxymoronic nature of who and what Joel and Ethan are as directors and filmmakers, because they’re incredibly, unbelievably, in an unparalleled way, meticulous and prepared as filmmakers. So that when you get to the set there really are no decisions being made during the shooting time that could’ve been made earlier, and that rigor pays off in an interesting way because it allows for the actors inside of that meticulous preparation, to be utterly free, to have all the time an actor could possibly want. So I think it’s the amount of preparation, with which I became familiar on O Brother, and I’d never encountered before in any movie I’d done with any director, or directors. And it’s repeated once more here, with the added challenge I think for Joel and Ethan that they were making effectively six films with six different linguistic principals inside the language of the Western and I found the specificity with which they were working on the one I’m in, unbelievable in terms of its extremes and its fearlessness. And the way that they were pushing me, and in certain cases allowing me to do certain stuff. And then seeing the whole movie, watching five other versions of that, was truly astonishing. So what I guess I really mean to say is that the opposite of my joke is true: they continue to be unparalleled in terms of the work they put in, the preparation they do, and the specificity borne out of the shooting and also in the result.

‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ is available on Netflix and in select theaters from November 16. Letterboxd recommends seeing it on the big screen if you can!

#letterboxd #director #coen brothers #buster scruggs #nyff 2018

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mothermaidenclone-blog · 7 years

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Spider-Man: Homecoming or Don’t You Always Hear Harps When You See A Girl?

I don’t think I actually saw any women in the four billion trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming that were in the cinema, so I went into this one with the bar set very, very low. I did, however, know that Aunt May would feature because of the whole internet losing their minds over the thought of a middle aged woman existing on screen.

*Spider-Man: Homecoming spoilers follow*

So let’s start with Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been reduced to his canonical high-school age, so it only makes sense that Aunt May should drop a decade or so too. However, this brings her out of the venerable status of being “old” and puts her somewhere in the middle of the ageing process itself. Mainstream cinema is obviously comfortable with portraying women as youthful, and has reserved the honour of showcasing those who have reached “old age” to basically a trifecta of Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. You can be middle aged in a film, Gweneth Paltrow makes a brief appearance as Pepper Pots and she’s forty four at the time of writing, but god forbid you actually look it. Marisa Tomei is fifty two, and in my opinion is a very beautiful woman, but because she looks something over twenty five it seems that the only way that anyone can deal with it is to fetishise her as some sort of, and I really hate to use the term, MILF. The first reference to Aunt May is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) saying, “What’s she wearing? Something skimpy I hope.” That pretty much sets the tone for how she is interacted with and observed for the rest of the film, which is a shame because she is shown to be a caring, understanding and supportive guardian with a sense of humour, despite all the tragedy that her and Peter have endured as a family.

How male characters deal with female characters seems to be the main problem with this film, as the women themselves are fantastic. Liz (Laura Harrier) is smart, capable, headstrong and independent and Michelle (Zendaya) is blessed with an excellently dry, nihilistic sense of humour and indifference to the opinion of others that is so rarely afforded to teenage girls in film. Other girls are very much present, around the school and in the quiz team, and are played by a diverse range of actresses. It was particularly refreshing to see no white, blond love interests, or even male best friends or rivals. So what do the boys in this film do when confronted with these amazing girls? Say that they should “probably stop staring before it gets creepy” while actual fucking harp music plays in the background. At one point Peter is actually secretly looking down at Liz in her swimming costume through a literal glass ceiling. It couldn’t get much more on the nose where the gaze is concerned. Annoyingly, despite the aforementioned list of both of these girls’ excellent character traits, both Liz and Michelle become visibly, and somewhat inexplicably, flustered by Peter at some point in the film.

Outside of girls at school, the other two female characters who make a memorable appearance are Anne-Marie Hoag (Tyne Daly) - who I don’t think is actually named, I had to look her up - and Karen (Jennifer Connelly). The former appears at the beginning of the film as an older lady in a position of business control, which got my hopes up, but she is immediately portrayed as a baddie because she is taking honest jobs away from good, hard-working men. The latter is the AI in Peter’s suit, which he names (and almost very creepily named after his crush) and who takes on a strange kind of wingman role (literally and figuratively, wahey). It’s almost as though Peter is so uncomfortable talking to real girls that he has to use a semi-sentient “female” computer program for advice instead.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the number of women that featured in this film and how strong their personalities were. However, all of the men seemed to react to them like penis-controlled pubescent teenagers, regardless of whether they were actually boys or grown men. I know part of this was the comedy of showing Peter as a realistically awkward teenage boy, it’s the charm of Spider-Man that he’s not a ripped, charismatic, fully-developed man, he’s a geeky, smart teenager and that’s a great role model. I just want to throw it out there though, if we normalise the portrayal of strong, funny, smart young women, maybe boys won’t lose their minds when they discover that’s what girls are like.

And now for some asides:

It was good to hear Spider-Man making jokes again, I’ve missed that.

They didn’t even mention Uncle Ben! Hallelujah!

Michael Keaton’s life and career as so many Bat/Birdmen is now the most meta thing ever.

#spider-man #spiderman #spider-man homecoming #film review #movie review #spider-man spoilers #spoilers #feminism #sci-fi #science fiction #mcu #marvel #superhero #super hero #mothermaidenclone #cw: language

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wikitina · 7 years

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Tim Daly as a guest on the 'Really Famous' Podcast with Kara Mayer Robinson.

For this interview Kara visited Tim at his apartment in New York. It is a interesting and fun podcast with a chance of getting to know Tim a little bit more.

As a start Tim talked about the fact he was living in LA and looking for a excuse to move to NY and then ‘Madam Secretary’ happened and what better excuse than that, right? Tim prefers living in NY, first because is close to his farm in Vermont, which is one of his favorite places and also because in NY you can be famous and still get a life to live. He points that in LA everyone including the city lives for the entertainment and in NY ‘people are just doing their things, living their lifes’.

Unfortunately there is ups and downs in every story, in this case: Yes, Tim's exactly where he wanted to be, he's close to Vermont and his daughter Emelyn is living with him but his son Sam lives in Los Angeles with his wife and newborn son Owen Daly. Now with a excited voice Tim tells he recently became a grandpa. He talks about how great it is and how it’s completly different of becoming a dad. Tim goes back in time and tells how was it when Sam was born and how he discovered the true meaning of 'Throw your self in front of a bus for somedoby'. "I'm good with babies, I've always been a 'baby guy'". he says explaining how cool is to be a grandpa, you only get the fun part because if the child poop there's always gonna have someone around to take care of it even if he's totally capable of doing himself.

They went back talking about the differences between living in LA and NY. For Tim, people in NY who wants to cut your throat they just say it, in LA everybody wants to be famous leading to everyone being nice and friendly but internally they wanna cut your throat too, so you never know who to trust or who's your friend. As many others actors Tim's shy (also competitive but in a healthy way).

Broken legs: Tim's a lot better now, "I had to sit on my ass for fucking months" (three and a half to be more exactly). The actor said how important was for him to get back to work and he did it in less than a week after surgery. "My dressroom became like a rehab center". FYI Tim's still in rehab and will have to keep doing fisiotherapy (which he said is boring) for a long time.

Childhood: His mom Hope Newell (actress) gave up of her career to be a mom and the first time Tim watched ‘Mad Men’ he thought of his dad (James Daly) whom he used to have a great relationship with.

Kara asked Tim where would he like to work: Theatre. Which is what he's doing, since ‘Madam Secretary’ is on hiatus. Tim's about to start ‘Downstairs’ with his sister Tyne Daly. Interesting fact: both already worked together but never in theatre which is where both of them came from.

Early Career: Before becoming an actor, Tim worked at a restaurant as a cooker, fun fact: he didn't know exactly how to cook. Looks like Tim really enjoyed that job, he talked a lot about it. Beyond that, he mentioned his first payment (wow Tim's must have an elephant memory, I don't remember what I ate yesterday and he remember things of forty years ago). Tim moved to LA and after that to NY.

"I believe my first big break was "Hill Street Blues" (x) Tim rejected lots of jobs which he believes was a mistake. During a tour crossing India and Syria Tim met his former wife (Amy Van Nostrand) and fell in love. At the bottom of all that Sam came, changing their priority. “I don't really regret anything because how can you?”

“The truth is that being sort of medium famous is a lot better than being really famous.” As a medium famous you still have a chance of living a "normal life". Tim reveals how sometimes is cool when people don't recognazie him. "When Téa and I are together" There were times people spotted 'Timéa' but only recognize one of them. "Mr. Daly, I love you on Madam Secretary, you're just wonderful. Thank you so much." they looked at Téa and just didn't recognize. The same happened in the other way round. "Mrs. Leoni, Madam Secretary is my favorite show. I love you." with no idea of whom Tim was. "And we are standing there together" Tim claims it's normal, in fact it already happened to him. Probably because the fans are so concentrated in that one specific person that they don't see anything else surround them.

David Chase was mentioned along with his relationship with Tim, who at first thought David hated him and the answer is no, Tim was wrong about that.

JAMES TIMOTHY DALY aka Tim Daly

- So what would your dream roll be now? - I'd love to do a sitcom. It's more funny because of the audience, so you immediately gets your feedback. Let's not forget that for Tim, comedy is harder to play than drama. To the tv show's addicted, Tim has been watching ‘Handmaid's Tale’, ‘Game of Thrones’ (love/hate relationship) and ‘Catastrophe’. While talking about the last one, two phrases sounded good to quote: "When I get sad, I get very worry about it." "I just love those two so much that I'm invested in them being happy" (sounded exactly like me when refering to Bess and Henry).

Both remembered the first time Tim met the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and also how surprised Tim was when discovered that Madeleine was a fan of ‘Private Practive’ and loved his character Pete Wilder. "It was not my proudest moment"

- What do you do for fun? - Gardening. I love growing things (...) I like putting a seed in the ground and putting water on it and watch it grow. Tim also likes to cook and play guitar. "I'm always creating something" -Who do people generally think that Tim Daly is? Tim answered saying that mostly when people write(?) his biography they get it totally wrong (honestly I think he meant "read") There were also some dark deep things that happened to him but than again nodoby's life is perfect.

"It takes a while for me to let people in" Last but not least; - Who knows you best? - Maybe my sister. Maybe Téa, she's gotten to know me pretty well.

(x)

#madam secretary #téa leoni #tim daly #podcast #really famous podcast

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paintmeflattered · 7 years

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Title: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Director: Jon Watts

Starring: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Jon Favreau, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Tyne Daly, Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr.

Brief Synopsis: Peter Parker must handle his new life as a superhero called Spider-Man, but the restrictions he has because of Tony Stark frustrates him and he ends up finding out about a crime ring selling weapons made from alien products but the adult superheroes do not believe he is capable of handling it.

Review: The movie was really good! I liked that they explored Peter being an actual teenager more and Holland was much more believable as a teenager than Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield. I liked that they explored the idea of family between Aunt May and Peter and between Toomes and his family. I felt like they could have shown the villain’s evolution a bit more but other than that I really enjoyed it *Spoilers from now on* I really enjoyed the little video diary Peter made in the beginning, it was funny to see the Civil War scene from his perspective. Peter’s frustration with Happy Hogan and Tony Stark never getting back to him or taking anything he said seriously was very realistic. I do think Peter tried to do the right thing by going to the adults first. He did think he was capable of more even though he obviously did not have the training or experience to do it. I think he ended up defeating Vulture because of luck and that he really wasn’t out to kill him. What I think a huge problem in the movie was communication. Happy kept ignoring Peter but relaying what he said to Tony. Happy would dismiss it all but still tell Tony and he would look into it but keep Peter in the dark about it. That’s why he ended up on the Staten Island ferry with the FBI pointing guns at him. If they had just let him know they were looking into it, at whole situation may not have happened. But at the same time, if Peter didn’t do it all he may not have been there to stop Toomes from hijacking the moving plane. When Peter realized the alien artifact that Ned was carrying for him could act like a bomb if it came into contact with radiation, my first thought was, “I guess they’re safe! They are teenagers so why would they have any reason to be working with radiation?” I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me that there are X-RAYS. I felt so dumb. I know some people had an issue with the fact that the romance with Liz but I also think it was realistic since he was 15 and had a crush on a senior girl. Not all relationships at that age have a nice wrap up. I also have no problem with Zendaya playing MJ. First of all, she’s not actually playing Mary Jane Watson, more like a character inspired by her so people complaining about her being black need to realize this. Second of all, we already have two stories of Spider-man, one of which has Mary Jane so why do the same story all over again? I don’t hear people complaining about how there is no Harry in this reboot. I have heard about people complaining and sending death threats to Tony Revolori for playing Flash which is so not okay. You can dislike his portrayal or the fact that they changed him from a jerky jock to a douchey rich boy, but do not threaten him; there is absolutely no reason for it. The movie had great humor, a great story, and great action; I was thankfully not disappointed.

#spiderman homecoming #2017 #jon watts #film review

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the-domestication-of-the-dog · 5 years

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The 9th Annual L.A.O.K Awards

I’m no artist, but I did love art class growing up, and let’s just say I’ve won a few coloring contests in my day (God did I live for coloring contests). Let’s also say that in high school I did a watercolor of one of my stepmom’s nature photographs, and let’s say that it ended up in the yearbook. That watercolor was the crowning achievement of my many classes with Ms. Warren, our high school art teacher. Let me paint a picture of Ms. Warren for you: short spiky blonde hair, this pattern Gap button down every day, long denim skirt, and the unfaltering attitude of someone who was born to be an artist but instead ended up teaching ungrateful teenagers who called things “gay” around you even though you were clearly a lesbian.

Months after completing that watercolor, I began work on acrylic painting I’ll admit was uninspired, but I still gave it my best. The composition featured a bird on a branch in narrow focus, so that everything in the background was blurry, and I had planned on giving it to my mom as a Mother’s Day present. The problem was that I had no idea how to paint something out of focus, and instead of doing any research or asking my teacher how to do that, I just dove right in and painted from memory and tried to make the lines really soft. Here is that painting, which still hangs in my mother’s bedroom to my everlasting shame.

If you look closely, you might recognize that I cut my losses on this one. That’s because it was at this point in my progress when I fully realized I was in over my head and decided to ask Ms. Warren for some tips. She came over to my desk, looked at the painting for a good 10 seconds, and finally uttered two sentences I’ll never forget: “Garrett, sometimes in art you hit, and sometimes you miss. Your watercolor was a hit.” And she was off to the next student.

That said, sometimes a year in movies is a hit, and sometimes it’s a miss. 2017 was a hit. Now on to the next desk:

Best Film Eighth Grade The Favourite First Man Mary Queen of Scots Sicario: Day of the Soldado

First off, anyone who didn’t like Mary Queen of Scots can meet me in a laundry cottage halfway between England and Scotland in negative 460 years for another asskicking. What is there not to like about this movie? According to Ben Friday, extreme historical inaccuracy. Okay, if anyone comes up with any non-nerd reasons, please let me know. The second film in my top five that you’re going “Guh, what?” to: Sicario: Day of the Soldado, was actually very good, and it turns out everyone is wrong for thinking it’s not. Wow, definitive proof here (https://letterboxd.com/g_baby9000/film/sicario-day-of-the-soldado/). I also loved First Man’s slow burn. La La Land was a misstep for me from Damien Chazelle, but now I’m right back on the Chazelle train. Bravo for making an unconventional, understated historical biopic, which drives through its seeming monotony with an ever building tension that keeps it compelling from start to finish. Then there’s The Favourite, which continues Yorgos Lanthimos’s reign over this annual list. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the dictum came down to the Fox marketing department that they were going to go wide with this movie.

And the Layokie goes to… Eighth Grade

In the lead up to Eighth Grade I thought two things: 1) I hope it’s not that good because Bo Burnham’s age and career make me feel inadequate, and 2) It probably isn’t that good because everyone’s talking about how good it is. In LA, if you don’t see a movie until after its release date you are a total loser, and I went even a few weeks after that, so it was already sufficiently hyped. I honestly didn’t expect much from it, and it totally blew me away with it’s humor and heartwarmingness in a way that no other film matched in 2018. I’ll talk more about this great film below.

Next Five The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Cold War First Reformed Roma Shoplifters

Also Great Avengers: Infinity War Beautiful Boy Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Outlaw King The Rider A Star is Born Vice (Why does everyone hate Vice? My thoughts on Vice.)

Best Original Screenplay The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (1/6 adapted) Shoplifters - Hirokazu Koreeda Eighth Grade - Bo Burnham The Favourite - Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara First Reformed - Paul Schrader

And the Layokie goes to… Eighth Grade

Not to retread the obvious, but I think about Eighth Grade and its screenplay in much the same way as Avatar. Predictability and the use of stock plotting does not equate to bad writing, and even if you know exactly what’s going to happen (Kayla must end up with Gabe) it can be done in such a satisfying way that the story still sings (which is the reason why the same story lines continue to be retread). From early on, we can guess pretty much what Kayla’s arc will be, but the fact that it plays out in just the right way, so that you can’t really imagine it had the potential to be anything else, is what makes it such a high mark in screenwriting. Getting to this point in a screenplay is very difficult, because it’s usually only after figuring out the 50 paths not to go down that you realize the obviously correct one. When it finally clicks which Scene B should follow Scene A, the screenwriter too realizes that it couldn’t have been any other way, it just takes a lot of work to get there. I put Eighth Grade on for my second viewing while building an IKEA dresser a week or two ago, and it filled me with such glee. I was doubled over with laughter more than once and had to watch some scenes five times before I could move on.

Best Adapted Screenplay Annihilation - Alex Garland Beautiful Boy - Luke Davies and Felix van Groeningen Leave No Trace - Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini Mary Queen of Scots - Beau Willimon Sicario: Day of the Soldado - Taylor Sheridan

And the Layokie goes to… Mary Queen of Scots

Like I said above, I don’t really know anything about the historicity of this movie. Apparently the rabble-rousing preacher that everyone was supposed to hate actually was cool and founded my own church’s denomination? Anyway, I loved the way this was paced, only parsing out the information you absolutely needed and trusting you to catch up through its many jumps in time, expertly illustrated via cutbacks to Queen Elizabeth. The characters were complex (especially Elizabeth) and the dialogue was snappy. There’s nothing better than seeing someone in an authority position take someone’s shit just long enough before thoroughly dressing them down at the exact appropriate time, and Mary gets many such chances to shine thusly.

Best Director Damien Chazelle - First Man Alfonso Cuarón - Roma Yorgos Lanthimos - The Favourite Pawel Pawlikowski - Cold War Josie Rourke - Mary Queen of Scots

And the Layokie goes to… Alfonso Cuarón

Was tempted after another viewing to switch this to Damien Chazelle, but I had already written the following paragraph, and I’m too lazy to redo it. From the opening shot of Roma, two things are clear: you’re in the hands of a great director, and it’s a damn good thing you’re in a theater because it’s gonna be a long, slow ride. If you watched this on Netflix from start to finish without looking at your phone, I salute you (and I’ll say the same for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs). If you haven’t seen it on the big screen and live in LA, it’s currently playing at the Landmark and Vista, so check it out. Also how insane is it that Cuaron will likely win the Oscar in this category this year, making Mexican directors winners in this category 5 out of the last 6 years? Specifically, Cuaron, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro, who were already known as the Three Amigos long before going on this stretch?

Honorable Mention Ari Aster - Hereditary Alex Garland - Annihilation Paul Schrader - First Reformed Stefano Sollima - Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Best Actress Emily Blunt - Mary Poppins Returns Lady Gaga - A Star is Born Joanna Kulig - Cold War Thomasin McKenzie - Leave No Trace Soarise Ronan - Mary Queen of Scots

And the Layokie goes to… Soarise Ronan

I’ve talked about this before, but it seems so many years I struggle to come up with a good list of best actresses (while supporting actress overflows with abundance). I had wondered if I was just a misogynist, but it became clear to me over time that there just weren’t nearly as many films with females in starring roles, let along female protagonists. However, not only did I have trouble paring down my favorites to five this year, there were many more female-driven films I could have drawn from. I really felt like this was a year for women in film, and it was great. The idea that women/minority leads can’t drive box office success seems finally to be a thing of the past, and it’s about damn time. This all probably comes across as liberal posturing, but if you know me well you’ll understand it’s really born from my own selfishness. First, I don’t want special treatment over anyone because I highly value fairness, and the reason highly value fairness is mainly because I don’t want anyone else to get special treatment over me. Second, I don’t care if a story is about women, black people, Asian people, aliens, some fish, or a fuckin’ toaster, a good story is a good story, and I don’t want to miss out one because some marketing executive wants to save his ass. Not once have I ever been not able to get into a film because the protagonist was a different age/race/gender than me. Even though some of them aren’t on this list, Annihilation, Ocean’s 8, Thoroughbreds, Suspiria, Roma, The Favourite, Widows, and Mary Queen of Scots not only had female leads, but fully female-centric casts, and all were either da bomb, fairly da bomb, or da bomb-ish.

Honorable Mention Yalitza Aparicio - Roma Claire Foy - Unsane Claire Foy - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Supporting Actress Olivia Colman - The Favourite Tyne Daly - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Cynthia Erivo - Bad Times at the El Royale Nicole Kidman - Boy Erased Regina King - If Beale Street Could Talk

And the Layokie goes to… Tyne Daly

Pretty thrilled TBoBS is on Netflix, because I recently went back just to watch my favorite two segments: “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and “The Mortal Remains.” Still not really sure what “The Mortal Remains” is all about ‘cause I’m not that smart about that kind of stuff, but damn did all five of them chew up the scenery, and none more so than Tyne Daly.

Honorable Mention Zoe Kazan - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Marina de Tavira - Roma Rachel Weisz - The Favourite

Best Actor Ethan Hawke - First Reformed Nicolas Cage - Mandy Ryan Gosling - First Man Viggo Mortenson - Green Book Christian Bale - Vice

And the Layokie goes to… Christian Bale

I didn’t hate Vice, but it seems like everyone else did. I also didn’t love The Big Short, but it also seems like everyone else did, somehow causing the people who loved The Big Short to hate the Vice. But I don’t think you can deny Christian Bale on this one, or at least I don’t think you can triumph Gary Oldman in The Final Hour or whatever it was called, but deny Christian Bale in Vice. (Scroll down to see that I didn’t triumph Gary Oldman last year, even though he might have deserved it.)

Honorable Mention Mahershala Ali - Green Book Bradley Cooper - A Star is Born Joaquin Phoenix - Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

Best Supporting Actor Robert Pattinson - Damsel Linus Roache - Mandy Timothée Chalamet - Beautiful Boy Harry Melling - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs John Malkovich - Bird Box

And the Layokie goes to… Timothée Chalamet

It’s about this time that I get tired of trying to come up with something to write for everyone of these, so I’ll take my comments of the air. Timothée Chalamet was great!

Honorable Mention Jake Ryan - Eighth Grade

Best Documentary The Dawn Wall Minding the Gap RBG Three Identical Strangers Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Syeeeke. Did I say I was done coming up with things to write? ‘Cause I got lots to say about this. First let’s get it out of the way. Free Solo is a mediocre documentary about some excellent subject matter. Jimmy Chin made another one of my favorite documentaries, Meru, that definitely did not get the acclaim it deserved, so if he finds that acclaim with Free Solo, then super. And if it wins the Oscar, I won’t be sad about it. What I will be sad about, is that another documentary, also about climbing El Capitan, The Dawn Wall, got totally overshadowed be Free Solo. I watched The Dawn Wall first, and I think that may have something to do with shaping how I felt about Free Solo, but The Dawn Wall had a better, more interesting, more likable protagonist, with a more interesting story to tell about himself and his climbing attempt and way better climbing material! Now, there’s no denying that climbing the full height of El Capitan without a rope is riveting, awe-inspiring, and completely insane, and the 5-10 minutes of Free Solo that actually cover that feat are impossible to top, but if for the other 90 minutes (both films are exactly 1:40) you’d like to watch a doc about climbing El Capitan, it has to be The Dawn Wall. If you’d like those 90 minutes to instead be about a whiny guy who lives in van, then by all means, champion Free Solo. I don’t want to say too much more about why I think it’s better, because I want people to see it and experience it. Hopefully it starts streaming soon. (And if you did see and like Free Solo, please check out Meru, which is currently streaming on Netflix.) The other docs were also great, and what a shame that Won’t You Be My Neighbor? didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, which made me cry evertim.

And the Layokie goes to… Duh, The Dawn Wall -- (See how the wall below makes Alex Honnold’s Free Rider route look like the freaking Aggro Crag from Nickelodeon’s GUTS?)

Best Foreign Film I only saw: Border Capernaum Cold War Roma Shoplifters

And the Layokie goes to… Shoplifters

Now, as always, on to the fun stuff:

Refuse to Watch Any more Clint Eastwood Movies

The 15:17 to Paris was truly a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back-breakingly bad movie. Literally worse acting and writing than some student films I’ve seen. And I’m not talking about the Student Academy Awards, I’m talking about the ones I watched from my own peers in my own undergrad film classes. And I’m not talking about some USC or UCLA film classes, I’m talking about University of Oklahoma film classes, where they actively did not give us film equipment to use, because we were a studies program and not a production program, even though no one there wanted to do anything but be writer/directors, and they seemed to resent us all for that fact so we had an edit bay in like an old closet or something and it was on one of the original iMacs with the hockey puck mouse and everything. The last tolerable Clint Eastwood move was Mystic River don’t @ me.

Great in Everything Award Joaquin Phoenix - You Were Never Really Here, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, The Sisters Brothers, (and when do we get to see Mary Magdalene??) Cynthia Erivo - Bad Times at the El Royale, Widows

Best Lesbian Rachel Weisz

Deserves Discussion Damsel

Hmm, a New Wave Anit-Western starring Robert Pattinson with folk dancing and real-life weirdo non-actors, an obvious grand slam slam dunk, right? Wrong. Boy do I wish I had known the Zellner Brothers were also the ones behind Kumiko the Treasure Hunter before going into this. I could have at least prepared myself for all the meandering. I don’t really mind meandering if it serves a story/theme, say like in another seminal film in the genre, Meek’s Cutoff, but you can miss me wit dat meandering for meandering’s sake. The script for Damsel is a great example of an antithesis for what made Eighth Grade so great. The meandering here is not only in the physical sense, but also in the story sense, where no scene absolutely had to happen, and nothing in particular means anything. You would think that a character strapping dynamite to themselves and walking a few miles would fill a theater with Hitchcockian dread and similarly provide a Hitchcockian catharsis when that character eventually blows up. Instead, it’s just one more in a long line of things happening that never add up to what we would call a “story.” Like in Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, the interesting parts that never make up a whole are in themselves still interesting, and I’ll forever be grateful for that film’s gift of the discovery of the Yamasuki Singers. In the same way, I’ll forever be grateful to Damsel’s opening credits sequence, the chance for another stellar character performance from R Patt, the incredible mise-en-scène, and for giving Mia Wasikowska another opportunity to put a mediocre film on her back and carry it to the finish line (what if some day she starred in a good movie??). Perhaps my harshest criticism of Damsel is also one of my proudest film-watching moments. The film’s true lead isn’t even featured on the poster; it’s a character named Parson Henry, portrayed by David Zellner. About 3/4 of the way in, I thought to myself, this actor is so absolutely lacking of anything you could call charisma, I bet it’s the director and he cast himself in the lead role, and you know what? It was. *sunglasses emoji*

Best Song All of the Stars

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Best Score Tie: First Man and Isle of Dogs

Many LOLs Avengers: Infinity War Eighth Grade The Favourite Mandy

Most Surreal Movie-Watching Moment When me and Becca and Joe and Natalie went to see Rampage kind of as a joke when we had our Moviepasses so it was like whatev, and the theater was PACKED even though it was a week or two after it came out, and at one point The Rock is going in for a pound with the big white gorilla that he trained, and the gorilla fakes the pound, then flips off The Rock and starts gorilla-laughing at its gorilla antics, and the audience went. fucking. NUTS. Like it was the purest moment of comedy that ever existed. It was a Sullivan’s Travels-level eye-opener for me. Give the dumb galoots what they want, and what they want, is to see a gorilla give The Rock the finger.

Most Non-Fun Fun Movie Ready Player One

Please Stop Giving Melissa McCarthy’s husband bit parts in Melissa McCarthy movies (didn’t hate The Happytime Murders btw)

The Something Award Sorry to Bother You

The Nothing Award Crazy Rich Asians

Best Scenes Annihilation - Watching the camcorder footage Aquaman - Escaping the trench creatures Bad Times at the El Royale - Any time Darlene sings The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - All of “The Mortal Remains,” which was basically a single-scene segment Eighth Grade - Chicken nugget dinner The Favourite - The dance (putting my fingertips to my mouth then and then giving it a chef’s kiss: “MWAH”) First Man - the m-er f-ing moon landing (damn that was good, had me on the edge of my seat in both viewings) Free Solo - Despite what I said above, for a stand-alone scene, you cannot beat the final climb Incredibles 2 - Jack Jack/racoon fight The Girl in the Spider’s Web - the motorcycle escape Mandy - So many, but it has to be the Cheddar Goblin Mission Impossible: Fallout - The bathroom fight The Old Man & the Gun - When John and Forrest meet Outlaw King - When they finally(!) had sex A Quiet Place - The very beginning when the whole theater went silent Roma - Fermin’s naked martial arts, Fermin’s denial (so sad!), and the fire A Star is Born - v basic of me, but you cannot deny the first “Shallow” performance The Strangers: Prey at Night - The pool scene Upgrade - The first upgraded fight Won’t You Be My Neighbor? - A lot of them, but it has to be “It’s You I Like” at the end

Best Visuals Annihilation Cold War Mary Poppins Returns The Ritual

Worst Movie of the Year

The 15:17 to Paris (turnoff)

A Wrinkle in Time (walkout)

The Nun

Fireworks

The Meg

Winchester

Rampage

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Hold the Dark

Fahrenheit 451

Sadly Missed/Haven't’ Watched Yet At Eternity’s Gate Blaze Burning Destroyer The Kindergarten Teacher Lean on Pete Madeline’s Madeline Mid90s Never Look Away Private Life Support the Girls We the Animals The Wife

Absent on Purpose BlacKkKlansman Black Panther Blindspotting Bohemian Rhapsody

#layokies #movies #oscars

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brian-lozano91 · 7 years

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Spider-Man: Homecoming review

Spider-Man : Homecoming is directed by Jon Watts (Clown, Cop Car) it's the second Spider-Man reboot and the sixteenth film in the Marvel cinematic universe. It stars Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Jon Favreau, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Tyne Daly, Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. The plot is, “Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, young Peter Parker returns home to live with his Aunt May. Under the watchful eye of mentor Tony Stark, Parker starts to embrace his newfound identity as Spider-Man. He also tries to return to his normal daily routine -- distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just a friendly neighborhood superhero. Peter must soon put his powers to the test when the evil Vulture emerges to threaten everything that he holds dear.”

Spider-Man: Homecoming had a tough hurdle to get through, one being the second reboot of Spider-Man and the fact that the last Spider-Man movie was not good. I felt people were having Spider-Man fatigue, but once people saw the film everything started changing. Also in my opinion this is the second best Spider-Man movie since Spider-Man 2, they finally got the character right. Tobey Maguire was great in the Sam Raimi films but he was only a great Peter Parker and a good Spider-Man, but those films made Spider-Man epic and the character is smaller than that and it’s fine for those films, then in The Amazing Spider-Man films Andrew Garfield played a good Spider-Man but a bad Peter Parker.

Tom Holland plays both parts perfectly, when he’s Peter Parker he is shy, he doesn’t really know how to talk to girls, he gets picked on a lot and nobody seems to pay attention to him, at least not the cool people and like any teenager at that age he is trying to fit in but can’t. Then when he is Spider-Man it’s different, he is confident, sarcastic and doesn’t really know what he is doing. Which is the best part because that’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man is not perfect especially since he’s just barely starting out. But as the films go forward we will see a growth with the character, and hopefully more growth as more films will go on. Also we see that Spidey has a A.I. in his suit like Iron Man did and him interacting with it was really great and funny. I was a kinda worried because I felt that the suit was just an excuse for Spider-Man to have a Iron Man suit, however it works because at the end of the film he doesn’t have it and has to use his old suit to beat the bad guy, that was great because he learned his lesson.

Also a new character created for the film Ned who is Peter’s friend, is really good. It’s nice to see Peter actually talk to someone about being Spider-Man, also the fact that his friend keeps asking him questions about how his powers work and is excited that his friend is a superhero, it felt relatable, because if it was anyone in high school including me and my friends we would feel the same way and probably not be able to keep it a secret. Then we have young Aunt May and I was afraid that they were going to have too many Aunt May is hot jokes, but their wasn’t a lot just two. Her relationship with Peter is like any mom she cares for him and worries about him and wants him to be safe. She was the same Aunt May from the comics and other movies all that was different was that she was younger. New version of Flash, instead of being a big jock that picks on Peter it’s someone in his social circle another nerd. Which is great because that’s now, it’s relatable.

Also of course the best part of the film is Michael Keaton, he does a really good job playing the villain. But the screenwriters also need to be complemented because they actually made a villain that you could actually relate to, you understand why he’s doing these things and he’s not just a bad guy who wants to destroy the city or the world. He just trying to make money for his family, so you actually feel for the guy. Also can I just say that they actually made the lamest villains in the comics the coolest in this film. The Vulture looks awesome, so much better design and character wise. Then we have the other villain the shocker, he doesn’t have the costume but the way they made him look was better. Then we cameos have future villains that hopefully will come in the sequels.

However their are some negative things to say, one of them is the cinematography for the film. The cinematography is alright it’s standard per usual for the Marvel films, but like those minus Guardians it lacks the color that this movie needs. The film is fun and exciting, so it’s needs to look like that. Then the score for the film is mediocre at best. Which I really hate to say because it’s Michael Giacchino, and I know he’s made good scores in the past, but his scores for his Marvel films have been meh. I don’t know if he came in the last minute like he did for Rouge One and wasn’t able to compose a good score or that Marvel are cheapskates and don’t want pay more for a better score, which is probably what it was. Also the marketing for the film was not that good. The posters suck, really bad. They look so lame, nothing to get you excited for it. Then the trailers show way too much of Iron Man making you think he’s big part of the film, also spoiling a cool moment in the film.

Spider-Man:Homecoming was awesome, I love this movie second only to Spider-Man 2. One of the best superhero film this year and I think my favorite this next to Logan. I hope everyone sees this film. You should go out and support it and watch it multiple times. Thank god Marvel had some say in this movie or else Sony would’ve probably made another bad Spider-Man film. Lets see what happens with sequels and other appearances from Spider-Man in other films.

4 and half stars out of 5

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mrmichaelchadler · 5 years

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The RogerEbert.com Interviews of 2018

Below is a collection of some of our favorite conversations from this year. Each interview features a quote from the conversation, as followed by a link at the end to the full interview. Enjoy this survey into a year of top-notch work from actors and directors, and we'll see you in 2019.

THE STARS

Adriana Barraza (“Everything Else”) on life after her Oscar nomination for “Babel”:

“All the red carpets and these types of events, I’ve lived them and I will continue to live them as a fairy tale where you wear a beautiful outfit, like when you were little and wore your mother’s dresses to feel like a princess. I never forget that’s all just an instant, and everything else is about the work.” [link]

Steve Carell on his first time doing motion-capture acting, for Robert Zemeckis’ “Welcome to Marwen”:

“Like the advice that Bob [Zemeckis] gave me on day one, just think about it as very low-budget theater. And use your imagination. And I’ve done just the black outfit and everything, a couple chairs onstage. It’s ironic because, doing it back then you were at the mercy of your finances. And the irony now being, to do something like that is expensive to do and very complex. It’s fun. Just give yourself over to it, and enjoy it. It’s play time.” [link]

Tyne Daly on going between movies like “A Bread Factory” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming”:

“A film like this is my antidote. They pay you no money at all. They pay you lovely money to do Spider-Man. But this is about characters and situations that are deeply human and not at all cartoon-y.” [link]

Paulina García (“The Desert Bride”) on acting with minimal dialogue:

“I love characters of few words because they allow you to move in multiple directions, which when you have a character that experiences a sudden and significant change, like she does over the course of the story, the viewer can understand it, can follow it, and can believe it. Characters are much more malleable for me when they have little dialogue.” [link]

Lil Rel Howery on the cathartic comedy in “Uncle Drew”:

“Comedy has always been used as a weapon, but it’s also the most consistent thing that everybody needs because people need to laugh. You gotta laugh through crazy times, and yes, what we’re living through right now is crazy, but there have been other insane times throughout history, and laughter has always stood out in their midst.” [link]

Isabelle Huppert on “Claire’s Camera” and what moviemaking means to her:

“Moviemaking to me is sharing different experiences each time with a different director. [It’s not something] I want to repeat with someone else because all great directors have their own manner, their own way, whether it is Michael Haneke, Paul Verhoeven, or Hong Sang-soo. What’s exciting is, being different each time.” [link]

The great Quincy Jones on de-categorizing music and breaking genre:

"We’ve been stuck with—well, blessed, I should say—with 12 notes for the last 700 years. That’s heavy. That’s all we have is 12 notes. The first guys—Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven—took all the good stuff, you know? Through rhythm and harmony, we had to find a way to make those melodies ours. It feels like you belong to it, and that’s not so easy." [link]

KiKi Layne on the biggest challenge in acting in Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk”:

"I think having to communicate so much without having too much dialogue. Tish doesn’t really speak that much, but she has so much to say and so much that has to be communicated. That was a really tough part of getting to the truth of this film." [link]

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (“Leave No Trace”) when asked whether she might write or direct some day:

“I’m at my happiest when I’m acting. At the beginning of this year, I was having a bunch of meetings with different agencies and they were talking about other opportunities I have with starting projects and producing and directing. These would obviously come further down the line if it all works out, you never know.” [link]

Amy Schumer (“I Feel Pretty”) on how confidence comes internally:

“For me, definitely in college was when I was really confused about my value. People make you feel like it’s all about how you look, and you realize slowly that it’s totally not true, and it’s all about how you feel. You determine your own self-worth. Some of [that] sounds like it would be on a fucking mug, but it’s true.” [link]

Amandla Stenberg on why she wanted to make “The Hate U Give”:

“I fell in love with the book because of Starr and one of the first things she does is speak so candidly about having these two versions of herself that she presents depending on the environment that she’s in. That was so special to me as someone who has experienced that. I think it’s part of the contemporary black experience that you understand that your success is often conditioned upon how you present yourself.” [link]

John Travolta (“Gotti”) on the magic behind great co-star chemistry:

“People say that chemistry is an innate thing, but it’s true that it can also be created. If I ask the right questions of you, and you ask the right questions of me, I can assure you, we’ll start looking good together. You know what I mean? Like buddies. You can do the same thing with acting." [link]

John David Washington "BlacKkKlansman" on loving acting from a young age:

I’ve loved acting since I can remember. I’ll never forget watching my dad perform in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Richard III in New York. I also watched him in “Glory” so many times that I knew every line from every character in the film, so it was clear that the love was there back then. [link]

Forest Whitaker on whether he could tell that collaborating director Ryan Coogler would be successful with “Black Panther”:

“I did have the feeling that it would match some of the other “Star Wars” and other films. I did feel that way; I thought something special was happening. I know Ryan and I know Ryan is a great filmmaker with a great mind, and I think given the proper tools which he was allowed to utilize, and a great cast and a great crew, that he would be able to do something exceptional and that people would want to see that.” [link]

Steven Yeun on how “Burning” is not a film that can simply be solved:

"We speak in brain. We speak in words. We speak in tones and boxes and ways to compartmentalize things. We try to figure things out. And so people will watch this and try to connect every piece and by the end you have a dissertation about what this thing is, but, really, he was trying to convey an emotion. So, if you got that, your body got it but your brain maybe doesn’t and so you have this dissonance and you’re trying to wrack your brain to catch up with your body. It’s this thing that you feel but can’t exactly process." [link]

THE FILMMAKERS

Desiree Akhavan (co-writer/director, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”) on releasing her film in the middle of the Trump administration:

“What’s interesting about living in a time like this is that you also get to be a part of a rebellion against it. More women are running for office than ever. I think young people are getting politically motivated in a way that they weren’t before. I want to be part of that change.” [link]

Bo Burnham (writer/director, “Eighth Grade”) on how “Gucci” became a big catchphrase for his film:

“That was Elsie's! Elsie said that on set all the time. I didn't know what [it meant.] And then we [shot] those videos on the last few days, And I was like, "She's gotta have a sign-off or something," and then it was like, "Well, just give her 'Gucci.'" Elsie literally gets the last word of the film. I still don't know what it means.” [link]

Ruth Carter (costume designer, “Black Panther”) on creating the costumes for the Dora Milaje:

“I had a lot of stories behind the costumes because that’s how culture is. It always has a story and the costumes have to be a part of it. That’s why that female fighting force had to live and it couldn’t just be a fantasy.” [link]

Aneesh Chaganty (co-writer/director, "Searching") on looking at technology in a positive light:

"We’re looking at things that talk about how negative technology is, and how addicted we are to this, or how obsessed we are with that, or how much it alienates us and all that stuff. And we’re like, yeah, that is true, but it’s just one aspect of the stuff. It’s like zoom out and get this macro picture of what technology does as a whole; as much as it can alienate, it can connect us. As much as it can make us hate, it can also make us love." [link]

Sara Colangelo (adapting writer/director, “The Kindergarten Teacher”) on creating a challenging female character:

“It was an opportunity to create a female anti-hero, and somebody that isn’t perfectly likable. I think it’s high time that we see stories like that. For me, there’s something about this last election that [made] women’s likability an issue. I like the idea of having a character that isn’t this kind of lovely, ethically perfect person.” [link]

Ryan Coogler (co-writer/director, “Black Panther”) on his aspirations with the action genre:

“My favorite action movies have themes that are deep, that you can chew on, and that what we were trying to do, to make a movie that functions the way it was supposed to but also has some depth to it.” [link]

Debra Granik (co-writer/director, “Leave No Trace”) on making a film that encourages open-mindedness:

“One of my jobs as a storyteller, in the way that I self-describe my job, is to engender some kind of consideration or empathy; to ask some questions that at least make you motivated to want to understand another person. Something about what they've lived through, what they think about.” [link]

Nicole Holofcener (writer/director, “The Land of Steady Habits”) on the through-line of flawed characters in her filmography:

“I guess I like taking regular human frailties and building on that to kind of be more dramatic for a movie. It's certainly not anything I planned or I think about when I'm sitting down to write. It's just what I'm drawn to, I guess. You'd have to ask my therapist.” [link]

Barry Jenkins (writer/director, “If Beale Street Could Talk”) on celebrating art that moves him:

“I just know how open and wonderfully connected the world can be. And so if I see something that I respond to, I want to share it with the folks. And I want to encourage the people who see making beautiful things to make more beautiful things.” [link]

Tamara Jenkins (writer/director, “Private Life”) on connecting with her characters:

“My goal as a writer, which I guess is every writer and actor’s goal, is putting myself in each person’s shoes and believing their truth. And I just feel like I’m all three of those women easily. They're all different. From each one of their perspectives, I can see why they feel the way they do about what's happening.” [link]

Bing Liu (cinematographer/director, “Minding the Gap”) on the healing power of cinema:

“Healing begins when you are able to open up about things that are painful. I believe in the power of cinema to help you survive. Films like “Kids” and “Gummo,” as well as songs like “This Year” by The Mountain Goats, along with various books, are what got me through my childhood. It’s all about feeling like you are not alone, and that’s the hope these stories provide.” [link]

Lynne Ramsay (writer/director, “You Were Never Really Here”) on the presence of sound in her movies:

“I really think about sound and music when I'm early on in the process because of what they do to your subconscious. It's not just put on at the end, for me. Even when we do a cut, we do sound work after a cut [to] inform the next cut. I'd get the music from Jonny Greenwood and I would re-cut to the music. So, it was very organic. It wasn't a very conventional method.” [link]

Boots Riley (writer/director, “Sorry to Bother You”) on collaborating with his actors for the unique tone of his film:

“I think all of these actors, what made it was that none of them were in a comedy. While we were filming this, none of them were in a comedy. This was all real life, and if it ended up being hilarious then it was hilarious. Sometimes the characters would be trying to make jokes with each other and sometimes, purposely, those jokes weren't funny because that’s how it is in real life.” [link]

RaMell Ross (director, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening”) on editing his documentary down from 1,300 hours of footage:

“I was editing the entire time. When you quote-unquote shoot someone, I hate that term ... when you film someone, you're constantly searching for meaning or representational moments, right? These moments are in dialogue with moments you've seen before in films, specifically with people of color; certain types of humanizing touches or gazes. You're always confirming your own relationship to meaning.” [link]

The legendary Tom Savini on his approach to directing:

“Directors are visually inspired, you have a shot list, and I do the same thing. The movie’s over when I create it on paper, but now I have to go out and shoot those shots. If you have a great crew and everyone is on your side, you can create those pieces exactly the way you created them on paper. That’s the fun of it.” [link]

Paul Schrader (writer/director, “First Reformed”) on the spiritual quality of his film:

“Taking things away from the viewer is the same as meditation. Good things happen to people who wait and making people wait until it happens to them is the delicate dance of a spiritual style. You have to use boredom like a scalpel to contour an emotional reaction without it becoming plain old boredom.” [link]

from All Content http://bit.ly/2EX92e9

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calzona-ga · 5 years

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Amelia Shepherd finally got some closure.

Grey's Anatomy dedicated an entire hour to the Derek-less Shepherd family this week in an episode titled "Good Shepherd," where an impromptu and long overdue New York City reunion between Amelia (Caterina Scorsone), mom Carolyn (Tyne Daly), and sisters Nancy (Embeth Davidtz) and Kathleen (Amy Acker), the latter of whom has often been mentioned but never seen, drudged up Amelia's past inhibitions and personal battles during an explosive conversation around the dinner table. (The fourth Shepherd sister, Liz, portrayed by Neve Campbell in season nine, was "out of town.")

Ever since her Private Practice days, Amelia has been the definition of tumult -- with her share of failed romances (her recent divorce from Owen), battles with substance and alcohol abuse, and health problems (her brain tumor in season 14) keeping everyone on their toes. And as the youngest Shepherd sibling, she was often seen as the baby of the family, with her late brother, Derek (Patrick Dempsey), taking responsibility as her unofficial caretaker following their dad's death when they were kids. Those factors, mixed with Amelia's lack of communication with her family over the years, compounded her sisters' perceptions that she was still the "black sheep" of the family, no matter how successful she became or the strides she took to improve upon herself.

But a deep heart-to-heart between Amelia and her mom in Central Park provided the answers she had been seeking about her error-prone, directionless past. "Do you think I sabotage my relationships? I don't know how to love?" Amelia asked, after coming clean to her family about her divorce from Owen (Kevin McKidd) -- and her mother's response was both heartbreaking and illuminating. "Every time you fell down, you got up and came back stronger... You weren't afraid of it. And that's what made you -- out of all the kids -- the most like your father," Carolyn said, explaining that it was difficult to be around her youngest daughter following Papa Shepherd's death, hence why she handed the reins over to Derek. "You deserved a mother... and it is my biggest regret."

Following the episode, ET spoke with Scorsone for a breakdown of the Amelia-centric hour, reuniting the Shepherd family members (and finally meeting Kathleen!), Amelia's romantic future with Link (and if Owen is still in the picture) and the touching Central Park moment between Amelia and Mama Shepherd.

ET: When did you know that you were going to get a standalone hour dedicated to Amelia's story? Caterina Scorsone: One of the nice things of having an Amelia-centric episode was a lot of stuff that was developed when Amelia was a regular character on Private Practice. There was a lot of backstory that we learned about her on Private Practice that some Grey's fans haven't seen. Getting to go back and encounter her family of origin, as opposed to the family that she's built in Seattle, is great. You kind of get to see a little bit of where she came from and where she fits into her family dynamic.

You've been playing this character for almost a decade now, and I feel like the theme of this episode is a lot about Amelia confronting her past and her place in the family -- that many of them still look at her as the "black sheep." You really see Amelia work through this with her sisters and her mother, especially. Right, although she's encountering the behavior that triggered a lot of her childhood stuff to come up. I think one of the things that's beautiful about it is I think it's a really relatable, universal story -- maybe it's a bit more extreme in Amelia's case. Often we grow up and we encounter new ideas and we have new experiences and we change and evolve into a different person [than] when we were a child or when we were surrounded by our childhood dynamics. But I think there's a part of most people that doesn't notice the change happening, so when they go back to see their family at holiday times, they have an opportunity to excavate some of the dynamics that formed who they became and some of the dynamics that led to them wanting to change that dynamic. It's a beautiful opportunity to see somebody working through therapy. She's like, "Wow, I think I'm a different person but these are the conditions that formed the person that I became."

One of the most beautiful moments was Amelia's conversation with her mom, Carolyn, in Central Park, where they hash out their nonexistent mother-daughter relationship... Ugh! Tyne Daly is unbelievable. I'm so grateful that I got to work with her. That was the part of doing the standalone that made me most excited and nervous. I couldn't believe that I was going to have an opportunity to work opposite Tyne Daly. (Laughs.) Because I've been playing Amelia for so long and I've known Tyne played my mom -- I've seen all of the footage of her with Derek [in the season five episode, "Sympathy for the Devil"] -- and she was a big part of my backstory even when I was playing scenes without Tyne. Whenever I would do scenes about her, I would picture Tyne as my mom as Amelia -- whenever I had to remember something or telling a story. She was an active part of my creative life. So when Tyne walked into the lobby of the hospital where we did our first scene and I saw her, I burst into tears! (Laughs.)

When Carolyn conceded that she wasn't there for Amelia when she needed her in her formative years, that was truly heartbreaking. Have you thought about how differently things could have turned out for Amelia had her mom taken the reins more as a parental figure? Absolutely. In that moment, Amelia's mom [stepped] up as a mother and took care of Amelia's inner child and said, "Listen, you weren't given what you needed at the time when you were forming your ability to attach. I was not there." There was an absence. In terms of psychology and attachment theory, Amelia went through some incredible trauma at a formative time -- she was 5 years old and she was sitting in that store and she witnessed her father murdered in front of her. After that, her mom -- from what she says in this episode and from what I established in my backstory on Private Practice -- her mom, because of her grief, wasn't able to mirror Amelia and be present for Amelia in the ways that would have helped her process that trauma. That trauma was guided in her body and in her amygdala [nerve tissue in the brain responsible for emotions, survival instincts and memory] and created this fight or flight response that wasn't cured. I think that she probably had a viron that was predisposed to addiction, but I absolutely think that the body attachment and the trauma that she witnessed at such a formative age was a big part of the road that her life ended up going down for a long time.

It's Amelia's strength that, despite all that trauma and broken attachment, she was able to overcome and go to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and create relationships and go to med school and start getting back to medicine and have friendships. Her mom was big enough to admit her part in that piece and still be available as a mother. It's a powerful story. Nobody does things perfectly, but when you're able to look at them and talk about them, and forgive them and yourself and others, that's a pretty good job that you're doing there.

We've met the other Shepherd sisters, Nancy and Lizzie, before, but it's pretty stunning that it took until season 15 for Kathleen to finally be introduced. What did it mean to be able to have a full picture of the Shepherd family with Amy Acker now in the mix? Amy Acker is such an incredible actress. She's so talented, she's so funny and as a person, she's so kind and lovely. I had a blast working with her. I hope that she comes back and plays with us more. Working with her and Tyne and Embeth was incredible, and I'm so happy to have a complete picture in my creative, imaginative mind about Amelia's family. We're also so lucky to work with Chris -- he's so great in the episode and so funny. It was just a wonderful time. And Bill D'Elia, who was the director, and Julie Wong, who was the writer; I just feel super lucky to have this experience.

You haven't shared a scene yet with Neve Campbell, who plays Lizzie.I know! She has to come back! (Laughs.)

Shifting gears, Amelia and Link's blossoming relationship has been a pleasant surprise. Did you see them coming as a couple? What is their long-term future? I didn't see it coming. It kind of a twist that Krista [Vernoff] came to me about, she was like, "We want to try this. You're going to go back to New York and he's going to be there." Chris Carmack is a super talented guy and so it's been fun to play with him. The chemistry is really good and there's been a lot of fun, comedic beats that we've been able to play, which has been a really refreshing turn for Amelia. A lot of what she's been going through were fun at times, but there was a lot of heaviness with the Betty storyline. This has been a little bit of a reprieve from that. In terms of long-term, I honestly don't know. We're doing some fun stuff, but I also think that "Omelia" is such a beautiful and rich relationship; Kevin [McKidd] and I love working together too. We're just trying to stay as present and open and as available for what flows through [the writers'] pens. Both relationships are really interesting and fun to play for me, so I'm trying to be in acceptance of whatever lands at my desk in the next script.

Amelia and Owen have been back and forth over the years; they're currently divorced, co-parenting baby Leo and at the same time, Owen is expecting a child with Teddy. Should we be closing the door on Amelia and Owen? What do you think their relationship status should be when it all comes down to it? I would never say they're over for good. They do have so much history and they've shared so much pain and they both have their wounds and they've witnessed each through those. At this point, it's extremely complicated and they've reached a bit of an impasse at this point in their lives. At least where it stands right now, they're taking a step back and taking a breath and trying to figure it out. They can't keep ramming their heads into this wall right now, but they're just so beautiful together and their bond is so deep that I think it would be impossible for them to being nothing. They're going to either be incredibly cordial to each other or one day, they'll find each other again. I don't know. But what I can tell you is, as actors, Kevin and I adore each other and we love working together, so [maybe the writers] decide they are buddies, co-parenting babies in this new, structured way. Or could they end up re-finding each other and end up living happily ever after?

#grey's anatomy #Amelia Shepherd #Caterina Scorsone #15x21 #sccop #ETOnline

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newyorktheater · 4 years

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Bobby Steggert LMSW

Bobby Steggert, actor headshot

Ragtime, 2009 in his Tony-nominated performance as Mother’s Younger Brother

Ivan Hernandez and Bobby Steggert in Yank, 2010.

Big Love, 2015

Bobby Steggert, Frederick Weller, Grayson Taylor and Tyne Daly in Mothers and Sons, 2014

Two years ago, Bobby Steggert, a Tony-nominated actor with extensive credits on and Off Broadway (Ragtime, Big Fish, Yank! etc) , surprised the theater community by announcing that he had switched careers. In an article on Medium, he explained that he was in the middle of getting a degree in social work from Columbia University. “My master’s degree will be a piece of paper, but my life as an artist will make me a great social worker, this I know.” Since July of 2019, Bobby Steggert LMSW has been serving as a psychotherapist in private practice and a staff therapist at the Institute for Human Identity Therapy Center,. Three-fourths of his clients, he tells me, are “actors, singers, dancers, directors, writers, or designers,” and (his staff biography says) he comes to the therapy relationship with “warmth, humor, and a solution-focused approach.” He seemed the right person to ask about the specific mental health needs of theater artists during this stressful period, and he readily agreed to speak with me.

Have you had any new thoughts about your switching careers since you wrote that piece in Medium in 2018?

Time and retrospection have been even more clarifying. I think that what I struggled with most of all near the end of my performance life was a lack of meaningful purpose when not employed. This is obviously part and parcel of any freelance career, but a lot of that sense of purposelessness was within me, and in my inability or unwillingness to find sustainable and grounding purpose in other parts of my life. As a result, I focus quite a bit on finding purpose with clients, and how they can foster these essential elements of a satisfying life, even within the extreme limitations of a time like today.

Based on your own experience as a therapist, and that of your therapeutic colleagues, has there been a general uptick of mental health issues over the past few months?

Most definitely. I think that we are in a time of great anxiety as a culture and so of course that trickles down to individual experiences. There are a lot of people who are experiencing heightened anxiety and depression, and, as a result of that, dealing with an increase in substance abuse and also relationship issues and, of course, issues with unemployment and loss of income.

My colleagues and I have gotten quite a few inquiries from people who want to enter therapy. I am at capacity so I try to find other therapists for people who call me in order to get them treatment as soon as possible.

People are struggling pervasively because we have been challenged with unbelievable limitations. When you don’t have community and you don’t have a sense of purpose and you don’t have a source of income, those are definite recipes for mental health struggles.

I understand that every person is individual, but are there issues specific to (common in) theater artists during this time of pandemic and unemployment, or ways in which theater artists feel these stresses in a different way?

The most devastating thing about this crisis for theater makers is that there is really nowhere to turn for alternative employment in live performance. Theater artists are singularly gifted in creating work that is shared and felt in one communal, physical space, and in this moment, it’s practically an impossibility. We are all making major sacrifices right now, but theater artists have their hands tied in a way that is unique, and any adjustment to other work is felt as a true loss to one’s core sense of contribution.

What advice or words of comfort have you been giving to artists — or could you give to artists now?

The irony is that so many artists buy the line that they have “no real world skills” and yet they are the most creative, adaptive, and flexible people around. They are made for shifting and unexpected circumstances. They understand the vicissitudes of a highly inconsistent industry, which uniquely prepares them for a highly inconsistent time. I try to remind my clients that their fantastic relationship and communication skills alone make them highly qualified for any temporary adjustments to employment or living situations that are required of them right now. I also like to remind my clients that they are excellent at making meaning – that’s what artists do – and one major thing we have control over now is to make conscious, growth-oriented meaning out of our experiences, even when they’re terrible. And while many can’t make meaning through work right now, they can make it through their relationships, parts of their identities outside of the profession, their bodies through health and self-care, and their creative voices, whether broadcast to the world or quietly to themselves.

What about theatergoers rather than theater makers? Are you aware of ways in which the lack of live in-person theater has had a tangible, diagnosable effect?

I am not sure if I could call it diagnosable but I do think that humans benefit greatly from gathering in groups and physical spaces and in experiencing collective energy together. I think that is why theater is so special. That’s a huge reason why people, for example, attend church. Without that live shared energy, I think that is why people are suffering from loneliness even when staying connected to fiends and family through the Internet.

So what can people do about this?

I think it depends on people’s risk level and how far they are willing to go to be in contact with other humans, but I have suggested to my clients to find as many opportunities as possible to meet friends in the park or to be around other people in outdoor settings as a way to feel more physically connected to other humans.

It’s interesting that you talked earlier about finding purpose, because that of course is the main characteristic of your Tony-nominated role as Mother’s Younger Brother in “Ragtime.” Is that just a coincidence?

In retrospect, I think that as an actor the roles you play can teach you about yourself, and I do attribute that experience to be the seed of an investigation for myself as to how I could find more sustainable purpose than I was able to find as an actor who too often has to wait around for invitations to participate n what they do. Another role really taught me something — Will in “Mothers and Sons.” He was a young man who was so integrated into himself as a gay person. That character taught me that I needed to do more work to embrace the fullness of my own sexual identity.

So you’re saying that your roles helped shaped you as a person?

Very much so. When you inhabit them you take on their energy and you take on their psychology and if you are open to it , that character can teach you new things about yourself.

I admired your performances, and was struck by how much vulnerability you allowed your characters. Feel free to disagree with my premise, but, if you agree, was that vulnerability deliberate, a reflection of your own nature, or just a result of the roles for which you were cast? And is that quality a help or a hindrance or irrelevant to your new career?

I do agree with the premise. The purpose I did find as an actor was to expose the complexities of the human condition in a way that was raw and that was vulnerable. I think that is because I am naturally a more emotional and more vulnerable person. I think that quality inspires others to be more vulnerable, and so I find it very helpful as a therapist. I’m asking others to become more vulnerable and through that vulnerability to understand themselves and to experience life more deeply.

But do people seeking therapy want vulnerability, or rather somebody who seems confident and authoritative?

I think that the most important quality in a therapist is that the person feel safe with them. That sense of safety can help them to open up and to be braver in their own introspection. [My vulnerability] changes shape because as a therapist there are certainly boundaries, but at the same time I try to exist in a therapeutic relationship with total openness and with a certain kind of vulnerability that I hope can inspire others to be the same.

Where can people go for help?

I have two layers of an answers to that question. Specifically for theater people who are looking for mental health help, I think that the Institute for Human Identity is a great option because they have a lot of availability for therapists who are in the arts or who understand what it is to be in the arts. Another resource is the Actors Fund, which has a wonderful list of therapists who are also in some way connected to the arts. Those are the two places I would send theater people if they are looking to talk to someone.

On another layer, I think the best way to deal with stress especially under these circumstances is to find a physical practice, because being connected a one’s body is sometimes the best option. So I am finding that people are turning to yoga or exercise or mindful meditation.

But what if the theater person doesn’t have any money? As you said, most are unemployed now.

That is really rough. The Actors Fund also provides grants to people who are unemployed. There are also much more affordable options, such as a therapeutic apps called TalkSpace.

Is there anything about theater that you’ve used to help your clients – or yourself – cope with the stresses of the current situation?

I find it oddly comforting to think about Shakespeare’s time, in which London theaters closed several times due to the plague. He mentions the plague in several of his plays, including The Tempest and King Lear. And during the two year period between 1592-1594 when he couldn’t write plays, he turned to poetry. He adapted just like we all must.

If possible for us to telescope out of this very moment, and while acknowledging all of the suffering and hardship we are enduring, we can be reminded that human history is full of enormous disruptions to life as usual, and yet we keep moving forward, because we have to. Live theater will never leave us – and we will inevitably return to the day when we gather again to take in stories in ways that no other storytelling can replicate.

Centers for Disease Control: Coping with Stress

Bobby Steggart, Actor Turned Therapist Q & A: Theater Artists Are Suffering Two years ago, Bobby Steggert, a Tony-nominated actor with extensive credits on and Off Broadway (Ragtime, Big Fish, Yank!

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archerton84-blog · 5 years

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'Murphy Brown' Re-Arrives With Too Many Clunks for Now

The past year’s two other cast reunion reboots of note, Will & Grace and Roseanne, fired up the Donald Trump jokes in their first episodes before turning to other matters in subsequent episodes.

That’s decidedly not the case -- but hardly surprising either -- with CBS’ second coming of Murphy Brown (Thursday 9:30 p.m. ET) Relishing the fight at hand, the three episodes made available for review go hard at Trump, his supporters and the importance of truth, justice, and an unfettered, vigilant media. This is not always done with dexterity, though.

Episode 2, in particular, hits a comedic rut when Murphy (Candice Bergen) dons a brunette pageboy wig and poses as a French journalist in order to infiltrate a White House press briefing, from which she’s been banned. Once in, she doffs the disguise and confronts Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who’s edited in via previous footage because obviously she didn’t cooperate with this.

“So here’s my question,” Murphy climactically proclaims. “Why do you lie?”

After protesting Trump’s “enemy of the people” declarations, Murphy tries to lead a walkout of all the journalists in the room. No one joins her, including son Avery (Jake McDorman), now an anchor-reporter. More on this later before first noting that this is a rather embarrassingly bad episode which can’t be saved by an ongoing over-active laugh track.

The premiere episode begins with video clips of Trump’s stunning election before Murphy is first seen awakening that night in a pink “Original Nasty Woman” sweatshirt. “Nooooooo!” she exclaims before she’s soon striding into Phil’s Bar & Grill in her own ramped-up version of a pink pussy hat.

“I still can’t get used to being in a protest march without reporting on it,” Murphy laments before two of her old “FYI” news magazine co-workers, investigator Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) and lifestyles reporter Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford), join her at their old hangout. The place is now run by the late Phil’s salty sister, Phyllis (Tyne Daly). (Pat Corley, who played Phil, died in 2006.)

The original Murphy Brown ended its run on CBS 20 years ago after 10 Emmy-lauded seasons. Early in its run, Murphy Brown drew the ire of then Vice President Dan Quayle, who upbraided Bergen’s character for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone.” The show fired back in the following season’s premiere episode, celebrating the many forms of family life while also mocking Quayle’s celebrated miscorrection of a student at an elementary school spelling bee. It’s “potatoe,” he said erroneously, not “potato.”

The son in question is now all grown up. Not only that, but he’s just landed his own show, “Avery Brown’s America,” on Fox News Channel.

Suitably aghast, Murphy exclaims, “The Wolf network! Where all the male anchors are conspiracy theorists and the women are dead behind the eyes?”

That’s being “very judgy,” he retorts before mom says she’s also getting a new show on the CNC cable network. Fontana and Sherwood will join her on “Murphy In the Morning,” airing from 7 to 9 a..m. weekdays. Pause, one-two. This also turns out to be Avery’s time slot. And until he can get his finances in order, he’ll otherwise be boarding with her, too.

The give-and-take living room scenes between Murphy and Avery so far are the best and most natural parts of this reboot. McDorman, who previously starred in the CBS drama series Limitless, has an easygoing manner that succeeds in taking things down a notch. In contrast, the old Murphy cast members (also including Grant Shaud as frazzled producer Miles Silverberg), too often seem to be loudly out of rhythm in these early half hours. Rather than acting, they’re acting out. In Episode 2, even Bergen comes off as mechanical when delivering the line, “For crying out loud, LeBron would have an easier time getting into Mar-a-Lago!” In this case, she’s talking about barging into Phil’s during off-hours.

Through the course of these three episodes, Murphy also gets into an instant Twitter war with Trump and goes toe-to-toe verbally with an obvious mockup of Steve Bannon named Ed Shannon. But this happens at Phil’s rather than on the air. Murphy has refused his request to spar on her show after “FYI’s” old and still self-important news anchor, Jim Dial (Charles Kimbrough), counsels her during an Episode 3 walk-on as a guest star.

“If you put that human mudslide on the air, you’re creating a perfect example of false equivalency,” he tells her. And that’s what’s ruining journalism.

Besides Avery, the only regular cast member under 50 is newly imported social media whiz Pate Patel (Nik Dodani), who in the opening episode has an amusing reaction to Murphy’s antique cell phone.

Shaud’s Miles Silverberg likewise has a funny moment in Episode 3 after Murphy makes the ratings-deflating decision to shun Shannon against his wishes.

“I’m a five-foot-seven Jew with small calves and colitis,” he declares. “I’ve had a lifetime of not getting what I wanted.”

Meanwhile, Avery’s collusion with Fox News Channel comes with his caveat that “they’re still playing nice with their token liberal.” Wouldn’t it have been better to make the mom-son disagreements be about his politics as well -- rather than basic guilt by association?

Murphy Brown, through these first three episodes, is aggressively polemic to the point of diminishing returns. It will be telling to see if the core CBS audience, which is both older and white, will be won over or be more inclined to simply tune out. So far this just isn’t a very good show, with both Roseanne and Will & Grace making stronger and funnier first impressions in this particular three-way reboot universe.

Source: http://www.tvworthwatching.com/post/Murphy-Brown-Re-Arrives-With-Too-Many-Clunks-for-Now.aspx

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